Snorkel

I was given The Merlin Conspiracy for Christmas one year. Such a fun book! Surprising gift, the people who gifted it hadn't read it and didn't know much about it, so no idea how they picked it, but it was really great! I found Deep Secret, the book that it's sequel to, and was surprised at how different it was.

You're not thinking of the possible long-term consequences if he dies of coronavirus with his books unfinished. That's been illegal here too for over a month. The rules just relaxed yesterday.

I mean, I'm a bit sensitised because my country has had REALLY strong lockdown laws for the last month, and what Brandon did in his last video would have been straight-out illegal here. The signing video where he's in his office with multiple other staff for a few hours ... staying 6 feet away isn't going to help much when you're all in the same building, touching the same things. D: I had been hoping that he was holed up in his awesome dungeon lair for the duration. Don't risk your health for us Brandon!

Nope, it's a board game, not a video game. Thanks though. Loved the Space Demons trilogy when I was younger. My next step is to go into storage and see if I wrote about the book in my teenage diary. I don't want to read my teenage diary D: Edit: Nope, didn't start my diary until a year later.

Harry Potter didn't bother me very much in that respect. There were a couple of moments, but most of the time I thought Rowling had explained his reasoning sufficiently to make his decisions understandable. The Snape thing - well in the books it was more understandable because the man was constantly just awful to Harry, and not played by the amazing Alan Rickman in the books. But Hermione does keep calling him out on it at least.

I skipped most of the thread because I don't want spoilers. Is it complete at the end of Season 3? It has a finale?

It's really hard to read something where you fundamentally disagree with every choice the character makes. One of my favourite book used to be Treasure Island. Trying to re-read it as an adult, every single choice Jim Hawkins makes in teh early part of the book, I'm going "WHY??? NOO! Just do the safe thing, don't be a moron!" D: That why I couldn't stand to watch Breaking Bad, after seeing him make morally bad choice after bad choice, why am I supposed to enjoy watching several seasons of this villain not getting his just deserts?

Right now I wish I was allowed to pat my neighbours' cats. They keep coming and asking me for love, but not supposed to touch things other people touch, so no patting of neighbours' cats. :<

I definitely recognised a bunch of different mythological elements, and the latin-derived spells when I was a teen. When the later books started to come out, there was a vocal group of people who got really ANGRY about this topic. They'd complain that Rowling was very unoriginal and that she was "raping mythology" ... I heard that exact phrase from several different people D: This reaction always baffled me (I mean, other than the completely inappropriate comparison). Her universe exists in the same place as the real world, it's only partially hidden and historically has not been hidden. It seems perfect that our mythology would be semi-incorrect interpretations of real magical creatures. Her setting is in a place where Celts lived and the Norse invaded, so that works just fine. As for Latin, well I've imagined that magic is a little like computer programming. High-level programming languages are usually based on English. But magic is much older than computers, so ... Latin works fine.

The thing I most miss is being able to buy watercress and bread I can eat that's only available at a greengrocer that's closed. I also miss my butcher, but I just managed to put an online order through for delivery, so hopefully I can fill my freezer up again before I have to start buying gross supermarket meat. I got a voucher for my birthday to a movie theatre. I was saving it for Mulan, and looks like I'm still saving it for Mulan. Also, a hot salt water pool was due to open here in the first week of April, and I'm looking forward to visiting that. But I will absolutely wait a few more weeks after opening for the crowds to settle. It's behind the beach, but apparently they're not using sea water and heating it, they're constructing their own salt water, chlorinating it, and adding a bunch of acid as well so that the chlorination has an effect with all the salt. So it might not be very pleasant. But it's a warm outdoor pool, so I'm gonna give it a go anyhow. But mostly the lockdown has made me realise that I hate going out, and I'm a happier person when I don't have to force myself to go and do things that are supposed to be good for me. Humph.

Thanks, it's none of those. :<

All these threads about Harry Potter have got me thinking again of another YA book I read back in '97, and I cannot remember the name. The book was in new condition, but not sure if that's when it was first published. It was about a kid (boy maybe?). An old man gives him a magical board game, and he gets sucked into it, has to do things on the different squares to win/get out. The old man may have been his grandfather, or a friend's grandfather? Edit: Possibly one of the game squares/locations was a large building like a bank. I vaguely remember a scene (in the real world) where the kid gets invited to the birthday party of a rich brat kid. The rich brat kid has an amazing house with some kind of super play room which is accessed by a trapdoor in the ceiling. I can't remember whether the brat went into the board game world with the main kid or not. It was not Jumanji. Anyone recognise my vague memories?

Do you mean Eragon copied Tolkien? Or are you meaning how Eragon was basically a re-write of Star Wars?

Really? In 1997 it felt pretty new and fantastic! We got the first book from the library when it was brand new, my Mum read it and then gave it to me and said I had to read it. We were both reading a lot of YA/children's at the time, and it WAS very different to the other things that were available then. Part of its charm was the almost naive humour with things like the school song and Dumbledore saying a few words: "Nitwit! Blubber! Oddment! Tweak!". We saw a newspaper story saying a second book would be published soon, and I'm not sure what was more exciting - to see that a sequel was coming for a book I really enjoyed, or to see that the newspaper was even bothering itself with writing about a book for children. Before Harry Potter, children's fiction was paid almost no attention at all. The popular books were mostly ghostwritten formulaic series (Sweet Valley High and Babysitter's Club were popular at my school ... I tried to read some and they were BAD). Harry Potter brought some originality to the genre, and I suppose it showed publishers that they could loosen up and publish some more diverse stuff. Yup, the magic system didn't really make a lot of sense, but that didn't matter because they were very entertaining reads.

"It's easier to ask forgiveness than it is to get permission" - Grace Hooper

Order of the Phoenix was my favourite book because of the storyline about holding secret classes, and then RUNNING RAMPAGE around the school when they kicked out Umbridge. Having had some really awful school teachers, I really appreciated the schadenfreude The film just skipped most of the fun rampage :< I enjoyed the first film. It fit OK into the time constraints. I didn't think any of the following films did, and really wished they'd gone the high-budget tv miniseries route instead of full movies. My favourite film was the last one, entirely for Alan Rickman's awesome scenes. I just adored his portrayal, although he made Snape far more charismatic and likeable than I think he was supposed to have been. Prisoner of Azkaban was probably my second favourite book, for the Lupin story line, but I didn't like the casting of Lupin very much. I've only watched each film once, maybe twice for a couple of them, and I have no desire to watch any of them again. The books I've read a LOT. They books are just so much better. It really bothers me when people say they don't like Harry Potter, and it turns out they've only watched the films.

This youtube channel is putting an Andrew Lloyd Webber musical up to watch free for 48 hours every weekend. Next weekend is the 25th Anniversary edition of Phantom. IMO it's a much better version than the movie.

</purposely mishearing you because it's funny>

Well, I was thinking that part of the wish would be that creating test-tube babies would not be difficult or expensive. It is a reality-altering wish after all!

For what do we live, but to make sport for our neighbours, and laugh at them in our turn? - Mr. Bennet, Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen.

They can all have puppies too. Good puppies though, not the kind that chew everything.

Disclaimer, these are terrible ideas and would probably make a setting for a future distopia horror film 1 - We'd all be fixed, and babies would be created in a lab. As our vets tell us - our pets are much happier without having hormone-induced urges, and it lowers the risk of cancer as well! Surely the same applies to people. No more will our emotions be influenced by hormones making us angry and competitive or weepy and exhausted or whatever. Nuh-uh! And everyone could then act as masculine or feminine as they felt like, and nobody would be jerks to each other about it. 2 - (this is the REALLY unethical one). People would be psychologically screened for sociopathy/psychopathy. People with certain traits could be denied a certain class of employment (bye-bye psychopaths in management!), or just sent straight to prison before they get to do really bad things to people. ... OK this is terrible. I'd at least make it standard practise for companies to do anonymous employee surveys for those in positions above them. If you're a jerk in a leadership position, the company will find out and replace you with someone who isn't a jerk! 3 - a puppy

I wish that Warcraft III voice actor had sounded less whiny though D:

Cats or Dogs? Yes.

Long John Silver. The first really charismatic villain I came across.