If you have an email ending in @hotmail.com, @live.com or @outlook.com (or any other Microsoft-related domain), please consider changing it to another email provider; Microsoft decided to instantly block the server's IP, so emails can't be sent to these addresses.
If you use an @yahoo.com email or any related Yahoo services, they have blocked us also due to "user complaints"
-UE

Harry Potter didn't do much for me

24

Comments

  • edited 2013-05-04 01:38:11
    You can change. You can.

    Also: The way Voldemort dies/is defeated is kinda anticlimactic.



    That's kind of the point. Voldemort struggled his whole life to be a grandiose motherfucker. He wanted the bling, the bitches and the swag and the rides and to be a pimp


    but he got out-gangsta'd by harry (who is the complete opposite of an O.G)

  • OOOooooOoOoOOoo, I'm a ghoOooOooOOOost!

    Also, Harry only survived because he didn't try to kill Voldemort. Which is very important thematically.

  • yea i make potions if ya know what i mean

    I didn't really like them either.


    I think I liked the first movie at the time, but I haven't seen it in years and would probably hate it now.

  • Yet you really liked Little Witch Academia...?


    That... confuses me a little.

  • yea i make potions if ya know what i mean

    I don't understand the comparisons honestly, aside from a very superficially similar premise ("mage school") the two have almost nothing in common.


    Also, I liked LWA mostly because of its animation and the bits of comedy. 


    I don't really find Harry Potter entertaining on any level. The later movies I saw weren't really fun to watch, the characters always just struck me as sort of boring, and I could never get into the plot.

  • No struggle on Harry's part. I kind of got the impression that it was supposed to be his fight.


    Maybe I was just so used to payoff (honestly, the most direct comparison I can make is "Sozin's Comet") that it was jarring to see Voldemort die so anticlimactically.

  • edited 2013-05-04 01:50:47

    ^^ Well, LWA seems to aim for the same "feel" the first movie had going for it. (well, if you ignore the Voldemort stuff) There's this sense of... whimsy and a worldview that's, how you say... wondrous?

  • yea i make potions if ya know what i mean

    Have you seen LWA?

  • OOOooooOoOoOOoo, I'm a ghoOooOooOOOost!

    No struggle on Harry's part. I kind of got the impression that it was supposed to be his fight



    Again, except for the entire series up to that point.


    And again, his choice to not try to kill Voldemort is what keeps him alive, so from a character perspective it really is the only way for the series to end.


    Now, if they'd actually had a fight fight, Harry would have just died. Because he's a kid who didn't even finish wizard school, up against one of the most powerful wizards of all time.

  • edited 2013-05-04 01:56:37

    ^^ Yes. Ako entering the world of magic is pretty much childish (but not in a bad way, but rather in a wide-eyed wonder kind of way. Especially considering Chariot's scene in the prologue) wish-fulfilment, same as Harry making friends, playing Quidditch, anything that didn't involve Voldemort.

  • You can change. You can.

    I don't see how even having similar aims means that you should like them both. 


    Either way



    No struggle on Harry's part. I kind of got the impression that it was supposed to be his fight.



    Well, as mentioned previously, Harry had already struggled for seven years. Even then, though, a huge part of the magic in Harry Potter has always been the planning before the battle. It's why Voldemort is such a dumb villain to the point where he doesn't really feel threatening. In a world where wizards like Dumbledore have plans that span decades, he is constantly being driven by his own impulses, and whenever he sits down to plan, he always tends to be too smug to see the possibility of failure coming down the road and preparing for that too. 



    Maybe I was just so used to payoff (honestly, the most direct comparison I can make is "Sozin's Comet") that it was jarring to see Voldemort die so anticlimactically.



    That's...kind of a weird example, considering how badly that episode fails at paying off the central dilemma that it poses on Aang by giving him a third completely out of nowhere option.

  • edited 2013-05-04 01:57:24

    ^^^Rowling should have written it so that Harry got strong enough to challenge Voldemort, though...


    Also, Harry himself is a very bland character. This is probably because he's supposed to serve as a surrogate for the reader, but I found Ron similarly bland, and in his case there's no excuse.

  • OOOooooOoOoOOoo, I'm a ghoOooOooOOOost!

    Rowling should have written it so that Harry got strong enough to challenge Voldemort, though



    How?


    Seriously, how?


    He had six years of education and one year of war experience, versus a childhood of practice, seven years of education, and decades of war experience. Him winning in a straight-up fight would be the narrative equivalent of a chipmunk beating up a lion.

  • edited 2013-05-04 02:03:40
    yea i make potions if ya know what i mean

    ^^ Yes. Ako entering the world of magic is pretty much childish (but not in a bad way, but in a wide-eyed wonder kind of way. Especially considering Chariot's scene in the prologue) wish-fulfilment, same as Harry making friends, playing Quidditch, anything that didn't involve Voldemort. 



    Those are very vague comparisons.


    As I recall, it didn't exactly take long for the Harry Potter series to get dark. Even if that weren't the case, I already explained that I don't like LWA for the same reasons I dislike Harry Potter. The Harry Potter movies aren't even animated, so I can't exactly like them for that (my interest in live action fiction television and film has always been and probably always will be minimal), and I don't really recall HP ever being particularly funny either, or even trying to be.


    I'm not trying to argue that LWA is somehow "deeper" than HP, but I certainly like it more, and still don't understand the comparisons, since they seem incredibly superficial/shallow to me. 


    Plus, Akko and Harry don't have much in common themselves either. Harry had all sorts of problems, baggage, and a tragic backstory from Day 1. Akko's biggest "problem" is that she's sort of a ditz. There's no analogue in HP to Shinychariot either. Their groups of friends aren't really even similar. So I'm not sure what point you're even trying to make here.

  • You can change. You can.

    Also, Harry himself is a very bland character.



    Nah, he's just a huge douche.

  • yea i make potions if ya know what i mean

    huge douche = bland character 99% of the time

  • edited 2013-05-04 02:07:46

    ^^^^Okay, I concede. I'm not quite sure how.


    ^^I know this is stupid, but I understood him being as upset as he was in the fifth book (I don't recall him being quite as douchey/disagreeable elsewhere, other than not throwing Colin Creevey a bone; seriously, you have someone who thinks you're the coolest guy ever, maybe consider giving them the time of day). After the stuff that's happened up to that point, anyone would snap.

  • edited 2013-05-04 02:10:05
    You can change. You can.

    nonono see i am talking about an asshole


    not just any kind of asshole here


    i am talking about an all encompassing, all absorbing, light-cannot-escape-this-shit asshole


    @Anonus: Admittedly, it may come down to the fact that this is a kid who lived eleven years of his life being intensely bullied only to find that he's worshipped as a messiah by like half of England, if not the world, but the way he deals with people and the way he treats his friends when they don't blindly follow him into the maws of death is just...off-putting.


    Also that whole deal with Cho Chang, but that's more on J.K than Harry, I think.

  • edited 2013-05-04 02:12:27

    Those are very vague comparisons.



    Well, "feels" is somewhat my basis for really, really enjoying something. Stuff like "humor" or "characterization" just don't go as far for me.



    Plus, Akko and Harry don't have much in common themselves either. Harry had all sorts of problems, baggage, and a tragic backstory from Day 1. Akko's biggest "problem" is that she's sort of a ditz. There's no analogue in HP to Shinychariot either. Their groups of friends aren't really even similar. So I'm not sure what point you're even trying to make here.



    She's an audience surrogate in the same way as Sorcerer's Philosopher's Stone Harry was. In a "I don' know much about this magic stuff but man it's cool" kind of way.



    Also that whole deal with Cho Chang, but that's more on J.K than Harry, I think.



    That subplot was almost non-existant in the movies though, IIRC.

  • You can change. You can.

    I don't see how that's really relevant

  • yea i make potions if ya know what i mean

    Well, "feels" is somewhat my basis for really, really enjoying something. Stuff like "humor" or "characterization" just don't go as far for me.



    Well I'm sorry that I'm apparently not enjoying the shows properly.



    She's an audience surrogate in the same way as Sorcerer's Philosopher's Stone Harry was. In a "I don' know much about this magic stuff but man it's cool" kind of way.



    Again, really vague comparison. I already demonstrated several ways in which Harry and Akko are very dissimilar.

  • edited 2013-05-04 02:18:16

    ^^ Well, Rowling didn't write the movie scripts, so you're probably right that it's more about her than Harry.


    ^ With stuff like Harry's tragic backstory, it wasn't focused on too much in the first movie once Hagrid picks him up. There's a little talk about Voldemort, but little more. Harry was mostly going "whee, the Wizarding world sure is fun" with the danger stuff in-between, but never ruining the fun.

  • You can change. You can.

    It still sucked a lot in the movies.

  • yea i make potions if ya know what i mean

    ^ With stuff like Harry's tragic backstory, it wasn't focused on too much in the first movie once Hagrid picks him up. Harry was mostly going "whee, the Wizarding world sure is fun" with the danger stuff in-between, but never ruining the fun.



    It was still there, and it played an enormous part in the series in general.


    Again, you're trying to compare a 22-minute short with a...eight, I think? Movie series. It just doesn't work.

  • edited 2013-05-04 02:19:46

    The Dursleys are just unbelievably awful towards Harry...how can he shrug them off so easily?


    And if Dumbledore knew he was condemning him to ten years of abuse and neglect, why didn't he try to stop the Dursleys from being so awful to him?


    ^Yes, eight movies (the seventh book was split into two movies)

  • edited 2013-05-04 02:28:38

    ^^ Uh... no. All the LWA comparisons I brought up are specifically for the first movie.


    ^ Dumbledore's plan also involved Harry dying or almost dying, so maybe he doesn't care.



    The Dursleys are just unbelievably awful towards Harry...how can he shrug them off so easily?



    Because "wheee, Wizard school is fun", at least for the first movie.

  • If you must eat a phoenix, boil it, do not roast it. This only encourages their mischievous habits.

    The Dursleys are just unbelievably awful towards Harry...how can he shrug them off so easily?



    Because they didn't treat him so badly.


    You can blame the tonal shift. The first couple of books were full of whimsy and fun. Things were exaggerated; McGonogall was strict, Snape was strict and awful, Dumbledore was the enigmatic force of good, Hogwarts was a wonderful place full of weird magical effects, the Dursleys were ridiculously abusive, and characters were generally one-dimensional.


    As the series moved in, things became more serious, and the whimsy disappeared. The Dursley's treatment of Harry was downplayed, much as everything else was; instead of being ridiculously abusive towards him, they alternately feared and hated him, but had to put up with him because of Dumbledore's orders. This led to Harry having a disdainful view of Muggles, but due to the lack of actual abuse (in favour of neglect), he didn't hate them.


    You can see aspects of this everywhere. While Snape remained antagonistic, he became less ridiculously so in later books, and you come to understand why he acts so. Dumbledore becomes less a force of good and more a competent but not omniscient wizard trying to do the best he can to help the world. McGonogall remains strict but also softens up towards the students in general. Draco becomes less of a bully and more someone who mouths off about his family's superiority, before everything goes wrong.


    Everything was played less seriously and more whimsically in the first few books, so you can't take that treatment of things as serious unless you understand the tone of the books as well when you take that into consideration.

  • If you must eat a phoenix, boil it, do not roast it. This only encourages their mischievous habits.

    Dumbledore's plan also involved Harry dying or almost dying, so maybe he doesn't care.



    Dumbledore did care, very much.


    He mentions that in... the fifth book, I think. Dumbledore had plans, but they were complicated by the fact that Dumbledore actually cared about Harry as a person- which is also why Dumbledore didn't raise Harry as a weapon against Voldemort.


    Dumbledore's ultimate plan did involve Harry dying (when he found out about the Horcruxes, and not before- he didn't know that Harry would need to die before that). It also involved himself dying, though, so I find it hard to condemn him for that- he isn't asking anything of Harry that he isn't willing to ask of himself, after all.

  • I know why Snape acted so antagonistic, but unless he had to do it to seem convincing as a Death Eater, I really don't like the fact that he was outright abusive towards his Gryffindor students.


    And then Harry goes and partially names his youngest son after him. Maybe Harry's view of him changed over the years, but still...

  • You can change. You can.

    It also involved himself dying



    Not really?


    Maybe I am misinterpreting the books, but what I recall is that Dumbledore had to plan with his death in mind because he made a hugely silly mistake. His death was never part of the plan to defeat Voldemort and he just had to roll with it.

Sign In or Register to comment.