Welcome!

By registering with us, you'll be able to discuss, share and private message with other members of our community.

SignUp Now!

Rome's Harry Potter Live Blog

Page 655 of Order of the Phoenix.

Snape's worst memory is the best thing to happen yet in the series. I hope there isn't some explanation that makes James and Sirius not look like bullies after all. As it is, it adds a level of moral complexity that just wasn't really present in the series until now.
 
Finished the book. Will probably swing by the used bookstore to see if they have a copy of Book 6.

Overall, that was incredibly good. A big step up from any of the others so far, to my mind.
 
rome8180 said:
Finished the book. Will probably swing by the used bookstore to see if they have a copy of Book 6.

Overall, that was incredibly good. A big step up from any of the others so far, to my mind.
Click to expand...

Indeed. Only a squib would think 4 is better than 5.
 
Random thoughts:

1) The idea of a prophecy that is fulfilled by the person trying to prevent the prophecy is classic greek tragedy.

2) It's kind of funny that Sirius's death could have been avoided if only Harry had remembered he had that mirror Sirius gave him. Also why didn't Sirius use the mirror to contact Harry instead of the clearly dangerous Floo Network?

3) Rowling's clearly proven willing to kill important characters now. That ups the tension for me.

4) I wish Umbridge had ended up in Azkaban.

5) Pretty bummed that Harry and Cho are not together.

6) I've always felt like there was something going on with Ron and Hermione. The books are subtler about that than the movies.

7) The writing is definitely a lot better. She's not doing nearly as much unnecessary explanation, though she can sometimes be a little heavy-handed with the dialogue tags. I don't need to hear that Luna Lovegood said something "vaguely" for the 27th time. But I really like how she's handling Harry's thoughts now. She's definitely trying to use more direct consciousness rather than reporting what he's feeling.
 
8) Going to watch the movie now. I need a job, but where I am going to find time for that with two books and three movies left?
 
Already not a fan of Harry's new less shaggy haircut.

Speaking of movies, why did they cut Winky out of the last movie? Who on earth would want fewer house elves? Annoyed as well that we haven't seen Dobby for a while.
 
rome8180 said:
Random thoughts:


4) I wish Umbridge had ended up in Azkaban.
Click to expand...

She actually did at least get fucked up somewhat, though:

Dolores Umbridge is perhaps the one person in the whole Harry Potter universe who is virtually impossible to like, no matter what angle you choose to piss on her from.


Via Hp-lexicon.org

She's like Mussolini and your nosy old neighbor, all rolled into one.

The short-lived headmistress of Hogwarts gets off on torturing children, has an unflinching holier-than-thou attitude...[paraphrased: 'fine by the end of book '5]

Well, unless you count the part where she is abducted and gang raped by centaurs. And if you think we're just filling in the rape stuff with our filthy imaginations, hang on.

Near the climax of the book/film, Umbridge is hauled screaming into the Forbidden Forest by a group of centaurs. No one sees what happens next.



What you have to realize is that there's a reason Rowling made sure it was centaurs who snatched Umbridge, rather than any of the countless other dangerous creatures in the forest (like the giant spiders). If you're familiar with the mythology of centaurs, seeing a screaming woman get hauled away by a bunch of them gives you the same feeling you get in Deliverance when Ned Beatty falls into the hands of the hillbillies, or when Bruce Willis and Ving Rhames wind up imprisoned by the same in Pulp Fiction. Centaurs rape human women -- that's what they do, that's a central part of their mythology.

In one legend, centaurs were invited to a wedding feast and attempted to rape the bride. In another, the famous centaur Nessus was killed while trying to rape a woman. That's the point of centaurs as characters -- they have the heads of men and the animal urges of horses.

People on the Internet familiar with the mythology were quick to notice this, as were feminist blogs. After all, showing Umbridge getting dragged away by centaurs would be like having Draco Malfoy getting his comeuppance by having him get hauled into the back of a windowless van by a creepy guy with a wispy mustache. We don't need to see what happens next if we know the context.

Now, if that had been the last time we saw Umbridge in the series, then you could say, OK, maybe these centaurs are different, maybe they just trampled her to death or stabbed her or tied her to a tree and strapped a bag full of oats to her face. But Umbridge comes back, and comes back suffering from some kind of major trauma that didn't involve any damage to the visible parts of her body. Here's Rowling's depiction of her in the aftermath:

Professor Umbridge was lying in a bed opposite them, gazing up at the ceiling .... Since she had returned to the castle she had not, as far as any of them knew, uttered a single word. Nobody really knew what was wrong with her, either. Her usually neat mousy hair was very untidy and there were still bits of twigs and leaves in it, but otherwise she seemed to be quite unscathed.

'Madam Pomfrey says she's just in shock,' whispered Hermione.

'Sulking, more like,' said Ginny.

'Yeah, she shows signs of life if you do this,' said Ron, and with his tongue he made soft clip-clopping noises. Umbridge sat bolt upright, looking around wildly.

'Anything wrong, Professor?' called Madam Pomfrey, poking her head around her office door.

'No ... no ...' said Umbridge, sinking back into her pillows. 'No, I must have been dreaming ...'

Hermione and Ginny muffled their laughter in the bedclothes.

Two characters watch Umbridge getting dragged away -- Harry Potter and Hermione Granger. At least one of those two knows that centaurs are rape machines. (Hint: It's Hermione, the character whose main purpose in the plot is to know absolutely everything.)

Neither of them make an effort to save Umbridge. Potter gets in a witty, James Bond-esque quip as she's being dragged away, and Hermione seems satisfied that mass horse rape is a fitting punishment. We like to think that on the way back to school, Harry asked "So what do you suppose those centaurs are going to do to the professor?" and that Hermione casually described to him how Umbridge would almost certainly be brutally violated by equinely endowed inter-species rapists. And that was the day Harry learned that you do not mess with Hermione Granger.
Click to expand...
 
Interesting. I of course knew about the animal-on-human rape that's so prevalent in Greek mythology (mostly by a disguised Zeus), but I didn't really know that about centaurs. It makes sense though.

I wonder how many other "offscreen" things like that there are in the books.
 
So they put Kreacher in this but couldn't be bothered with Winky or more Dobby? I guess they REALLY didn't want to do the whole Hermione helping the house elves storyline.
 
Umbridge did a good job, but there were way too many arbitrary changes in the movie. The first couple movies were actually way more faithful to the books. And the increasing inaccuracy doesn't seem to a function of the length because there were obvious ways to follow the books in the same amount of time.

I said the changes were arbitrary, but as usual they are actually about simplifying and dumbing down.
 
28 pages into Book 6. Don't know what to think about Snape now. Is he a double agent, triple agent, quadruple agent?

I think it's more interesting if he's on the side of good, since the rest of his personality and demeanor suggest that he would be on the side of evil. Makes for a richer character than simply a villain pretending to be good.
 
Page 158. I was happy to see this one is a couple hundred pages shorter than the last -- not because I'm not enjoying it, but because I'm eager to get to Book 7.

This book feels like it's going to be Snape's book, one way or the other.
 
ZackM said:
rome8180 said:
Finished the book. Will probably swing by the used bookstore to see if they have a copy of Book 6.

Overall, that was incredibly good. A big step up from any of the others so far, to my mind.
Click to expand...

Indeed. Only a squib would think 4 is better than 5.
Click to expand...

Shut it, Mudblood.
 
I think we should start planning our porn equal to Rowlings series. I am starting with an all female House at Hogwarts called the House of Scissorin'
 
I just find myself comparing Duke players and staff to Hogwarts teachers and students.
 
rome8180 said:
I just find myself comparing Duke players and staff to Hogwarts teachers and students.
Click to expand...

Examples?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Chat users

Chat rooms

Forum statistics

Threads
1,067
Messages
424,986
Members
624
Latest member
Bluegrass Blue Devil
Back
Top Bottom