The Reading Room

1:01 AM

@BESW I think the best way to do this is through the JKR AJHall comparison answer we're discussed.

(Or at least that's the best idea I've heard so far).

But the downside is I have to read fanfiction to write that answer, and while I actually don't mind reading A. J. Hall (unlike pretty much all other fanfiction), there's a lot of other books on my list that I want to read first.

BESW

1:33 AM

Heh, that's fair.

I mean, you could go with Anne Rice but that's seriously fraught and personal.

Or the history of Poe vs Plagiarism--but people get really invested in that because of the place Poe has in the literary canon.

Emily Dickinson's got some fascinating contradictions between her letters and her biographies, but analyzing her poems in the tension between those will require (much like analyzing Poe) also analyzing the implied and stated intents of her biographers.

BESW

2:06 AM

Harry Potter characters by Tony Moore @tonymoore https://t.co/9rq2sOaCfo

Tweeted by CoolComicArt on July 16, 2017 at 2:01 AM

Hamlet

@BESW Dickinson sounds interesting but very difficult since I would have to do a lot of reading. Honestly, Hall sounds easiest, but I'm not sure if I'll ever get to writing that answer, at least this year.

BESW

"What is the role of Pākehā in supporting te reo Māori?"

@Hamlet yeah, Dickinson and Poe both had massive character assassination via biographer after their deaths. In the case of Poe, also during his life.

(They're good examples, also, of how we assign value to information based on its format.)

Hamlet

2:24 AM

I have a ton of political questions/answers. but since they're political it would be harder to learn from them.

I guess Hall is kind of political since she talks about class, but to be honest it's not that political.

BESW

I think Hall's making text out of what she sees as JKR's subtext.

The concept of patronage, for example, is deeply embedded in the wizarding world.

[rummages] I've written an answer or two about that on scifi.se...

15

A: Why couldn't Snape and McGonagall prevent what Fudge did at the end of Goblet of Fire?

Because of the kind of power structure underlying the Wizarding World. As Pharnabazus outlines in his amazing essay on the patron/client dynamic in Harry Potter, Dumbledore and Fudge have a complicated history of influence and struggle. While originally Fudge allied himself with Dumbledore, the ...

Hamlet

2:40 AM

@BESW she has a blog post where she literally says that's what she's doing

@BESW great, now I have to read through your SFF account.

BESW

Eh, it's not that impressive.

Mostly screaming "HARRY IS AN UNRELIABLE NARRATOR" and "DOCTOR WHO HAS CONTINUITY BUT NOT CANON."

Hamlet

@BESW more to see if you link to any good blogposts

Also, these livejournal pages are 100 times more impressive than any academic writing I've seen on Harry Potter.

BESW

@Hamlet I know, right. [sigh]

Hamlet

I kid you not, people will write books about the alchelemical symbolism of Harry Potter.

Like, can anything possible be less interesting than alchelemical symbolsim?

The only thing worse than HP academics are Tolkien academics.

BESW

I was active on LJ during the hiatus between GoF and OotP; it was amazing. People had four and a bit books to sift through and study, knowing that more was planned but having to wait for it to come.

The collaboration and study produced by a fandom that refused to be put on pause by the creator's writing block, was phenomenal. Also often very silly.

But hey, even the academic satire coming out of that community was on point.

Hamlet

2:47 AM

@BESW I'm kind of following ASOIAF which is in a similar place but the analysis isn't nearly as good.

BESW

Part of what made the HP hiatus community so awesome was the same thing which ultimately let the series itself down: JKR presented the story as a mystery to which she had planted all the clues if her readers were just aware enough... but she didn't write with the caution she expected of her audience, so we got all kinds of ridiculous red herrings which while the series was ongoing were fun to speculate about and build on. After the story was over, though, they stood out as the flaws they were.

(cf LOST)

Hamlet

@BESW flaws?

BESW

Unmistakable mistakes.

Hamlet

@BESW example?

BESW

She taught us to look for inconsistencies and coincidences, and to consider them clues. So when the Dursleys mention someone with the surname Evans, or the older Weasleys' graduation years don't match up, we perked up our ears and made notes.

But nope, JKR herself has said that she hadn't noticed she'd given a random off-screen Muggle the same surname has Harry's mother until the fans asked about it.

And the Weasleys' weird age inconsistencies, rather than implying some important role held by Bill and/or Charlie in the narrative, instead gave rise to the "Oh Dear Maths" meme.

In a werewolf story she couldn't get the moon's phases right.

Some of it's just lazy: the first chapter takes place on "dull, grey Tuesday" despite 31 October 1981 being a Saturday. That's just basic research fail.

But then Dumbledore says he passed several parties on his way... despite having clearly Apparated. Aunt Petunia acts surprised by Platform Nine and Three-Quarters, but we later learn she'd already been there at least once. And so forth.

I'd call these nitpicks, if JKR hadn't been explicitly training us that these sorts of things were deliberate and important to pay attention to.

So instead they're flaws.

(This is, actually, a case for authors to keep their mouths shut about this kind of thing. If she'd just kept her lips zipped then Mark Evans would've gone down in fandom history as a tantalizing hint of the extraordinarily detailed world JKR had crafted, instead of that time the author forgot her main character's mother's name.)

Hamlet

3:13 AM

Harry Potter Bibliography

@BESW any advice on finding A. J. Hall's essays?

Would it be worth emailing her?

BESW

It might be! I don't have any tricks beyond the WayBack.

Hamlet

Apparently she has a paper in Nimbus-2003 Compendium: We Solemnly Swear These Papers Were Worth the Wait, but I don't really feel like hunting it down.

BESW

4:20 AM

Shaenon Garrity is planning a Kickstarter to reprint Narbonic.

BESW

5:53 AM

Most people know Jack Kirby did something in comics, maybe. But they will never appreciate how breathtakingly *wei… https://twitter.com/i/web/status/886456127071846400

Tweeted by Nash076 on July 16, 2017 at 5:23 AM

a newspaper writer in 1840 ignited a national craze for "machine poetry"—mechanical, soulless verse, with the conce… https://twitter.com/i/web/status/885627936904167424

Tweeted by xfoml on July 13, 2017 at 10:32 PM

Gallifreyan

8:42 AM

Harry Potter characters by Tony Moore @tonymoore https://t.co/9rq2sOaCfo

Tweeted by CoolComicArt on July 16, 2017 at 2:01 AM

Bookworm

9:21 AM

0

Q: Did Dirk Gently do anything to help Odin the end of Tea Time?

At the end of The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul, the following things resolve Odin's troubles: Thor changes an eagle back into a fighter plane, which (unintentionally?) kills the Draycotts, whom Odin entered a contract with. Odin re-entered the hospital he wanted to stay in, on more favorable ...

BESW

If you have any interest in book-making or graphic design, Ravilious & Co well worth the trip to Eastbourne http://www.townereastbourne.org.uk/exhibition/ravilious-and-co-the-pattern-of-friendship/

Tweeted by sydneypadua on July 16, 2017 at 9:20 AM

Rand al'Thor

11:26 AM

@Gallifreyan Eh. Those are just drawings of the film characters.

Also, are you just retweeting BESW's posts? ;-)

9 hours ago, by BESW

Harry Potter characters by Tony Moore @tonymoore https://t.co/9rq2sOaCfo

Tweeted by CoolComicArt on July 16, 2017 at 2:01 AM

Gallifreyan

Huh. No, I just saw it in my Twitter feed :D

That account really does post cool comic art.

BESW

11:50 AM

They do indeed. Though about half of it is somewhat repetitive con sketches.

(And I'm always happier to see the less mainstream stuff.)

Rand al'Thor

12:32 PM

@Hamlet FYI, I'm hoping to be able to answer your "The Nose, the Name" question. I've now read the story once and don't have any ideas yet, but I'll reread it and close-read it and try to work something out.

I'm also working on an idea for another potentially-controversial scope-stretching question.

Mithrandir

raises eyebrows

Rand al'Thor

Whose on-topicness I'm pretty sure is supported by existing meta consensus, but will still make people go "whoa, what, didn't expect to see that kind of question".

And which may make at least one or two users very happy.

Gallifreyan

12:48 PM

@BESW This blog is also good.

But not very active.

And not very mainstream.

Please feel free to suggest me other good twitters and blogs

Transcript for