Actually, Harry Potter doesn't have a huge following with the people named Voldemort. They feel they're being given a bad name (pun intended).
My uninformed friend, I happen to be a member of the LOHPFNV, the League of Harry Potter Fans Named Voldemort. Yes, I, Dennis Voldemort Smithers, and my colleagues Voldemort W. Walters and Voldem Ortoson III (whose membership qualifications are still being considered) are offended by your remark and demands an apology. There are hundreds of us. HUNDREDS.
I'm a big Harry Potter fan. I'm also a Christian. I'll never understand why there are people who insist that the Harry Potter books are evil. I'd heard several people say this when the books were still coming out, and have seen (not read) at least one book regarding such nonsense in more than one bookstore.
I can say for certain that anyone who ever says such things about the Harry Potter series has not read any of the books, and is a highly gullible idiot.
I'm a big Harry Potter fan. I'm also a Christian. I'll never understand why there are people who insist that the Harry Potter books are evil. I'd heard several people say this when the books were still coming out, and have seen (not read) at least one book regarding such nonsense in more than one bookstore.
I can say for certain that anyone who ever says such things about the Harry Potter series has not read any of the books, and is a highly gullible idiot.
Did people really say that?I don't see how a book can be evil...
In fact, it's my personal opinion that nobody in the world has ever really been evil. Well, maybe one or two people, but you can count them off as anomolies.
In fact, it's my personal opinion that nobody in the world has ever really been evil. Well, maybe one or two people, but you can count them off as anomolies.
I wouldn't say I agree with that, but I can tell you that there are people in the Christian community who say that Harry Potter teaches ungodly values to kids, including encouraging them to study witchcraft and the occult. It's all just a load of bs.
The Harry Potter series is fiction. It's fantasy. I was the first of my family to have started reading them, and since then myself, my wife, her parents and brother and several extended family members, and my parents have all read each HP book at least once, and we're all Christians and see nothing wrong with any of it. Sure, by the end of book 4 it can get rather dark in tone, but that's different from people trying to say that Satan is trying to attack our kids by influencing them through the story elements within Harry Potter.
It makes me extremely mad every time I hear anyone say such things. READ THE BOOKS FIRST before you believe that crap.
I wouldn't say I agree with that, but I can tell you that there are people in the Christian community who say that Harry Potter teaches ungodly values to kids, including encouraging them to study witchcraft and the occult. It's all just a load of bs.
The Harry Potter series is fiction. It's fantasy. I was the first of my family to have started reading them, and since then myself, my wife, her parents and brother and several extended family members, and my parents have all read each HP book at least once, and we're all Christians and see nothing wrong with any of it. Sure, by the end of book 4 it can get rather dark in tone, but that's different from people trying to say that Satan is trying to attack our kids by influencing them through the story elements within Harry Potter.
It makes me extremely mad every time I hear anyone say such things. READ THE BOOKS FIRST before you believe that crap.
I guess there are just a lot of stupid Christians
(don't take offence to that - I'm an atheist and there are a lot of stupid atheists)
How funny - One of the Reverends at my school (yes, my school has Reverends) always uses Harry Potter metaphors when preaching. He spoiled the end of The Deathly Hallows for everyone during the Easter service a few years ago.
How funny - One of the Reverends at my school (yes, my school has Reverends) always uses Harry Potter metaphors when preaching. He spoiled the end of The Deathly Hallows for everyone during the Easter service a few years ago.
There's a reverend at my school. Ironically, he teaches biology.
I completely agree with all that Chyron has said. I'm also a Christian and I too see nothing wrong with the Harry Potter books. I've read all of the books twice (Philosopher's Stone thrice), and find them to be harmless and actually beneficial in some ways. I personally hate the movies because they are nothing like the books and have a completely different mood, different themes and different or, often, obsolete humour.
Anyway, the books (and the movies, for that matter) are not evil. As Chyron said, they are fiction and fantasy. And the Hogwarts students aren't actually learning any evil spells or dark magic, that would be the villains of the story - who are later fought against in an effort to try and save the magic world from an evil rule. The book is nothing more than a tale of good vs. evil - just like Lord of the Rings, just like the Chronicles of Narnia.
In France, I know the whole "the Harry Potter books are evil because they show witchcraft as something positive" thing was all brushed-off as "these crazy Americans" (no offense meant, nobody thinks you're all like that).
I've always felt that the books, on the opposite, had a Christian influence. Now, I don't think they're "Christian propaganda" or "a new gospel" or anything, just that the author is from a Christian culture and therefore there is Christianity in the book. But whether you're Christian or not (I'm not) you can enjoy the books. Or not, it's not like you have to like them, either.
Pratchett just doesn't do it for me. I can't read his stuff. I need to get someone else to read it and then tell me the story, and then I enjoy it, but not if I read it myself. Guess I don't like his style.
I have the same problem with Tolkien, incidentally. Never been able to finish a book by either of them.
Pratchett just doesn't do it for me. I can't read his stuff. [...] I have the same problem with Tolkien, incidentally.
I love Pratchett and his style, he's a brilliant writer and often has me smiling or even laughing. Don't care for Tolkien so much. His descriptive passages are lovely and he obviously creates very rich worlds, but for me his books are so dense - there's too much detail extraneous to the main narrative (Tom Bombadil anyone?).
I love Pratchett and his style, he's a brilliant writer and often has me smiling or even laughing. Don't care for Tolkien so much. His descriptive passages are lovely and he obviously creates very rich worlds, but for me his books are so dense - there's too much detail extraneous to the main narrative (Tom Bombadil anyone?).
I love tolkeins work, I just can't read his stuff because it's too descriptive by the time, I finished the first chapter I was falling asleep.
I got to book 2 of Lord of the Rings and found myself trudging through the first chapter, re-reading sections because I was obviously missing details, and the density of the thing was just too much for me. So I tossed it.
Pratchett and Douglas Adams though, those are some fun writers.
No seriously though, I completely agree with these people and I made my own comic that helps carry their message:
Regarding books, I think that Douglas Adams is excellent. His books have a lot of genuinely interesting, clever philosophical observations in them. Their biggest flaw (of the ones I've read - restaurant at the end of the universe and hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy) is that the characters aren't fleshed out at all. Before reading Hitchhiker's Guide, I was familiar with the character of Arthur Dent and I'd seen the movie, so I knew what to expect. When I read the book, however, I realised that there's barely any description of him and there's not a lot to get from his dialogue - his character seems to be derived solely from his situation. And Trillain, who I thought was an important character after watching the movie, is introduced and then barely touched on. Hell, in the second book, her first line of dialogue is more than half way through. Before that, the only things she does is occasionally nod or make some other sort of gesture. It really bugged me when I was reading the books that the characters were so shallow.
In my opinion, Terry Pratchett's books are a lot like Douglas Adams', but I think they're a lot better. The characters in his books are brilliant; I can vividly picture all of them within a few pages of their introduction. Their thoughts and characters are fully described and it's always made very easy to empathise for them. Also, Pratchett's humour is just the type that I love. He somehow manages to create a weird, crazy universe with all sorts of over-the-top ridiculousness that carries some really poignant philosophical and political messages, and that's what I think helps to convey the messages - he points out how ridiculous some of our real-world customs and ideologies are by making over-the-top Discworld counterparts which he can relentlessly poke fun of.
Oh, Chick tracts are hilarious. Scary at the same time because you realise he must actually believe these things, but otherwise hilarious.
And he obviously has no idea what he's talking about. His DnD one made no sense, and the Harry Potter one... What the hell? When in HP does it tell anyone to use tarot cards, ouija boards and crystal balls? I can't even remember the first two being mentioned, and the third one is only made fun of as ridiculous and inefficient.
I've read a few Chick tracts and I always ended being all "what the..." as he makes connexions and leaps that make absolutely no sense. "The neighbor said she doesn't believe in God, so I decided I won't either and instead I'll kill people". What??
All the people in his tracts seems mentally unstable and extremely easily convinced.
("You know, Jesus died for us" "Oh, wow, I'm a devout Christian now. I guess nobody had thought to mention that to me before").
I like Douglas Adams's style but can't get into his stories (so, the opposite of Pratchett I guess). I just love the way he says things ("it floated in the very same way a brick doesn't" or something.) but I'm not really interested in what he's saying. I guess you might be right that he doesn't make me care about the characters.
I felt a bit the same with A Series of Unfortunate Events. I really liked the style at first, but then it got too repetitive, and I wasn't very interested in the story, that seemed to focus only on raising questions and then not answering them, and end up leading pretty much nowhere.
The reason I'm comparing the two, by the way, is that what I like in Douglas Adams's style is similar to what I like in "Lemony Snicket's" style. Not sure how to describe it since I don't have the A Series books to quote from (borrowed them from the library) but maybe people who have read both will see what I mean. A certain kind of randomness, I guess.
Oh, Chick tracks are hilarious. Scary at the same time because you realise he must actually believe these things, but otherwise hilarious.
And he obviously has no idea what he's talking about. His DnD one made no sense, and the Harry Potter one... What the hell? When in HP does it tell anyone to use tarot cards, ouija boards and crystal balls? I can't even remember the first two being mentioned, and the third one is only made fun of as ridiculous and inefficient.
I've read a few Chick tracks and I always ended being all "what the..." as he makes connexions and leaps that make absolutely no sense. "The neighbor said she doesn't believe in God, so I decided I won't either and instead I'll kill people". What??
All the people in his tracks seems mentally unstable and extremely easily convinced.
("You know, Jesus died for us" "Oh, wow, I'm a devout Christian now. I guess nobody had thought to mention that to me before").
Yeah, that's what I was making fun of in my little paint comic. In the Harry Potter comic I posted, he gives us two characters, one of them to provide the problem (in this example, being negatively influenced by Harry Potter) and another to provide the resolution (in this example, making the harry potter fan see what's wrong with Harry Potter), but then in the last frame he just gets carried away and makes the character who provides the problem provide her own resolution with little-to-no provocation, and then the other character just concurs.
I just love the way he says things ("it floated in the very same way a brick doesn't" or something.) but I'm not really interested in what he's saying.
Yeah, that's exactly it. He has a brilliant way of describing things, but I don't care about what it is he's describing. Also, his stories aren't all that good... everything that happens is really fun and the settings and everything are good, but the structure of the stories themselves is kind of weird, and it just adds to my apathy towards what's happening when I read his books.
How about the new Hitchhiker book by Eoin Colfer, written "in the style of" Douglas Adams? I hadn't planned on reading it (it just smells wrong, metaphorically speaking), but I'm curious to know if anyone has.
I don't usually like sequels by other people than the original authors, except when they have been chosen by the author while they were still alive, and are using notes and stuff.
I haven't finished the "trilogy" anyways so I wouldn't read it yet if I planned on ever doing it, but I'm not really planning to.
I'm suddenly wondering, was the sequel to Les Misérables ever translated into English? For your sake, I hope not :P
I'm suddenly wondering, was the sequel to Les Misérables ever translated into English?
Oh dear, looks like it was... both of them! I had no idea such things existed.
Sometimes things really just need to be left alone. It must take a huge amount of arrogance to think you're capable of matching (or bettering) a very well-loved author.
I think you need to consider them fanfics or something. I mean, everyone is allowed to write a sequel to something that's public domain. But these one, the recent 2001 ones, I mean, were just bad. I admit I haven't read them myself, but from all the things I've heard that were changed (some characters being brought back that shouldn't, including from the dead... and not as zombies! Actually, I would probably read that lol, characters just changing personalities completely, anachronisms, etc) it sounds like it was pretty bad.
I meant the second of those you linked, by the way. That guy wrote two books that work as sequels, the one you linked is the first of the two.
There were many sequels written, but the one I'm talking about was just so different from the story, and so unfaithful to it that it just created a big controversy. There was even a trial for disrespecting the dead's work lol. The writer won, though, after all Hugo was always a big protector of the freedom of speech so that makes sense, and it IS in public domain.
But man, I'm almost curious to read it after all the bad stuff I've heard.
Also, I found my husband's favourite Chick tract image (the last image): an insane kid who hears about evolution and becomes a nazi as a result. I posted the previous page too for more context.
I don't get the evolution controversy in the US, incidentally. It doesn't exist in France as far as I know. Evolution doesn't talk about life appeared, only what happened once it was there. It's 100% compatible with belief in God.
Sorry for going back to that, as it might be too controversial for the forum. I always kind of wish I would find one that someone left laying around, so I could actually own one. They're great entertainment.
One that was horrible though was about a doctor who sees that a 4 year old girl has an STD and was raped by her father, and the doctor's reaction is "I have to go see the father and tell him about Jesus". Of course it ends up with the father accepting Jesus and hugging his daughter while saying "I won't hurt you ever again now".
I don't get the evolution controversy in the US, incidentally. It doesn't exist in France as far as I know. Evolution doesn't talk about life appeared, only what happened once it was there. It's 100% compatible with belief in God.
In England (at least, in my experience), evolution by natural selection is taught in the science class and the Christian creation story is taught in the Religion Education class along with a handful of other creation myths. That might have had something to do with the school I went to, though. About half of the students were practising Muslims, probably a handful were practising Christians and the rest were either apathetic towards their religion or atheist, so it would probably result in upset by a lot of parents if they taught the Christian creation myth as being more important or true than that of Islam.
We didn't have religious education, we were taught religion in history class. And I didn't pay a lot of attention >.>
Similarly, we don't have a sex education class, it's just part of biology class.
The Adam & Eve thing is generally considered to be a metaphor, and evolution to be the way God wanted us to aim towards getting better and better, or something along these lines. I'm not exactly sure since I'm not religious myself, but I've never met a French religious person who didn't believe in evolution, so I've always been very surprised by the "evolution vs religion" thing there seems to be in the US, like they're contradictory or something.
We didn't have religious education, we were taught religion in history class. And I didn't pay a lot of attention >.>
Similarly, we don't have a sex education class, it's just part of biology class.
We didn't have a sex education class either. There was just one sex education lesson at some random point in the year in year 11 (which is for ages 15-16), and I missed it
The Adam & Eve thing is generally considered to be a metaphor, and evolution to be the way God wanted us to aim towards getting better and better, or something along these lines. I'm not exactly sure since I'm not religious myself, but I've never met a French religious person who didn't believe in evolution, so I've always been very surprised by the "evolution vs religion" thing there seems to be in the US, like they're contradictory or something.
Yeah, most of the scientific discoveries made in the past few hundred years are more compatible with religion than some people seem to think.
Comments
He is also a fan of Kim Possible and McDonalds.
Actually, Harry Potter doesn't have a huge following with the people named Voldemort. They feel they're being given a bad name (pun intended).
My uninformed friend, I happen to be a member of the LOHPFNV, the League of Harry Potter Fans Named Voldemort. Yes, I, Dennis Voldemort Smithers, and my colleagues Voldemort W. Walters and Voldem Ortoson III (whose membership qualifications are still being considered) are offended by your remark and demands an apology. There are hundreds of us. HUNDREDS.
Hundreds!
EDIT: found it.
It wasn't. Though it came to my mind as I was typing it.
I can say for certain that anyone who ever says such things about the Harry Potter series has not read any of the books, and is a highly gullible idiot.
Did people really say that?I don't see how a book can be evil...
In fact, it's my personal opinion that nobody in the world has ever really been evil. Well, maybe one or two people, but you can count them off as anomolies.
I wouldn't say I agree with that, but I can tell you that there are people in the Christian community who say that Harry Potter teaches ungodly values to kids, including encouraging them to study witchcraft and the occult. It's all just a load of bs.
The Harry Potter series is fiction. It's fantasy. I was the first of my family to have started reading them, and since then myself, my wife, her parents and brother and several extended family members, and my parents have all read each HP book at least once, and we're all Christians and see nothing wrong with any of it. Sure, by the end of book 4 it can get rather dark in tone, but that's different from people trying to say that Satan is trying to attack our kids by influencing them through the story elements within Harry Potter.
It makes me extremely mad every time I hear anyone say such things. READ THE BOOKS FIRST before you believe that crap.
I guess there are just a lot of stupid Christians
(don't take offence to that - I'm an atheist and there are a lot of stupid atheists)
btw, I didn't mean to balance this topic on controversy. That just really ticked me off.
There's a reverend at my school. Ironically, he teaches biology.
Anyway, the books (and the movies, for that matter) are not evil. As Chyron said, they are fiction and fantasy. And the Hogwarts students aren't actually learning any evil spells or dark magic, that would be the villains of the story - who are later fought against in an effort to try and save the magic world from an evil rule. The book is nothing more than a tale of good vs. evil - just like Lord of the Rings, just like the Chronicles of Narnia.
Cool
Wait what.
I've always felt that the books, on the opposite, had a Christian influence. Now, I don't think they're "Christian propaganda" or "a new gospel" or anything, just that the author is from a Christian culture and therefore there is Christianity in the book. But whether you're Christian or not (I'm not) you can enjoy the books. Or not, it's not like you have to like them, either.
Seriously though, I'm not into Harry Potter. When it comes to stories about magic, I think Terry Pratchett's Discworld novels are more interesting.
I have the same problem with Tolkien, incidentally. Never been able to finish a book by either of them.
I love Pratchett and his style, he's a brilliant writer and often has me smiling or even laughing. Don't care for Tolkien so much. His descriptive passages are lovely and he obviously creates very rich worlds, but for me his books are so dense - there's too much detail extraneous to the main narrative (Tom Bombadil anyone?).
I love tolkeins work, I just can't read his stuff because it's too descriptive by the time, I finished the first chapter I was falling asleep.
Pratchett and Douglas Adams though, those are some fun writers.
Oh god... this stuff makes fun of itself...
No seriously though, I completely agree with these people and I made my own comic that helps carry their message:
Regarding books, I think that Douglas Adams is excellent. His books have a lot of genuinely interesting, clever philosophical observations in them. Their biggest flaw (of the ones I've read - restaurant at the end of the universe and hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy) is that the characters aren't fleshed out at all. Before reading Hitchhiker's Guide, I was familiar with the character of Arthur Dent and I'd seen the movie, so I knew what to expect. When I read the book, however, I realised that there's barely any description of him and there's not a lot to get from his dialogue - his character seems to be derived solely from his situation. And Trillain, who I thought was an important character after watching the movie, is introduced and then barely touched on. Hell, in the second book, her first line of dialogue is more than half way through. Before that, the only things she does is occasionally nod or make some other sort of gesture. It really bugged me when I was reading the books that the characters were so shallow.
In my opinion, Terry Pratchett's books are a lot like Douglas Adams', but I think they're a lot better. The characters in his books are brilliant; I can vividly picture all of them within a few pages of their introduction. Their thoughts and characters are fully described and it's always made very easy to empathise for them. Also, Pratchett's humour is just the type that I love. He somehow manages to create a weird, crazy universe with all sorts of over-the-top ridiculousness that carries some really poignant philosophical and political messages, and that's what I think helps to convey the messages - he points out how ridiculous some of our real-world customs and ideologies are by making over-the-top Discworld counterparts which he can relentlessly poke fun of.
Okay, babbling over.
And he obviously has no idea what he's talking about. His DnD one made no sense, and the Harry Potter one... What the hell? When in HP does it tell anyone to use tarot cards, ouija boards and crystal balls? I can't even remember the first two being mentioned, and the third one is only made fun of as ridiculous and inefficient.
I've read a few Chick tracts and I always ended being all "what the..." as he makes connexions and leaps that make absolutely no sense. "The neighbor said she doesn't believe in God, so I decided I won't either and instead I'll kill people". What??
All the people in his tracts seems mentally unstable and extremely easily convinced.
("You know, Jesus died for us" "Oh, wow, I'm a devout Christian now. I guess nobody had thought to mention that to me before").
I like Douglas Adams's style but can't get into his stories (so, the opposite of Pratchett I guess). I just love the way he says things ("it floated in the very same way a brick doesn't" or something.) but I'm not really interested in what he's saying. I guess you might be right that he doesn't make me care about the characters.
I felt a bit the same with A Series of Unfortunate Events. I really liked the style at first, but then it got too repetitive, and I wasn't very interested in the story, that seemed to focus only on raising questions and then not answering them, and end up leading pretty much nowhere.
The reason I'm comparing the two, by the way, is that what I like in Douglas Adams's style is similar to what I like in "Lemony Snicket's" style. Not sure how to describe it since I don't have the A Series books to quote from (borrowed them from the library) but maybe people who have read both will see what I mean. A certain kind of randomness, I guess.
Yeah, that's what I was making fun of in my little paint comic. In the Harry Potter comic I posted, he gives us two characters, one of them to provide the problem (in this example, being negatively influenced by Harry Potter) and another to provide the resolution (in this example, making the harry potter fan see what's wrong with Harry Potter), but then in the last frame he just gets carried away and makes the character who provides the problem provide her own resolution with little-to-no provocation, and then the other character just concurs.
Yeah, that's exactly it. He has a brilliant way of describing things, but I don't care about what it is he's describing. Also, his stories aren't all that good... everything that happens is really fun and the settings and everything are good, but the structure of the stories themselves is kind of weird, and it just adds to my apathy towards what's happening when I read his books.
I haven't finished the "trilogy" anyways so I wouldn't read it yet if I planned on ever doing it, but I'm not really planning to.
I'm suddenly wondering, was the sequel to Les Misérables ever translated into English? For your sake, I hope not :P
Oh dear, looks like it was... both of them! I had no idea such things existed.
Sometimes things really just need to be left alone. It must take a huge amount of arrogance to think you're capable of matching (or bettering) a very well-loved author.
Ah yes, those guys and Daniel Handler are my three favorite writers.
I meant the second of those you linked, by the way. That guy wrote two books that work as sequels, the one you linked is the first of the two.
There were many sequels written, but the one I'm talking about was just so different from the story, and so unfaithful to it that it just created a big controversy. There was even a trial for disrespecting the dead's work lol. The writer won, though, after all Hugo was always a big protector of the freedom of speech so that makes sense, and it IS in public domain.
But man, I'm almost curious to read it after all the bad stuff I've heard.
Also, I found my husband's favourite Chick tract image (the last image): an insane kid who hears about evolution and becomes a nazi as a result. I posted the previous page too for more context.
I don't get the evolution controversy in the US, incidentally. It doesn't exist in France as far as I know. Evolution doesn't talk about life appeared, only what happened once it was there. It's 100% compatible with belief in God.
Sorry for going back to that, as it might be too controversial for the forum. I always kind of wish I would find one that someone left laying around, so I could actually own one. They're great entertainment.
One that was horrible though was about a doctor who sees that a 4 year old girl has an STD and was raped by her father, and the doctor's reaction is "I have to go see the father and tell him about Jesus". Of course it ends up with the father accepting Jesus and hugging his daughter while saying "I won't hurt you ever again now".
Oh dear lord... -_-
In England (at least, in my experience), evolution by natural selection is taught in the science class and the Christian creation story is taught in the Religion Education class along with a handful of other creation myths. That might have had something to do with the school I went to, though. About half of the students were practising Muslims, probably a handful were practising Christians and the rest were either apathetic towards their religion or atheist, so it would probably result in upset by a lot of parents if they taught the Christian creation myth as being more important or true than that of Islam.
Similarly, we don't have a sex education class, it's just part of biology class.
The Adam & Eve thing is generally considered to be a metaphor, and evolution to be the way God wanted us to aim towards getting better and better, or something along these lines. I'm not exactly sure since I'm not religious myself, but I've never met a French religious person who didn't believe in evolution, so I've always been very surprised by the "evolution vs religion" thing there seems to be in the US, like they're contradictory or something.
Yeah, most of the scientific discoveries made in the past few hundred years are more compatible with religion than some people seem to think.
Ummm... Ron Gilbert is Cool! He totally should be accepted at Hogwarts! There!