Intergalactic

[mike_smith]

So the word I'm hearing is that Stargate SG-1 is cancelled. All I have to say is: GOOD. F*** Stargate. The movie sucked, the TV show sucked, and that spinnoff show sucks so hard, even Stargate fans hate it, and that's saying something. They can toss SG-1 on the pile with Babylon 5, Firefly, Farscape, Lexx, Andromeda, Earth 2, Enterprise, and

Comments

[tekalynn]

I really like your analysis of Snape's teaching style. It makes SENSE, dammit.

(Which means it's probably totally wrong, because this is Rowling's book we're talking about. Oh well.)

[inboots]

The problem with that analysis is that it's parting from the principle that Neville's progress in Potions is Snape's ultimate goal. That Snape wants to teach Neville (and Harry, Hermione, Ron) something.

[merenwen_81]

I would be more conviced by that analysis if Snape's choice of teaching style didn't seem to depend on how he feels about these idiots' fathers.

The Gryffindors have Herbology with the Hufflepuffs and Charms with Ravenclaw. I guess DADA is a class where the group sizes are smaller.

[bubonicplague]

Well, if we consider that spells are based upon intent as Bellatrix Lestrange points out in book 5, then the word is likely used as the greatest point of focus for that intent. So the word has to conjure the mental images necessary to rlease the intent of the spell. Though I think that people who had the misfortune to, say, grow up speaking a Semitic instead of a Romance language would be royally fucked, here.

Though, come to think of it, then if Harry used the sectumsempra spell which was clearly labelled "for enemies", he was obviously of murderous intent, or it would have fizzled.

[mike_smith]

I seem to recall that Harry tested sectumsempra on a dummy of some sort to get some idea of what it did. But maybe I'm just remembering what I thought he should have done to determine what the spell did before using it.

Not that it matters, since when he used it against the Inferi later on, the spell was ineffective. This suggests to me that intent can't govern the nature of a spell. Harry's intentions were clear: he wanted to destroy the zombies. Yet the spell just did the same thing it did to live adversaies, which was ineffective against the undead Inferi. Had the spell been governed by Harry's intent, it would have rent the zombies to pieces, neutralizing their threat. Similarly, Harry didn't know what levicorpus would even do the first time he used it, yet it levitated Ron when he had no intent at all

[bubonicplague]

Still, at that point, Harry would have seen the effects of the spell and (I am assumping that he does not have the brain capacity or motivation ever to have picked up even a tiny bit of Latin) determined that it sliced abdomens open. I think this would be relatively ineffective on a zombie, obviously, and probably serve to make them even more repulsive, as one might witness a display of popping , squirming, murderous innards like in Re-Animator.

Though, bonus points if it takes place in the Ministry of Magic's elevator.

So I suppose it is a two-way issue. The spell's name is suppose to evoke what it actually does, and one uses it as a mnemonic device to remember the intent of the spell. I guess the person who invents the spell gets to pick the names, though, really, if some wizard decided that saying "I fucked your mom" is more powerful and evocative than "riddikulus", that would work just as well.

But wait...there are also non-verbal spells. Oh, fuck it all, I give up.

[jim_smith]

I'm starting to think all these spells are like built-in functions in a programming language. If I want to, say, search a word for a particular sequence of characters, I don't have to design the code for that myself because there's already a magic word--the preg_match() method--that does it for me. I don't have to know how it works or even what it does to make it work--I just have to say (well, type) the word.

However, to actually get any use out of preg_match() I have to use it in the proper context, and that's where I have to either know a little about it or get lucky. Unless you provide preg_match() with a string to search, a regular expression to search for, and an array to store the results in, it won't do you any good. Similarly, spells require no special skill to be used, but do require specific parameters to actually accomplish anything--riddikulus only works if you're fighting a boggart and you know what form he'll take and your imagination can make that into something funny. So if Lupin were writing the appendix of an

Hogwarts classes

[tropical_madnes]

From my understanding, each of the houses have some classes individually (ie Defense Against the Dark Art and Transfiguration) - perhaps classes where students might need a little more individual attention, and some classes with one other house (ie Care of Magical Creatures and Potions with the Slytherins and Herbology with the Hufflepuffs.) I'm guessing Ravenclaws and Hufflepuffs just have more of their double classes together.

[rubyd]

A possible other reason for the pronunciation-dependant spells: all the spells require a use of a wand, and the wands were made by someone. Maybe it's like a computer, wnere the techonobabble itself is complicated, but it boils down to point-and-clicking.

[rubyd]

...a theory that I see, now, you have approached in an above comment, so please disregard this.

[jim_smith]

That was me, not him. Mike wouldn't know a regular expression from the Ryan Expressway.

[kirabana]

ilu, mike. these reviews make the books so much more tolerable.

also, Lupin made Harry practice on a boggart!Dementor in the movie and they had pretty much the same affect on him