As the world hold its collective breath for the impending release of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows<\/i>, I had a few thoughts I wanted to share.<\/p>\n
First, this website will be a spoiler-free zone. Except for the tidbit that Bertie Bott’s Every Flavored Beans are people. There. I said it.<\/p>\n
No, really, spoiler-free zone. I haven’t read a Harry Potter book since number two. I haven’t seen the films since number three. Spoiler-free zone, right here.<\/p>\n
Second, I wonder how much of the online leaks of the book (the photograph thing is<\/i> quite clever) and various retailers breaking street date is genuine stupidity and\/or a clusterfuck, and how much of it is Scholastic\/Bloomsbury\/Rowling wanting to crank the hype machine up that<\/i> much more.<\/p>\n
Y’see, if I were a cynical man, and we all know that I’m not, I’d find the digital photographs suspicious. Almost a “See, this is the real book. There it is, you can’t deny it” sort of suspicious. Would Scholastic go to the time and trouble to have a bogus book written up, laid out, printed, and bound? The photographs–and yes, I’ve seen some of them–look<\/i> amateurish. There are better angles that could have been used, better set-ups to use. You don’t even have to think<\/i> hard to find several other better<\/i> ways to take digital photos of every page of Deathly Hollows<\/i>. Were I a Romulan, and I’m manifestly not<\/i> a Romulan, perhaps I’d be screaming “It’s a faaaake!” right now. I dunno, maybe the photos are legit. Maybe.<\/p>\n
And for the early shipments from online retailers? I won’t say they’re carefully coordinated, but surely, surely<\/i> they’re not so damaging. Why? Because with every early-shipped book that’s reported on in the media, it adds to the hype machine that little bit more. The rabid fanbase gets just a little<\/i> more rabid until, lo and behold, the book finally<\/i> goes on sale.<\/p>\n
And there you have it. Spoiler-free zone. Bertie Bott’s beans are people. And the rampaging hype machine.<\/p>\n
Gah, I’m so indifferent. \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
As the world hold its collective breath for the impending release of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows, I had a few thoughts I wanted to share. First, this website will be a spoiler-free zone. Except for the tidbit that Bertie Bott’s Every Flavored Beans are people. There. I said it. No, really, spoiler-free zone.Continue reading “On Harry Potter Madness”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[74],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1233","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reading","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1233","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1233"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1233\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1233"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1233"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1233"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}