Well, if we're posting fan art:
Molly Weasley v. Bellatrix Lestrange.
Fade Manley @ 650: I think that's the sort of thing which makes me enjoy the books, despite the many legitimate criticisms which could be leveled at them. Even the minor characters are interesting enough to me that as I follow the story, I'll forgive problems in plot and setting (for example, did no one ask the Gray Lady the right questions in all those years? Why did they just leave a dead basilisk to rot in the Chamber of Secrets for five years? Are some curses more Unforgivable than others now? What kind of society has one bank, one secondary school, no universities, and thirteen professional sports teams?)
It's too bad some of these supporting characters either didn't have a significant part in the seventh book, or died abruptly. But then again, the novels aren't told from their point of view, and even the surviving characters won't have any more adventures anyway.
Eleanor@573: I think the fact that Kreacher, Dobby, and the house elves of Hogwarts play a major role in defeating Voldemort, partly because they were overlooked, underestimated, and oppressed, is all we can take away from it. Full elvish equality would take a long time, and would require a process almost as complicated as developing parliamentary democracy in Rohan and Gondor. Both stories are about the defeat of a dark lord, so we don't get to see either event happen.
Matt Austern@557: This points to one aspect of the movies which I thought was an improvement over the books: the wizards in the movies wear fairly normal clothing when not wearing robes, can understand enough Muggle science to read A Brief History of Time, and the hunchback who works at the Leaky Cauldron apparently has a car with a remote starter and theft alarm.
510: St. Mungo is an actual saint, as it turns out.
#352: No gods appear on stage. I'm not even sure there's anything qualifying as a demon or angel, to be honest. A personification of Death appears as part of a legend told within the story, there are purely secular celebrations of Christmas and other nominally Christian holidays, and characters sometimes say something like "My God!", but that's it.
#272: It's funny you should mention the Hermione/Willow parallels: both of them, for one, end up erasing the memories of their loved ones.
I was talking about this with a friend who was annoyed about Hermione sending her parents to Australia, which she interpreted as an arbitrary action she probably took without consulting them. It would be in keeping with the way she secretly cursed the sign-up sheet for Dumbledore's Army, and imprisoned and blackmailed Rita Skeeter. My friend had to re-read the passage to confirm that the book never mentioned anything about consent being given.
On the other hand, when I read that passage, all I got was that she was quite upset about having to do that, and it never occurred to me that she might not have at least explained matters to her parents first. (How much they would have understood is another question.)
If it were Willow doing something like that, we wouldn't have had to discuss it: Willow wouldn't bother consulting anyone.
34: I'd love to read Neville Longbottom and the Year Without Harry Potter or something like that.
54: Since one of the kids refers to him as "our Teddy", and Harry's his godfather, I suspect Harry and the extended Weasley family were closely involved. (Though as a more sarcastic reviewer pointed out, a 17-year-old fugitive on a dangerous quest during a time of war is perhaps not the safest choice as your child's godfather.)
Condescending constructions of the form "Hint: Bacon is made from pigs" or "Clue: Hawaii and Norway are not near each other."
On a website I'm involved with, we ran into a user who, when caught in an apparent lie, replied that as a "strong believer in [religion]", he could not possibly be lying. That one may be unique.
This Reuters story reports that "disemvowel" is going to be added to the Collins English Dictionary.
This entry was just reposted on the livejournal feed: I don't know if that's due to a technical problem on your end or livejournal's, though.
Paul A. @ 166: Perhaps the admins they can find pictures of, or the admins who ED users get annoyed with or decide to criticize, also tend to be the younger ones.
I'm surprised to see ED treated here as a reliable source: in my experience, a large section of it seems to be a place for serial trolls to semi-anonymously flame and defame their internet "enemies," and not always accurately either. Perhaps I'm just saying that because they have an article insulting me for some reason.
Matthew White's page always struck me as a more reasonable critique of Wikipedia: too bad he's not updating it anymore.
Actually, in the TV movie Sharpe's Justice, Sharpe does meet someone named Wickham. For the reasons listed on this page, this might actually be a son or nephew of the original.
But then you'd have the rather odd situation of "the Moon" not being a "moon" anymore. Not to mention the fact that the Galilean satellites are the oldest examples of "moons" other than Luna.
What's wrong with overlapping categories? Pluto is a planet that's also a Kuiper Belt object, Charon is a (provisional) planet that's also a Kuiper Belt object and a moon, Ceres is a planet/asteroid, etc.
theophylact: From what I gather from this CBC story, the Moon wouldn't count as a planet because the centre of gravity for the Earth-Moon system is below the Earth's surface. On the other hand, Charon and Pluto are far enough apart and close enough in mass that the Charon-Pluto system's centre of gravity is above Pluto's surface. So it's not a planet/satellite system, but a double planet under these proposed rules.
Personally, I'd rather promote the Moon, Titan, and the four Galilean satellites of Jupiter too.
Complaint that previous comment was badly formatted, and cannot be read (names of versions of Firefox, Internet Explorer, and Lynx which failed to display previous comment included in parentheses.)
The BBC link is to last year's list: I can't find this year's list of true stories, but here's their roundup of fakes:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/4867512.stm
Re: the Libyan tricolour of green, green, and green -- is it a vertical tricolour like France or a horizontal one like Russia?
Arlo Guthrie's City of New Orleans has been going through my head since Sunday.
The thing that gets me about this was that I've seen two separate links on BoingBoing this week offering free lightsabre effects software. If they had bought cheap toy lightsabres and used that software, it probably would have turned out better than flaming glass tubes.
I'd be laughing at them -- if they had only wasted money, rather than getting severe injuries.
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