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February 05, 2009

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I'd heard they weren't really outstanding, but it's nice to know the money goes to charity.

Wizards who treat Muggles badly and Muggles who treat wizards badly lose in various ways.

This reminds me of Larry Niven's heroic-fantasy story What Good Is A Glass Dagger? Its narrator is a wizard who comments on the usual runins between wizards and barbarians that, if the former loses, the world just got rid of a lousy wizard. If the barbarian loses, the world's average intelligence goes up.

As for Rowling's story and how selfishness is punished and selflessness is rewarded... True, it is a fairy tale.

The book is pleasant enough, but I was underwhelmed.

Mary Aileen:
I can't seem to work up any praise stronger than "fine" for the actual stories.

Susan: That sounds about right. My reviews keep adding up to "not a total waste of time." I agree that the Dumbledore books are better than the actual stories, but that's faint praise indeed.

I suspect the stories would be pretty good for a child not already familiar with a wide variety of classic fairy tales. I'm just not that child. I liked them okay, I just can't bounce with enthusiasm over them.

I just read a couple of short alternate-universe future-Harry Potter fan-written stories and found them much more interesting than ol' Beedle's stuff. Here and here.

Susan, those links don't work when I click on them. (It looks like you've somehow got HTML mixed up inside the link.)

Paul,
Fixed now. Sorry!

No problem, Susan.

They're interesting stories, but it bugs me that they start out with the Sorting Hat cheating. It seems to me that if you're setting out to prove that Slytherins have something to offer, you should do it using genuine Slytherins. (I suppose maybe the author wanted a sympathetic point-of-view character, but then if it's out of the question for a Slytherin to be sympathetic the whole enterprise is probably doomed anyway.)

SPOILERS in this comment for the fanfic linked above!


I'm not sure it's cheating; the Hat almost sorted Harry Potter into Slytherin back in the first book. Bravery and ambition (IIRC that is the defining characteristic of Slytherins, but correct me if I am misremembering) are not mutually exclusive. If Albus's desire is to be great or to prove himself or simply to get out from under the shadow of his father and older brother, then Slytherin isn't necessarily an insane concept.

If anything, you could say Harry cheated by begging the Hat NOT to put him in Slytherin.

I always figured that Harry's Slytherin potential, assuming that it wasn't just cross-contamination from You-Know-Who, arose from his upbringing - one can see how he might want to amass personal power to make sure that nobody could ever again treat him the way the Dursleys did. If Albus had that kind of upbringing, I should be very much surprised.

(And I don't think that Harry cheated at his Sorting: all he did was express a preference, which the Hat was free to ignore if it wanted to. "Ignored" is perhaps the wrong word - an expressed preference, as I think Dumbledore says somewhere, is a useful data point when weighing the question of which House he would do best in - but it might still have decided that other considerations tipped the balance toward Slytherin.)


The question of whether a desire for a great reputation is a Slytherin trait is a bit shadowy, I think: we're told that "ambition" is the Slytherin thing, but ambition for what, exactly?

One fan essay I've read argued that Slytherins are ambitious for power and influence, regardless of whether it comes with general recognition; eminence grise is a very Slytherin sort of occupation. People for whom the reputation is the important thing end up in the House of Heroes, Gryffindor, like Gilderoy Lockhart.

I think Albus' hypothetical issue would be a Miles Vorkosigan one: getting out from the shadow of a very famous and accomplished father. Look at Miles' fantasy to some day have Aral introduced as "the father of Miles" rather than Miles' permanent tagline "the son of Aral" and his pleasure at becoming an Auditor because that was one thing Aral hadn't ever done.

Or, more malevolently, look at George W. Bush.

Susan... look at George W. Bush

I did everything I could to do the exact opposite of for most of the 21st Century.

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