Power cable linking UK and Ireland now passes near Bronze Age human burial remains instead of fictional grave on Welsh beach
Update: further information by @BigDiction@lemmy.world in the comments below
Jesus Christ, they’re not even good children’s books
It’s, of course, a matter of taste whether or not you find them good. But let’s not pretend that we’re not talking about one of he most popular, best-selling children’s book series of all time that spawned a 30+ billion dollar franchise of movies, merch, games, and a theme park. Plenty of people found them plenty good enough to generate that big of a financial success.
hey now, lets not try to get people to realize that other people’s opinions matter.
And we all know that popular equals quality
Popular doesn’t mean great, of course, but it does mean it was at least good enough to be enjoyed by a lot of people. If it were objectively bad, as in it had no good qualities at all, it wouldn’t be popular.
Harry Potter is very well written. Like leagues beyond what you typically get for youth fiction/young adult.
Its pretty mid.
I was a book kid, who grew up and was 13 to 17 during the release of the HP series.
I read mountains of YA books and adult alike. Spent tonnes of weekend days at the library.
HP was okay, it wasnt bad.
But it wasnt the best either. I would absolutely say stuff like Sabriel and the Bartimaeus trilogy were substantially better.
Oh and dont even get me started on Redwall, Jacques was an amazing writer who knew how to craft incredible worlds.
By comparison to those, Id score HP closer to a 6 or so.
Sabriel and Redwall were my jam as a kid. I still revisit the Abhorsen series from time to time. Basically I reread them all when Nix releases a new book.
I love you. THE goddamn Bartimaeus Trilogy. I have been searching “bartholomew djinn adventure” “bartoman magic series” and “funny djinni soup” for SO long. Im gonna go fucking read those books again. Various forms of praise for you, etc.
You’ve only got “UK AKSHULLY NO IT ISNT LALALALA” responses, and I feel obligated to speak up for my late (queer fan) friend and say I’m not a fan but they are completely fine books written better then a shit ton of other books for kids. I’ve read the first four and found them to be between “serviceable” and “great”. They were no “Animorphs” to me, but at no point did I find myself thinking “this is boring and sucks”, so people saying they’re straight-up bad are nuts or just being disingenuous.
If the author wasn’t a mad cunt, I guarantee most of the people saying they’re shit wouldn’t be saying that.
If she hadn’t become a vociferous anti civil rights activist the reality is a lot of us would still be tired of the books and frustrated with elements of them, but there’d be less anger when they come up. There were plenty of people getting real sick of how popular they’d remained in the mid 10s.
I read them all as a kid and loved them, but I was definitely tired of how much cultural space they took up for so fucking long. And the criticisms are valid, the books did an amazing job of inspiring obsession in a kid of the time, they felt like they grew with me, they had so much room to imagine in, and they were also full of holes, mid prose, and the sort of issues I’m kinda shocked my parents didn’t feel the need to have a conversation about.
But also, would people be as vocal about these issues if it wasn’t the largest media franchise under individual control and controlled by someone who has funded massive rollbacks in rights for a group she’s bigoted towards? Obviously not, we’d just still be saying to read another book, not arguing not to continue purchasing products from the franchise.
Harry Potter is very well written. Like leagues beyond what you typically get for youth fiction/young adult.
, they said loftily.
You should read His Dark Materials or The Old Kingdom. Both series are much, much more thoughtfully put together. Their plotting and characterization really put HP to shame.
Not to mention Alcatraz vs the Evil Librarians (younger audience) and Skyward (true YA audience).
I think Rick Riordan’s series are a better comparison that HDM, which is aimed at a slightly more mature audience. Garth Nix is a great shout though, Keys to the Kingdom particularly has parallels to HP while being a much better series.
It’s really not well written, by classical standards. It’s very colorful and fun and entertaining. But the story and plot constantly use “deus ex machina”. Just try an summarize the actions and plot of the movie, it makes no sense whatsoever. Really the story is garbage, but the characters and adventure still makes it fun.
I think that is a feature of a many modern “web novels” or fan fiction. A sort of liberation of the shackles of good writing. Web novels democratized authorship in a way. We really have far more entertaining authors with much more talent than was made to believe (Tangent: A bit like porn today, now that everybody can do it on their own, from their home without some creepy porn producer, we have far better and more creative porn than ever). Most people are creative and pretty good as amateur writers. They just haven’t learned the craft of writing a good story lol (cannot be said about Rowlings though, she should have known better).
Why some things become a hit and others not is an unsolved question. If we could answer that, book publishing and movie studios would work very differently. Don’t ascribe to quality which can equally be ascribed to luck or marketing.
It’s not very well written, even by youth / young adult standards.
It’s not poorly written either mind.
Have you actually gone back and read any of the copious amounts of ya books?
Off the top of my head – go and reread a Goosebumps book. They are super simple. HP is downright shakespearian compared to them.
Hardy boys, tom swift series (80s/90s versions) and countless other one shot books that I can barely remember are all super simple too.
Yes, there are always outliers like Redwall but when compared to the whole HP was well written regardless of the trash person who wrote them.
None of that changes the fact she isn’t a good writer.
I do think a lot of that popularity was because it came out when internet forums were a novelty. If you’re used to only one or two people liking the same book as you, then you see thousands liking the same book, that book must be popular.
Then the popularity fed itself. Movies, merch, games, everything was done to capitalise on the “popularity” of a new series, and this introduced it to a new audience. Media started to talk about the new book series that people were going mad for. People who didn’t read the books wanted to find out what everyone was talking about. Time passes, and people look back on the books with nostalgia goggles. Even you, when defending the book, can only point to its popularity as an argument.
The actual book doesn’t matter. It’s popular because it’s popular.
Even you, when defending the book, can only point to its popularity as an argument.
Well, that’s a bad assumption. I was appealing to it popularity and financial value because that is a real objective measure that indicates that people liked the series. I didn’t argue with someone on the internet who declared that the books were bad, full stop, over my subjective perception of its merits and quality becuase that is a pointless argument to have. Not to mention, likely one to be met with open hostility on Lemmy. No thanks.
First, it’s only a measure that people consume the media, not that they enjoy it. Hate-watching is a thing, as you can tell from a comment higher up. Or they watched because someone else wanted to watch (or they thought someone else wanted to watch).
Second, enjoyment does not reflect quality. People can like bad media. I like the second D&D movie, and even I can only rate it’s quality as “fine”.
Third, even at the height of its popularity and among its strongest fans, there are flaws galore in the books. Even ignoring the racism, sexism, ablism, slavery, “ugly is bad” mindset, and all that, there’s also stupid plot decisions and lazy world building. Of all the fanfics on AO3, well over a third of them are fix-fics.
Fan merch doesn’t sell for “fine”. Theme parks aren’t floated on hate-watching. People don’t spend $30 billion ironically. Yea, those things factor in, but they are clearly not the main drivers. And flaws do not make a work not good overall. I’m the first to admit it is flawed, for every reason you mentioned and more. But none of that makes it bad.
There is fan merch of The Room. Theme parks don’t need a popular franchise connected to be popular, so long as there’s a rollercoaster and something fun for the whole family. People will happily spend money on nostalgia and fitting in with others, or on gifts for someone you think likes the thing.
All of this is, once again, an appeal to popularity. It has nothing to do with the quality of the books. And you saying the book isn’t bad despite bad plot, world, characters and implications just condemns your judgement.
You know you are being disingenuous. You know plenty of people enjoy(ed) the series. This is a stupid pedantic argument.
Plus the Author is a bigot.
They are quite shit. They are easy reads, and it gets children to read, that’s pretty good. But damn, shit makes no sense, and harry potter adults are pretty damn weird.
I like the books, hate the writer
The first four are decent monster of the week fare.
The last three remind me of bad fanfiction. The attempt to pull it all together into some sort of grand storyline is pathetic. The Horcruxes and Deadly Hallows crap was clearly pulled out of her ass at the last minute.
and dobby was the most poorly written one.
Not the Jewish bankers or Irish bomber?
they weren’t Jewish, they were goblins…
There is a historical relation between their stories. So it is a pretty convenient mistake that her history doesn’t afford much leeway in.
I don’t give a fuck about HP Whatshercunt, but I do love this story. Because it shows that collectively we have more power then these companies. If we could get our shit together and stop fighting each other we could bully them into litterally anything we want because THERE ARE MORE OF US. It’s so dumb that we have let a tiny group of people convince us, the larger group that massively outnumbers them, they have all the power in the relationship.
Power cable linking UK and Ireland now passes near Bronze Age human burial remains instead of fictional grave on Welsh beach
Just another story about people making the real world a little worse because they’re disconnected from reality.
Do you also applaud antivaxxers get together and bully people? Same thing isn’t it? People disconnected from reality bullying people.
Sorry, but people disconnected from reality aren’t capable of making any improvement in the world.
It was a … power cable. To connect the Irish grid to the welsh/English grid. To allow for more efficient transfer of power between renewable generation to the respective grids based on availability and need.
It was actually a good project? Like unironically. It was going to allow for further decarbonization. Now it’s been delayed and going to cost a lot more, and may have to go through a Bronze Age burial site now.
The people who blocked the project were also disturbing the local environment by leaving huge amounts of synthetic fiber socks at the beach.
“Sorry, too busy attacking political allies for disagreeing with me on a point or two.”
Which two points are you talking about? Would it happen to be:
- Blocking strikes
- Supporting genocide
Because people who support those things are not allies.
A brief glance at their profile shows they mostly spend their time on the fediverse dropping incendiary comments in politically charged threads; we may never get clarification.
I’m here. Just waiting for you to answer the question.
It didn’t seem like a good faith question so I didn’t bother answering, but it seems at least one person in the shadows thinks it was, so I’ll answer it:
I was thinking of people who think the Uyghur genocide is fake news, the Holodomor was an accident and Ukraine ought to be a Russian territory again, and the DPRK is a wonderful place to live. If you disagree with that on the fediverse, there tends to be much gnashing of teeth from certain people who otherwise make sane political arguments about the biggest evils we currently face, at least in my country (e.g. Epstein Class Bad, Trump Bad, Fascism Bad).
As for your two points, I haven’t met anyone who supports genocide or the blocking of labor strikes, so I don’t know why you thought those up.
You accuse me of asking a question in bad faith and then act like you’re living under a rock? Labor issues and genocide support are at the forefront of current political discussions. I can’t remember the last time an American politician mentioned the Uyghurs.
As for your two points, I haven’t met anyone who supports genocide or the blocking of labor strikes, so I don’t know why you thought those up.
Joe Biden went around congress twice to ship weapons to Israel in support of their genocide. Joe Biden, 44 Democratic senators and 36 Republican senators passed a bill to block the rail strike in 2022. Were you unaware of this?
I feel like you over-specific’ed my meme into an apparent attack on me or my position(s)?
I don’t see an answer to my question anywhere in this comment.
It didn’t seem like a good faith question so I didn’t bother answering, but it seems at least one person in the shadows thinks it was, so I’ll answer it:
I was thinking of people who think the Uyghur genocide is fake news, the Holodomor was an accident and Ukraine ought to be a Russian territory again, and the DPRK is a wonderful place to live. If you disagree with that on the fediverse, there tends to be much gnashing of teeth from certain people who otherwise make sane political arguments about the biggest evils we currently face, at least in my country (e.g. Epstein Class Bad, Trump Bad, Fascism Bad).
As for your two points, I haven’t met anyone who supports genocide or the blocking of labor strikes, so I don’t know why you thought those up.
Yeah, it’s a pretty wholesome story about a group of fans caring about something fun, the company playing along … and everyone ended up happy in the end.
Well, not entirely … one small comment section of indomitable lemmies still holds out against the joy!
This is actually a win. The original site was going through an ecological sensitive area. People fought to protect the “grave” of a fictional character but accidentally protected a delicate ecology. That is more important than protecting the dead, real or not.
Fans of the wizard series come to leave stones reading “Here Lies Dobby” despite being asked not to by the land owner, the National Trust, because the beach is an ecologically sensitive site.
Gotta love that a fictional character created by a transphobe carries more weight and concern than the further destruction of our biosphere.
People are leaving rocks at the site of the “grave”, which they’ve repeatedly been told not to do, specifically because of concerns about harm to the environment. So they might have accidentally helped in some respect, but it doesn’t exactly mean much when they’re showing up themselves, and fucking it up anyway
The HP obsessive are also littering that sensitive sight with a bunch of socks.
Also the cable was for sharing load between grids to account for variability in power generation in renewables. It was literally being built to support further decarbonization of the grid.
Oh and now the cable might have to go through a Bronze Age burial site.
Like, this is not a win, this is idiots making a good project more expensive and difficult and potentially causing the destruction of an archeological site.
“How did Donald Trump win in the US? How could so many people be so stupid and out of touch with reality?”
Harry Potter fans force relocation of £430m undersea cable to avoid Dobby’s ‘grave’
They’ll do anything but acknowledge they’re funding the legal discrimination of trans people in the UK.
Cult behavior.
Who the fuck cares about Dobby’s grave!
wow this sucks
probably not true, fortunately: https://old.reddit.com/r/ukpolitics/comments/1vjde6y/rumours_speculation_questions_and_reaction/p2t4b8m/
Fuck that. Login???
Yeah, if you open Fuckweddit and look at a page for long enough it covers the entire page with a big LOG IN OR SIGN UP to block contents
That’s why I’m here
Never I let google steal the info
RedLib link: https://redlib.shreven.org/r/ukpolitics/comments/1vjde6y/rumours_speculation_questions_and_reaction/p2t4b8m/
(RedLib is a private, FOSS frontend for viewing Reddit.)
I am not creating an account to view that
I for one am glad they’re leaving this gender neutral toilet alone
I had a small inkling of hope that “dobby’s grave” was something unrelated to hary pooper
If you want to visit an interesting, more meaningful grave, visit “Sambo’s” grave on Sunderland Point.
Any grave site more than a hundred years old that isnt well preserved is actually exactly as fictional as dobbys grave. Neither person is in there, after all…
Except we can and have learned volumes from the past by studying grave sites, but that doesn’t work for fictional sites.
Fans of the wizard series come to leave stones reading “Here Lies Dobby” despite being asked not to by the land owner, the National Trust, because the beach is an ecologically sensitive site.
But apparently not so ecologically sensitive that an undersea cable couldn’t run through it.
You only have to lay a cable down once and it’ll work for however many decades. People trudging through on a regular basis to leave rocks would be an ongoing concern.
This assumes a lot of things about the installation and longevity of the cable and its jacket, and forgets that some of these things have been so magnetically interfering to their surroundings that sharks have bitten them.
To be fair, sharks bite a lot of things.
This sounds a bit cliche, or like just a joke, but it’s really quite true.
Haha yeah, it sounds like a joke doesn’t it. I was thinking of the shark that’s known for eating license plates and nails. Or the one that eats car tires.
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My ignorance is as valid as the knowledge of experts.
The knowledge of experts is as valid as the hand which feeds them.
In the end, he said, “we went quite close to some real Bronze Age remains, but we avoided Dobby’s grave”.
The Bronze Age remains include urns associated with human burial.
Priorities are in order!
