"Dumbledore is Gay" sez Rowling

In the UK, they say "Bra"

and "ooh ah cantona"

worst pacing/edit remains Goblet of Fire for opening, with 200 pages hanging around at the world quidditch finals before fucking anything happens whatsoever. but i remember it fondly, as i was working in a bookstore at the time, and dressed up as Harry for the midnight unveiling of pre-sale copies... it made the local paper!

i was also working in a bookstore when goblet of fire came out (and share your view of its pacing). i did not dress up, having had to dress up as a christmas elf when i worked in woolworths left me traumatised.

I got a big emotional reaction over the Boyhood scene where they're in a lineup for something and it turns out to be a new harry potter book. Massive anticipation over a book launch is something that doesn't happen often.

wow more like gobshite of dire

xp

I was working in a call centre on the publicity campaign for the Hogwarts express

...when I met you

Ha

quidditch is such a dumb sport

quidditch analytics teams just like "turn all your players into seekers and get the fuckin golden snitch"

https://www.usquidditch.org/about/rules/

M@tt otm

m bison brings analytics to quidditch #trusttheprocess

that aggravated me so much when I read it!

I suppose a person who doesn't watch sorts sports inventing a sport wasn't going to go well

"how can I make running around a soccer field feel more like Settlers of Cataan? WAIT I'VE GOT IT"

Quiddich is one of many examples of her refusing to involve anyone (in this case someone who has ever watched any sport) in her research and worldbuilding.

We tried to do Quiddich (as described in those rules) at a summer school once, opinions varied as to whether it was awful or just meh.

Jesus kids are jaded these days, we were lucky to get a broomstick amongst four at christmas in our house in the 80s

i will read all the HP books through twice to get sight of a photo of fizzles dressed as an elf

elfie

xp see I felt bad for him reading this cos I always think that’s cruel but I’d love to see you rageblogging the series

I'm reading the whole series for the first time, aloud to my 6 year old. Just finished Goblet of Fire. Yes, those first 200 pages were an unbearable slog. It seems like Rowling found it important/fun to create analogues in the HP/wizarding world for literally anything she could think of, like going on an overnight excursion to a massive soccer/football match. But for those of us who don't share those particular cultural and personal touchstones (I'm American), those are the moments when the books are weakest. Those World Quidditch Finals are like the macrocosm of every time pages are wasted on some whimsical aspect or ritual of Hogwarts that only exists to be an analogue to some arcane detail about the stereotypical British boarding school.

everyone otm upthread about her repetitive, awful prose. That said, I am enjoying the storytelling. And I think Tracer makes a good point about the technical skill required to build such a dense world and not have it be disorienting and overbearing. It would just be nice if the dialogue and relationships between characters resembled the complexity of actual humans.

the thing is, she could have just had them playing cricket and the overall effect would have been the same

The worst book (& film) is probably Order of The Phoenix - it's 800 pages of absolutely fuck all happening - even the ending does not advance the story one bit. The only good bit is the introduction of Umbrige, she is a well thought-through villain, though I wouldn't be surprised if plenty of people found her cruelty unbearable to read about.

xp She'd never manage to put the spin on it douglas adams did

Order of the Phoenix was the movie that made me go "you know what, fuck all of this"

Harry Potter himself is such an intrinsically boring character. To a certain extent, it doesn’t matter because having a relatively bland lead character your readers can identify with is a fairly standard part of children’s literature. But when a series has such a huge adult audience, and one of the few things I think about these books (having recently read the last one when I was...22?) is how much more interesting the side characters are, I wonder what people get out of it on repeat reads once all the plot twists are known.

My older kid is rewatching all of the films right now and I am usually in the same room (though generally have headphones on) - was struck by how good HP&POA looks, like I would be really happy to watch a whole series like that, and how homogenised HP&OOTP looks, suits the source material I suppose.

This was a good comment from under the article, btw

The series has a sorting hat and kids go into their thematically and temperamentally appointed social circles. Conservative essentialism was always baked in. Labeling gives freedom when you name your own, but it's always also been accepting a structure at the same time So what happens when you want to break that structure? Elves are happy as a servant class, and though Rowling tried to change that, she couldn't imagine a way out. (it's a magical world, but the essential never changes.)

This always seems like a story about fandom and hero worship to me--and maybe don't do the latter? Make no mistake, Rowling is a fan of Rowling's work at that's part of it. The same constricted reading of text is in her own opinion and that of fandom. Dumbledore was always gay? That's a fan's reaction to aligning the work to their beliefs. And here we have an author and fans, labeling themselves to different ends, one end labeling for protection and another to break and remake the culture that allows things to happen, mixed in with a mess of hero worship.

was also working in a bookshop at Goblet Of Fire time, also stopped reading there as she was now obviously too big to take any scrap of advice from an editor, let alone cut the book down to the reasonable size of the first three

(I'd only read them in the previous year, taking store copies home to read on the train to and from work)

(mostly from tbh, I got good at putting my head on the vibrating window at 6:54 and waking up at 7:37)

i had to tap out after order of the phoenix which i could not remember a single thing about after reading it.

i will see re: goblet of fire, at the time ppl were just hoovering up as much HP content as they could so 200 superfluous pages was in some sense welcome even though it made for bad pacing/construction from the standpoint of trying to write a good novel

Was also working in a bookshop when some of these were oozing out, which is a small part of why I hate them. So many adults wandering in, demanding to know when the next one would come out, insisting I put in a preorder for them for a book not yet announced, then wandering off and never coming back.

Quidditch is a terrible sport that's improved about a thousand times over if finding the Snitch merely ends the game without adding any extra points (so if you find it when losing you have to renounce it) or maybe only like 30 points or something

JK Rowling didn't understand sport dynamics or game theory though

It would so be helped if the Seeker could be assisted by the other players, who might notice the Snitch in passing and take time out from their bashing and hurling to relay the info idk

But none of that stops it from basically being aerial water polo

And water polo is the worst spectator sport in the entire world

it's not a sport, it's a one on one match with many diversions

they should be able to destroy the snitch and then nobody can ever stop playing

LJ how much of the last 20 years have you spent thinking about this

I wonder what people get out of it on repeat reads once all the plot twists are known.

I'd say it's like wanting to crawl back into the womb, but instead it's the urge to live in a fantasy world that feels more welcoming and wonderful than their real life.

xpost honestly when I read the rules of Quidditch in whatever book it was introduced, I spent 20-30 minutes unable to move ahead, fixated on the stupidity of a sport in which the majority of position players have no outcome in the results of the game

but enough about Sheffield United

I have spent surprisingly little time thinking about Quidditch, but plenty thinking about sport as a whole

Goblet Of Fire was the one that killed it for me, didn't read the last three

Reading that Vulture article, every time a name of a character Rowling had invented came up, I wanted to spit blood. She's George Lucas-level.

it's easy to make up Rowling names

Ansel Thimbleknocker

Theo Bumblesnatch

Vera Spinabifida

It would so be helped if the Seeker could be assisted by the other players, who might notice the Snitch in passing and take time out from their bashing and hurling to relay the info idk

I literally wrote that bit as I thought it up

_I wonder what people get out of it on repeat reads once all the plot twists are known._

I'd say it's like wanting to crawl back into the womb, but instead it's the urge to live in a fantasy world that feels more welcoming and wonderful than their real life.

i liked these books tbh, I just think the hyperfandom is nauseating. but I feel for everybody who feels betrayed by Rowling - a lot of my LGBTQ+ friends who were megafans are still dealing with how to deal with Rowling's ultimate betrayal.

just realized I said betrayal twice. ooof...tired brain

xps - I would appreciate your explaining why that simile is unacceptable, instead of just darkly hinting about it. idgi and if there's something to 'get' I'd rather know it than stay ignorant.