Accio blog!
That’s the name of one of the lucky fans who got her copy of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows early on Tuesday. There was a mix-up via DeepDiscount.com and Scholastic is taking legal action and offering those folks hush money.
The Baltimore Sun has more info.
At least none of these people are like the unscrupulous leakers. I’ll have a post on that issue later today.
Via the Newsarama comic book blog I found out about a scandal in the Harry Potter fanfic community that has been meticulously documented on LiveJournal.
Long story short: an author used multiple screennames/personalities to bash her own work in an effort to court favor.
I’m no fanfic writer/reader, but I’m interested now.
Ok, Potter news kind of slow so I’ll recommend another great fanfic for you all. This one is called With Quill in Trembling Hand, by Ciircee, and it’s another kind of sad one. A really poignant Neville, PoA compliant fic. A little Percy thrown in as well. Rated G.
Well, as anyone who follows this blog knows, my “relationship” with fanfic has been stormy at best. But I’ve been enjoying some lately, and I wanted to share this one that I stumbled on today. It’s called “five ways that sirius black never returned from the dead” by allecto. Really quite good, and it made me get teary eyed. I think I might miss Sirius as much as Harry does after all. It’s rated G in my opinion, so no worries.
There’s an interesting project going on called HarryWiki.com. Basically, HarryWiki is an attempt by fans to beat J.K. Rowling to the punch and have a complete book 7 (or more than one) before she does. The project is open to anyone, so if you think you know how book 7 should be, head on over and write a few chapters or even just write one particular scene. The site’s creators say they will save everything in the hopes of having several different versions of book 7.
I have to say this is a particularly great use of wikis.
As Ravenclawwit posted, JK redid her site. The entrance is much better and the whole site has a holiday theme to it (which begs the question of are there any Jewish witches and wizards who feel alienated due to Hogwart’s only celebrating Christmas). Best of all she has updated the rumors page and her diary.
1) The Diary talks about 2006 being the year she writes Book 7. SO that gives us the pretty much assumed badnews that 7 will not be out this year… However, if things stay on track, we could see a summer 2007 release (my guess not her statement) which would be great.
2) The rumors address a few things… A fictional HP7 title, Wormtail’s Silver Hand, the new DADA teacher, and under the dark mark, a horcrux rumor. Unfortunately, it isn’t the Harry/Horcrux rumor… but the one it addresses has been bandied around a lot. Very good stuff… as always, read and discuss.
I actually found a fanfic that I like today. It’s a non-slash, mostly canon based fic about Draco Malfoy. I actually felt sorry for the poor kid.
Anyways, I realized we’ve never talked about Draco on this site. So what does everybody think of him?
In some ways I feel bad for him. He was basically raised to be the arrogant, evil prat that he is. Raised by people who are Death-Eaters, taught that non-pure bloods are scum to be hated and killed if possible, taught to revere evil. Did he have a chance?
Sadly, my answer to that question is yes. We all have to make the choice between doing good and doing evil (or as Dumbledore put it, between what is right and what is easy), and I think that’s a message that Rowling tries to make clear in her books. Draco may have been raised in an evil environment, but their comes a time in every person’s life when they have to make their own choices, regardless of their upbringing. Take Sirius for example. He was raised in an environment very similar to Draco’s. And yet he chose to abandon that kind of life and fight for good. I’ll speculate that when the sorting hat placed Sirius in Gryffindor, it wasn’t for “shits and giggles”, pardon my language. It was probably very akin to why Harry was placed in Gryffindor, because Sirius was probably already choosing to reject the ideas of hatred and violence that he grew up with.
There is hope, of course. Draco, like most other humans, is not beyond redemption. Possibly he could see the error of his ways (perhaps he’s already starting to) and redeem himself in book 7. Only time will tell.
via Mugglenet
A fan has cobbled together a Harry/Hermione ship trailer using footage from the upcoming Goblet of Fire. I have to say that although I’m not a H/Hr shipper myself (Come on, Ron and Hermione just make sense), the video is pretty entertaining and almost sweet in a way. Sometimes I wish though that the H/Hr shippers could value Harry and Hermione’s friendship, which is unique and special instead of trying to throw them together in a linen closet, if you know what I mean.
Here we go again. Yet another Christian group is attempting to claim that Harry Potter seduces young children into embracing the Wiccan religion.
I really don’t understand how you can connect the Wiccan religion with Harry Potter. The magic and “witchcraft and wizardry” in Rowling’s books is that of fantasy and fairy tales. It involves wands, magic spells, and mythical creatures. It bears no resemblance whatsoever to the Wiccan creed. Wicca is a neo-pagan religion that reveres nature and the earth; deriving its deities, male and female, therefrom. Some practitioners of Wicca may cast spells, but they are nothing like the fantastical latin incantations found in Harry Potter. For instance, most Wiccans would not claim to be able to cast a spell that breaks natural laws as many spells in Harry Potter do; apparition (the ability to disappear from one location and reappear in another) for example.
I take issue with a couple of points raised in the article, for example:
Internet links and postings direct children from numerous Harry Potter sites to more serious ones educating about real Witchcraft and the fast-growing religion of Wicca.
I’ve visited over a hundred Harry Potter related websites. I’ve found very few references to Wicca on any of these sites. Conveniently, the author Steve Wohlberg fails to give even a single example of these prolific Potter/Wicca links.
Here’s another:
Not only has Witchcraft gone mainstream, but retail outlets worldwide openly display books on Witchcraft, Pagan worship and spells right next to the “harmless” Potter books and are enjoying the financial profits of this growing industry.
Boy, for someone calling himself a Christian he seems to offer up a lot of falsehoods. I’ve never gone into any bookstore and seen a Harry Potter display next to books advocating Wicca or the occult. That’s because there’s a whole seperate section of bookstores for that stuff. It’s usually called the Religion or Spirituality section. He may be familiar with it; it’s where they sell all the Bibles.
Here’s the clincher to Mr. Wohlberg’s triumvirate of made-up evidence.
Beneath the fun, fiction, and fantasy, Wohlberg claims that Harry Potter endorses the world of Witchcraft (in contrast to the non-magical “Muggle” community) and attacks the very core of Judeo-Christian values now believed by millions of people.
Now I get it. Either Wohlberg has not read the books at all, or he is a person incapable of critical thinking. Quite obviously to anyone who reads the books, hatred or prejudice against the Muggle community is portrayed to be the trait of the evil villain Voldemort and his followers, not a condoned and sought after attitude. As for “Judeo-Christian” values, (because of course, we all know that Jews and Christians are the only people who have values), many of them are in fact centerpieces of the story. Rowling has stated time and time again that what makes Harry special are not his abilities as a wizard, but his ability to love. Themes of friendship, loyalty, good vs. evil, forgiveness, and sacrificial love are brought up again and again. What other “Judeo-Christian” values is Mr. Wohlberg looking for?
A teenager from Moldova copied the entire contents of her English friend’s copy of The Half-Blood Prince, because the book isn’t available in her homeland.
One month to copy the book, two days to read it.
All 607 pages fit into five hand-written notebooks.
Amazing!