The Potter Inkblotter

Continuing...

( Chapter 4 )

( Chapter 5 )

 

Long time, no update, I know.

But I've decided to work on this for NaNoWriMo.  At least, it's a good motivator for me to get off my ass and do it.  The story is finished in outline form; it's just a matter of writing the details.

So, here we are. These are all rated G.

( Chapter 2 )

( Chapter 3 )

It's been over three months since the release of DH and the "bombshell" about Albus Dumbledore.  (The one that actually means anything, for all the doofuses out there who think that the world revolves around OMGAnGsTyRoMaNcE.)  In that period of time, I've found that my initial impression of it has shifted a great deal, almost 180 degrees, in fact.  I am considerably less charitable toward his later actions toward Harry and Snape, but with regard to the infamous Summer of '99, I've found myself rather in sympathy of what he was doing.  I can't find a lot to complain about.

Website:  http://www.pasteldefender.com
Author/Artist:  Jennifer Diane Reitz

Ye gods, where do I start?  (Bad sign, BTW.)  I am going to attempt to be objective in this, but I should tell you up front that I do not like this comic.  I found it to be a mix of dusty fantasy cliches, poorly-developed characters, and an overwhelming religious (or, more appropriately, anti-religious) agenda.  And an authorial agenda in fiction is one thing that disgusts me like nothing else.

OK, so, unless you've been in hiding lately, you should know about the lawsuit by Rowling and WB against Steve Vander Ark of the HP Lexicon.  (If you have been in hiding, hit the Leaky Cauldron website.)  Here's what I think of the whole clusterf*ck (and my use of that term should give a good clue of my opinion of it all):

Rowling/WB are legally right.  The unauthorized encyclopedia, which will be published for a profit and evidently does not include any literary analysis or commentary, is in breach of copyright.

Vander Ark's publisher has not the faintest idea of how to handle P.R. or how to be diplomatic.  It was outright disrespectful to her to react in the brazen, "up yours" way that they did.  If not for her, they wouldn't be printing this thing.  I am blunt and abrasive online because I want to be, and I view it as my true nature rather than the polite mask I wear in "real life."  Take note, though, that I don't put traceable info online.  This publisher has mistaken "bravado" for "standing one's ground."

However, there is a distinct difference between being legally right and being "Right." 

Authorial note:  The original "Who Knew" and "Area 51" essays were separate and disjointed when they shouldn't have been.  So I've made some modifications to them, and combined them into a single essay.  Here 'tis.

Who Knew?  Dissecting the Wizarding World’s Cluelessness about Voldemort’s Secret

After finishing The Deathly Hallows and taking the time to let it sink in, I found myself frustrated with Mrs. Rowling over a number of apparent plot flaws.  One of the most important is the whole issue of how, according to documented canon, no one other than Albus Dumbledore and Regulus Black (and, presumably, Horace Slughorn) independently figured out how Voldemort had secured his immortality.

Granted, the full gory details may be contained only in a single book, since Hermione says that Secrets of the Darkest Art is "the" book that gives detailed instruction, out of the many that she summoned.  But the information does exist.

Website:  http://go-girly.com
Author/Artist:  Josh Lesnick

I've been advised to have a look at this comic for awhile, but I've put it off, because the premise of it is something that usually pushes my feminist buttons hardcore:  An R+-rated comic about attractive lesbians/bisexuals, drawn and written by a guy.  Ordinarily this pisses me off, both as a feminist, a bisexual, and an artist.  See, I really could not care less if you draw or write something to satisfy your sexual fetishes, Mary Sue yourself into a fanfic with your favorite hawt character, etc.  I've done it myself.  You just won't see it online.  And there's the crux of the matter:  My annoyance with this is when these authors/artists publish something on the Internet that is little more than their personal wankfest, and presume to call it art.

Well, it turns out that I sold "Girly" short.

Hipsters are a source of derision in and of themselves, as anyone who has ever had to deal with one of the snotty "my crap is better than your crap" pop-culture elitists will recognize.  They try so hard to be "cool," fancying themselves to be above narrowly defined scenes, far above the "lame" mundaneness of pop culture.  They imagine themselves to be "the true individuals," but like all such cultural conformists, they develop their own sense of "correct" group values and their own conformity and narrow scene.  When insecure people get together, this is the inevitable result, and it's actually quite entertaining for those of us who are secure in who we are, because we can laugh at the collectives behind their backs while convincing them that we're actually laughing at the same people they laugh at.  None of the various "scenes" have a clue that they've become what they despise, of course.

There is a new breed of hipster that is distinctly unfunny, though.  Let me profile the Political Hipster.

Update November 4, 2007:  I have pulled all explanations of AK into this essay, including the Godric's Hollow and Forbidden Forest ones, because they don't fit well in their previous places.


The Killing Curse in Harry Potter seems to be a very simple piece of magic.  You zap something with it, and it kills it (if it's alive) or blows a hole in it (if it isn't).  Nothing to see here; move along please.

Um, nope.  Nothing is that simple in Potter.  And this curse is obviously not simple.  We get three different versions of it, as well as a pretty serious (at first glance) issue that appears to contradict how the curse is demonstrated to work.  It is my position that there is no contradiction, and every "WTF" moment can be explained.

First, I have very little comment on Dumbledore's sexual orientation... except to say that I'm surprised he has one.  I don't like it when every character has to fall in "love" with someone else... although I guess a number of characters never did, like McGonagall and Sirius.  (And Voldemort, although I'd argue that he had a very creepy feeling for Nagini.)  The one issue I have with this is that, if Albus was let down by love, it's incredibly out of character for him to be going on about it being the cure for everything.

Now, the point of this post.  I'm going to be reviewing webcomics from time to time.  It won't change the focus of this journal -- I'll be posting essays whenever they come to mind.  But the FF.net reception for my long story was, let's say, highly disappointing... so I'm going to be branching out a bit.

Not just any webcomic, though.  I have a certain type that I will read.  Here's a list of categories I'm not going to post about.

1. Gamer comics.  I am not a gamer, and from what I'm able to tell, these comics rely very heavily on the reader's knowledge of that community, its conventions, in-jokes, etc.  I'd consider a comic based upon a game's plot, so long as it didn't require an intimate understanding of gamer culture to get it, but most gamer comics I've seen aren't like this.  I'm utterly unqualified to assess the quality of this genre.
   
2. Manga.  Now, I get it; "manga" is Japanese for comics.  But let's not get technical about this; I am referring to a comic drawn to imitate the style, with a cheeseball plot like something out of Sailor Moon or some other anime or manga.  I have zero interest in this genre and find it full of cliches, and as such, any review I gave would be colored by this bias.
3. Gag comics in the style of The Far Side, political cartoons, and many newspaper comics.  That is, comics with no real plot, often minimal (if any) character development, that have a single panel or a single page with a self-contained joke.  My taste in humor tends toward the dark, quirky, complex, and ironic, and honestly, I haven't seen any gag comic, online or off, live up to the standard of The Far Side.
4. Serial, "slice-of-life" comics that have developed characters but no real plot.  These comics take the characters through various events, but there's nothing happening in the background.  I realize that there can be a fine line between a slice-of-life comic and an episodic story comic, but if there is no plot, I'm not likely to be able to get through the comic, let alone write a review.

In a nutshell, these reviews will be of story-format comics.  This includes graphic novel-style comics, finished or otherwise, as well as episodic comics that send the characters on a series of generally unrelated adventures.  I'm only going to review mature stories; that is to say, that have 50 pages or so.  I think it's hard to get a feel for it with less than that.

My first review will be in a few days.

This list is a work-in-progress and will be added to whenever the need arises.  It contains some things people do that irk me, either in writing, promoting, or responding to comments about their stories.

Annnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnndddd............

HERE IT IS!

This is a fanfic/original story hybrid.  It's set in the Potterverse, and some era-appropriate characters from the HP Lexicon turn up as cameos, but the main characters and the plot are all mine.

The premise:  Wizards went into hiding in 1689.  What particular back story could have prompted this?  We learned in PS/SS that witch burnings rarely caught actual witches, so if they could avoid being caught, what was the point of Seclusion?  This story provides a dramatic history of a particular group of families, which provides the impetus for the Statute of Secrecy.

The central characters are a Muggle-born witch from a noble house, a pureblood wizard from one of the last Wizarding families of nobility, and a rebellious young lady from the Most Ancient House of Black.  Supporting characters include a sharp, perceptive Hogwarts professor, the dubious cousins of the young wizard nobleman, and -- later on -- a variety of Ministry politicians.

The story itself will be told in three parts:  First, their Hogwarts years.  Don't worry, this segment won't be anywhere as detailed as the HP books.  The purpose for its inclusion is to allow me to "show, not tell," their childhood history.  The second part will detail their early adulthood and establishment in magical society, with the stage being firmly set for the events of the third section... And that section details the deterioration of affairs in the wizarding world, and the events that lead to Seclusion.

Some of the content toward the end is going to be quite dark.  For this reason, I have given the story a PG-13 rating, although most of the content of the first two parts will be G.

The story is at FF.net.  I'll link to it every time I make an addition to the story.  This journal will, however, include character profiles, art, and assorted other things that aren't appropriate for FF.net, so check here regularly if you like what you see.

Without further ado, I give you Chapter 1.

Snape/Lily has, rather unexpectedly, become a new favorite 'ship for me. I've written a fanfic which references it, and now there's this picture.

This is a bit of a rant.

First, let me say outright that I do like the Potter series.  Of course I do.  It's a good fantasy adventure, like Lord of the Rings, and for the most part, it never attempts to be anything except a fantasy adventure, like Lord of the Rings.  I get deeply, intensely pissed off when an author tries to use fiction to shove their agenda--moral, religious, political, etc.--down the reader's throat.  This is why I viscerally dislike the Narnia books and why I refuse to read Philip Pullman, so it doesn't matter what the agenda is.  I'm equal opportunity on it.  I even like Tolkien's Silmarillion, which is an allegory of the Fall of Lucifer, but the story itself reads like a retelling of classical mythology rather than a heavy-handed morality tale.  If I want to read a poorly-disguised sermon, I'll go to the Current Affairs section of the bookstore and get a political book that makes no pretenses at being anything else.

However, even the best authors cannot help but let their personal worldview influence their writing.  Rowling is no exception, and I do not care for the rather twisted and contradictory view of morality that is portrayed in the Potter series.

The war against Voldemort:  The key to the series.  So much information hinges upon when, exactly, certain important events took place, particularly the first time around, in which we didn't get to see it firsthand and had to rely on accounts from the survivors.

The period of 1970-1981 is inherently interesting, too.  If JKR had not opted out of writing a prequel, I would imagine that this period would've been it.  And not for the purpose of seeing the various schoolyard stunts that "Potter and his mates got up to."  The War on Voldemort, Part I, had a lot going on.  The thing is, we don't have it neatly laid out.  The information is there, though, and this essay will piece it together.

This is a short oneshot. It's Chapter 19, "The Silver Doe," told from Snape's perspective.

FF.com link: For Lily
Rating: G
Characters: Severus Snape, Albus Dumbledore (portrait), Phineas Nigellus Black (portrait), Harry Potter, Ron Weasley
Spoilers: All books, obviously.


( Snape.... )

I will be perfectly honest:  I do not like Hermione Granger.  This puts me at odds with a majority of the fandom, I am sure, but it doesn't change my mind about her.

My main issue with her is her personality.  Readers seem to forget what she actually sounds like as soon as they get past the troll incident in the first book.  Granted, some of her more egregiously obnoxious traits do resolve themselves, but the underlying causes for these traits do not change; they just mutate over the years and express themselves in other ways.  For instance, her compulsion to show off in class largely goes away after the third year.  However, it does not have any effect whatsoever on her control-freak mentality.  Whenever anyone in her circle of friends wants to do something, she has an "improvement" to make to it--and never hesitates to offer her opinion, solicited or not.  This type of person is incredibly difficult to get along with, and it says something about Harry, Ron, and Ginny that they can put up with it as well as they do.

Mind control is a critical part of the Potter series, and is a fascinating topic in and of itself.  There are a number of minor issues relating to the subject, seeming inconsistencies, and unanswered questions for us theorists to chew on.  This essay will attempt to tie them up.  Mind control comes in two basic varieties -- "external" mind invasion, such as the Imperius Curse, and psychic possession, in which the wizard's very soul is occupying and directing another person.

As soon as I encountered it, I knew I disliked the "Deathly Hallows" subplot.  My feelings have changed very little.  That storyline has all the hallmarks of being something that Rowling only thought up after completing book six, possibly book five.  It certainly wasn't planned from the story's beginning.  It's clunkily handled, and upon closer examination, is full of gaping holes that would not have been there if she'd had it in mind from the beginning.  The entire revelation leaves a reader thinking, "WTF?  Where did this come from?", while the other big bombshell that was late to the party -- Horcruxes -- was hinted at repeatedly, and was definitely traceable in a re-read.  Not so with the "Hallows."

However, as an integral part of the story, and part of canon, it's up to the theorists to make an attempt to resolve however much can be resolved.

Slytherdor:  A mix of Slytherin and Gryffindor, having traits from each house, overpowering or dominating any traits associated with other houses.

I have come to the conclusion that all four cardinal characters in the series fit this description.

Four cardinal characters, you say?  Yes.  Throughout the series, there are very clearly four central characters.  Everyone else is a supporting character.  And those four are not HRHG, or even HRHN.  The four central characters are Albus Dumbledore, Tom Marvolo Riddle, Severus Snape, and Harry Potter.  Two Slytherins and two Gryffindors.  All of them half-blood.  The two Gryffindors are half-blood by virtue of a Muggle-born mother; the Slytherins by virtue of a Muggle father.  I am convinced that this is entirely intentional.  These four characters are all Slytherdors, to varying degrees.