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Post by vegablack on Mar 2, 2009 18:25:55 GMT -5
I agree; I find fandom Luna almost unreadable. A few people can write her well, but most people either right her as a Mary sue repository of their own fantasies or a weird animal name dropper who hardly says anything real.
Luna as part of a pairing often behaves so freakishly I wonder how any man could have the patience for her.
But that is fanon Luna not canon Luna. I liked JKR's Luna, but I don't think I could do any better than the people I criticize above.
She may have become a comfortable with herself outsider as an adult, but that is not who she is as a teen. She is desperately lonely as a teen.
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Post by queenie on Mar 17, 2009 21:42:16 GMT -5
Count me in the anti-Grawp camp. He does nothing except turn Hagrid from a still reasonable adult who sometimes forgets that not everyone thinks the way he does, to a character that Harry, Ron, and Hermione practically need to babysit. And did anything actually come of Hagrid and Maxime's envoys to the giants?
Kreacher, too, is on my short list of least favorite characters. He's repulsive, servile and racist, and does nothing except provide a bad atmosphere and kick the plot along. And then he and Grawp both undergo this bizarre cuteification in book Seven - Kreacher suddenly dotes on Harry, nevermind that he gladly sent Sirius to his death, and we see people playing with Grawp after the battle for Hogwarts - which is another one of several reasons why I dislike the book. I expected Kreacher to die, the very last of the House of Black and all it symbolizes, instead we get Dobby, who at least is a faintly inspiration figure, if a bit of an oddball, with a knife in the chest. In fact, the whole House-Elves plot in general bugged me.
Very Last Note: the Carrows. You may as well stamp 'Hi, We're Evil!' on their faces - they're twisted, they wheeze, they're ugly, and their personalities are kind of nil other than sadistic bootlicking Death Eaters. For anyone who's read Jasper Fforde, they are Level C Villains.
P.S. Pius Thicknesse. Just the name enrages me. After Argus Filch and Minerva McGonagall and other such wonderful, evocative, personality-licious names, we get Pius Thicknesse. An adjective and a noun. Really really clever.
/rant
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Post by birdg on Mar 18, 2009 12:11:00 GMT -5
Well, I thought it was interesting in giving the war a wider scope and giving Hagrid something to do but it was better kept to sub-plots and offscreenland. Grawp was JKR indulging her favorite character and possibly setting up a Deux Ex Machina to get rid of Umbridge but then - in a surprise twist - he doesn't even do that.
I am biased but I do think the Carrows might have had some use - to act as a catalyst for the reformation (and possible expansion) of Dumbledore's Army. I don't think Snape alone could have done that, hence why we have the Carrows.
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Post by mo on Mar 18, 2009 17:03:41 GMT -5
The Carrows were pretty necessary, in the end...there needed to be a genuinely evil presence at Hogwarts, and, in the end, we learn that Snape wasn't it...and there were hints of this early on, when the Trio hears that Snape punished Ginny, Neville and Luna by giving them detention with Hagrid...of all the professors at Hogwarts who could actually "punish" those three, Hagrid was one of the most likely to be lenient.
Fandom Luna can be VERY problematic, vegablack, I agree. The only romantic stories I have enjoyed with Luna have been a few Luna/Neville ones that capitalize on the inherent sweetness of both characters, without ignoring the fact that both were essentially "losers" in school. The worst I've seen are the Luna/Ron stories (and, I haven't seen many, as I usually won't even read them) that have Luna as crazy and Ron as so stupid he just believes whatever she says. (I suspect these are disguised screeds from those who believe "Ron is an idiot and unworthy of perfectbrilliantcultured Hermione, who should really be with Draco/Harry/Snape!")
Pius Thicknesse is more than an adjective and a noun. While "Thicknesse" is a bit....obvious, I believe that "Pius" is a reference to Pope Pius XII (I think it's XII), who turned a blind eye to the evils of the Third Reich and is still derisively referred to as "Hitler's Pope" because of his willful ignorance.
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Post by queenie on Mar 18, 2009 19:26:01 GMT -5
All right, point taken about the Carrows. I guess that they have uses in the story, after all, one can hardly expect Bellatrix Lestrange to volunteer to run Hogwarts - but I still feel like JKR put absolutely the minimum required thought into designing and developing their characters. "What do they look like?" "They look... evil!" "How do they talk?" "They talk... like Darth Vader!" "Is there anything else we should add? Motivations? Past? Bit of a family history?" "Come on, do you want the seventh book written or not?"
And interesting point about Pius. That makes sense, and in fact it's really kind of cool, though she still could have done a lot better than Thicknesse.
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kareena
Hogwarts Letter Recipient
Posts: 6
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Post by kareena on Mar 20, 2009 20:41:27 GMT -5
Let's see,
I agree, Dobby, Winky and Grawp, I believe they could have had Dobby, but left out the WInky and Grawp sections. Dobby is important in the last book, and it is to be interestin how they bring him into the movies, or work around the whole issue. Why would Harry be SO upset by the death of Dobby.... esp. since he has very little part in the movies thus far.
I am not a real big fan of Trelawny either, she seemed just a flakey plot twist, she was convenient for annoying poor Harry re: his imminent death, and was a nice foil to take the heat of Umbridge off Hagrid, but... she was a weak character to me.
I am sorry, I love Hagrid, makes me want to write a fan fic for him, once I heard there are few. He has his good and bad points, but overall, I think Hagrid is one of my favorite characters.
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Post by Ilene Bones on Mar 29, 2009 20:35:55 GMT -5
Well, least favorite character to meet as a real person would definitely be Dolores Umbridge. She's the reason (other than the sheer length) that I rarely re-read OotP. At least Voldemort has an interesting backstory. Umbridge's brand of evil is so banal that she isn't even interesting, just repulsive. Also, unfortunately Umbridge's kind of evil is a lot more common than Voldemort's. I have met a few people in RL who reminded me of Umbridge, and they gave me the heebie-jeebies, like chalk grating on the blackboard. Ugh.
Least favorite character from a literature analysis standpoint would be Ginny, unfortunately. I tried to like Ginny but I never got a sense of who she really was. I don't have the Ginny-hate I've seen elsewhere in the fandom. But I don't think she was a well-written character.
As for Luna...I like her, but I think she has been a tad over-rated by some in the fandom. The disconnect between her comedic aspects (her strange behavior and belief in crazy conspiracy theories) and the "wise fool" aspects of the character does grate on me a little.
I think that one challenge any author (or playwright, screenwriter, etc) has is to create characters who have funny, comedic aspects but can also be serious and believable (this is why I think a good comedy is harder to write than a good tragedy). It seems most of the characters who have been criticized here are characters meant to be both comic and serious, or even tragic, and the two roles may not always have melded together well into a convincing character. Luna fits this problem, and so do characters like Dobby and Hagrid.
I don't find Hagrid that annoying though, perhaps because I know animal-loving people who are like that, who if attacked by a wild creature would defend the beast and say it was their fault for intruding on its territory, and that the animal was only acting on natural instinct and shouldn't be blamed. So (other than the half-giant thing) he strikes me as pretty realistic as a character.
As for Pius Thicknesse...he's not really much of a character, he only shows up in one scene, and he's under Imperius then, so we can't really judge him. I did think Jo could have come up with a better name for him, especially as he shows up in DH, the darkest book in the series. The name sounded like one of the cutesy pen names for textbook authors Jo used earlier in the series. Also, while I got the historical reference there is still a lot of controversy over the actions (or inactions) of the historical Pope Pius during WWII, so that's another reason I thought Jo could have done better.
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Post by vegablack on Mar 30, 2009 15:36:07 GMT -5
I thought she was taking her stand on Pope Pius himself through the name. (Not that I agree with her.)
I thought your comments on Umbridge were interesting. I hadn't thought of her as banal, but that is a perfect description.
I never thought of her as being as dangerous as a character like Bellatrix, because she is a follower. She needs to hitch herself to a more powerful star to both function and have motivation. She expresses her evil within the limmits created by the climate around her. In the right climate she'd merely be a crank. While Bellatrix would create the climate herself and would be dangerous where ever she was.
A lot of teens can be different from year to year. I"ve chaparoned kids and been shocked at how different they acted from one year to the next. I thought of Ginny that way. I think she wanted to create the image she had. She created herself.
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Post by Ilene Bones on Mar 31, 2009 17:08:21 GMT -5
vega black, I agree that Umbridge is probably not as dangerous as someone like Bellatrix, and I certainly wouldn't want to meet up with Bellatrix any time soon either. Still, at least Bellatrix, despite her being an evil psychopath, never tries to hide who she is, or what she believes. (It seems she did so after Voldemort first fell, but that seems to have been motivated by the wish to remain free so she could find her master, not remain free to enjoy her social position like Lucius Malfoy did) . Another aspect of Umbridge I find so foul is her phoniness, how she pretends to be a sweet, caring person when she is actually cruel and sadistic. So, in terms of the "ugh" factor Umbridge still wins, for me.
As for Ginny, I suppose I can rationalize her development intellectually, but she is just not someone I can relate to at all, and that is not the case for the rest of the Hextet, meaning the Trio, Neville, and even Luna.
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Post by vegablack on Apr 1, 2009 18:31:27 GMT -5
Umbridge has a small petty quality to her while Bellatrix has a Lucifer like reign in hell sort of high level quality. It's probably a matter of taste which seems worse to the reader. They both seem to get a lot of pleasure from hurting people and obsess over serving their leader.
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Post by starsea on Apr 2, 2009 16:57:15 GMT -5
I agree with Ilene: Bellatrix is honest about who and what she is. She is terrifying and horrible but you know where you are with her. You don't know where you are with Umbridge. And she's officially sanctioned, that's the worst thing.
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Rugi
Third Year
Norberta's Chief Cook and Librarian
Posts: 33
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Post by Rugi on May 10, 2009 7:06:58 GMT -5
So my least favorite character... I think I'm going to ignore the "villains."
Of the positive characters, the ones I was (I feel) supposed to like and admire in some way, I think my least favorites have to be the Twins. I always got the impression that they were mean, I was revolted that they appeared to direct their mockery and tricks at people who were younger and weaker than they were, and I was horrified that they almost killed a fellow student through a prank and didn't seem to care. They always struck me as the sorts of boys I would have been frightened of as a child.
I think I've felt a little leery of Ginny because (in the end) she reminded me of them.
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Post by Author By Night on May 10, 2009 7:58:25 GMT -5
I was horrified that they almost killed a fellow student through a prank and didn't seem to care. Ugh, this bothered me as well. I was really hoping that would be discussed in HBP and/or TDH, but nope. I want to love the twins, and I love them outside of OoTP - and even HBP, apparently selling Draco the Peruvian Darkness Powder or whatever it was. I realize they weren't as set on the "Draco is a Death Eater" theory as Harry, but when does giving any kid something like that seem like a good idea? (Although I have to say, I'm a Jo defender through and through for the most part, but her idea of poetic justice as a whole horrifies me just a little.)
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Rugi
Third Year
Norberta's Chief Cook and Librarian
Posts: 33
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Post by Rugi on May 10, 2009 8:48:49 GMT -5
I realize they weren't as set on the "Draco is a Death Eater" theory as Harry, but when does giving any kid something like that seem like a good idea? That was a huge part of my problem with them. They never ever seemed to consider that their actions could have grave consequences - something which seems especially disturbing in people whose intended career involved catering primarily to children. At first I disapproved of things they did, but shrugged it off as typical behavior in a certain type of kid, but, as they aged without changing, I just couldn't forgive it anymore. That might have been the source of some of my trouble too - I was in the group that thought what happened to Marietta was pretty sad and horrifying.
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Post by vegablack on May 11, 2009 0:04:11 GMT -5
The problem with the Marrietta incident and much of the twins behavior is that there is no repurcussions to any of their actions. McGonagall seems to not know or not care that they are testing untied potions on younger kids, that they've almost killed a kid over house points or that Hermione has maimed someone. It seems to me to be similar to the attitude to dueling. If your magic is strong enough to over power another persons' within cerain limmits then good for you. Look how skilled you are. Which turns into the strong dominating the weak without any social protections at all.
It's that or the teachers let their favorites get away with anything. Or McGonagall seems conspicuously unaware: Hermione curses someone who shows up in Dumbledore's office maimed, the twins test drugs on fellow students and shove someone into a broken magical cabinet who is not seen for weeks. (Didn't anyone look for the kid and trace his last whereabouts?) The Marauders roam the grounds as animagi with a released werewolf blissfully in their youth unconcerned with the possible consequences. No one ever figures this out. Did the possiblitliy that a guard on the werewolf might be a good thing enter any adults mind?
McGonagall may have been an excellent teacher. Her house under her care seemed a bit chaotic.
I don't think deep down wizards care about what happens to the weak.
You might say these events were made necessary for the plot but the writer has to live with the consequences of what she has written. If no one thinks to put a guard on the were wolf we can't say they would have but I needed them not to for the plot. We have to see what that says about the characters.
I love Lupin. No one was doing him a favor by putting him in the position to hurt someone while he was out of his head. A guard would have been a favor to him.
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Post by birdg on May 11, 2009 0:21:31 GMT -5
There really is an undercurrent of "might is right" happening in the wizarding world. Not just in these events or the casual violence that is quite frequent but also in their attitudes towards Squibs and house-elves and Muggles.
It's not surprising that the Death Eaters got as far as they did, only that they didn't get farther.
I think JKR is, at least partially, aware of this. One of the titles of DH echoes the aphorism I used above - "Magic is might".
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Post by queenie on May 11, 2009 1:48:10 GMT -5
There really is an undercurrent of "might is right" happening in the wizarding world. Not just in these events or the casual violence that is quite frequent but also in their attitudes towards Squibs and house-elves and Muggles.I don't think deep down wizards care about what happens to the weak.Ahh, fascinating. www.redhen-publications.com/Premature.html This is a brilliant - and very long - essay on thoughts about Deathly Hallows and how it might have gone differently, and the deepseated problems in the WW at large which Rowling never addresses. He contrasts his idea of what JKR would provide with the eventual result. There's a whole lot of great stuff in this article, but one of the things most pertinent to this topic is this paragraph: Every direction you look you see people who won’t forgive this, or who won’t forgive that, or who won’t forgive the other, starting with Petunia Dursley all down through the series, and Harry has fallen right into lockstep with all of them. And they are all wrong.
And I was beginning to suspect that this is going to be the punchline of Rowling’s entire message as it regards choices. To forgive is a choice that you can make without it ever being formally offered.The twins with the Vanishing Cabinet, Hermione with Marietta, even Harry with the Cruciatus Curse - all smack of not just an eye for an eye, but "I have to hit you worse than you hit me. I will not regret it." If Hermione had cursed the paper so that whoever betrayed them would be violently sick, or marked, for a day, that would have been one thing. But she's scarred Marietta for life - curses never heal fully. Considering that Hermione's own ineptitude made her half-transform into a cat, and that her teeth were cursed by Draco to expand to agonizing and humiliating size, one would think that she would be less severe in such a punishment. But the punishment that Hermione doled out, it seems like she's incapable of imagining that she would ever forgive Marietta, or ever feel sorry for what she's done. Which is, admittedly, pretty fair for an immature person. But Hermione is supposed to be very mature, not the sort who'll let her emotions carry her away, and furthermore, no one calls her on having mutilated Marietta's face. Also: Wizards not caring for the weak. Somehow this idea seems to go along with the probability that Luna never received proper counseling for watching her mother die in front of her. It's probable that her father would have rejected such care - but if there was anyone else, they should have insisted on that. With Neville's upbringings, it seems that childrearing ideas among wizards are very archaic indeed - if not 'spare the rod,' then they certainly predate the Freudian psychological notion that we should take care of children's minds, as well as bodies, in childhood (I am probably grossly oversimplifying.) After all, who is weaker than a child whose magical abilities have only just started to manifest? Or a child with no magical abilities?
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Rugi
Third Year
Norberta's Chief Cook and Librarian
Posts: 33
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Post by Rugi on May 11, 2009 5:15:40 GMT -5
Every direction you look you see people who won’t forgive this, or who won’t forgive that, or who won’t forgive the other, starting with Petunia Dursley all down through the series, and Harry has fallen right into lockstep with all of them. And they are all wrong.
And I was beginning to suspect that this is going to be the punchline of Rowling’s entire message as it regards choices. To forgive is a choice that you can make without it ever being formally offered.The twins with the Vanishing Cabinet, Hermione with Marietta, even Harry with the Cruciatus Curse - all smack of not just an eye for an eye, but "I have to hit you worse than you hit me. I will not regret it." If Hermione had cursed the paper so that whoever betrayed them would be violently sick, or marked, for a day, that would have been one thing. But she's scarred Marietta for life - curses never heal fully. Considering that Hermione's own ineptitude made her half-transform into a cat, and that her teeth were cursed by Draco to expand to agonizing and humiliating size, one would think that she would be less severe in such a punishment. But the punishment that Hermione doled out, it seems like she's incapable of imagining that she would ever forgive Marietta, or ever feel sorry for what she's done. Which is, admittedly, pretty fair for an immature person. But Hermione is supposed to be very mature, not the sort who'll let her emotions carry her away, and furthermore, no one calls her on having mutilated Marietta's face. I don't think I have a characterization problem with Hermione's act. A mature teenager is not the same as a mature adult - the reason teens are given more latitude to make mistakes is because teens, even mature ones, are given to acting on impulse without considering the consequences of their actions - they are half-children with the powers of an adult - a dangerous combination. Moreover, Hermione has always had a ruthless streak which, I think, makes her actions make sense. What I found far more disturbing was the fact that no one calls her on her actions - none of the teachers seem to think that Hermione should be punished for permanently disfiguring a student. And what disturbed me more is that, unlike the time where say, Harry almost killed Draco, I got the impression that we, the readers, were supposed to approve of what happened to Marietta - like it was justice fairly meted out, and I just couldn't do it. The way I see it is, if (imagining a world without magic) Hermione, instead of cursing Marietta, finds four of her strongest friends, way-lays Marietta in a hallway, and slices up her face with a razorblade - and all the adults at the school act like "Well, she had it coming. Tattle-tale." I see your point, except I don't think either Luna or Neville are good examples as their care-givers are portrayed as a-typical and weird. I do think, though, that they are examples of how the teachers at Hogwarts, at least, who are, in theory, acting in loco parentis, appear to have minimal interest in protecting the children under their care. Consider the Sirius Black situation. They leave the dormitories exposed, with no protection other than the abilities of dozens of children under the age of eighteen to keep a secret. And when, as is natural, one of the younger children (Neville) reveals the secret, they blame and punish him. Do they sat, "Gosh! Maybe we shouldn't have expected 11 year olds to protect themselves from Dark Wizards! Maybe we shouldn't have relied on a thirteen year old child to keep Black out!" So Neville left the passwords lying around? Whoop-di-doo. If Black had been as ruthless as they thought, what would have stopped him from kidnapping a student, torturing them for the passwords, and then walking in to kill Harry? Though I don't know if I would call it bad writing. I think its indicative of the magic world. If you think about it, given that magical children would have the power to maim each other, I suppose a society could respond in two ways: (1) becoming intensely restrictive and protective; and (2) accepting that a certain amount of serious injury will occur and not getting huffy about it. And it makes sense that this (2) attitude would slop over into other behavior towards children. But that doesn't change the fact that I thought that the adults in Harry's life were horribly irresponsible.
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Post by dancingpony on May 11, 2009 10:55:23 GMT -5
I agree with Vega and Queenie and Rugi. And I can't blame the kid's who are growing up in JKR's magical world for their nonchalance toward violence and death given their adult role models.
All of the examples already posted here show the nonchalance of adult wizards toward violence and death.
Look at wizard "sport;" it's violent and dangerous . . . players have been killed while playing.
Look at the Triwizard tournament - kids are turned loose to face dragons and giant spiders, among other horrors. Sure, in GOF, an age limit was set, to try to minimize the risk . . . and there were adults around, to try to intervene in a life threatening emergency . . . but any of the participants could have been killed. And when a fourteen year-old's name popped out of the goblet, and the adults faced the dilemna of either canceling the tournament or allowing said fourteen year-old compete, what did they do?
Heck, it's even strongly implied that Dumbledore knowingly allowed Harry to face Voldemort in the first book, when Harry was only eleven. What responsible adult would do that?
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Post by Author By Night on May 12, 2009 6:20:59 GMT -5
Rugi continued the discussion on the teachers here: thewhompingwillow.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=discussion&action=display&thread=30&page=1#890 Thanks, Rugi, for reading my mind - I've enjoyed this discussion very much, but there's other threads for it. I've thought Hermione was always a slightly scary character, and at her worst in OoTP. (Actually, OoTP was what really made me start to dislike Hermione.) However, although Marietta's curse apparently never goes away, TDH Hermione seems much more rational. She steals food from a grocery store, which is actually necessary - but although Hermione knows they had to, she still leaves money, realizing that her actions had consequences. She's obviously upset with Ron for leaving them, but doesn't resort to face curses or attacking birds. So while yes, I would've liked to have seen her face the fact that she injured a fellow student, I see redemption. And this isn't a character I dislike anymore, but there was one I was wary of in PS/SS. (And Queenie, you're going to kill me.) I didn't really like Ollivander; his "Voldemort was horrible, but great" speech seemed like it could be either very philosophical or very creepy, and I wasn't sure which. I didn't quite trust him until HBP, when he was kidnapped. I decided that unless Ollivander staged being kidnapped, which Death Eaters don't seem to do (at least, Peter didn't, and of all people he should've), he probably wasn't on that side. Did anyone else get weird vibes from Ollivander?
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