No, I understand your objections, I just don’t agree. Well, not entirely. I did say I think the scoring is unbalanced.
But ISTM that most of the on-camera matches have been quite short, for narrative reasons. There have been references to very long games. Play for six, eight hours, and I suspect that a score of 350-510 would not be entirely surprising. The Snitch is supposed to be fast as hell and ensorcelled to hide.
You’re right, of course, that the matches we’ve seen have been all about the Seeker. But I can easily imagine a House team with an abysmal Seeker and stellar Chasers pursuing a strategy of “get ahead by 15 and then sod 'em.” Or a team with a great Seeker playing a holding game entirely around the Snitch.
And in a match lasting longer than, oh, three pages or so, I don’t think a 15 goal lead is entirely out of the question.
Again, I think it would make more sense if the Snitch scored fewer points. But I still think my argument about the power of tradition is not totally unfounded. “That’s the way the game’s always been played, that’s the way it’ll always be, dammit!”
'Course, I don’t think it would be a huge stretch of the imagination to argue that the game has only become overly Seeker-oriented very recently. Broom technology has advanced by leaps and bounds, and it’s a lot easier to grab yerself a Snitch on a Firebolt than even the best broom from twenty years ago. Longer games might well have been the norm in the past, and hidebound stubbornness has made the game late to catch up.
I agree that quiddich doesn’t make much sense, but it’s not quite true to say that six of the seven players are meaningless. Possibly a better analogy would be one pair of players playing badmington, and the other team members throwing balls at the opposing team’s player, or defending their own player against balls trown by the other team.
The real problem with the game is that a single event brings it to an end. This could happen in 5 minutes, or several months. I can’t think of any real sports where this happens.
That’s probably the only reasonable explanation, and has obvious parallels to real sport. Ice hockey, for instance, allows fighting for no reason other than the fact that they have always allowed fighting. Football’s dependence on the extra point is kind of a holdover from a different game. Baseball has several antiquated rules, such as rules around appeals, that really don’t make a hell of a lot of sense but survive because they’ve always been there.
It’s possible that you’re right and Quidditch had failed to keep up with technology. Within the first three or four books it’s clearly indicated that broom technology was advancing extremely quickly; several times the newest broom confers a startling advantage for one team over the other. That cannot have been going on forever, simply because if it had, and you extrapolate that trend backwards a few decades, the Seekers in Harry’s father’s day would have been moving about as quickly as Marlon Brando after a donut splurge. Clearly, it’s possible things have advanced really quickly, really recently.
Not that I think Rowling has thought of any of this; the purpose of Quidditch is just to have a sport at the school, because sports are important to kids and to schools.
AD couldn’t tell Harry because Harry can not keep it secret. He never learned occlumancy. Part of Snape’s rage at Harry may be that he blames Harry for forcing him to kill AD. In book 7 Snape may reveal that if Harry could shield his mind AD and Snape wouldn’t have had to follow such a desperate plan.
If my theory is right then it is strange that AD didn’t tutor Harry in occlumancy.
In these Death Eater attacks, since Avada Kadavra is apparently impossible to block, why not just fire a bunch of these at the opponent until one hits? Why deal with all the silly stunning curses and such? I’m guessing it’s because the killing curse requires intense concentration and it’s slow or whatever, so it can’t hit an alert, moving target.
What happened to Halloween? It seems something significant always seems to happen on Halloween (troll getting lose, basilisk attack, sirius attacking fat lady, drawing of triwizard tourney, and…uh…I’m sure book 5 had something…). Plus it was when Voldemort ver 1.0 was vanquished. Book 6 seemed to completely ignore Halloween.
If we assume that Snape is on the good side, why did Dumbledore choose now to make him the DADA teacher?
What was really going on in Dumbledore’s head when he was drinking that potion in the cave? That part was disturbing.
Speaking of disturbing: Dementors are breeding?! How does this work? Or do I even want to know?
And big question: What are Voldemort and friends trying to accomplish in the long term? Are they trying to take over the government, or just go around killing people for fun as long as they can? Trying to purge the world of non-purebloods? Surely they must have a goal beyond destroying Harry Potter.
Well, firstly, haven’t you ever heard of someone taking a year off of school, then going back later and finishing their degree? And secondly, we are talking about Harry Potter, here. As Snape is so fond of pointing out, the rules don’t seem to apply to him.
“Sorry, Mr. Potter-you’re not eligible to join the Aurors, as you didn’t even take any N.E.W.T. exams, much less pass them with flying colors.”
“But-that’s because I spent what would have been my last year of school tracking down Horcruxes, and destroying the evil wizard that’s been tormenting the world for decades!”
“Excuses, excuses.”
A couple more thoughts, inspired by comments in this thread.
[ul][quote]
Well Quidditch shows me that Rowling has no experience with sports. The lack of second sting, I can somewhat get around by the fact there is an entire house to choose backups from, but if someone gets injured, they play without. No sport has that! And, of course, the game is seriously unbalanced, with the Snitch getting you 150 points.
[/quote]
I must agree with this sentiment. Rowling is a great author, but she doesn’t know jack about sports. A more balanced version of Quidditch would have the snitch be worth only about 20 points – the equivalent of a couple of goals, not 15. As it is now, the chasers and the keeper are pretty much useless players. Only in the most extremely one-sided games will they be significant. With a less valuable snitch, scoring goals will be important, because if the other team is up by more than two goals, you’ll still lose even if you catch the snitch. This necessitates the use of strategy, such as preventing the other team’s seeker from catching the snitch while not catching it yourself until the game is close enough that catching the snitch will win it for you. If you want to make sure that the games won’t ever end in a tie, you could make the snitch worth 25 points instead.
[li]About Harry being a horcrux: I think Rowling is just teasing us with the idea that Harry might not survive book 7. That would be a horribly depressing way to end the series. She might well try to mislead us into thinking that Harry might have to sacrifice himself, but in the end it won’t be necessary, and he’ll survive. Hopefully, he’ll hook up with Ginny again, and Harry, Ron, and Hermione will end up being related by marriage.[/li][quote]
I liked the seven potions predicting the new teacher idea, but maybe it foreshadows something else. Voldemort’s appearances, perhaps? The two corresponding to Nettle Wine only feature young Tom Riddle, in diary or flashback form, as far as I recall. Does Voldy appear in Book 3? Of course, this theory would seem to suggest Voldy isn’t in Book 7, so maybe that’s just preposterous…
[/quote]
Could be.
[list][li]Book 1 (poison): Voldemort appearance.[/li][li]Book 2 (nettle wine): No Voldemort, except in the diary.[/li][li]Book 3 (Forward potion – literally, the potion that “will let you move ahead”): No Voldemort, plus the “bad guy” turns out to be a friend.[/li][li]Book 4 (poison): Voldemort appearance.[/li][li]Book 5 (poison): Voldemort appearance.[/li][li]Book 6 (nettle wine): No Voldemort.[/li][li]Book 7 (Backward potion – literally, the potion that leads to safety): Voldemort dies, the wizarding world can return to normal.[/ul][/li]This fits as well as the “new teacher” theory does. Of course, the potions might foreshadow more than one thing…
I’ve been wondering about this myself. I expect that we’ll hear Voldemort’s big plan before the final fight between him and Harry Potter. Or else, the final fight will occur because Harry is trying to stop the big plan.[/list]
AD knew going in that ever since Riddle was denied the post, no DADA professor had returned for a second year. So he must have figured that Snape had reached the end of whatever usefulness he had to AD at Hogwarts, and when his DADA year was over, he would be free to pursue whatever plan AD had for him outside the school.
That, of course, leaves the question of why Snape wanted the job so badly if he was also aware of the pattern. Did he think he would be the exception? Or did he want to use it as a stepping-stone?
And that’s another thing. Are there other sports where an individual player can have better equipment than his fellow team members, let alone other teams? I could be wrong, but I thought one reason Ron never went out for Quidditch before year 5 was that theretofore, he’d had a crappy broom and figured that put him out of competition.
Quidditch is NOT ALL ABOUT THE SNITCH. It’s about the ACCUMULATION OF POINTS OVER THE COURSE OF A SEASON. A team could conceivably win the Quidditch Cup without having a single snitch-capture, or even a single victory. A team that’s leading in the points standings might want to grab the snitch to end a game which it’s losing to prevent the other side accumulating more points.
It has its own internal logic. And chasers are very much a part of it.
Rilchiam:
Of course. Bats in baseball are very individualized, from length to weight to type of wood. Why not Quidditch brooms?
No, the reason he never went out for Quidditch before then was because Oliver Wood was established as Gryffindor Keeper, which would have been Ron’s preferred position. Poor brooms never kept his brothers from playing on the team.
& I addressed Dumbledore’s death & Snape’s relationship with Harry. Props to whoever may possibly have identified Snape as the Half-Prince. I didn’t see that one coming.
I found the Half-Prince to be rather workmanlike and not very inspired.
Likes: the creativity of the series as a whole and Rowling’s Wizarding World
the dynamic pacing of each novel
finding out the backstory of Voldemort.
Dumbledore was around more
Harry’s no longer moody or snappish
Harry & Ginny get together
the Burrows
the reappearance of Dobby
the importance placed on the founders’ objects
Horace Slughorn’s character & the potions class
the spell book, although it brought to mind Tom Riddle’s diary.
Hearing of the Phoenix again
Dislikes: Voldemort’s history was revealed by appointment with Dumbledore. Story lagging? Harry is summoned to Dumbledore’s office.
That Dumbledore appears to have been dispatched by a second-rate baddie. Sad, but anti-climactic.
That there had to be six horcruxes, because four or five just weren’t enough. I wonder what the plot structure will be for book seven?
That Harry’s grief over significant past losses was a footnote.
the changes in Dumbledore’s & Harry’s relationship
Dumbledore’s sermonizing
the lack of development for characters Ron & Hermione.
that Harry was right, in every single dogmatic way, about his suspicions of Snape & Draco. Harry outguesses the grown-ups again.
That Voldemort’s father was killed off so quickly & that we were not privy to Voldemort’s meeting him.
That Fred & George, Neville, & Luna weren’t in the story more.
Fleur’s & Tonk’s irritating characters.
HP & the Goblet of Fire remains my favorite of the series.
Who cares about “I am not a Coward” Snape, even if he turns out to double-cross Voldemort? He’s bullied Harry too long. Creating a convincing and sympathetic motive for his betrayal would be hard to pull off. It’s not like Snape’s family is being held for ransom.
Unless Snape is Harry’s father.
It’s still seriously unbalanced. It doesn’t matter if it is about accumulation of points over a season’s length, when catching the snitch is worth 15 GOALS, there is seriously something wrong with such a sport. At most it should have been 50 points. And probably more like 30.
It waaaay too powerful and even if based on tradition (which, of course, Rowling has made up ;)), someone would have realized you can’t make the Snitch worth that much and have balanced game.
Furthermore, that is ONLY for Hogwarts Quidditch (and perhaps seasons). In tournament play, it has to be one and done.
No one baseball bat is better than the others. Or else everyone would be using that bat. It is just individualized preference as to what they prefer.
I submit it’s weighted as it is due to the difficulty of catching the snitch. Obviously, with Harry being such a natural, we haven’t seen evidence of it in the matches we’ve watched so far, but it’s been said that matches have lasted for months, which would easily lead to an accumulation of Quaffle-scores that render the snitch’s 150 points a drop in the bucket.
I’ll grant you that much. But they’re not going to change the rules for tournaments, after a whole season working under the other rules.
Not necessarily. I’m pretty sure that maple bats have some objective advantages over ash bats, but both are used by different folks.
Doesn’t matter if it’s really hard. Assigning that many points to one scoring action unbalances a sport. It’d be like if basketball had a 20 point shot in the last shot of a game or something. No other sport on Earth has a scoring play that counts 15 times more than any other scoring play in the game. There is a reason, because it would lead to serious unbalancing issues.
Just because it may not factor as much in a very high scoring, long, game, doesn’t mean it doesn’t result in great imbalances in the sport.
It just shows me that Rowling had no concept of sports. She wanted a vehicle to give Harry more confidence. Being a player who’s actions are responsible for 15 times the number of points anyone else can possible get on a single play will do that. But it makes for a piss poor sport.
Which indicates that Rowling didn’t think this game through very well.
No, it’s really based on personal perference. Since no on really swings the same, they prefer different bats to take advantage of their motion.
I thought all in all it was quite good. Most of my thoughts have already been expressed by other folks upthread.
I did find myself feeling that the title of the book, and indeed the whole Half-Blood Prince moniker. was ill-conceived. The idea of half-bloodedness already exists (and is fraught with baggage) in the HP world.
I suppose this could be chalked up to knowing misdirection on Rowling’s part (“Ha! You thought you knew what this was going to be about, didn’t you?”), but it just seemed to me to be ill-considered and frankly not that significant.
Young Snape should have had a better pseudonym, and the title of the book should have been different.
When you think about it, the Prince’s potion book wasn’t even the main MacGuffin; the horcrux was. Although ‘Harry Potter And The Lost Horcrux’ would make for a singularly unlovely title itself.
Yeah, and I guess “Harry Potter and the House of Gaunt” wouldn’t have worked that well either.
Perhaps it was a title to signify that 6 & 7 were conjoined, because Snape sure seems like he’ll be playing a huge role in the next one even more than he did in this one.
As cmkeller points out, Quidditch only makes sense if you note that points are accumulated over a season. Since catching the Snitch ends the game, it may actually be of benefit for a team to avoid it if their position in the rankings is precarious. For example, a team that is currently in second place, behind the leading team by 200 points, might focus on scoring with the Quaffle until they get to 60 or more points, at which point they switch tactics to all-out Snitch hunting. At this point, the additional 150 points from the Snitch would put them solidly in the lead… but unless the Chasers first put forth the effort to make those six goals, the capture of the Snitch wouldn’t actually help them anyway. It’d win them the game, but lose them the championship.
The Wronski Feint (from Book 4) demonstrates how Seekers can work against each other- Krum distracts the opposing Seeker by pretending to dive for the Snitch. The moment his Irish counterpart smacks into the ground, Krum is back in the air and scanning for the Snitch. I could see such diversionary tactics being extremely important in serious Quidditch games, in which the Seekers not only search for the Snitch, but actively work to prevent the other Seeker from finding it as well.
True, but this is presented as being an unusual outcome. Fred and George win a lot of money by betting that this will happen. Obviously, the team that catches the snitch is usually the winner.
(About that match: Apparently, the Hungarian team was a bunch of second-rate losers who only got to the finals because Victor Krum is a very good seeker. Conversely, the Irish team was solid, but perhaps didn’t have a very good seeker. Therefore, Fred and George bet that the game would end the way it did.)
Don’t Ron and Hermione inform Harry at the very end that when he goes back to Privet Drive, they’re going with him? Any guesses as to what the Dursley’s reaction is going to be to this? That kind of shock may be just what it takes to make Petunia spill everything about her past.
Harry will more than likely stay at the Dursley’s until he can take his Apparition test. After that, I have no idea what’s going to happen; I hope he goes back to school (I’m picturing a stern Dumbledore Chocolate Frog card lecturing him in his room about finishing his education). One thing’s for sure; the second he turns 17 he’s out of the Dursley’s house for good.
