Mindy's Many Posts(Death, Duelling Club, 3rd Task)

[Aleks]

No: HPFGUIDX 25391

Wow, you have been busy reading all these and coming up with 
questions. I'm gonna skim over a lot of what you said, but there were 
a few points I wanted to take up.

--- In HPforGrownups at y..., "Mindy, a.k.a. CLH" <mindyatime at j...> 
wrote:> I find it rather interesting that there is no spell that can 
>reverse death in the Hogwarts World. Magic should be infallible. 
>Raising people from the dead should be something that should be 
worked out by these amazing wizards. I am puzzled by this -- only 
perhaps this is so, because the plotlines would be endless and 
readers would be clamoring for every second character to be killed 
>and every third character to ressurect one of them.

Whilst this would be nice in theory, in practice it gets very 
tiresome. As I might have mentioned before (only about half-a-dozen 
times :) )I am a big X-Men fan. However, nobody ever seems to stay 
dead - either they didn't actually die, or it wasn't actually them, 
or they are immortal etc etc, many fans over the years have got 
increasingly fed up about this. Death, IMHO, is something that makes 
people reassess their lives, theirselves, it isn't something that 
should be treated lightly, as in "Oh, well, nevermind, we'll just 
cast this spell and then they'll be fine again." 

> I really don't get the entire premise of the dueling club chapter. 
Why was the entire dueling club necessary? The students are much too 
young to know proper spells and defense spells. Lockhart doesn't 
begin to know what he's doing; does he just want to show off?
> 
In my opinion, yes! Lockhart wants people to think that he's a great 
wizard, and the popularity of the club would have made him feel very 
good. As if his ego ~needed~ a boost :).

> HOWEVER, WHY ON EARTH DOES IT HAVE TO TAKE TWO FULL YEARS TO WRITE 
THE NEXT BOOK???? I don't get it. If she locks herself into her room 
for a month and subsists on take-out, and doesn't look at her 
daughter, she can finish this book by October. Why two years???? 

Have you ever attempt to write anything of that length yourself? As 
any fanfic author (or even professional author if there are any on 
this list) could tell you it takes an incredible amount of effort to 
write. Typically, even with fanfiction, it seems to take authors up 
to a month per chapter. If you put this is terms of a HP book then 
two years seems a very reasonable amount of time. From personal 
experience, I am in the process of writing a novel, whilst attending 
university full-time. It has taken me 2years (and 3complete rethinks 
of the plot) to write 10,000words. I have nothing but awe at JKR.

> 
> Did any of you ever wonder what went through the minds of all of the
> spectators of the Tournament while the cemetery drama was taking 
place? What a pity there was never a chapter describing the mayhem 
that may have gone on as Fleur and Krum were taken out and Cedric & 
Harry were not to be found, and neither was the Cup. 

Yes, this is one point where the fact that the action is seen mostly 
from Harry's POV was a problem for me. I really wanted to know what 
the 'audience' saw throughout the task and what happened back at 
Hogwarts whilst Harry was facing Voldemort. I have read a number of 
good fanfics which give some suggestions but I would like to know 
what Ron and Hermione were doing/ thinking. Perhaps they will tell 
Harry at some point during book?


>Here is a technical question on the digests themselves, rather than 
>the content. I've noticed that many of you have a 'signature line' 
with a couple of lines quoted from a particular book. Are those lines 
supposed to represent your favorite phrases, or are they an 
indication of your personality? I've never created my own signature 
>because I don't know what that signature is supposed to signify.


Finally I'll end with this question. Personally I add a sig line if I 
have a quote relevant to something I've written (as you'll see at the 
end of this post) or if I've read something I particularly liked. I 
guess that other people do the same thing.


Aleks


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"Just because he's dead, doesn't mean it's fatal!" 
      - Domino, X-Force #10
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