The obligatory Harry Potter 7 thread with spoilers

[Jon Miller]

He didn't know it was the last bit of his soul.

JM

[LordShiva]

He knew that the other Horcruxi were either destroyed or with Harry, and probably destroyed.

[LordShiva]

Also, howTF do magical battles go on for hours? So you duel another person, and your spells bounce off each other for a while, but then one of you hits, and game over. Disarm, tie with a rope, make a big invisible force field, whatever. And howTF are 20-foot giants in any way useful in a battle? Even a 10-year-old wizard would have no trouble hitting it with a spell and taking it out of teh equation within 20 seconds.

[Kuciwalker]

Giants have a high SR. (Remember, lots of spells just bounce off of Hagrid.)

[Nostromo]

Originally posted by Jon Miller


It is magical though. She goes for magical over other realism, or the rules of literature, and that is what gives her books that special quality.

JM

From Wikipedia:

The phrase deus ex machina (literally "god out of a machine") describes an unexpected, artificial, or improbable character, device, or event introduced suddenly in a work of fiction or drama to resolve a situation or untangle a plot (e.g. the rope that binds the hero's hands is luckily chewed off by a rat, or an angel suddenly appearing to solve problems).

[...]

The phrase has been extended to refer to any resolution to a story that does not pay due regard to the story's internal logic and is so unlikely that it challenges suspension of disbelief, allowing the author to conclude the story with an unlikely, though more palatable, ending.

In modern terms the deus ex machina has also come to describe a being, object or event that suddenly appears and solves a seemingly insoluble difficulty, where the author has "painted the characters into a corner" that they can't easily be extricated from (e.g. the cavalry unexpectedly coming to the rescue, or James Bond using a gadget that just so happens to be perfectly suited to the needs of the situation).

Other examples are seen in Dante Alighieri's Inferno when a mysterious personage (variously identified) "sent from Heaven" clears the path of fallen angels and opens the gates of Dis for Dante and Virgil to pass; and in Michael Crichton's The Andromeda Strain, where the main adversary in the novel is rendered harmless by random mutation. The device is a type of twist ending. A recent example of this occurs in the film adaptation of Dan Brown's novel "The Da Vinci Code" (directed by Ron Howard for the big screen) where a bird is seen to disturb the killer just before he shoots the lead character, thus giving him the opportunity to flee.

You can have deus ex machinas in fantasy, too. Deus ex machinas are almost always bad, IMO. I agree that the Potter books are special, they are charming and whimsical, but they could have been so much better without those damn deus ex machinas!

[Jon Miller]

I am well aware of what deus ex machina means.

Her deus ex machina always make the story more magical. As such, they are forgiveable, considering what is important to her in the story.

JM

[Nostromo]

I don't agree. The lack of deus ex machinas would have made her stories more believable. They turn-off our suspension of disbelief.

How did it make the story more magical when Neville took the sword from the hat and cut the snake's head? It was just lame, IMO. A cheap shot.

How did it make the story more magical when, in the second book, the bird came out of nowhere and rescued Harry? It was also pretty lame, IMO.

How did it make the story more magical when, in the Goblet, Harry surprisingly survived his duel with Voldemort
thanks to that weird wand effect? Its not like he could have won.

I don't think these stunts make the books anymore magical, they just make them less believable. Its like bad CGI.

[LordShiva]

Originally posted by nostromo
I don't agree. The lack of deus ex machinas would have made her stories more believable. They turn-off our suspension of disbelief.

How did it make the story more magical when Neville took the sword from the hat and cut the snake's head? It was just lame, IMO. A cheap shot.

How did it make the story more magical when, in the second book, the bird came out of nowhere and rescued Harry? It was also pretty lame, IMO.

How did it make the story more magical when, in the Goblet, Harry surprisingly survived his duel with Voldemort
thanks to that weird wand effect? Its not like he could have won.

I don't think these stunts make the books anymore magical, they just make them less believable. Its like bad CGI.

QFT. The stories are "magical" enough. These are just lazy/unimaginative.

[DinoDoc]

Why did you buy all 7 books, nostromo?

[Nostromo]

Originally posted by DinoDoc
Why did you buy all 7 books, nostromo?

Imran made me do it

Overall, I enjoyed the Potter books. I think its a good series. Rowling created a charming, whimsical world, filled with strange creatures and memorable characters. There are a lot of things going for it. But its also an uneven series. Like I mentioned earlier, I started to see the flaws after book 3. I almost stopped reading them after book 4, but my curiosity got the better of me.

[Will9]

Originally posted by LordShiva

Yeah but the goblin had it.

The hat has a magical connection with the sword.

[Imran Siddiqui]

Originally posted by LordShiva
Yeah but the goblin had it.

Not after the Sorting Hat took it away . I think that's another reason the goblins hate wizards. They enchant goblin steel to return after the goblins think they'd get it back.

Oh, and the goblin's name is Griphook.

It's still stupid. If you were teh master of teh world and believed that teh only thing that could bring you down was someone killing teh last bit of your soul after all teh others had been destroyed, you'd probably want to keep it safe, or at least not parade it around in front of a castle full of your enemies.

But Nagini is very useful. It allows Voldy to be in more than one place at one time, basically. True, it showed supreme overconfidence, but if you've ever seen a Bond movie, you know that the big badguys fail because they think nothing can harm them .

[q=nostromo]I don't agree. The lack of deus ex machinas would have made her stories more believable. They turn-off our suspension of disbelief.

How did it make the story more magical when Neville took the sword from the hat and cut the snake's head? It was just lame, IMO. A cheap shot.

How did it make the story more magical when, in the second book, the bird came out of nowhere and rescued Harry? It was also pretty lame, IMO.

How did it make the story more magical when, in the Goblet, Harry surprisingly survived his duel with Voldemort
thanks to that weird wand effect? Its not like he could have won.

I don't think these stunts make the books anymore magical, they just make them less believable. Its like bad CGI.[/q]

Complete disagreement here... all those "deus ex machina" (which, lets face it make the "twists" Rowling is famous for possible) add a LOT to the story and, IMO, are things that make the books better.

Neville taking the sword of Godric Gryffindor from the sorting hat showed that Neville was a true Gryffindor, embodying all of the elements that the house is famous for. Furthermore, it was NEVILLE... the guy laughed it. That was a great part of the book.

Fawkes (the Phoenix) coming out of no where, and dropping the Sorting Hat for Harry to pull the sword of Godric Gryffindor out of, showed a great closeness to Dumbledore and how much DD trusted Harry that Fawkes would help him out. That, and it allowed for the healing tears, later when Harry was stabbed by basilisk venom (which would be important later when destroying horcruxes).

And I can't believe you are really pillorying the meeting of the wands at the end of GoF!! That's an absolutely essential part... the dual core, the link between Harry and Voldy even closer, and, of course, it allows Harry to fight another day. Of course its more magical.. the same phoenix gave its tail feathers for both wands, which causes an interesting reaction when they both meet... how does not advance a magical world?

[Kuciwalker]

Can you call something a deus ex machina if it was set up 3 books before the event? (re: meeting of the wands)

[Imran Siddiqui]

Originally posted by Kuciwalker
Can you call something a deus ex machina if it was set up 3 books before the event? (re: meeting of the wands)

I assume you could... but I'm not sure if it is necessarily a bad thing to have such deus ex machina, if it is built on and integral to the plot and it makes the story more interesting (building up to it throughout the story and then making a plot twist work).

Then again none of those examples he stated "[did] not pay due regard to the story's internal logic", at least IMO. Fawkes had been set up earlier on in CoS, Neville's showing he was actually a worthy Gryffindor in spite of the laughing at him was set up since the end of the 1st book, and the meeting of the wands was set up, as Kuci points out above, books ago.

Which one, pray tell, didn't pay due regard to the story's internal logic?

[Nostromo]

Originally posted by Kuciwalker
Can you call something a deus ex machina if it was set up 3 books before the event? (re: meeting of the wands)

The two wands had the same cores, that's all we knew. And there was no mention of the possible effects if the owners of those two wands duelled. Rowling put, yet again, Harry in an impossible situation in book 4 and she pulled out of her ass the meeting of the wands thing. It was a deus ex machina and it was incredibly lame, IMO. Saved by the bell, yet again, mister Potter