The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

11:01 PM

@b_jonas If I'm being pedantic, it doesn't say Pettigrew is a coward, it says that he's the most cowardly of the Death Eaters' pool.

b_jonas

@Jenayah Yes, and he had a bit of too few choices of DADA teachers and had to do with unsatisfactory candidates occasionally, and he did not trust Quirrel and had Snape keep an eye on him.

Jenayah

Though I agree that the implication is clear.

b_jonas

@Jenayah Right, but that's even more wrong. Pettigrew being brave may be a matter of opinion where I have a strong opinion, but nobody should call him less brave than Karkaroff.

Jenayah

@b_jonas see the various posts linked here, that'll save me from flooding the chatroom with all of them ahah:

-7

Q: Albus Dumbledore and teachers of the Defense Against the Dark Arts

Reading the Harry Potter series, I have this feeling that Dumbledore always got the Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher wrong. Was this on purpose or was it his incompetence?

b_jonas

@Jenayah Oh yes, Quirrel had been a Hogwarts teacher before.

Good point.

He wasn't hired, he was accepted back and "promoted" to DADA, and probably asked for this himself for very different reasons than Snape.

Jenayah

11:06 PM

@b_jonas that's from the games though, so its worth might be discussed; anyway, I was mainly linking that post because it redirects to all the "Why did Dumbledore hire X" questions

b_jonas

And that is part of why I imagine Professor Sprout probably got promoted to DADA teacher, at least part time, when Neville became a Hogwarts professor.

Jenayah

@b_jonas hey there's a question for that actually

lemme fetch it

b_jonas

@Jenayah No, that is from the books, and from an interview.

Jenayah

@b_jonas ah, my bad!

b_jonas

This time I think I can even actually find the interview.

accio-quote.org/articles/2007/0730-bloomsbury-chat.html search for "Muggle Studies"

And it's Harry's first meeting with Quirrel in Philosopher's Stone in the pub that gave people the idea to ask about Quirrel having taught in Hogwarts.

Jenayah

11:10 PM

@b_jonas there:

8

Q: Why did Quirrell change his teaching subject to DADA?

Up until his trip to Albania, Quirrell was not the Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher. Later on, when he became a servant of Voldemort, he became DADA teacher. Do books indicate in any way why he had this sudden change of heart? Working under his previous title would provide him a better cove...

harry-potter

b_jonas

It's a very early interview, which is why I know about it.

They were simply better than newer ones, though I can understand the reasons for that.

Partly at least.

@Jenayah That is a good question, thanks for pointing it out.

Jenayah

@b_jonas alright, thanks!

@b_jonas yeah, the growing fanbase may've flooded interviews with meaningless questions. I remember JKR saying something about how some fans wouldn't rest until they knew the name of Harry's great-grandfather or something

b_jonas

"Additionally, its unlikely Voldemort would have wanted to be around muggle studies all year, given his views on that topic." wait really? I think he enjoyed when during the seventh year, Muggle studies would be abused to corrupt vulnerable young minds and turn some of them to blood purists

Manipulation with words, it's the Dark Lord's kind of thing.

Jenayah

That's the interview I was referring to:

J.K. Rowling sur NBC, première partie (VOST)

►

@b_jonas uh yeah, but he had (almost) total control at that point. He was really weak in year 1, so he would have had to stick to the "Muggles do funny things but we should not despise them" stuff, and that'd been a stretch for the guy

b_jonas

@Jenayah I didn't hear of that specific case, but I do know when JKR did interviews with the questions asked by people who JKR actually knew and was in friendly terms with, and would have a fun to read interactive discussion with her; rather than moderators working under her to filter the thousands of questions to a reasonably short list, and there was no interviewer to listen to what JKR answer and react to it in real time.

@Jenayah Yeah, true.

@Jenayah Yes, exactly. The later personal and online chat appearances weren't interviews, they were a dumb question-answer session where JKR got a list she had to work through.

My two short meetings with the writer G. Szabó Judit were an experience that I will always remember. This was three years before her death and she was already visibly wary from her age and the summer heat, but she clearly wanted to meet her readers and have actual meaningful chats with them no matter how tiring it was for her.

Jenayah

11:22 PM

Blimey, I'm responsible for searching for such questions though :/

6

Q: What are the known memories used to conjure Patronuses?

Inspired by a random YouTube user commenting on this Deathly Hallows clip: Does anyone know what memory Alberforth thought of in order to create that huge patronus? AeroRomero We know that casting a Patronus "[..] will only work if you are concentrating, with all your mind, on a sin...

harry-potter patronus-charm

@b_jonas well that's a great writer.

b_jonas

This was on a book festival, with authors who had short-lived fame and even really good authors who rightly had long fame and a lifetime carreer of good writing (not necessarily writing I like), and some of them looked like they signed books and smiled and talked a few words with each of the people waiting in a long queue because their publishers ordered them to do that under threats.

Jenayah

(I mean writer attitude, I don't know the writer per se and Google only gives me Hungarian Wikipedia so far :/ )

b_jonas

And it's possible that some of them just had no choice because they really had a long queue and got tired, but still.

But Pterry complained about long queues and stupid fans but the fans who met him seemed to enjoy meeting him.

I'm not saying G. Szabó Judit is unique, she was just one of the very few writers whom I met and she showed me such consideration that I'll never forget.

Jenayah

@b_jonas some publishers are a bane. I'd link to very interesting comics by one of my favorite cartoonist on that topic, but unfortunately, they're in French :/ (and also, are mainly targeted towards French publishers)

b_jonas

She even remembered me, personally, in the second meeting which was a year after the first one. I know she's had aspirations to be a teacher and so probably has good memory for that sort of thing but still!

Jenayah

11:29 PM

@b_jonas That's impressive.

b_jonas

@Jenayah Mind you, the kind of writers that were famous for only one year, for writing a bibliography of a famous politician or something like that, those writers deserved what they got.

And luckily G. Szabó Judit didn't have many readers visit her, which is why I could spend more than a little time with her (not enough time, no amount would have been enough time).

Jenayah

@b_jonas well yeah, I'm mainly talking about people who actually developed stuff, worldbuilding, plot and all

You can write some very interesting biographies (I know I read some of these, though not of politicians), but you don't really have to care about the facts. It's stuff that is mainly already there, especially with the Internet, you just have to put it in the right way

In my book (pun not intended), biography writers qualify more as reporters than writers.

b_jonas

I also met Békés Pál twice before his early death, and he seemed a nice guy, although we found we didn't really have any common topic to speak of. The meeting with Ranschburg Jenő and Hernádi Miklós were like that too but even worse. And it's more my fault than theirs.

I also met Szabó Magda, but she had a long queue to work through (she was famous for his adult books mainly, plus a film made from another of her children's books, not for the books I like) so I couldn't really judge her attitude.

I would like to add that each of G. Szabó Judit, Békés Pál, Ranschburg Jenő, and Szabó Magda died a few years after I met them. I am now a bit superstitious and would be harder to convince to go to writer-reader meetings.

And the part of my stupidity that hurts me is that when G. Szabó Judit failed to show up on the next three years of the same festivals, then I actually thought of how enthusiastic she was to meet fans and concluded that she's probably seriously ill, and I guessed right, but I didn't have to common sense to write a letter to thank her.

Jenayah

@b_jonas I Googled all those since I didn't know any one of them, but the common point I see is that they all were from the previous generation, which probably had differents views on that matter

b_jonas

I am still bad at interpersonal communications, but this one specifically hurts me.

@Jenayah G. Szabó Judit was from the previous generation too. I think my mother was reading his early books before I was born. At least the copy of her book I got from her that G. Szabó Judit later authographed looks that old.

Jenayah

11:41 PM

@b_jonas I can understand :/ I'd tell you not to worry too much though, but that'd probably not be of much help. For what it's worth, from whereever she is now, she might've heard that in a way.

b_jonas

I allow for that it may have been after I was born, but she is certanily from the previous generation.

Jenayah

(not sure how good the WiFi is in heaven :) )

b_jonas

She just understood what's shared between all generations really well, and thus could target current children with both her old and new books.

She did put references like Dudley's playstation that makes it clear when each book was written, including modern ones like mobile phones and computers in her later books, but despite that, her books are timeless and a child today understands almost all of her old books as much as an adult from that generation.

(I did have to ask my mother about what one specific phrase for an obsolete phenomenon meant, but it's not like that was an important part of the book or anything.)

Jenayah

@b_jonas well now I'm hooked up :) know if there are English translations somewhere?

b_jonas

And most of her books are in webcomic time, when the heros permanently have the same age and family structure despite that the world around them changes.

Their adventures couldn't fit the time they spent being children of that specific age.

@Jenayah They are children's books. Good ones, but I have to warn you. If you don't like children's books, you might not like these.

@Jenayah I don't know off-hand, and I'm not the best person to ask. Ask someone who is familiar with libraries other than the ones in Hungary, and online library catalogs, and good at locating stuff. There are some such people in Sci Fi SE I think.

Jenayah

11:50 PM

@b_jonas honestly, there are some very good children's books around, and heck that's all down to personal opinion, is it? Worst-case scenario, I don't like it and move on, best case scenario, I've discovered new stuff that I like :)

b_jonas

One of her books has a translation to polish, and one to czech, and one to slovak, which may give some hope.

Jenayah

@b_jonas poke @Mithrandir who I reckon knows quite some stuff about literature ;D tell me if that's not your field though, wouldn't want to waste your time

@b_jonas well I know one word of Polish and two words of Slovak, so yeah that's a start ahah

b_jonas

But English translations of Hungarian works are not typically found in libraries of Hungary, because they're published on the west of the Iron Curtain where books are much more expensive (they're too cheap here for a real market, as a side effect of the communist regime), and libraries are poor and can't afford them. So I have no idea which works in Hungarian have such translations and which don't.

@Jenayah No, I mean if her books are translated to some languages, that makes it more likely that they are translated to other languages.

And frankly I was never really interested about English translations of Hungarian books, and never went out of my way to find out anything about them.

Jenayah

@b_jonas yeah I got that, I was just joking that if in the case it wasn't translated into English, I could still understand three words tops by cross-cutting Czech and Polish translatiions ;D ('cause I don't know a single word of Hungarian for that matter ahah)

@b_jonas of course, you'd have no reason to

b_jonas

When the ed. Iványi book (on theoretical computer science) got translated to English, and I saw a copy early in professor Rónyai's room (he was one of the authors), I made some remark on it and he was so gracious as to offer me to lend me his copy, but I declined immediately because why'd I read the English translation when the original is in Hungarian?

Jenayah

11:58 PM

Oh hey wait, I probably happen to know some Hungarian words. Let me check if that band is Hungarian or Bulgarian, I'm not sure

b_jonas

They're probably not easy books to translate though, unlike some other children's books.

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The Restaurant at the End of the Univ…