'Bushwhacked'
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By consensus, this thread is reopened specifically to discuss Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. It will be closed again once that discussion has run its course.
***SPOILER ALERT***
humans get to be generalists; bad or good is to be determined, but for other species it's in the genes.
Hm, and I was thinking that all the magical species having specific flaws (which in at least the cases I can think of off the top of my head some individuals manage to transcend) implied that humanity also has a specific flaw we just can't see it, since we all pretty much have it.
Get your gay Dumbledore shirt today! [link]
Reading some comments on Dumbledore's outing and laughed my ass off at this one:
And give me a break with this “it traumatizes my kids” nonsense. If you dont want you kids to hear about “deviant” sexual behavior, stop electing republicans to congress.
BWAH!
OK, that's worth a second BWAH! here.
There are times when it's obvious an author is modelling real world racial/ethnic stereotypes for propagandistic purposes, and other times when it's clearly unconscious, or else they're aiming to be enlightened, but missing the target by a mile. Writing is sometimes harder than it looks.
It's over. Nothing really surprising in the ending bits. Harry only keeps the cloak which is pretty much what probably anyone suspected would happen. One thing though, Harry says if he dies a natural death then the elder wand will never have another true owner. Well, he won the wand by yanking Draco's wand out of his hand. If someone ever disarms Harry then the elder wand will have a new owner. The wand thing just doesn't all click together for me.
The wand stuff confused the hell out of me too, Gud. I think I need a diagram. Or perhaps a Powerpoint presentation.
I don't really see how the wand stuff can all add up. It's not like it ruined the book for me, but I would have liked something more internally consistent.
I hand-wave with "the want choses the master"
So, if the Elder Wand has ANY SHOT AT ALL of picking Harry over Draco it is so going to.
I'm sure even the other wands are giving him hell. "Oh puhleeze, you aren't even the wand he took in that battle!"
The POV who gets most of his wizard knowledge second-hand, at that. Hermione pretty much proves that the wizarding world is an unreliable narrator in re: house elves.
And most --if not all -- of this conversation is coming from a human perspective with human value judgements. I'm sure in some alternate universe, goblins are sitting there on the Internet typing, "You know, in all of J.K. Rowling's books, humans are thieves!"
Expanding on what Victor said, I thought JKR did a good job in the last book of explaining how the Goblins are not money-grubbing from their point of view. They just have a different way of looking upon trade.