Hydra of Ages

I'm fairly certain I'm still in Canada. Harry Potter is poorly plotted. It's long in all the places it should be short, short in all the spots it should explain more, confused in its intentions and, worst of all, few of the characters are particularly interesting, let alone worthy of heavy investment. As far as prose goes, it could be worse I suppose; it doesn't choke on its own description very often, and I like many of the settings it tries to build. The Department of Secrets was probably my favourite; a dungeon filled with dark, often evil magic that nobody understands, yet still organized by a sort of macabre clerical efficiency? How neat. I can even forgive some of the stupidly unexplained things there (the veil, the locked room) because the mood of the set requires a certain degree of mystery to everything that happens. It's a crying shame the climactic scene that takes place there is so bloody stupid. That's probably why I liked it so much as a kid, come to think of it. No matter how poorly it uses them, it has to be admitted that Rowling came up with some pretty neat ideas for her world now and then, even if she spared less than the bare minimum to keep them consistent. As a child, I know I spent more time ooing and awwing over the neat situations Harry and friends would get into than I did analysing the actual literary merit of anything I was reading. Philosophers are defined by their ideals. People are defined by their actions.

I don't care. This has nothing to do with the literary merits of Harry Potter. I'm killing this tangent now; the moment I start arguing the specifics of the Bible, the thread either needs to be burned to the ground or moved to Debates. Which is arguably worse than being burned to the ground. Evilfusion, you'll find that the respect I have for a debating opponent drops sharply the moment they give away that they're just attempting to evangelize (often rather smugly). It's a flaw those of us with a "young, unshaped conscience" are prone to. Comrade, the problem isn't that people consider sexual promiscuity bad, it's that people specifically consider sexually promiscuous women bad.

I certainly hope so.

That's funny. I'm pretty sure my Classics class studied the Iliad, and that was a good three hundred people examining a piece of literature based off of its creative merit rather than its moral value. Maybe I invented it as part of my "musings of (my) young, unshaped conscience". And you're right, I certainly should stop thrusting my biases onto other people and examine information outside of my myopia. After all, they might think I'm some sort of Satanist otherwise. Pot, meet kettle. What the hell is with your obsession with Satanists? Why are you bringing it up in this thread? Why are you talking about morality like it's an objective commodity? "I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man, she must be silent." 1 Timothy 2:12 "Now go, attack the Amalekites and totally destroy all that belongs to them. Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys.’” 1 Samuel 15:3 "Do not allow a sorceress to live." Exodus 22:18 "...Daughter Babylon, doomed to destruction, happy is the one who repays you according to what you have done to us. Happy is the one who seizes your infants and dashes them against the rocks." Psalms 137 (excerpt) " In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed shameful acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their error." Romans 1:27 "Slaves, in reverent fear of God submit yourselves to your masters, not only to those who are good and considerate, but also to those who are harsh." 1 Peter 2:18 Why should I care what Satanists think. No, I'm pretty sure most do it to better understand the field in question. Birth of a Nation invented techniques in film that are still being used today. Watching it as a film student, therefore, allows us to better understand the art of film making. Also, you presume to tell us what humanity is based off of? How lucky. Perhaps you should submit some philosophical works, there are some people I know of who will be quite interested to know definitively what being "human" is, from a metaphysical point of view. Strange, here I thought it was elementary school English class that taught me to interpret symbolism. Also, sudden religious myopia ahoy. ...No. This is not how logic works. ...Am I on 'Punked' or something? I don't recall Polaris being religious-crazy before. Did I just miss this or something?

To a certain extent, I give JKR a little lenience here. There are very few mainstream novels around that conform to all (or even most) standards of proper feminism, and going out of your way to sate all of them can be a maddening task, especially if you don't have a in-depth knowledge of feminism before hand. Patriarchy is so ingrained into our society that it's almost impossible not fall into even a few traps if you're not constructing an entirely fictional society with different societal rules than exist in real-life. That said, it's no excuse, especially for some of the examples mentioned in the list. Dumbledore's sexuality was pertinent to the narrative only to clarify his relationship with another (relatively minor) character, so I'm not terribly bugged about her never actually stating it... but Umbridge's karmic punishment and Lavender's treatment are problematic, to say the least. That said, ...When, exactly, did this happen? I'm not doubting it, I'm just at a loss as to what the writer is referring to here. This is flagrantly incorrect. We frequently and regularly look past the moral flaws of creative works, especially those created in the past, in order to examine them solely based on technical or artistic merit; many of Shakespeare's works, for example, would be considered hideously misogynist if they were printed today. Canadian propaganda during World War II was instrumental in creating their national identity and Canadian environmental pride. Even the Bible itself contains implications that are at least controversial in modern society, if not outright rejected, yet is still respected as the centerpiece of a number of religions. Merit isn't a simple binary value; humans are capable of appreciating the skill involved in creating a work without approving of the message of the piece.

Exceptions exist to every rule, it seems. That said, despite its relevance to film history, I'm not sure I could stomach three hours of American history as described by the Klu Klux Klan. Back onto Harry Potter. Strangely enough, it seems that as the books increased in size, less content of actual relevance was contained in them... with the exception of the final book, which introduced all elements of the resolution with little to no connection to information established in previous instalments.

This is a category that includes nearly every published work that is neither Twilight nor racist propaganda.

How have I not commented in this topic before? I've read through it at least twice, I know that much at least. As far as children's fantasy goes, Harry Potter falls pretty flat. I highly doubt I'd ever be able to give it an objective criticism, given it was possibly the first fantasy novel I've ever read, but it's obvious that Rowling had a bunch of ideas and no clue what to actually do with them. Heck, the third book alone (which I will agree was the best) casually introduced time travel, then failed to ever bring it up again. Despite time travel being, well, time travel. There are few problems conceivable by a mortal mind that can't be solved by the ability to go back and fix your mistakes retroactively, especially since the book isn't entirely clear how the laws of time actually apply in this setting. You also reminded me that while Order of the Phoenix is the largest book, it also fails spectacularly to have anything of note accomplished within it. Probably the most disappointing thing, however, is that the plot elements that seem to set up certain themes never actually get resolved; the Houses never actually reconcile their differences, Voldemort and Harry's parallels are never important, the tension between the Wizards/Muggles never gets resolved despite almost every book touching on it, etc. It's sad, because even one of those plotlets grown would have led to a more satisfying conclusion than whatever it was that we got. In the end, what was the actual message of the book? What did Harry actually learn from his defeat of Voldemort? How is the world around him different or better in any way? As far as I can tell, Harry Potter ends with the Wizarding World in the exact same state as at the beginning of the first book, the only difference being that Voldemort is actually dead rather than just mostly dead this time. That would be excusable if the characters had undergone any growth, but unfortunately, they haven't; nothing more than you would expect from normal children that age, at any rate.