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Post by chris777 on Dec 6, 2009 23:29:46 GMT -5
In the Harry Potter books, what I do find a bit disappointing is that Harry Potter never uses the classic Fireball spell. It would've been cool for him to shoot fireballs out of his wand at his enemies. Lightning bolts too would be cool. Those are the classic combative artillary spells. He beats Voldemort with Expelliarmus of all things, a novice spell. Harry Potter needed a better arsenal if you ask me.
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Post by bittermind on Dec 11, 2009 3:58:46 GMT -5
Burning flesh doesn't make for good children's literature. That's why none of the Famous Five books take place in 'Nam.
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Post by eviltb on Dec 11, 2009 4:10:51 GMT -5
Haha tru dat! Although there was use of Faeire Fire but a couple of characters; one by a master wizard who knew what he was doing and another by a student who probably would have featured on the HP version of FailBlog. Good reasons why HP didnt get involved in direct-damage spells.
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Post by Doomy on Dec 11, 2009 5:04:14 GMT -5
Burning flesh doesn't make for good children's literature. That's why none of the Famous Five books take place in 'Nam. ;D |
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Post by Seneschal on Dec 11, 2009 8:06:49 GMT -5
"I say Julian, whatever was that noise off in the bushes?"
"Must be that rotter Charlie, come to spoil our picnic."
"What, cousin Charlie from Dorset?"
"No, no, that shifty foreign fellow Charlie, you remember, that Aunt Fanny warned us about."
"Pshaww. I say we call one of those jolly napalm strikes down on him before he tries to make off with the ginger pop."
"That's your solution to everything, George... just because a fellow's not British isn't a reason to burn him alive."
"Well, can I at least let him have it with a grenade then? I've been practicising my throw, for sports day..."
"Oh, go ahead then. Make sure we don't end up with any burning flesh on the picnic blanket, though."
What do you mean, doesn't make for good children's literature?
;D
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Post by Beowuuf on Dec 11, 2009 8:34:54 GMT -5
Seems educational (biology) and uplifting (about 100 feet in the air uplifting)
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Post by chris777 on Dec 30, 2009 13:50:13 GMT -5
Well if the reason why Harry Potter didn't use the more "violent" spells such as fireball and lightning bolt was because the Harry Potter books were geared towards children, than consider this. The Chronicles of Narnia were also children's books and there is much violence in them. The main characters use weapons such as swords and engage in fights. In the first book, there was the case where Peter ran his sword through a wolf and the book then describes how the blade was all covered over with blood and fur from the wolf, and then Aslan knights him for his kill. Aslan then goes on to devour a witch later on in the book. So that being the case, I don't see why a little fire and lightning from Harry Potter would've done much harm. After all, Harry Potter does use some direct damage spells such as Reductor and Confringo, and from what I understand, although the books never talk about this, the Incendio spell can be used to create a fiery explosion. In the books Incendio is for the most part just used to light fires in fireplaces but in some of the Harry Potter games, its used to make an enemy explode in flames from what I've heard.
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Post by zipp on Dec 30, 2009 14:14:35 GMT -5
Well if the reason why Harry Potter didn't use the more "violent" spells such as fireball and lightning bolt was because the Harry Potter books were geared towards children, than consider this. The Chronicles of Narnia were also children's books and there is much violence in them. The main characters use weapons such as swords and engage in fights. In the first book, there was the case where Peter ran his sword through a wolf and the book then describes how the blade was all covered over with blood and fur from the wolf, and then Aslan knights him for his kill. Aslan then goes on to devour a witch later on in the book. So that being the case, I don't see why a little fire and lightning from Harry Potter would've done much harm. After all, Harry Potter does use some direct damage spells such as Reductor and Confringo, and from what I understand, although the books never talk about this, the Incendio spell can be used to create a fiery explosion. In the books Incendio is for the most part just used to light fires in fireplaces but in some of the Harry Potter games, its used to make an enemy explode in flames from what I've heard. The Narnia books are children's books in the same way that Lord of the Rings is a child's book. In short: neither series was written for children. However, at the time that Narnia was written, fantasy literature was not a genre. Anything fantastical was given over to the children's section, which is why we view Narnia as child's books today and why they propogated the various film incarnations that they did. CS Lewis actually intended Narnia to be a Christian theological study, which you can still see if you read the books today. As for why HP never used fire, I'm not sure the children's literature is a good excuse. After all, he sees his friends killed by insta-death spells and sees zombies rising up out of a lake and all sorts of other horrors. I more think that Rowling was trying to move away from the classic view of wizards and into a more contemporary view of how wizarding might work. Anyway, there are fire spells. Wizards use them in the series to light fires a few times. But who needs to chuck fireballs at enemies (enemies who can probably turn off fire very quickly) when you have a death spell? As for Voldemort being defeated by a disarming spell, that's because the Harry Potter books after 4 suck. |
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Post by Seneschal on Jan 3, 2010 20:46:46 GMT -5
We can presume that at Hogwarts they don't teach pure attack spells (fireballs etc, whatever suits your taste) as opposed to disarming magic for the same reason we don't give guns to secondary school pupils. In fact, it would be even worse with the spells - you can take guns away from people, ban them from having them in the school, etc - but once they know a spell they can use it as long as they have wands, and they need those for most of the curriculum.
Sometimes kids will fight or vandalize things... imagine the damage (and casualties) that would be involved if they could use fire magic to do it.
I suppose you can argue it according to the situation in the world at the time - in Narnia, they are actually at war, and usually against a numerically superior force, whereas in Harry Potter, it's more of a "crime spree" - and one most people don't believe is even happening - for most of it.
Taking analagous situations in the real world, resistance movements and guerilla groups will train and arm children, but when a serial killer escapes from prison, we don't immediately give handguns to all the local schoolkids - even if we think they're the killers target.
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Post by Al on Jan 16, 2010 16:27:13 GMT -5
I think the reason he does not use them is that he ends up defeating evil through spells that evil would have laughed at - it was not about HP being an Elminster, quite the opposite
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