"Things I don't get"

God help me, I'm about to defend the Harry Potter books.

The thing about the Harry Potter books that makes them good is the fact that they are so mundane. The story isn't about the magic or the fantasy - plenty of writers focus all their story on magic and fantasy and they end up producing boring garbage that goes on for 1000 pages.

Let's take another fantasy writer - JRR Tolkien. What made his books so great was the fact that Bilbo, Frodo, and Sam are characters anyone can relate to. At the end of the story when Frodo has to go away, it was extremely relevant to anyone who had seen relatives come back from World War II damaged beyond repair. As a writer, he failed when he focused all of his efforts on the technical aspects of the world he created. Some of his best writing is actually located in the Appendix of the Lord of the Rings, and his life's work, The Silmarillion, is an absolutely unreadable jumble of unidentifiable characters and events. Those facts together go to show that he had no idea what it was that made his writing so popular.

When you get right down to it, the Harry Potter books aren't about the Hogwarts school, they're not about dark magic, they're not about wizards. They're about kids, growing up, dealing with life, making tough decisions, sometimes understanding that life isn't fair, realizing that even in a world of magic there are government officers and money problems and personal limitations. It's the exact opposite of fantasy writing.

Now here's something I don't get: Macomb County. I don't get Warren or Roseville or Romeo or any of those places. Why all the Catholic churches? Why all the tough-guy guidos with modified cars, spiky hairdos, and fake tans? Life is just different out there, and I feel like every time I'm on Gratiot I might as well be on Mars.

I don't get why the police chief in nearly every city has the last name "Dolan".

I don't get "unboxing" updates. I read a couple tech news websites and a couple mobile phone websites (now that I'm newly interested in them) and whenever a site gets the new thing its going to review they all do an "unboxing". If you are unfamiliar with the process let me explain it to you. They video themselves OPENING THE FUCKING BOX. That's it. Here are the manuals. Here are the cords. He's the thing. End. Who fucking wants to see these? So dumb.

I'm glad I realize that there's more to life than stuff.

I don't get why all cars don't come with extenders on the sun visors. It's a safety issue, just like mirrors, seat belts, etc. It's damn hard to drive dogding between the mirror and the visors for shade when the sun is directly betweem them. MAKE IT STANDARD ON ALL CARS!

And for that matter, all wiper systems should have AT LEAST 5-6 speeds. I'm sick of cars with 3 fucking settings. That's another safety issue.

Don't tell me I need a luxery car to see through my damn windshield properly.

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Originally Posted by WTFchris

I don't get why all cars don't come with extenders on the sun visors. It's a safety issue, just like mirrors, seat belts, etc. It's damn hard to drive dogding between the mirror and the visors for shade when the sun is directly betweem them. MAKE IT STANDARD ON ALL CARS!

I'm not so sure on the "all cars" part. I was recently in a VW New Beetle. They have this huge dashboard, easily big enough to put an extra large pizza on it. I found out that the spacing between the front seat and the windshield is such that sun visors are pretty-much useless, and tinted glass is the only option.

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Originally Posted by Mich & Tele

God help me, I'm about to defend the Harry Potter books.

I don't get atheists who say "God help me". :)

(Seriously, I know what being culturally Christian is about.)

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The thing about the Harry Potter books that makes them good is the fact that they are so mundane. The story isn't about the magic or the fantasy - plenty of writers focus all their story on magic and fantasy and they end up producing boring garbage that goes on for 1000 pages.

I don't get 1000+ page novels and book publishers who want to pay by the word in today's day and age. When a novel (as opposed to reference book) is too big to hold for long stretches, even though the print is too small and the paper is shitty to accomodate, split the bitch up and make the author write more tightly so it's a better read.

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Let's take another fantasy writer - JRR Tolkien. What made his books so great was the fact that Bilbo, Frodo, and Sam are characters anyone can relate to. At the end of the story when Frodo has to go away, it was extremely relevant to anyone who had seen relatives come back from World War II damaged beyond repair. As a writer, he failed when he focused all of his efforts on the technical aspects of the world he created. Some of his best writing is actually located in the Appendix of the Lord of the Rings, and his life's work, The Silmarillion, is an absolutely unreadable jumble of unidentifiable characters and events. Those facts together go to show that he had no idea what it was that made his writing so popular.

The Silmarillion was never put out by J.R.R. Tolkien, but by his son. It's just a bunch of notes Tolkien had written about what he thought his world would be like at many stages (many of them pre-Hobbit and pre-LotR) that was never in a publishable state. If Rowling spent decades coming up with her world and someone took Rowling's notes (some in the form of prose) about her world from before the first Harry Potter book was published and it was half-formed and contradictory with the published text, you'd have The Silmarillion.

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When you get right down to it, the Harry Potter books aren't about the Hogwarts school, they're not about dark magic, they're not about wizards. They're about kids, growing up, dealing with life, making tough decisions, sometimes understanding that life isn't fair, realizing that even in a world of magic there are government officers and money problems and personal limitations. It's the exact opposite of fantasy writing.

Good fantasy writing makes you care about the characters, not just some goob's idea of a new magic system. Good science fiction isn't about showing how aliens are cooler than humans.

I don't get kid protagonists much, though, and never really got the appeal of most kid protagonists back when I was a kid. I really never got kid sidekicks. Most of the time I cared about a kid character, it was because the adults had to respect the character and not pull bullshit hiding of key info to protect the kid (a staple of kid fiction). I was never big into reading about other people getting shit upon even as I was getting shit upon, unless at the end those getting abused establish a new world order. Here's a children's character I would've related to had I grown up in the '90s:

http://www.internationalhero.co.uk/b/brain1.jpg

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Now here's something I don't get: Macomb County. I don't get Warren or Roseville or Romeo or any of those places. Why all the Catholic churches? Why all the tough-guy guidos with modified cars, spiky hairdos, and fake tans? Life is just different out there, and I feel like every time I'm on Gratiot I might as well be on Mars.

Co-signed! The very first bit of guidance I gave my realtor was "not Macomb County".

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Originally Posted by Uncle Mxy

I'm not so sure on the "all cars" part. I was recently in a VW New Beetle. They have this huge dashboard, easily big enough to put an extra large pizza on it. I found out that the spacing between the front seat and the windshield is such that sun visors are pretty-much useless, and tinted glass is the only option.

you are missing the point. If it needs to be tinted, so be it. My point is that a lack of shade and wiper settings can contribute to accidents for sure. the safety industry spends all this time on crash tests but how about actually requiring some basic shit to prevent them?

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I don't get kid protagonists much, though, and never really got the appeal of most kid protagonists back when I was a kid. I really never got kid sidekicks. Most of the time I cared about a kid character, it was because the adults had to respect the character and not pull bullshit hiding of key info to protect the kid (a staple of kid fiction). I was never big into reading about other people getting shit upon even as I was getting shit upon, unless at the end those getting abused establish a new world order.

Orson Scott Card - Ender's Game

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Originally Posted by Fool

Orson Scott Card - Ender's Game

I spent many foolish years reading Card books until I had to come to the bitter conclusion that Ender's Game was the only good one. The rest are a split between "good idea executed poorly" and "god damn, this is insufferable crap."

He really blew his load with Ender's Game and now he's just a right-wing religious creep living in a LDS compound in North Carolina.

EDIT: and I got a chance to read his Ender's Game script treatment when it was online, and ... UGH. It's awful. It's basically been rewritten to be cutesy, like it was gonna star the kid from The Little Vampire and be directed by Steven Spielberg.