Have A Very Harry Christmas.
Jul. 10th, 2015 06:40 pmHarry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix is an interesting and rather a bleak book. In contrast to Philosopher's Stone or Chamber of Secrets, each of which are year-long buildups to Harry discovering and thwarting Voldemort's plan, Order of the Phoenix is a year-long buildup to Harry screwing up horribly and getting someone he loves killed. I was so upset whenever I noticed a point where everything could have been averted.
A few more thoughts:
- Harry, Hermione, Ron, Neville, Ginny and Luna all go to the Department of Mysteries. A six-person party, three male, three female. A perfect party for a Final Fantasy game, in other words. Get on that, Square. Or someone could write fanfiction in which they're all l'Cie.
- It never really occurred to me before how confused Neville must be during the entire ending sequence. 'We're going to fly to London to save someone named Sirius? Well, this is obviously really important to Harry, so I'll help out, even if I don't really know what's going on.' (Bless you, Neville.) And then Sirius actually shows up. 'Oh. So, um, we came here to rescue Sirius Black? Death Eater Sirius Black? Sirius Black, the guy who broke into our dormitory and tried to kill Harry two years ago?'
- I'm liking Ginny more this time around. I've never disliked her, exactly, but I had trouble believing in her sudden offscreen shift from 'quiet and shy' in the first four books to 'bold, outspoken, spirited' in the fifth onwards, and I suppose that made it hard for me to appreciate her as a character. I still think the shift could have been done better; if it's true that she only came across as quiet and shy at first because of her crush on Harry, perhaps we could have seen her spending a lot of time with Harry and gradually getting more comfortable with him over the course of a book? But I am enjoying her more than I used to.
- The room in the Department of Mysteries where love is studied is always kept locked. They leave open the room with the literal veil of death, but the love room is always kept locked. What the hell is in that room?
On a related subject: I recently loaded up my Pokémon White file from 2011 and went through my PC box to see the nicknames I'd given all my Pokémon. A few of them made me smile (I'd named my Trubbish 'WHAT' in allcaps, which I think accurately captures my reaction when I first saw it), but my absolute favourite was the Litwick I'd named Filius. Filius Litwick. I'm so happy with my past self. (I'm also quite fond of Severus Snake the Seviper.)
In SoulSilver, meanwhile, I have a box containing twenty-five male Eevee (I was breeding for a female). You can see my gradual breakdown if you look through them. I started out giving them individual nicknames, then started giving them all nicknames beginning with E, then eventually named one 'EEEAAARRGH' and gave up; the rest are nameless.
(Oddly enough, one of the Eevee of Suffering is named Ezio, even though I must have named him well over a year before I started playing Assassin's Creed.)
On a less related subject, here is a terrible tale of Sense8 references gone wrong:
Riona: There's a really strong smell of cat urine. It's troubling me.
RD: ?
Riona: ...I'm the only one who can smell it, aren't I? Someone in my cluster is at a cat urine convention, and I'm experiencing the things they can sense.
RD: ...a cat urine convention.
Riona: ...
RD: A cat urine convention.
Riona: (breaks into giggles)
RD: You said 'cluster', and I thought 'okay, I'm following this'. And then you said 'cat urine convention'. That's what came to your mind.
Riona: I don't want to be psychically bonded to someone who goes to cat urine conventions!
A few more thoughts:
- Harry, Hermione, Ron, Neville, Ginny and Luna all go to the Department of Mysteries. A six-person party, three male, three female. A perfect party for a Final Fantasy game, in other words. Get on that, Square. Or someone could write fanfiction in which they're all l'Cie.
- It never really occurred to me before how confused Neville must be during the entire ending sequence. 'We're going to fly to London to save someone named Sirius? Well, this is obviously really important to Harry, so I'll help out, even if I don't really know what's going on.' (Bless you, Neville.) And then Sirius actually shows up. 'Oh. So, um, we came here to rescue Sirius Black? Death Eater Sirius Black? Sirius Black, the guy who broke into our dormitory and tried to kill Harry two years ago?'
- I'm liking Ginny more this time around. I've never disliked her, exactly, but I had trouble believing in her sudden offscreen shift from 'quiet and shy' in the first four books to 'bold, outspoken, spirited' in the fifth onwards, and I suppose that made it hard for me to appreciate her as a character. I still think the shift could have been done better; if it's true that she only came across as quiet and shy at first because of her crush on Harry, perhaps we could have seen her spending a lot of time with Harry and gradually getting more comfortable with him over the course of a book? But I am enjoying her more than I used to.
- The room in the Department of Mysteries where love is studied is always kept locked. They leave open the room with the literal veil of death, but the love room is always kept locked. What the hell is in that room?
On a related subject: I recently loaded up my Pokémon White file from 2011 and went through my PC box to see the nicknames I'd given all my Pokémon. A few of them made me smile (I'd named my Trubbish 'WHAT' in allcaps, which I think accurately captures my reaction when I first saw it), but my absolute favourite was the Litwick I'd named Filius. Filius Litwick. I'm so happy with my past self. (I'm also quite fond of Severus Snake the Seviper.)
In SoulSilver, meanwhile, I have a box containing twenty-five male Eevee (I was breeding for a female). You can see my gradual breakdown if you look through them. I started out giving them individual nicknames, then started giving them all nicknames beginning with E, then eventually named one 'EEEAAARRGH' and gave up; the rest are nameless.
(Oddly enough, one of the Eevee of Suffering is named Ezio, even though I must have named him well over a year before I started playing Assassin's Creed.)
On a less related subject, here is a terrible tale of Sense8 references gone wrong:
Riona: There's a really strong smell of cat urine. It's troubling me.
RD: ?
Riona: ...I'm the only one who can smell it, aren't I? Someone in my cluster is at a cat urine convention, and I'm experiencing the things they can sense.
RD: ...a cat urine convention.
Riona: ...
RD: A cat urine convention.
Riona: (breaks into giggles)
RD: You said 'cluster', and I thought 'okay, I'm following this'. And then you said 'cat urine convention'. That's what came to your mind.
Riona: I don't want to be psychically bonded to someone who goes to cat urine conventions!
