A general thread for discussion of the Harry Potter books. Any new books set in the same world are also on-topic.
Games, films and other adaptations may be more appropriate for other threads if they're being discussed in isolation.
The HBO tv series has its own thread
.
Mod Notes:
- Media threads are primarily for fans of the works they cover. Not everyone will like everything, of course, and that's especially true in a franchise like Harry Potter. It's fine to say a particular story within the franchise doesn't work for you, or to talk about why it doesn't work for you. But please try not to dwell on the negativity for too long. Complaints shouldn't take up too much space on a thread that's intended for fans.
- This is a thread to talk about Harry Potter and the content of the stories, not a place to talk about J. K. Rowling's more controversial views. If there's something newsworthy where Rowling's activities become relevant (e.g. it affects her relationship to new Potter works and adaptations), that's fair enough. Otherwise it's all been said already and we don't need to repeat it.
there doesn't seem to be a general HP topic...
Edited by Mrph1 on May 27th 2025 at 9:17:24 AM
They've been Unpersoned?
[[tvtropes.org/pmwiki/lb_i.php?lb_id=12919183980B30760200 Liveblog of]] John Carter Of MarsWhat I find annoying is that Ginny gains increased prominence in OOTP (and I'll admit that I liked this), but in HBP she just goes into the background again except for whenever Harry's "chest monster" cropped up. It's pushed to the side for endless exposition that ultimately ends with "yeah, Voldemort's a bad guy."
And really I should have seen Ron/Hermione coming. Because, in Fictionland, whenever two people argue constantly the only possible explanation is that they desperately want to fuck each other. It's not like they might have wildly differing opinions or personalities. It's like in other children's stories where boys only pick on girls they have crushes on. No, it's not a possibility that he picks on you because you're ugly or unpopular or weaker than you, it's because he likes you! Really!
Then I remind myself that it doesn't matter whether or not the canon ships make any sense to me, and if they make any sense to anyone else that's a complete accident. Harry marries Ginny because it legitimises the familial relationship he has with the Weasleys, and Hermione marries Ron because it legitimises the familial relationship she has with Harry. One Big Happy Weasley Family and all that.
Bleh. The canon ships just leave a bad taste in my mouth. Ugh. Just... moving on.
edited 8th Dec '10 2:27:18 PM by Medicus
It's not over. Not yet.Having participated in the ship debates in their heyday, it amuses me greatly that they're still going on years after the series is over, and despite everyone knowing what the final ships would be by HBP. Although as a major bone of contention they've largely been displaced by the "Snape: Flawed and Nasty But Ultimately on the Good Side, or Perfect Angel Woobie?" debates.
I like both of the ships, but I agree that it would have been nice if Ginny had had a greater visible role in the fighting in HBP and DH.
I don't participate in the shipping debates, and have found much amusement from the stuff posting at Rhe HMS STFU
. My interest in this sort of thing has mellowed considerably over the years, but it was never that great to begin with: you won't find anything I've written, because I didn't write anything.
Nowadays I just wish they'd been written with a little more competence. Oh, Ron and Hermione argue, obviously they want to fuck each other. Oh, Ginny's pretty and likes Quidditch, she's Harry's true love. Or, hey, ditch the last two books and write something that didn't suck. HBP is Expositon: The Novel, where the title boils down to it being Snape's lame nickname when he was a kid. And the less said about Deathly Hallows, the better. Voldemort's taken over the Minisitry! Quick, let's go fucking camping for ten months! Oh, Voldemort's rounding up muggleborns to be registered and given identification, completely different to what the Nazis did! Oh, Snape has control of the school! Don't worry, Ginny, Neville and Luna are perfectly safe, because the Death Eaters are apparently complete fucking morons! Oh no, how are we going to defeat Voldemort? I know, why don't you sacrifice yourself just like our Lord and Saviour did, then Voldemort can line up a Deus ex Machina so you don't have to angst about killing Adolf Hitler Emperor Palpatine Lord Voldemort? Fuck fuck FUCK, when did it all go to shit?
And Snape is an asshole, albeit one who made a Heel Face Turn. Doesn't change the fact it was motivated by a creepy obsession with Lily Evans, or that he spent the next sixteen years torturing children. Asshole.
edited 8th Dec '10 3:04:13 PM by Medicus
It's not over. Not yet.^^^ Deeply resisting the urge to facepalm. At the very least, I would not call Ron and Hermione's relationship bullying by any means whatsoever.
^^ The HP Fandom is one of many absolutes, but few middle grounds.
edited 8th Dec '10 3:07:37 PM by KnownUnknown
No thanks, my "telling angry shippers why they're wrong about Ron and Hermione" phase ended a few years back.
Deathly Hallows was my favorite of the series though, mainly due to the Dumbledore backstory, Harry gaining a degree of wisdom, and everything getting more intense. Also enjoyed HBP and found the Tom Riddle stuff fascinating - but then, I'm the kind of person who reads the Lot R appendices for fun, so to each their own.
PS, GOF and Oot P were probably my least favorites.
But the Lord of the Rings appendices weren't actually part of the narrative. You didn't need to go through them to get to the good stuff. We didn't need all those pages of backstory devoted to Voldemort and Dumbledore, because they didn't tell us anything we needed to know. Rowling took "Show, don't tell" to a level I've never seen before. Couldn't Dumbledore have just told Harry about Voldemort's horcruxes in about fifty pages? Did we really need to see "here's Tom at age eight, and he's a monster", "here's Tom at age eleven, and he's a monster", "here's Tom at age eighteen, and he's a monster" and "here's Tom at age thirty, and now he's Voldemort?" Couldn't that time have been better spent fleshing out Harry's relationship with Ginny, or the one between Ron and Hermione? Or have Dumbledore training Harry, at least on how to find and destroy Horcruxes?
Likewise, did we need all that exposition via Rita Skeeter that Dumbledore once flirted with the idea of world conquest? (I honestly have no idea where that came from, Dumbles could've stayed the wise old mentor a la Obi Wan) All that really needs to be explained is that Dumbledore had the Elder Wand and the Resurrection Stone, and if you removed that trinity of fail then you don't need to elaborate on Dumbledore's backstory at all.
As for things being ramped up and getting more intense: eh. People die I suppose, but they're always tertiary characters like Hedwig, Mad-Eye Moony, Colin Creevy, Dobby etc. The primary characters escape mostly unharmed, and of course the Big Six make it through completely unscathed. And the Death Eaters and Voldemort, previously described as the most dangerous threat that Wizarding Britain has ever faced, suddenly become so ineffectual that a bunch of teenagers can mount a guerrilla war right under their noses. Not to mention that nobody seizes on the idea of using the Weasleys or anyone else Harry has associated with as bait. Or why Death Eaters aren't indiscriminately killing the Mudbloods and Blood Traitors now that they control the Ministry. Or why there's no international effort to retake the country. Etcetera.
I don't know what my favourite book was, but I know I read through Books 1 - 5 more than a dozen times. I loved those books when I was a kid.
edited 8th Dec '10 3:46:18 PM by Medicus
It's not over. Not yet.^^^
That's bullying, and yes, you did say it was, though I suppose a more broad term would be abuse, no?
Like I said about hyperbole...
edited 8th Dec '10 3:49:45 PM by KnownUnknown
Not talking about Ron and Hermione there. There's never any physical abuse (at least from Ron, anyway), and while Ron and Hermione argue a lot it's almost never abusive. It's the rare exception and one or both of them ends up apologising in the end.
I was talking about those kids stories where boys always pick on the girls that they like.
edited 8th Dec '10 3:55:16 PM by Medicus
It's not over. Not yet.This is by far my favorite fanfiction ever.
Particularly these
two
chapters. Awesomely hilarious.
edited 8th Dec '10 4:46:53 PM by KnownUnknown
Medicus, it looks like as regards book seven, you are a fella entirely after my own heart. *high five*
I've made my peace with some aspects of the seventh book - it kind of makes sense that Harry would have to face Death personally to defeat Voldemort, whose biggest deal is that he's afraid of Death, and always has been, and that was pretty cool. But, seriously, it's one thing when the last few chapters of a series get derailed and start to get weird (cough cough, sorry, got a cold), but at least we had a cool adventure getting there, it's another thing when the entire last book is a confused, poorly plotted, overdone and underdone mess.
I think the point of Dumbledore's flashback was to show that he was a fallible human being, after we've spent six years building him up as Wizard Jesus. By the sixth book, we've become pretty dependant on the idea that Dumbledore will always be there, Dumbledore has the perfect plan, he's always right, he knows everything, and you can count on him to show up at just the right moment. He's this indestructible, unbeatable, perfect figure of awesome.
And then BAM, he's dead. The big shocker at the end of Half Blood Prince means that no, he's not going to save you, he's not going to be there at the end, he's not unbeatable. Gandalf will not be bringing the Riders of Rohan to save your ass, he is dead and he is gone and good luck without him.
The flashbacks that flesh out his life further serve the purpose of tearing down this illusion of Wizard Jesus by showing us that he had a life. That, at the end of the day, he wasn't God's Gift to Wizardry put on this earth just to guide Harry. He was just a man.
Now, I think Voldemort's flashbacks SHOULD have served the same purpose, showing us that Voldemort was not Pure Evil In The Shape Of A Man and was actually, just as Dumbledore was, a fallible human being. But that got shoved aside in favor of "See? SEE? He's EVIL. EEEEVIIIIIL!"
edited 8th Dec '10 5:03:04 PM by TobiasDrake
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.Medicus - It's called character development. It gives Dumbledore more depth, and gives Harry more depth as well as he learns to deal with the fact that his hero is fallible and has made some rather massive mistakes in his life. To me, character development is what makes book interesting - the ones that lack it (like Asimov's Foundation series - loads of plot, excellently planned out, but little time to get to know characters as it occurs over centuries) may show technical skill, but don't attract emotional investment.
Re Voldemort: Does he need any more character development? No, he's the bad guy, that's all we need to know. We already knew what we needed to about his past, all we need to learn in HBP was what Horcruxes were and where Harry could find them. That's it. We didn't need to know he killed animals or tortured children when he was at the orphanage, we didn't need to see the Gaunts. Mention it? Yeah. But don't devote whole chapters to it.
Re Dumbledore: All heroes have feet of clay, flaws that show them as human. It's that Dumbledore's flaw is that he flirted with the idea of world domination and enslavement of the majority of the human race. It is possible to overdo it.
edited 8th Dec '10 5:56:54 PM by Medicus
It's not over. Not yet.Almost entirely unrelated!
That spreadsheet baffles me. Events in time have to go in order for me, not necissarily left to right, but in a distinct progressing line. (It's not that I don't like time travel either =P that's unrelated) I imagine its easier to write a spreadsheet for a story plot than it is to puzzle out someone else's spreadsheet for someone else's plot, but still it got me wondering about the differences in thought process between different people, and what that spreadsheet might say about the way Rowling thinks.
Kino— Why fight on the winning side when both sides are gonna suffer heavy casualties? Be a donator instead of a soldier.
Read my stories!Fairly sure, mind you. Stephen Hawking is such an a-hole.
It's not over. Not yet.^ You are a man of exquisite taste.
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.Hermione will never be as annoying as Ron in a million years. If I had to live with someone like that again I think I might stab 'im with a fork.
A True Lady's Quest - A Jojo is You!

When I read the last book I was pissed because Slytherin didn't join in the final battle...then I realized " they're Slytherin, they're not idiots"...then I thought about it and I was like " They're smart enough to pick the winning side, the good guys were winning; why didn't they back them?"