JKR v. Eddings
Oct. 11th, 2005 12:16 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
timepiececlock10 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.
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.
Re: MAJOR spoilers for the Elenium / Tamuli
Date: 2005-10-12 07:43 am (UTC)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
Date: 2005-10-12 08:01 am (UTC)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.