July novel-reading

[garran]

A fairly predictable pattern, this month.

J. K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (reread)
Lois McMaster Bujold, The Sharing Knife: Legacy
Steven Brust, Dzur
J. K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (reread)
J. K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (reread)
J. K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (reread)
J. K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (reread)
J. K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
Gene Wolfe, The Shadow of the Torturer

On a nearby subject, I wanted to ask: which, if any, of the Hogwarts houses do the people reading this who have also read the books feel kinship with? Actually, what I wanted to ask was, "Do I have any friends who don't self-identify as Ravenclaw?" but before I got around to it I found somewhere* where a Windsor House acquaintance had described themselves as a Gryffindor. I'm still interested in whether Ravenclaw is as popular as it seems to be, though, based on its disproportionate favour among people I know who have told me that they think they'd be in a particular of the houses, so I'm especially interested in folks who feel inclined toward one of the other three. (Don't worry, we can still hang out!)

(* Okay, so it was their facebook page. I feel embarrassed to publicly admit that I'm using facebook now, but I guess it means that I can muse about it in public later.)

If any spoilers for the final book appear in my comments I will edit the post to mention them. Since I know that there is at least one person reading this who hasn't got to it yet and cares if they're spoiled, it would be cool if commenters could also clearly mark that spoilers are coming up if there are any, in case I don't get there in time. Edit: Some moderate spoilers have appeared, so far only in comments that are marked with warnings in the subject line. The earlier books, of course, are spoiled with impunity.

I finally duct taped the armrests to my computer chair. That's going to be so much better.

Comments

[opt513.livejournal.com]

Well, if you take the line that Slughorn is a rare exception to what is otherwise the hard and fast rule of what Slytherins turn out to be, then approximately 25% of all British wizards are evil bastards with no qualms about killing or using the dark arts if it'll get them what they want.

I don't think the actual number is quite that high. Even if the majority of Slytherins are like that, or think they're like that, I think "sounds a lot cooler than it actually is" applies just as much to the other side as it does to the good guys. Depending on how you want to interpret certain characters' actions in Deathly Hallows, I'd say that applies to at least 2 or 3 confirmed Slytherins.


As for this dispassionate reason angle you have on Ravenclaw, I'm inclined to disagree. Obviously, just being brilliant isn't enough to land a person in Ravenclaw. Dumbledore, Hermione, Snape, and Voldemort are among the most brilliant wizards in the series, and none of them are Ravenclaws. And those few noticeable characters that are in Ravenclaw have shown themselves to be perfectly capable of being stubborn and emotional, or courageous, or passionate. Whatever differences the houses may have in their espoused philosophies, the only practical difference, so far as I've been able to tell, is that Harry and his friends got sorted into one house and not the other.

[garran.livejournal.com]

It's not my contention that Ravenclaws are more intelligent than other characters, nor that they're less emotional; I do think, though, that they're more intellectual, and privelege the intellect more, than those who belong to other houses. (This is certainly true culturally, even if you disagree that the sorting hat picks up on real differences of personality; Hermione's academic prowess, which was treated as kind of a curiosity among the Gryffindors, would have brought her a lot of respect in Ravenclaw.) When making moral decisions, they will try to let clear and careful reason guide them, whereas (as I have argued) a Gryffindor will be more likely to turn to their visceral sense of fairness, or the behaviours of the people involved. The Gryffindors don't always come off the worse for this, of course; as masamage has pointed out to me, a Ravenclaw doing the underwater trial in Goblet of Fire probably wouldn't have decided it was necessary to save anyone's hostage but their own (since they'd assume that the contest organizers would have planned for the contingency that someone wasn't saved).

There seems to be a similar sort of mismatch in how they approach interpersonal relationships. When Gryffindors have an argument, they seem to tend to shout at one another and storm off in a huff and then reconcile tearfully or awkwardly later without ever having either side argue a point or admit that the other has convinced them (indeed, they tend to adopt the pretense afterward that there wasn't a fight at all). We don't get many equivalent scenes involving Ravenclaws in the book, but my assumption would be that they would be much more inclined to try to talk through their thoughts and feelings about the issue and, where applicable, to convince each other by reasoned debate -- holding the discussion afterward if they were too upset at the time. This seems to be borne out in the brief romantic relationship between Harry and Cho; Cho keeps trying to get them both talking about how they feel about Cedric's death, while Harry takes it as understood that they both feel awful and shouldn't talk about it because it will make them miserable and uncomfortable, and tries to avoid the issue while instead channeling his own grief into taking action against Voldemort. (Cho really was probably better off when she was dating a Hufflepuff.)

That's one of the significant Ravenclaw characters; how many others are there? I can think of Professor Flitwick, who is excitable in what I take to be a very mad scientist sort of way, the joy in knowledge and its application; and Luna Lovegood, who, although the believes in a number of things she has no rational justification for, seems to be of a disposition to consider new ideas calmly on their merits.


-Garran

[masamage.livejournal.com]

Luna is also disinclined to freak out at people who are less than polite to her.

And yeah, people aren't sorted based on having one and only one character trait; there are intelligent Gryffindors (Hermione), and brave Hufflepuffs (Cedric), and so on. The hat picks whichever traits seems to be most dominant, and as we know, what the individual values most has a significant effect on that.

[opt513.livejournal.com]

The hat is not indifferent to a person's choice, that is true. But just because a person values different things doesn't make them fundamentally different, and just because a person values a character trait doesn't mean they have it.

Wisdom is prized by Ravenclaw, but Cho doesn't seem very wise to me, nor does her friend with the boils on her face. And considering the Grey Lady's story, Ravenclaw has a long history of producing wizards that didn't really live up to what they believed in. I'm sure there are people like that from the other houses as well.

I think I've drifted off topic, however. Judging a house by its failures would be as unfair as, say, writing off the entirety of one house as irredeemably evil.

[vorkon.livejournal.com]

Well, that's the thing. Being a Ravenclaw isn't about actually BEING wise. It's about accumulating knowledge for its own sake, instead of to actually USE it for something. Now, the end result of that is often wisdom, simply because you've accumulated so much damn knowledge, but it isn't actually about wisdom, in and of itself. It's kind of the same way that Slytherin isn't actually about being evil, but that evil just has a nasty tendency to arise from the Slytherin mindset of being sneaky and abmitious.

[opt513.livejournal.com]

I suppose there's a point to that. And using the Dark Arts doesn't make one a dark wizard. After all, Harry himself has used two out of three Unforgiveable Curses.


The longer this conversation goes on, the more I figure I'd have been a Ravenclaw. Most of my life has been about accumulating knowledge without thinking what it would be good for, and honestly quite a lot of my knowledge doesn't seem to be all that useful.

That said, I'm still not British. Inasmuch as our American schools of wizardry would certainly be unplottable, the Washingtonian in me is telling me that there would have to be a school of magic around here somewhere. Either in the Olympic mountains, on an island in Puget Sound, or somewhere in the northern Cascades. Being as the Sorting appears to be unique to Hogwarts, well... there you have it.

[vorkon.livejournal.com]

I recall there being a mention of an American school for witches and wizards in Salem. There may have been others mentioned, but that's the only one I can remember off the top of my head. Other than that, though, for some reason I imagine that magic in the Americas would be dominated by the natives. That might just be the old Shadowrunner in me talking, though...

[opt513.livejournal.com]

Yeah, Salem, Massachusetts. One school isn't enough for a continent.

I think magic in the Americas may have more native influence in the south, but it seems to me that wizards in Rowling hold to roughly the same nationalist tendencies as muggles despite being mostly separate societies. I would expect the Salem academy to be entirely European style magic, and I would expect that the Unforgiveable Curses accompanied gunpowder and horses in wiping out most native magical traditions.