JKR v. Eddings

[timepiececlock]

10 Reasons Why Harry Potter And The Half Blood Prince Would Have Been Better If David Eddings Had Written It

1. The campyness of the HPverse would still be cute and campy, but the dramatic parts would be more dramatic.
2. The jokes would be funnier.
3. They both over-use adverbs, but Eddings makes better use of adjectives.
4. The Half Blood Prince would have turned out to be a character like Silk, and in two weeks he'd have the Order of the Phoenix running like a proper covert spy organization. Meaning more spying and less dying. And in three months he'd have recruited 3/4 of Voldemort's spies to work for the the Order instead. And in six months the Dark Lord would wake up one day to find all his financial assets had disappeared, all his magical items of power had been stolen down to the wand under his pillow at night, nearly every Death Eater had been bought off by the other side, and someone had tied his shoelaces together.
5. If Ginny were Ce'Nedra, she'd never put up with this Angel from Buffy season 3 shit. She'd call him on his idiocy and manipulate him into running in circles for daring to dismiss her.
6. Ginny would have a personality.
7. The mystery of HBP's identity would have been more interesting, and actually mattered to everything else that happened in the book.
8. Neville wouldn't have been forgotten about after being the most awesome character in book 5.
9. Luna would have had a an actual plot purpose instead of being forgotten about too.
10. Dumbledore would have had a more impressive end than waiting around for a Draco of all people to kill him.


EDIT: Half Blood Prince spoilers in comments, vague Belgariad/Mallorean spoilers too.

Comments

[rashaka.livejournal.com]

It's scary and wonderful how you've seen or read or listened to, like, everything that I have seen or read or listened to. Neat.

the concept of the Anakha is fucking awesome

I remember thinking the name was pretty cool, along wiht the whole godly powers thing. Even if repetitive, godly powers can never really not be cool. Then when SW episode 1 came out I kept trying to remember if the name was the same as Anakin.

MAJOR spoilers for the Elenium / Tamuli

[octopedingenue]

Not EVERYTHING; I've somehow managed to escape the Stephen King Dark Tower books. (Though I owe you enormous thanks for the Ender's Game rec, 'cause that book was awesome.) But oh, man, I went through all the Garion books in about a week when I was nine, and they've been my favorite high fantasy books ever since (my favorite of all is King of the Murgos, because I adore Silk and his family and Sadi and Salmissra).

The enormous appeal of Sparhawk-as-Anakha for me wasn't the whole godly powers thing, which honestly made him less interesting and much more Generic Hero than I liked. It was the idea that the gods fear Anakha because he's the one being whose actions can't be predicted by fate or destiny, which makes him a total wildcard/chaotic neutral, and the gods fear what they can't control. Unfortunately that didn't get a lot of play in the series, as the wacky godly powers got precedence.

The Belgariad/Mallorean is still the stronger series, but the Elenium/Tamuli gets love from me for having cranky old Sparhawk as the protagonist. And even though it cribs every plot and character element from the Belgariad, it sort of gets love from me for making the character elements really fucked up--only 'sort of' because, man, some of that stuff is REALLY REALLY MESSED UP. (Aphrael as Sparhawk's daughter and setting her sights on the queenship and Talen as prince consort? That is not happy. All the characters are like, "Oh, we love Aphrael 'cause she's so sweet and cute", but she's the scariest effing control freak goddess ever, and it leaves a bad taste in my mouth that that was never addressed seriously in the series.)

And since your icon reminds me, some Fruits Basket doujinshi, including a slightly Shigure/Rin one.

Re: MAJOR spoilers for the Elenium / Tamuli

[octopedingenue]

Oh, left out the other Messed Up Yo from the Elenium: Sparhawk/Ehlana, which is about seventeen kinds of badwrongnoooo. Sparhawk basically raised her until she was eight, and while we never get an exact measure of his age it's implied he wasn't a young man while doing this. Then he comes back ten years later and she's like "I've loved you and wanted to jump your bones since I was eight" and he's like "Okay", and they get married, the 18-year-old bride and her not-a-young-man-plus-10-years husband. That's just beautiful.

But I was totally okay with it when I was nine, which makes me kick myself in amusement when I react badly now to scary age differences in series. (Realistically scary age differences--I'm not counting, say, the vampire lovers on "Buffy", who look/act late 20s as they woo Buffy even if they're really in their 100s.)

Re: MAJOR spoilers for the Elenium / Tamuli

[rashaka.livejournal.com]

I vaguely remember the age difference bothering me when I was young and reading it, but I honestly don't think I'd ever thought it through or understood the implications that I'd instantly think about now. From my viewpoint 18 was way old and thus adult.

It was the idea that the gods fear Anakha because he's the one being whose actions can't be predicted by fate or destiny, which makes him a total wildcard/chaotic neutral, and the gods fear what they can't control.

YES! YES! I was trying to remember what I had liked about it and THAT was it, not the godly powers. It was the idea of him being the only person in the world without a destiny.


(Though I owe you enormous thanks for the Ender's Game rec, 'cause that book was awesome.)

I'm glad you loved it. That book is in my top 4 favs (see also LOTR, Dark Tower, tHHGttG.) I rec it to everyone.

Someday you'll read the Dark Tower books, and I think you'll love them too.

Silk, I think, was my favorite Eddings character. I loved them all, but I think I loved Silk the most.

but she's the scariest effing control freak goddess ever, and it leaves a bad taste in my mouth that that was never addressed seriously in the series

That always left me unsettled too-- glad to know I wasn't the only reader who thought so. The whole thing seemed like some twisted violation somehow... though exactly a violation of what I don't know. Their privacy? Their destiny? Ehlana's right to control her own body?

I remember thinking I wouldn't be happy about it at all if it were me, but at the time I couldn't articulate why. Didn't have the words.

Re: MAJOR spoilers for the Elenium / Tamuli

[octopedingenue]

I used to obsess over the idea of Spike from "Buffy" being a kind of Anakha. Its niftiness as an idea was outshone only by its incredibly dorkiness.

I was so jealous of Velvet ending up with Silk. But at the same time they were darling together, a snarky Boris and Natasha.

The whole thing seemed like some twisted violation somehow... though exactly a violation of what I don't know. Their privacy? Their destiny? Ehlana's right to control her own body?

Ehlana didn't work for me as a character in a lot of ways that were highlighted by this whole thing with Aphrael-as-her-daughter-Danae: either Ehlana's an incredibly emotionally fragile and delicate creature whose soul would be destroyed by the revelation that she could never naturally have children, in which case why the hell are you letting her run an entire country; or she's a strong and intelligent independent monarch, in which case why the hell are you keeping from her the state secret that there's a divine cuckoo in her nest? (And how stupid would she--and the rest of the court--have to be to not notice that Princess Danae is a different ethnicity from her parents?) It also pretty much burned me that the ability to have children was being presented as something without which Ehlana's life as a woman had no meaning. Ce'Nedra was a superficially flightier character, and I wasn't crazy about how she went crazy over her missing baby in the second series, but she's ultimately a much stronger personality than Ehlana.

I have this vision of Aphrael instating herself as eternal Goddess-Queen of Elenia, turning her royal soldiers to stamp out worship of the Elene God, and then using those forces combined with the Church Knights to conquer the world and rule forever--with Talen at her side as an eternally young consort who she regularly mindwipes to keep him docile and in love with her.

We're supposed to think Aphrael is cute, and when I'm reading I always do--but whenever I've got some space from the books she scares the hell out of me. She spends enough time with humans to be able to snark with them and adopt many of their practices, but she's not human and she's not trying to be, and she only believes in free will when it's serving her purposes. Give me the friendly but distant Santa-like gods from the Belgariad any day. Was anyone else annoyed that Eriond made the other gods go away at the end of The Seeress of Kell?

books

[rashaka.livejournal.com]

re: Nimh

I only read the one book, but I mostly remember the movie. Anyway, did you fangirl the one rat? The clevery charming one who was friends with Mrs. Bisby's late husband when they broke out of the lab? The one that was helping her and her family.

I wanted them to get together every time I watched the movie, even though they were two different species and stuff. Equal marriage rights for all rodents, I say!

We're supposed to think Aphrael is cute, and when I'm reading I always do--but whenever I've got some space from the books she scares the hell out of me.

Word.

Heh. Santa-like gods.

Was anyone else annoyed that Eriond made the other gods go away at the end of The Seeress of Kell?

I was disappointed. It seemed to be a move toward Christianity, like monotheism is the destiny of all cultures, and since at that point I was already a young atheist at heart (though not quite self-realized yet), it bothered me that all these fabulous diverse gods that had made this world I loved were being replaced by a single God who would make everything a little bit better through peace and love.

Though I liked the character himself. It's just I liked the other gods better story-wise.

dojinshi

[rashaka.livejournal.com]

Just realized I hadn't thanked you for the random doujinshi links. YAY FB DOUJINSHI!

I made the icon after deciding that recently volumes were making Shigure a complete pimpmeister instead of the horny loner hermit we all thought he was.