I find it odd that a couple books have a chapter w/the same name as the book and the others don't. Not terribly remarkable, just a bit odd.
All right, this is explained later, but really now! On first reading, it's very suggestive.
Oh, it can still be suggestive. Perhaps highly disturbed, 11-year-old Ginny didn't catch quite everything she was seeing. ;-)
I really like that Snape moment (which I read as genuine concern). A lot of characters seem to show all the right emotions but don't do much. Normally, Snape's exactly the opposite. This is one of the few times we really see him displaying a positive emotion, apparently caring. I also love the staff room dynamics once Lockhart comes in. Note the way everyone immediately jumps on what Snape's doing and joins in. He's almost the ringleader of the bunch.
I've been bothered by physical descriptions for a while, and it's gotten worse, not better. In general, most "good" guys are pretty average -- short and skinny, awkwardly tall, bushy hair, crooked nose (Dumbledore, that is). The bad guys are frequently ugly, though. The Malfoy men are seen as beautiful, but in canon we just know their hair and eye colors and that they have "pointed" faces. I was especially bothered by OotP, because I happen to be overweight and very short, and I have brown hair and stubby fingers. Sound familiar?
I wonder if most of Lockhart's Memory Charms are the subtle type we see Shacklebolt or Ministry workers at the QWC do, rather than the full-out blast he does here. Surely people would notice that many people completely losing their memory? Also, we learn here that Lockhart does, in fact, possess some fairly impressive skills as an author and researcher. Really, he'd write wonderful books, both fiction and non, if he could get over his own ego (both the need to take credit for everything and make it overly grandiose). I get the feeling these skills aren't held in high regard in the wizarding world, though. I get the feeling that if it isn't a form of magic, it isn't a skill worth bothering with, much less admiring, according to wizards.
I think that at first, we have the conceit of kids breaking rules for the "good", because they supposedly know better, but as our main characters get older, it does change. Ideally, you'd hope it changed so they learned that their actions have consequences and rules are usually there for a reason, but instead it shifted so that all the good guys (regardless of age) break rules and are right to do so. When bad guys break rules, it's truly terrible, and people who try to enforce rules broken by a good guy (or sympathetic person, as for Crouch Sr), they are themselves bad guys. This is far more disturbing than the usual idea of kids breaking rules in stories.
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Date: 2004-11-05 11:31 pm (UTC)All right, this is explained later, but really now! On first reading, it's very suggestive.
Oh, it can still be suggestive. Perhaps highly disturbed, 11-year-old Ginny didn't catch quite everything she was seeing. ;-)
I really like that Snape moment (which I read as genuine concern). A lot of characters seem to show all the right emotions but don't do much. Normally, Snape's exactly the opposite. This is one of the few times we really see him displaying a positive emotion, apparently caring. I also love the staff room dynamics once Lockhart comes in. Note the way everyone immediately jumps on what Snape's doing and joins in. He's almost the ringleader of the bunch.
I've been bothered by physical descriptions for a while, and it's gotten worse, not better. In general, most "good" guys are pretty average -- short and skinny, awkwardly tall, bushy hair, crooked nose (Dumbledore, that is). The bad guys are frequently ugly, though. The Malfoy men are seen as beautiful, but in canon we just know their hair and eye colors and that they have "pointed" faces. I was especially bothered by OotP, because I happen to be overweight and very short, and I have brown hair and stubby fingers. Sound familiar?
I wonder if most of Lockhart's Memory Charms are the subtle type we see Shacklebolt or Ministry workers at the QWC do, rather than the full-out blast he does here. Surely people would notice that many people completely losing their memory? Also, we learn here that Lockhart does, in fact, possess some fairly impressive skills as an author and researcher. Really, he'd write wonderful books, both fiction and non, if he could get over his own ego (both the need to take credit for everything and make it overly grandiose). I get the feeling these skills aren't held in high regard in the wizarding world, though. I get the feeling that if it isn't a form of magic, it isn't a skill worth bothering with, much less admiring, according to wizards.
I think that at first, we have the conceit of kids breaking rules for the "good", because they supposedly know better, but as our main characters get older, it does change. Ideally, you'd hope it changed so they learned that their actions have consequences and rules are usually there for a reason, but instead it shifted so that all the good guys (regardless of age) break rules and are right to do so. When bad guys break rules, it's truly terrible, and people who try to enforce rules broken by a good guy (or sympathetic person, as for Crouch Sr), they are themselves bad guys. This is far more disturbing than the usual idea of kids breaking rules in stories.