I think it was just a contrivance to both make a sport for the books while also allowing the Main Character to automatically be the most important person all the time (like basically everything else in the books).
this post was submitted on 30 Apr 2024
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Yeah the truth is that Harry is more or less completely useless at anything other than quidditch in the books. He's just a symbol that actually talented people rally around
Functionally, he's good at being reliably moral. See: the mirror of erised, the second GoF task, going willingly to his death.
Reliably moral by traditional wizarding standards*. Hermione is more reliably moral by standards external to the wizarding world.
Hermione blackmailed a journalist and kept her in a jar for several weeks. The following year she cursed a fellow student and left them permanently disfigured. I'm not sure that I would consider her more reliably moral... a good person overall, but with flaws.
Idk, just because she doesn't turn into a human welcome mat doesn't make her immoral. And Rita is as much a journalist as anyone on Fox News is, which is to say, not at all. Hermione recognized that nobody would do anything about Rita spreading her harmful bullshit and took direct, decisive action.
I read that part as a(nother) self insert for Rowling venting about tabloids which were absolutely writing about her at the time.
Reading Enders Game after reading the Harry Potter series felt like those were two opposite ends of the spectrum.
Harry was special because fate made him special and all things revolved around him regardless of his actions.
Ender was special because the author said he was the smartest kid in the room and all things he did worked because if it didn’t work, then he wouldn’t be the smartest.
But then we found out later that Bean was actually the smartest kid in the room
I always got the impression that Ender was better at overarching strategy but didn't have Beans attention to detail and ability to micromanage. They both complimented eachother really well though Bean went very underappreciated.
I think that's exactly how they described it in the book. Bean was like a surgical instrument, precise and perfect for those small details/strike teams, but not as great at the larger overarching tasks.
I mean, Ron isn't exactly brilliant either. I guess that just leaves the authorial self-insert?
This is the point, the entire thing is just so Harry can be the main character
It's made for teens, so that checks out.
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It should be worth 5 points (half a goal, so it functions as a tiebreaker), but still end the game when caught. That way, the team in the lead is trying to catch it, and the team that's behind is trying to prevent the opposing seeker from catching it to buy time to close the gap. It's still important that way, you can't win the game without it, but the rest of the team is also contributing.
Plus, when there are positions on the team whose entire goal it is to beat the shit out of the other team, it makes sense that you'd want to split their focus between scoring points or ending the game. As-is, there's no reason a beater should be trying to do anything other than beat the shit out of the opposing seeker.
i wanna see parking lot frog ball
Fun Fact: In California, a frog that dies in a frog jumping contest cannot legally be eaten. It, and this is from the state code verbatim, "must be destroyed immediately".
That was weird, but interesting. Thanks for sharing!
Disappointed this isn't in Arkansas, but that's probably toads
Honestly sounds a lot more interesting than baseball
Goes well with the rest of the writing.
They need to up the intelligence on the snitch. Make it so hard to catch that it hardly ever happens. Seekers now spend most of their time as normal players, while keeping an eye out for the snitch, then darting away every once in a while for a catch attempt
That was my take when watching the movies (never read the books). I figured the snitch was near to impossible but Harry just had main character syndrome, being able to actually see the snitch.
Yeah harry is just cracked at the game for no particular reason (never even flew before he went to Hogwarts)... they allude to some quidditch games lasting days, at which point 150 points isn't a big deal anymore.
never even flew before he went to Hogwarts
Or so he thought. We later find out that Sirius sent him a toy practice broom for his first birthday. Harry could have had three months of practice at a very impressionable age, which could account for some of his "immediate talent" when he gets to Hogwarts.
"I road a tricycle for a handful of months when I was one years old and then moved to a country that outlawed bikes until I was 10. Of course I'm qualified for the men's varsity cycling team. Yes, I'm still ten. So what?"
When was this revealed?
DH10, in Lily's letter to Sirius:
Dear Padfoot,
Thank you, thank you, for Harry’s birthday present! It was his favorite by far. One year old and already zooming along on a toy broomstick, he looked so pleased with himself, I’m enclosing a picture so you can see. You know it only rises about two feet off the ground, but he nearly killed the cat and he smashed a horrible vase Petunia sent me for Christmas (no complaints there). Of course, James thought it was so funny, says he’s going to be a great Quidditch player, but we’ve had to pack away all the ornaments and make sure we don’t take our eyes off him when he gets going.
If anything that just tells us that he has always been talented on a broom.
Totally forgot about that, thanks! I kind of like that it implies that he has a natural talent with the broom.
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Yeah, the first book mentions that there have been matches that lasted days or even months.
This helps but doesn't address the other issue, which is spectators can't see anything related to the snitch.
Another option would be to add other win conditions, like the game automatically ends after an hour. That would add some strategy too- if your team is up and the clock is starting to run down, you could devote a couple players to blocking the other teams seeker. But you would have to be careful because then the other team would have an advantage scoring goals, and could sneak back into the game that way. With a few minutes left, unless the score was very close, the game would turn into a mad scramble for the snitch since that would be the only way to make up the score difference, with maybe just a couple people playing defense to keep the other team from getting free goals.
Another way to balance would be to simply make it not an instant win. Instead it's just worth a large amount of points, but the other team could still win if they score enough before the game ends.
It's not an instant win. It's already 150 points and an instant end to the game. It usually happens that whoever catches the snitch wins, but not always. See: Quidditch world cup in Book 4 of the series.
Which is also dumb because he caught the snitch, causing his team to lose the game.
Yeah that was dumb. The rationale in the book was his team was getting clobbered and he just wanted to end it on his terms, but at that moment his team was only down 160 points! They were perfectly capable of scoring ONE more goal, after which if he caught it it would go to overtime or sudden death or whatever they do in the quidditch world cup when it's tied.
It's technically not an instant win, just a ton of points and an instant end to the game. In a lopsided enough match a team could catch it and still lose.
In a lopsided enough match a team could catch it and still lose.
That literally happens in the books
In the world cup, right? All these people discussing how the snitch is an instant win got me thinking I totally imagined that happening
And once also in a game Harry didn't play in cause he was... banned I think. Although that made more sense because the quidditch cup is based on point differential not w/l, so catching the snitch and ensuring getting the 150 points is a good idea even if you lose.
this analogy made me high
Imagine catching the snitch when you're 160 points behind by mistake. It just wouldn't ever happen.
Imagine doing it on purpose in the World Cup...
Another good point from HPMOR
EY is gonna go down like Freud, with fascinating insights on human nature and present culture, and then half his conclusions being batshit wackadoodle nonsense.
That fanfic, within two chapters, goes from spotting Umberto Eco's Ur-Fascism in the Death Eaters' whole pitch, to declaring Hermoine an NPC unless she can pass a gatekeeping knowledge-check about quarks. If you told anyone today that Elizer Yudkowsky wrote a whole-ass Harry Potter book then HPMOR is exactly what they'd expect.
Eh, I doubt he's made many fascinating insights so much as he's compiled them. He seems like he's trying to be The Great Educator of Rationality, and despite the verysmart pedantry I can get behind the sentiment. On the other hand, conceptual precision (i.e. pedantry) is pretty important to clearly expressing precise ideas, which is one of the bigger functions of communication in the first place. It is difficult to provide instruction on clear and deliberate reasoning without coming off, at least in part, as a pedantic dork.
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