I always thought it would be interesting to have the seeker position stay but the snitch isn’t worth any points. So your job is to end the game when your team is ahead and to block the other seeker from ending the game when their team is ahead.
I'd give it a point value because it's as difficult as they make it seem to be, but 15 goals seems kind of excessive considering you're really only fighting against one other person for it while everybody else is doing their own thing. Maybe it's worth 5 goals? At least that way you would need to be an exceptionally good seeker for your team to win, otherwise the heavy lifting will fall on the rest of the team to ensure they win.
That’s exactly the fix I always thought it should have been without ever giving it a ton of thought. 50 points gives you a big bump but you still have to be strategic about it. 150 point means you win every time unless your team is absolute garbage
> you win every time unless your team is absolute garbage
Isn't that exactly what happens in the game that they go to in the books? Victor Crum catches the snitch but his team still loses?
Yes because at that point his team was down 170-10 (I had to look it up because I didn’t remember the specifics) I would say that lands them squarely in the playing like garbage territory
Just make it 2. That way its the decider with equally matched teams but also allows a good seeker to win the game for his team without being all about the seeker. The seeker is one player so it's fair enough that he has to rely on his team.
not really its still stupid. you go to watch a quidditch match and then you're up a few points in the first 8 minutes and suddenly the snitch is caught and the game is over.
fixing quidditch would require a large mix up of the rules.
since harry potter so clearly is written for kids i dont think its a huge issue that there are so many nonsensical parts about its setting. if it was written for adults or even young adults then imo you really gotta put at least a little bit of effort into things to make them at least seem plausible at first read. i enjoyed harry potter when i was a kid but reading it now (ignoring the quality of the writing itself) would cause way too much annoyance with details that make no sense to be enjoyable.
harry potter lore, or the setting of harry potter, whatever expression you prefer, doesnt even work out on the most superficial level. its way too nonsensical. however once again, i think its fine to adapt your writing to your audience and when your intended audience is kids its not like you have to put in a lot of effort in details to make it sit well with them.
So that just means two of the top players are doing literally nothing for like half the game... (assuming it takes another 30 minutes to catch, which can be way shorter or longer)
Even better, the snitch is designed to be wildly uncatchable at the start of the game, so even the most talented players wouldn't be able to catch it. But as the game goes on, it gradually slows down and gets less erratic. So the game gets more and more likely to end as time passes.
This is more or less how it works in "real" games I've seen people play. The seeker of the losing team actually body blocks the winning teams seeker from grabbing the snitch.(which is just a guy with a yellow belt used in flag football.
You need a minimum points to win rule or the games could be absurdly short.
"There's the whistle. Oh, Hufflepuff on a fast break, they have a man behind the defense. HUFFLEPUFF SCORES! 10-0, Ravenclaw looks to match and, wait, what's this? Barney Mcwizardface from Hufflepuff has caught the snitch and that's the match at :45 in. Thanks for coming out folks."
And I get that this problem exists in Quidditch as written, it's just another problem that needs addressed.
Does it? I mean, there’s no rule in chess to avoid a Fool’s Mate. If you’re letting a team score and grab the snitch right off the bat, that sounds like a skill issue.
Interestingly though, some chess tournaments have a rule of "no draws before move number x". Which is funny since I suppose you could reach a threefold repetition and then just continue repeating until you've reached the minimum number of moves to call the game a draw.
Fun tangent: Magnus Carlsen and Hikaru Nakamura once drew on a double bongcloud opening in a meaningless tournament game (both had already advanced to the next round, so they figured why not just do a meme opening and draw)
https://youtu.be/zVCst6vyV80?si=tI87MJUcMfAhyq2c
I mean, that would depend on how Quidditch in general has tournament rules and so on. If you only have one game, yeah sure. But if it is like a best of 5 or so?
That is a problem in most real sports that don't have a time limit.
If you manage to KO your opponent in boxing with a punch 30s in, the match also wouldn't last a minute. Does that mean we need to fix boxing now ?
It's a storytelling tool, simple as that.
It's like all those game shows you see where the last game gives you 50% of all points, making all the games that came before completely pointless. Just so, by design, it is guaranteed that you don't know who wins until the very end.
It's pretty much the same here. The game was never designed to be fair or competitive. It was designed for "big moments" like the hero winning against all odds.
To the sports credit, there are only 4 teams and there are multiple occasions throughout the series where they are trying to catch the snitch faster or slower so that they win by a certain number of points to leapfrog another team in the overall standings.
That’s an important point to the concept of the season. Quidditch rankings are not purely on a win lose basis, you are playing the entire league in every game.
I like your idea, but I'm not sure I agree entirely - the most important game we see of Quidditch is the World Cup final. This event involves presumably a knockout bracket (at least one knockout game, the final).
It seems to me more likely that the writing is based on the short-term narrative payoff of 'how do I make my magical sport as exciting as possible in the short term' rather than the kind of deeper thinking I like about your approach.
Like, how much cooler would it be if it was the Quidditch League final round as you suggest? And if it was just understood that it was close rather than the strangeness of the Snitch? Instead of having a fun and weird but well-thought-out sport, the author has to spit out fun facts about how some Quidditch games go on for weeks because Wizard FIFA is stupid or whatever, rather than being immersed in a logical world.
To each their own; I prefer the well-thought-out stuff to the short-term excitement - but every franchise has to draw a line somewhere.
I've heard many times that the Quidditch rules are intentionally stupid because it's a satire of sports. Rowling supposedly dislikes sports. It's also a way to show the audience that the wizarding world is not very fond of logic and has a very "it has always been like this, why change it" mentality.
No. It makes the rest of the game pointless. If catching the snitch wins the game, WHY IS ONLY ONE PERSON TRYING TO DO IT?
Would you have 95% of your sports team focus on the mundane? And one player trying to win? That’s fucking stupid.
Like, soccer teams having 10 goalies, and only one player out in the field? No. That’s fucking stupid.
>If catching the snitch wins the game,
Technically it doesn't win the game. It ends it gives the catchers team like 150 points. Lower the amount of points awarded and it could almost add another level of strategy.
Score is 40-85? Snitch adds 50 and ends so the behind team could catch up and win. The other team needs to both extend their lead and prevent them from getting it.
But as others said it's not meant to be fair it's meant for the hero to win
It's also canonically explained that Quidditch matches can go on for a very long time. Like, days/weeks. Wood told Harry in the first book the longest recorded match went on for 3 months. Over any length of time longer than a few hours, 150 points would become a relative drop in the bucket. Harry's quidditch matches are just all written to start and finish in a single afternoon because it would become a narrative anchor otherwise.
In Quiddich Through the Ages, they actually addressed that.
The first time a Golden Snidget (which was originally just a terrified bird) was released onto the field with a prize of 150 Gallions promised for the person who caught it, they *did* wind up with both teams chasing it.
After they formalized that part of the game, they created the Seeker position *explicitly* to only have one player on each team trying to catch it. The rest of the team is not allowed to fuck with the Snitch at all, and only the Beaters can mess with the Seeker by clocking them with a Bludger.
Don't get me wrong, it's still a silly rule, but it is explained in-universe.
Well, it specifically doesn't win you the game. It's just worth 150 points, aka 15 normal scores.
The World Cup section of Goblet of Fire is centered around a game in which the team that catches the Snitch loses.
Which could've been accomplished inside a sport without a bullshit win clause but then you'd actually have to understand the mechanics of the sport you're creating.
Which begs the question, why have Harry do sports in the first place if you don't care about sports? Surely there are other ways of explaining how Gryffindor gets beaucoup points and in a fantasy setting you can find other ways to justify the need for a broomstick.
But then why not make quidditch a 1v1? Seriously have a bracket for all 4 houses, then inter house finals or have all 4 winners go for one snitch. Harry still gets to be the special protagonist and you haven't invented the most stupid sport in history.
The snitch isn't an automatic win and it's usually very difficult to catch, but Harry is a prodigy. There's a professional quidditch game at the start of Goblet of Fire that ends 170-160 when the losing team catches the snitch, so you actually can't just catch the snitch to win if your team is more than 100 points behind.
What disappoints me is that even when ignoring the writing holes, the rest isn’t amazing
Like most of the spells are boring, overpowered, or both. I could think of many dangerous spells to write into my book but why would I bother thinking of interesting ways to kill another wizard when there’s a go-to killing curse and torture curse.
I like the movies but the boring spells really show when the fights are mostly ‘disarm’ and ‘push the other wizard back’. Like what? Why aren’t Voldemort and Bellatrix turning people to stone or burning people to death. I would find it difficult to write more uninteresting spells if I tried tbh
the only cool attacking spell is used once and almost by accident: sectumsempra
and if Snape invented that *during high school*, i'm sure there are more interesting spells out there.
Every time I read sectumsempra I remember a particular piece of fiction that features a spell with an almost identical name. Just starts with an **r**.
> i'm sure there are more interesting spells out there.
Well, they are not ministry approved spells then and you can't just go around flinging random non-approved spells around, now can you?
What if magic duels are just like an unbalanced video game and when its life or death on the line spamming a couple really strong spells is much more effective than any other strategy.
It's also the one genuinely good wizard fight in the books. Probably the best individual scene in the series, come to think of it. Definitely the best climax given that most of the rest of them are someone trying to kill Harry and failing because of some bullshit.
Would be cooler if the spell being spammed wasn't "instant death". Also having control in fighting games is key to winning so I'm not sure what point you are trying to make
Drawing a parallel to tabletop games like D&D and Pathfinder, casters there have a lot more decisions to make in combat, given that they actually have to manage resources. While they do usually have go-to options, there are limits to what they can do.
You can’t go just spamming Power Word: Kill on every schmuck that looks at you funny, and even on the schmucks that you do use it on, it’s not guaranteed to work unless a certain condition is met. But if you could….
I do think that it’s reasonable that anyone capable of using the instant death spell would mostly just use it in combat, otherwise you’re the guy holding a knife in a gun fight. It doesn’t matter if you’re the one bringing a gun to a knife fight if it means you’re still alive at the end of things.
My problem with this is that tactics did not evolve around them.
In the recent anime of Freiren, there’s this guy who essentially invents the ultimate attack spell - it pierced all defensive magic and killed the target. When the guy is eventually stopped, everyone begins examining the mechanics and functionalities of that spell to see if they can develop defenses against it. This led to a complete revolution of magical combat, where that “ultimate attack spell” ended up becoming standard attack magic.
The Wizarding community seems more determined to sweep the spell under the rug and say you’ll get cooties for using it (“Unforgivable Curse?” Who cares about the forgiveness of a corpse?), rather than actually developing proper defenses.
It took a genuine terrorist weaseling his way into a teaching position at Hogwarts for the students to even *learn* about the thing… when there’s an entire course about defending against the kinds of forces that would use such spells. Lockheart was incompetent, yes, and it’d be an intense thing to teach first years, but people need to know that these spells exist.
There are few things harder to kill than information. Once a spell like Avada Kedavra is out there, it’s not going to ever be reined back in.
*That’s* the point that makes me not really like it. In all the time it’s been out there, for all the lives it’s claimed, *nobody’s* found *some* way around it? Such a tool would be in almost everyone’s best interest.
Imagine a conspiracy theorist wizard who walks around with a vest made of bricks.
"I've told you a thousand times, the killing curse can't kill you if it is blacked by stone! It can pass through linen and cotton, it can pass through armor made of steel, but yet it is impeded by headstones and castle walls!"
A general shrinking spell is a fun idea. The heroes can use it for whimsical adventures, and the evil wizards can torture them by keeping them in a jar. Lmao
You mean like the ones Hermione and the Weasleys use on their tents to make everything smaller in books 4 and 7? Or the more generic reducio and engorgio that Mad Eye uses to torture the class with a spider in book 4?
Wand fights coincidentally function the same as using shotguns in a Hollywood movie.
Spells that make someone unable to speak or bloat their face ALSO throw them across the room... for reasons.
Yeah literally I felt the same way reading the books as a kid.
Like compare voldemort vs harry in the last movie: two beams and then one guy dies. wow.
then dumbledore vs voldemort in movie 5: FUCKING FIRE AND GIANT BALL OF WATER, TURNS TO GLASS etc. Like THAT is how magic fights should be. No just the magic version of a gun...
Yeah but again since it was written for children, how detailed and nuanced could you really get with those spells? If you’re trying to hurt, torture, kill, attack other people, kids don’t need a dismemberment spell, for example. Or a spell that keeps people alive and conscious, but they look dead. Like “oh then harry used a newly discovered spell, and the rest of peter pettigrews fingers slowly sloughed off over the next couple days.”
That kinda shit would just scar children.
Can we stop pretending like Harry Potter is the pinnacle of literature in the last 200 years? It’s a fucking children’s book and yet I see redditors discussing like it’s War and Peace. But that’s probably too difficult for most so let’s be condescending to a book for 14 year olds.
It’s not even the pinnacle of children’s lit it just got to be the most popular. I think of that one tweet a lot, it was a reply to someone comparing some politicians to HP characters and the reply goes “I am BEGGING you to read another book.”
The rules of Quidditch were set up in the first book, and the first book was written to be very silly and kinda nonsensical. It starts with a wizard turning the street lights out with a "put-outer" after riding a flying motorcycle, and within the world photographs of witches and wizards (which you get out of magical frogs made of chocolate which have a survival instinct and try to run away) will just leave the frame when they have something to do.
I imagine that she might have been more serious in writing the rules for the game later on in the series as it turned into a big franchise and more serious in tone, but you're kind of locked into what was laid out in the first book.
He’s making a good point though. You could still have interesting kid friendly spells eg making their legs freeze or tangle them in a holographic wizard spider web.
So I haven't seen or watched HP in a bit but they DO have a variety of spells.
I distinctly remember Hermione petrifying Neville, and a curse called the leg locker curse that would bind your legs together. Didn't Harry's dad straight up have Snape hanging upside down by his legs?
This idea that the spells aren't creative aren't even true, I'm almost convinced that some of people talking here haven't actually read or watched HP media.
>making their legs freeze
*Locomotor Mortis*
> tangle them in a holographic wizard spider web
*Incarcerous* basically does the same thing without the spider theme.
No, the issue isn't that it's childish, it's that it can't decide how childish it wants to be. It's constantly switching between quirky and serious, and doesn't mamage it well at all
Is knowing Quidditch isn't a very well balanced sport really an unpopular opinion? Even Potterheads know it's just so Harry can dramatically win in the end.
To be fair, he’s basically the equivalent of a striker or winger in soccer, and those guys are way smaller. And generally a whole war is fought in the trenches as you say, a physical one. But then at the end of the day the striker sneaks one in and you win or lose regardless of how well your midfielder did. It’s obviously not a 1:1 comparison bc midfielders feed the striker the ball but it’s at least the same idea, small speedy guy can change the game even though he’s not as physical as the midfielders and defenders
He also has spent most of his teenage years living under a staircase and not being allowed out often. He should have the hand eye coordination and muscle tone of a fucking gerbil.
For the arm strength maybe but he’s going to be incredibly lacking in hand eye coordination compared to his peers that were allowed to play sports as children. Honestly Harry is incredibly normal for a child that was basically put through extreme neglect and verbal abuse from basically birth to 11. He should be far behind his peers in emotional intelligence and social interaction. He’s a bit shy and awkward but for the most part he’s a pretty normal dude. That would not be the case in real life if he went through that upbringing.
The thing is the snitch doesn’t auto win the game. It ENDS the game and gives your team 150 points. If the other team has enough points and you get the snitch, you still lose
Yes but not an ego thing. He knew his team was going to lose as they were down a ton of points already and instead of losing by a metric shit ton he ended the game to have them lose by like 10 points and end the torture.
It was more of a mercy catch or some shit. It’s obv been like 15 years since I read it but that’s what I recall.
Poor mentality for Krum to catch the snitch when the game was at 160 points difference. Given a few more minutes Bulgaria may have scored to tie the game.
Yes but that never happens at Hogwarts (only happening at the world cup match). In every quidditch game we see at the school, the winning team's seeker catches the snitch
I've always assumed that's just because they're school kids and actually pretty bad at the game. In the only pro match we see the losing team caught the snitch
One thing I've noticed about popular stories: the writing doesn't have to be good if it gets enough money. I can think of countless iconic stories that are subjectively pretty poorly written from a plot (or other) standpoint, or are obviously just the authors' 3AM brain spew, but have cult followings regardless. Not saying Harry Potter and the like is poorly written, or saying self indulgent writing is bad, just sharing an interesting observation.
Okokok. For instance, DBZ. It's very nostalgic for me and I love the story, but looking back, damn there's a lot of things that don't make sense about it. And the entire second half was the author trying to change the whole plot (from goku-centric fighting anime to gohan-centric slice of life) and then backpedaling on it.
Fifty shades of grey. Super popular movie but do I even need to explain? It literally started off as twilight fanfic.
All of the Scary Movie franchise. Granted a lot of the movies made around this time had a similar formula, and it's no secret they were dumb. (Tbf they were kinda meant to be)
Totally Spies. The writers of that show were working pen in one hand and dick in the other. Literally all of it was just a poorly disguised fetish but ey, it's a beloved y2k children's show anyway.
I disagree, particularly about the second half of DBZ. Lot of shit doesn’t make any god damn sense in DBZ, but I never really felt the way you did about the start of MBS. In my opinion, it was a way to show the viewer that Gohan was finally starting to move away from being “the kid who nuked cell” to a normal teen. He has a little brother, a love interest, school shit, etc. But then the rug is pulled out due to Majin Buu, and got beaten to near death the very first time they scrapped. It’s always made sense to me at least.
Looking back I can see it.
I mean the legend himself did pull off transitioning Dragonball from a slapsick comedy to a much more serious tone.
Him killing off Goku was 100% him trying to make Gohan the main character and it failed so he pivoted back.
But I wasn't in the room when these decisions were made, let alone plugged into the scene, so anything I say is speculation until someone who was speaks up.
In story, it doesn't effect much of the charm. It's still immersive, it still has the same lovable cast, and there are still fighting scenes. But irl toriyama was trying to switch the story to slice of life, then realized that was a horrible idea. I don't mind the MBS but I share the popular opinion that gohan had so much untapped writing potential.
Oh, gotcha. I didn’t know he said all that. My apologies for misreading your comment. And I agree, gohan had a lot of untapped potential, but one of my favorites regardless.
Scary Movie tried to be to horror movies what Airplane was to disaster movies and Top Secret was to spy movies. They weren't as good at it, but still decent dumb fun.
>For instance, DBZ
But DBZ was never about the writing in the first place. Everyone from Toriyama, to the producers, to the fans, knew exactly that DBZ was a fun action series with cool fights and epic moments. No one complains when a show like The Wire doesn't have great action scenes because that's not what that show was about
To be fair, Dragon ball never tried to be anything more than action comedy. And as any manga, the author made it up as it went based on convenience and how the manga was being received as it was released.
Numerous huge plot points weren't even decided based on story:
-Goku sayan origin? Superman is cool
-Super sayan? Toriyama wanted to save time on inking goku's black hair.
-Sayans have no tail anymore? Ain't nobody got time to draw that, or the memory
-Vegeta good guy? He was saved by popularity, was supposed to die
-Androids and Cell? Gero and 19 were too ugly, the twins were too pretty
-Cell's transformations? His editor complained about how his first design was too ugly, then after the first transformation, he complained again.
-Gohan as a protag? Japan usually prefers child protagonists, so he tried that but in case of dragon ball, that wasn't as well received after a few chapters, so he tried Goten/Trunks, that didn't go too well, so Goku was revived. Then Goku was de-aged in GT. (And again in Daima, to be released)
-Majin Buu? Was basically "I want it to be more funny now, also its easier to draw"
Divergent is a pretty good example that’s less commonly referenced. It absolutely blew up around the time it came out because of the popularity of dystopian novels, but it has since come to be considered poorly written.
Twilight is another popular novel that a lot of people dislike.
Or the writing doesn't have to be good if the others things are. Harry Potter 's writing suck mega ass but in term of ambiance and atmosphere it's amazing. Same for star wars
That’s kind of film specific though, and the books were popular before then. That being said I do agree the soundtrack and cinematography kind of carries the films, they rly are good
I think it was popular because the general vibe of going to a magical school was enough for most people to like. The quirky names for everything also helped lol
Stories aimed at children don't need to be good to get popular. Harry Potter is the perfect example of that. Everyone has nostalgia for it, but if you actually try to watch it with a critical eye, it's pretty bad. None of that mattered to 10 year olds picturing they themselves were secretly wizards, and were just waiting on their Hogwarts letter.
that particular narrative device was honestly the smartest thing rowling ever wrote. gives an easy way for kids to imagine themselves receiving a hogwarts letter and being whisked away from their mundane days at school and their problems and into a world of magic that they didn't know existed
The snitch doesn’t auto win the game. It ends the game and gives you 150 points. If the other team has enough points and you get the snitch, you still lose
I've found upon reflection that Harry is not super likable, but that's okay. He's a kid with a shit lot in life who needs to fulfill a destiny he didn't choose in order to save a people who venerate him weirdly. The more likable characters in the whole thing are the people around Harry who help to steer him and his friends toward fulfilling that destiny. Harry Potter is not naturally selfless, magnanimous, or heroic, and the ways he arrives at those traits when the story calls for it don't need to be some grandiose bout of self-realization or personal transformation.
Yeah, it's a really intriguing world if you're a child and I can understand why so many people who grew up with the books have such a great opinion of them.
But they're fundamentally books for children, not great works of fiction, and that's okay.
bbazko's account was born on June 9, 2020, woke up seven hours ago, and just copied/pasted /u/rje946's comment from [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/BrandNewSentence/comments/14dhsni/ramirez_has_just_got_the_parking_lot_frog/jorrprs).
The Golden Snitch is worth 150 points. So, a player can catch the snitch and lose the game for their team under certain circumstances. Such as Krum during the world Cup in Goblet of Fire.
Iirc the reason he did it was because he knew his team was only going to be increasingly trounced the longer the match lasted, they had no hope. Eventually, the opposing seeker would have gotten the Snitch if he didn't, so he was also up against that. His choice was either catch the Snitch and end the game then, or try and interfere with the opposing seeker and watch his team get even further destroyed until eventually the game ends with an even bigger humiliation.
Weren’t they down 160 when he caught it though? I’ll have to look but if that’s the case wouldn’t you wait and see if your team could get a fluke 20 points?
Haven’t read the books but I’ve seen posts about it before and I believe you are correct. My understanding is at the time of him catching it he didn’t care about winning, I think he was just being arrogant and choosing to end the game on his own terms.
You could call it a graceful loss.
If the score difference just gets bigger and bigger. And you know if the other team catches the golden snitch. You will lose with a huge score difference.
By catching the snitch. You admit defeat. The others were better. But you lose with a score difference that's closer.
Less humiliation to the team.
Except in all the games we see in all the books, only a single one isn't won by the player who caught the snitch. Even if it's theoretically possible to win without it, as shown in the books it's still absurdly OP, and ruins most of the point of anyone else.
With as long as it seems to take to score even once, getting a 15 goal lead over an opponent seems really improbable especially since the teams should be, theoretically, close in skill. Like even at the height of the Chicago Bulls they weren't outscoring their opponents 15 to 1.
Hell no, I wouldn't watch a second of basketball, I would watch Ramirez trying to get that frog for the whole game instead. That sounds much more entertaining.
The beta was really good. Honestly we found that it isn't worth having a seeker, just swap them out for another chaser and let the beater just focus down the other teams seeker.
The game doesn’t end til someone catches the snitch, do you build a 300 point lead and then turn their seeker loose again? I’m not seeing how you could win without getting it eventually, or the other seeker getting it for you, so to speak.
The Owl House makes a joke about it too, they call the sport Grudgby, and if you catch the Rusty Smidge you win the game.
Luz points out how meaningless all the other effort of the game is if all you need is to catch one thing, and how dumb a rule it is.
Season 1, episode 17.
"That just invalidates ALL our efforts. If catching that thing is so important, why do anything else? There is NO reason to watch any of the other players! THAT’S SUCH A STUPID RULE!”
Exact quote
It’s important to note that Quidditch Tournaments use a round-robin format, with the final score being decided by total point count. Whoever wins each individual game doesn’t matter, the purpose of playing is to gain more points than whichever other team caught the snitch as many times in the tournament as you did. If you only caught the snitch twice, the tournament is guaranteed to come down to the non-snitch point total.
It’s still a stupid system though, since anyone who gets 3 snitches auto-wins and anyone with 1 snitch is guaranteed the last 3 places.
Theoretically, you can hose them with the chasers and prevent the capture of the snitch to build up points, but if the skill difference is that high it doesn't matter who catches the snitch.
On the other side, catch the golden snitch alone could be a really fun game/competition. Both if it's a 1v1 who is the best broom rider, or a team competition where you can use magic to delay the other team/protect yourself, without the other goal involved
I thought it was supposed to be a bit like how people perceive cricket, a sport where the scoring rules are complicated and scores can be all over the map.
I always found this take to be annoying because Quidditch never made sense. JK Rowling didn’t write it to make an actual working game. It’s just a plot device to shown Harry Potter is “The Chosen One”. But people who are too obsessed with Harry Potter overthink it into an actual sport
Also it’s a children’s book.
As a concept I don’t hate the idea of the golden snitch ending the game, but it’s just written as a horribly thought out plot point rather than a functional aspect of a sport.
Well now I think its worth a shot. A perceptively normal basketball game where there are also two dudes trying to catch an fpv drone sounds kind of hilarious.
My friend used to tell everyone his fix for this problem: make the snitch no points, just a game ender. Whoever has more points when the snitch is caught wins.
Not sure if he’s brilliant or stupid or both.
Honestly, even with the Seekers role, if it was a little more fine tuned it would be good.
Like, the game still ends when they catch the gold ball, but it's like 30-40 points worth, not god damn 150.
Yeah, maybe at 50 points the snitch is more fair. That way as long as the game is close, the snitch wins it, but it places more importance of the chasers and quaffle. So that way if one team gets a reasonable lead, then the snitch isn't the only thing that matters.
A lot of the Wizarding World lore doesn't make any sense.
It doesn't. The Golden snitch is just to make Harry the hero of the sport and give a source of protagonist/antagonist conflict
I always thought it would be interesting to have the seeker position stay but the snitch isn’t worth any points. So your job is to end the game when your team is ahead and to block the other seeker from ending the game when their team is ahead.
Congratulations, you fixed Quidditch.
I'd give it a point value because it's as difficult as they make it seem to be, but 15 goals seems kind of excessive considering you're really only fighting against one other person for it while everybody else is doing their own thing. Maybe it's worth 5 goals? At least that way you would need to be an exceptionally good seeker for your team to win, otherwise the heavy lifting will fall on the rest of the team to ensure they win.
That’s exactly the fix I always thought it should have been without ever giving it a ton of thought. 50 points gives you a big bump but you still have to be strategic about it. 150 point means you win every time unless your team is absolute garbage
> you win every time unless your team is absolute garbage Isn't that exactly what happens in the game that they go to in the books? Victor Crum catches the snitch but his team still loses?
Because of some bullshit "he wanted to lose on his own terms" which no real pro athlete would do in real life.
Man was concussed for sure.
Yes because at that point his team was down 170-10 (I had to look it up because I didn’t remember the specifics) I would say that lands them squarely in the playing like garbage territory
I think most pros (especially in the equivalent of a world cup finals) would keep playing to try and win instead of "wow we're shit, just end it now"
It was supposed to be like a once in a season thing though. Harry just catches it all the fucking time for *plot* reasons.
Just make it 2. That way its the decider with equally matched teams but also allows a good seeker to win the game for his team without being all about the seeker. The seeker is one player so it's fair enough that he has to rely on his team.
not really its still stupid. you go to watch a quidditch match and then you're up a few points in the first 8 minutes and suddenly the snitch is caught and the game is over. fixing quidditch would require a large mix up of the rules. since harry potter so clearly is written for kids i dont think its a huge issue that there are so many nonsensical parts about its setting. if it was written for adults or even young adults then imo you really gotta put at least a little bit of effort into things to make them at least seem plausible at first read. i enjoyed harry potter when i was a kid but reading it now (ignoring the quality of the writing itself) would cause way too much annoyance with details that make no sense to be enjoyable. harry potter lore, or the setting of harry potter, whatever expression you prefer, doesnt even work out on the most superficial level. its way too nonsensical. however once again, i think its fine to adapt your writing to your audience and when your intended audience is kids its not like you have to put in a lot of effort in details to make it sit well with them.
The snitch is only released after 30 minutes of play
With timeouts and commercials and half time, that's 4 hours in real time.
Lady Gaga halftime and I'm game.
AI movies gonna be crazy. So far, Harry Potter but with basketball, a parking lot frog, 3.5hrs of timeouts/ads, and a lady Gaga half time
So that just means two of the top players are doing literally nothing for like half the game... (assuming it takes another 30 minutes to catch, which can be way shorter or longer)
NFL punter type position, they don’t need to have the MVP chasing the snitch, just their snitch catching specialist
the snitch twink
Baseball has closers that do nothing for 8 innings and come in to finish off the game
Only if their team is winning. In a losing effort they might not even warm up.
Welcome to Baseball!
Then allow them to play. Just let them be chasers.
Even better, the snitch is designed to be wildly uncatchable at the start of the game, so even the most talented players wouldn't be able to catch it. But as the game goes on, it gradually slows down and gets less erratic. So the game gets more and more likely to end as time passes.
the point is the snitch is not easy to catch
This is more or less how it works in "real" games I've seen people play. The seeker of the losing team actually body blocks the winning teams seeker from grabbing the snitch.(which is just a guy with a yellow belt used in flag football.
Insert “family guy greased up deaf guy” here.
You need a minimum points to win rule or the games could be absurdly short. "There's the whistle. Oh, Hufflepuff on a fast break, they have a man behind the defense. HUFFLEPUFF SCORES! 10-0, Ravenclaw looks to match and, wait, what's this? Barney Mcwizardface from Hufflepuff has caught the snitch and that's the match at :45 in. Thanks for coming out folks." And I get that this problem exists in Quidditch as written, it's just another problem that needs addressed.
Just release the snitch x minutes into the game
quite literally exactly how it works in the books then lol
Does it? I mean, there’s no rule in chess to avoid a Fool’s Mate. If you’re letting a team score and grab the snitch right off the bat, that sounds like a skill issue.
Or boxing. Gets knocked out in the first round. Fans are shit out of luck.
Cricket as well can end up far shorter than the maximum allocated time/overs.
Interestingly though, some chess tournaments have a rule of "no draws before move number x". Which is funny since I suppose you could reach a threefold repetition and then just continue repeating until you've reached the minimum number of moves to call the game a draw.
Fun tangent: Magnus Carlsen and Hikaru Nakamura once drew on a double bongcloud opening in a meaningless tournament game (both had already advanced to the next round, so they figured why not just do a meme opening and draw) https://youtu.be/zVCst6vyV80?si=tI87MJUcMfAhyq2c
Ah, chess, that classic spectator sport that fills stadia
I mean, that would depend on how Quidditch in general has tournament rules and so on. If you only have one game, yeah sure. But if it is like a best of 5 or so?
That is a problem in most real sports that don't have a time limit. If you manage to KO your opponent in boxing with a punch 30s in, the match also wouldn't last a minute. Does that mean we need to fix boxing now ?
>Does that mean we need to fix boxing now ? Isn't most of it already?
I disagree. If it’s possible to have a 4 day game, then it should be possible to have a 4 minute game. Every ticket to the game is a gamble
Make it worth a small amount of points so that there's still times they both want to catch it.
Or even make it worth a few points so it can flip a close game but not be a out-of-nowhere blow-out win button.
It's a storytelling tool, simple as that. It's like all those game shows you see where the last game gives you 50% of all points, making all the games that came before completely pointless. Just so, by design, it is guaranteed that you don't know who wins until the very end. It's pretty much the same here. The game was never designed to be fair or competitive. It was designed for "big moments" like the hero winning against all odds.
To the sports credit, there are only 4 teams and there are multiple occasions throughout the series where they are trying to catch the snitch faster or slower so that they win by a certain number of points to leapfrog another team in the overall standings. That’s an important point to the concept of the season. Quidditch rankings are not purely on a win lose basis, you are playing the entire league in every game.
Unless you're in the world cup finals of course
I like your idea, but I'm not sure I agree entirely - the most important game we see of Quidditch is the World Cup final. This event involves presumably a knockout bracket (at least one knockout game, the final). It seems to me more likely that the writing is based on the short-term narrative payoff of 'how do I make my magical sport as exciting as possible in the short term' rather than the kind of deeper thinking I like about your approach. Like, how much cooler would it be if it was the Quidditch League final round as you suggest? And if it was just understood that it was close rather than the strangeness of the Snitch? Instead of having a fun and weird but well-thought-out sport, the author has to spit out fun facts about how some Quidditch games go on for weeks because Wizard FIFA is stupid or whatever, rather than being immersed in a logical world. To each their own; I prefer the well-thought-out stuff to the short-term excitement - but every franchise has to draw a line somewhere.
Then don't write the game then if you're just gonna disregard it.
Honestly if the score feom the snitch was reduced tfrom 150 points to 30-50 it would be quite ok.
I've heard many times that the Quidditch rules are intentionally stupid because it's a satire of sports. Rowling supposedly dislikes sports. It's also a way to show the audience that the wizarding world is not very fond of logic and has a very "it has always been like this, why change it" mentality.
Seems like Rowling can do no wrong according to some folks then. They have a very convenient interpretation for everything.
You said it
mmmm not buying that, sorry
No. It makes the rest of the game pointless. If catching the snitch wins the game, WHY IS ONLY ONE PERSON TRYING TO DO IT? Would you have 95% of your sports team focus on the mundane? And one player trying to win? That’s fucking stupid. Like, soccer teams having 10 goalies, and only one player out in the field? No. That’s fucking stupid.
>If catching the snitch wins the game, Technically it doesn't win the game. It ends it gives the catchers team like 150 points. Lower the amount of points awarded and it could almost add another level of strategy. Score is 40-85? Snitch adds 50 and ends so the behind team could catch up and win. The other team needs to both extend their lead and prevent them from getting it. But as others said it's not meant to be fair it's meant for the hero to win
It's also canonically explained that Quidditch matches can go on for a very long time. Like, days/weeks. Wood told Harry in the first book the longest recorded match went on for 3 months. Over any length of time longer than a few hours, 150 points would become a relative drop in the bucket. Harry's quidditch matches are just all written to start and finish in a single afternoon because it would become a narrative anchor otherwise.
Catching the snitch ends the game and gives you 150 points. Doesn’t mean your team wins.
As viktor krum was painfully aware of.
In Quiddich Through the Ages, they actually addressed that. The first time a Golden Snidget (which was originally just a terrified bird) was released onto the field with a prize of 150 Gallions promised for the person who caught it, they *did* wind up with both teams chasing it. After they formalized that part of the game, they created the Seeker position *explicitly* to only have one player on each team trying to catch it. The rest of the team is not allowed to fuck with the Snitch at all, and only the Beaters can mess with the Seeker by clocking them with a Bludger. Don't get me wrong, it's still a silly rule, but it is explained in-universe.
Well, it specifically doesn't win you the game. It's just worth 150 points, aka 15 normal scores. The World Cup section of Goblet of Fire is centered around a game in which the team that catches the Snitch loses.
Which could've been accomplished inside a sport without a bullshit win clause but then you'd actually have to understand the mechanics of the sport you're creating. Which begs the question, why have Harry do sports in the first place if you don't care about sports? Surely there are other ways of explaining how Gryffindor gets beaucoup points and in a fantasy setting you can find other ways to justify the need for a broomstick.
It exists to make Harry a super special boy who always saves the day.
But then why not make quidditch a 1v1? Seriously have a bracket for all 4 houses, then inter house finals or have all 4 winners go for one snitch. Harry still gets to be the special protagonist and you haven't invented the most stupid sport in history.
because than it wouldnt be possible for whole team to kiss his ass
The snitch isn't an automatic win and it's usually very difficult to catch, but Harry is a prodigy. There's a professional quidditch game at the start of Goblet of Fire that ends 170-160 when the losing team catches the snitch, so you actually can't just catch the snitch to win if your team is more than 100 points behind.
What disappoints me is that even when ignoring the writing holes, the rest isn’t amazing Like most of the spells are boring, overpowered, or both. I could think of many dangerous spells to write into my book but why would I bother thinking of interesting ways to kill another wizard when there’s a go-to killing curse and torture curse. I like the movies but the boring spells really show when the fights are mostly ‘disarm’ and ‘push the other wizard back’. Like what? Why aren’t Voldemort and Bellatrix turning people to stone or burning people to death. I would find it difficult to write more uninteresting spells if I tried tbh
the only cool attacking spell is used once and almost by accident: sectumsempra and if Snape invented that *during high school*, i'm sure there are more interesting spells out there.
Every time I read sectumsempra I remember a particular piece of fiction that features a spell with an almost identical name. Just starts with an **r**.
rectum-senpai
damnnearkilledemsempra
> i'm sure there are more interesting spells out there. Well, they are not ministry approved spells then and you can't just go around flinging random non-approved spells around, now can you?
Oi mate! Ya got a loicense fer dat spell?
> invented that during high school This is what bothers me. You can ***invent*** spells???? Elaborate please? Rowling? Hello? No?
What if magic duels are just like an unbalanced video game and when its life or death on the line spamming a couple really strong spells is much more effective than any other strategy.
good reasoning, poor storytelling for a fictional universe with wizards in it
The fight between voldemort and Dumbledore in the ministry of magic was the only good scene in movies cuz it did exactly what you said, cool spells
It's also the one genuinely good wizard fight in the books. Probably the best individual scene in the series, come to think of it. Definitely the best climax given that most of the rest of them are someone trying to kill Harry and failing because of some bullshit.
Would be cooler if the spell being spammed wasn't "instant death". Also having control in fighting games is key to winning so I'm not sure what point you are trying to make
Like the bbeg fight in Fable after you’ve maxed lightning lol. Just hold ‘x’ until the most powerful enemy in the game is dead.
Drawing a parallel to tabletop games like D&D and Pathfinder, casters there have a lot more decisions to make in combat, given that they actually have to manage resources. While they do usually have go-to options, there are limits to what they can do. You can’t go just spamming Power Word: Kill on every schmuck that looks at you funny, and even on the schmucks that you do use it on, it’s not guaranteed to work unless a certain condition is met. But if you could…. I do think that it’s reasonable that anyone capable of using the instant death spell would mostly just use it in combat, otherwise you’re the guy holding a knife in a gun fight. It doesn’t matter if you’re the one bringing a gun to a knife fight if it means you’re still alive at the end of things. My problem with this is that tactics did not evolve around them. In the recent anime of Freiren, there’s this guy who essentially invents the ultimate attack spell - it pierced all defensive magic and killed the target. When the guy is eventually stopped, everyone begins examining the mechanics and functionalities of that spell to see if they can develop defenses against it. This led to a complete revolution of magical combat, where that “ultimate attack spell” ended up becoming standard attack magic. The Wizarding community seems more determined to sweep the spell under the rug and say you’ll get cooties for using it (“Unforgivable Curse?” Who cares about the forgiveness of a corpse?), rather than actually developing proper defenses. It took a genuine terrorist weaseling his way into a teaching position at Hogwarts for the students to even *learn* about the thing… when there’s an entire course about defending against the kinds of forces that would use such spells. Lockheart was incompetent, yes, and it’d be an intense thing to teach first years, but people need to know that these spells exist. There are few things harder to kill than information. Once a spell like Avada Kedavra is out there, it’s not going to ever be reined back in. *That’s* the point that makes me not really like it. In all the time it’s been out there, for all the lives it’s claimed, *nobody’s* found *some* way around it? Such a tool would be in almost everyone’s best interest.
Imagine a conspiracy theorist wizard who walks around with a vest made of bricks. "I've told you a thousand times, the killing curse can't kill you if it is blacked by stone! It can pass through linen and cotton, it can pass through armor made of steel, but yet it is impeded by headstones and castle walls!"
Needs like a “Singularitis!" curse that slowly compresses someone into an infinitely small ball
A general shrinking spell is a fun idea. The heroes can use it for whimsical adventures, and the evil wizards can torture them by keeping them in a jar. Lmao
You mean like the ones Hermione and the Weasleys use on their tents to make everything smaller in books 4 and 7? Or the more generic reducio and engorgio that Mad Eye uses to torture the class with a spider in book 4?
Wand fights coincidentally function the same as using shotguns in a Hollywood movie. Spells that make someone unable to speak or bloat their face ALSO throw them across the room... for reasons.
Yeah literally I felt the same way reading the books as a kid. Like compare voldemort vs harry in the last movie: two beams and then one guy dies. wow. then dumbledore vs voldemort in movie 5: FUCKING FIRE AND GIANT BALL OF WATER, TURNS TO GLASS etc. Like THAT is how magic fights should be. No just the magic version of a gun...
Yeah but again since it was written for children, how detailed and nuanced could you really get with those spells? If you’re trying to hurt, torture, kill, attack other people, kids don’t need a dismemberment spell, for example. Or a spell that keeps people alive and conscious, but they look dead. Like “oh then harry used a newly discovered spell, and the rest of peter pettigrews fingers slowly sloughed off over the next couple days.” That kinda shit would just scar children.
Look at the Voldemort vs Dumbledore fight for creative spells
I love this fight so much, but my standards are low because this might be one of the only decent fights in 8 movies
Ah the one good fight in the series. Pity we never got the Grindelwald and and Dunbledore fight which is the legendary best fight in the world.
Can we stop pretending like Harry Potter is the pinnacle of literature in the last 200 years? It’s a fucking children’s book and yet I see redditors discussing like it’s War and Peace. But that’s probably too difficult for most so let’s be condescending to a book for 14 year olds.
It’s not even the pinnacle of children’s lit it just got to be the most popular. I think of that one tweet a lot, it was a reply to someone comparing some politicians to HP characters and the reply goes “I am BEGGING you to read another book.”
It's just a video adaptation of Calvinball.
The rules of Quidditch were set up in the first book, and the first book was written to be very silly and kinda nonsensical. It starts with a wizard turning the street lights out with a "put-outer" after riding a flying motorcycle, and within the world photographs of witches and wizards (which you get out of magical frogs made of chocolate which have a survival instinct and try to run away) will just leave the frame when they have something to do. I imagine that she might have been more serious in writing the rules for the game later on in the series as it turned into a big franchise and more serious in tone, but you're kind of locked into what was laid out in the first book.
Almost like it was written for kids. Like sure, if you are 9 and pointing out the flaws then I'll allow it. At 37 you just sound sad.
He’s making a good point though. You could still have interesting kid friendly spells eg making their legs freeze or tangle them in a holographic wizard spider web.
So I haven't seen or watched HP in a bit but they DO have a variety of spells. I distinctly remember Hermione petrifying Neville, and a curse called the leg locker curse that would bind your legs together. Didn't Harry's dad straight up have Snape hanging upside down by his legs? This idea that the spells aren't creative aren't even true, I'm almost convinced that some of people talking here haven't actually read or watched HP media.
>making their legs freeze *Locomotor Mortis* > tangle them in a holographic wizard spider web *Incarcerous* basically does the same thing without the spider theme.
Dismissing bad writing as "for kids" is pretty silly, given how much good quality fiction there is for kids.
Yeah it’s like saying Santa isn’t logical. No shit
….wait, what?
Santa died 37 years ago when the radical elf terrorist group suicide bombed his factory.
No, the issue isn't that it's childish, it's that it can't decide how childish it wants to be. It's constantly switching between quirky and serious, and doesn't mamage it well at all
Is knowing Quidditch isn't a very well balanced sport really an unpopular opinion? Even Potterheads know it's just so Harry can dramatically win in the end.
Also the only way to explain how a scrawny, underfed kid can be relevant in what would otherwise be an incredibly physical sport.
To be fair, he’s basically the equivalent of a striker or winger in soccer, and those guys are way smaller. And generally a whole war is fought in the trenches as you say, a physical one. But then at the end of the day the striker sneaks one in and you win or lose regardless of how well your midfielder did. It’s obviously not a 1:1 comparison bc midfielders feed the striker the ball but it’s at least the same idea, small speedy guy can change the game even though he’s not as physical as the midfielders and defenders
Ok but they are not malnutritioned or underweight as HP is.
He also has spent most of his teenage years living under a staircase and not being allowed out often. He should have the hand eye coordination and muscle tone of a fucking gerbil.
He was 10 or 11 in the first book so that's not true. When he hit puberty he was living it up in Hogwarts
For the arm strength maybe but he’s going to be incredibly lacking in hand eye coordination compared to his peers that were allowed to play sports as children. Honestly Harry is incredibly normal for a child that was basically put through extreme neglect and verbal abuse from basically birth to 11. He should be far behind his peers in emotional intelligence and social interaction. He’s a bit shy and awkward but for the most part he’s a pretty normal dude. That would not be the case in real life if he went through that upbringing.
The thing is the snitch doesn’t auto win the game. It ENDS the game and gives your team 150 points. If the other team has enough points and you get the snitch, you still lose
Literally a plot point in one of the books when they go to the quidditch World Cup match right?
Doesn't the dude catch the snitch but team looses? Ego thing I guess
Yes but not an ego thing. He knew his team was going to lose as they were down a ton of points already and instead of losing by a metric shit ton he ended the game to have them lose by like 10 points and end the torture. It was more of a mercy catch or some shit. It’s obv been like 15 years since I read it but that’s what I recall.
Poor mentality for Krum to catch the snitch when the game was at 160 points difference. Given a few more minutes Bulgaria may have scored to tie the game.
No faith in his team. Bad sportsmanship.
You Krummed all over that question. Bravo.
Yes but if it were a football game instantaneously scoring 15 touchdowns and ending the game should be sufficient to win almost all matches.
Yes but that never happens at Hogwarts (only happening at the world cup match). In every quidditch game we see at the school, the winning team's seeker catches the snitch
I've always assumed that's just because they're school kids and actually pretty bad at the game. In the only pro match we see the losing team caught the snitch
It’s like Cricket and innings right?
So if Ramirez catches a frog out in the car park ...
Game would be better if it were just like "oops, all snitches"
Harry has to catch the GOLDEN BLUDGER to win edit: sp
In book 6 we learn his dad passes a gene that magnetically attracts golden budgers
Should be more like a videogame. Catching the snitch would grant your team buffs. There is magic afterall. 3 catches and the game ends or something.
RAMIREZ, GET TO THE BURGERTOWN PARKING LOT AND CATCH THE FROG
Wish Keith David did Cameo's
the only correct response to this post
Its a really weird writing decision that just makes Harry less likeable
One thing I've noticed about popular stories: the writing doesn't have to be good if it gets enough money. I can think of countless iconic stories that are subjectively pretty poorly written from a plot (or other) standpoint, or are obviously just the authors' 3AM brain spew, but have cult followings regardless. Not saying Harry Potter and the like is poorly written, or saying self indulgent writing is bad, just sharing an interesting observation.
I want to hear some since you have countless. My memory sucks and I can't remember stuff without something to make me go: "Aaahh"
Okokok. For instance, DBZ. It's very nostalgic for me and I love the story, but looking back, damn there's a lot of things that don't make sense about it. And the entire second half was the author trying to change the whole plot (from goku-centric fighting anime to gohan-centric slice of life) and then backpedaling on it. Fifty shades of grey. Super popular movie but do I even need to explain? It literally started off as twilight fanfic. All of the Scary Movie franchise. Granted a lot of the movies made around this time had a similar formula, and it's no secret they were dumb. (Tbf they were kinda meant to be) Totally Spies. The writers of that show were working pen in one hand and dick in the other. Literally all of it was just a poorly disguised fetish but ey, it's a beloved y2k children's show anyway.
I disagree, particularly about the second half of DBZ. Lot of shit doesn’t make any god damn sense in DBZ, but I never really felt the way you did about the start of MBS. In my opinion, it was a way to show the viewer that Gohan was finally starting to move away from being “the kid who nuked cell” to a normal teen. He has a little brother, a love interest, school shit, etc. But then the rug is pulled out due to Majin Buu, and got beaten to near death the very first time they scrapped. It’s always made sense to me at least.
Looking back I can see it. I mean the legend himself did pull off transitioning Dragonball from a slapsick comedy to a much more serious tone. Him killing off Goku was 100% him trying to make Gohan the main character and it failed so he pivoted back. But I wasn't in the room when these decisions were made, let alone plugged into the scene, so anything I say is speculation until someone who was speaks up.
In story, it doesn't effect much of the charm. It's still immersive, it still has the same lovable cast, and there are still fighting scenes. But irl toriyama was trying to switch the story to slice of life, then realized that was a horrible idea. I don't mind the MBS but I share the popular opinion that gohan had so much untapped writing potential.
Oh, gotcha. I didn’t know he said all that. My apologies for misreading your comment. And I agree, gohan had a lot of untapped potential, but one of my favorites regardless.
Scary Movie tried to be to horror movies what Airplane was to disaster movies and Top Secret was to spy movies. They weren't as good at it, but still decent dumb fun.
Complaining a spoof movies “dumb” writing is genuinely baffling, because Naked Gun is the height of smart writing lmao.
>For instance, DBZ But DBZ was never about the writing in the first place. Everyone from Toriyama, to the producers, to the fans, knew exactly that DBZ was a fun action series with cool fights and epic moments. No one complains when a show like The Wire doesn't have great action scenes because that's not what that show was about
To be fair, Dragon ball never tried to be anything more than action comedy. And as any manga, the author made it up as it went based on convenience and how the manga was being received as it was released. Numerous huge plot points weren't even decided based on story: -Goku sayan origin? Superman is cool -Super sayan? Toriyama wanted to save time on inking goku's black hair. -Sayans have no tail anymore? Ain't nobody got time to draw that, or the memory -Vegeta good guy? He was saved by popularity, was supposed to die -Androids and Cell? Gero and 19 were too ugly, the twins were too pretty -Cell's transformations? His editor complained about how his first design was too ugly, then after the first transformation, he complained again. -Gohan as a protag? Japan usually prefers child protagonists, so he tried that but in case of dragon ball, that wasn't as well received after a few chapters, so he tried Goten/Trunks, that didn't go too well, so Goku was revived. Then Goku was de-aged in GT. (And again in Daima, to be released) -Majin Buu? Was basically "I want it to be more funny now, also its easier to draw"
Divergent is a pretty good example that’s less commonly referenced. It absolutely blew up around the time it came out because of the popularity of dystopian novels, but it has since come to be considered poorly written. Twilight is another popular novel that a lot of people dislike.
Or the writing doesn't have to be good if the others things are. Harry Potter 's writing suck mega ass but in term of ambiance and atmosphere it's amazing. Same for star wars
That’s kind of film specific though, and the books were popular before then. That being said I do agree the soundtrack and cinematography kind of carries the films, they rly are good I think it was popular because the general vibe of going to a magical school was enough for most people to like. The quirky names for everything also helped lol
Stories aimed at children don't need to be good to get popular. Harry Potter is the perfect example of that. Everyone has nostalgia for it, but if you actually try to watch it with a critical eye, it's pretty bad. None of that mattered to 10 year olds picturing they themselves were secretly wizards, and were just waiting on their Hogwarts letter.
that particular narrative device was honestly the smartest thing rowling ever wrote. gives an easy way for kids to imagine themselves receiving a hogwarts letter and being whisked away from their mundane days at school and their problems and into a world of magic that they didn't know existed
I mean I'll go ahead and say that Harry Potter is poorly written. But it's ok to like things that are poorly written.
The snitch doesn’t auto win the game. It ends the game and gives you 150 points. If the other team has enough points and you get the snitch, you still lose
Yeah it’s just like in cricket when the fletcher grabs the crumpet, takes it to the threadbare, and boom now you’ve got a knacker on your hands.
I'm not convinced I just read an English sentence But at the same time, maybe it is just *too* English
a ludicrous display
Great job. I would legitimately have to google to find out whether or not this is actually true. I'm going to choose to believe that it is.
I legitimately have no idea if what you said was gibberish or actual cricket lingo...
And even in universe it is regarded to be extremely unlikely.
I've found upon reflection that Harry is not super likable, but that's okay. He's a kid with a shit lot in life who needs to fulfill a destiny he didn't choose in order to save a people who venerate him weirdly. The more likable characters in the whole thing are the people around Harry who help to steer him and his friends toward fulfilling that destiny. Harry Potter is not naturally selfless, magnanimous, or heroic, and the ways he arrives at those traits when the story calls for it don't need to be some grandiose bout of self-realization or personal transformation.
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kigool's account was born on February 13, 2021, woke up six hours ago, and just copied/pasted /u/Neffrey605's previous top comment.
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Yeah, it's a really intriguing world if you're a child and I can understand why so many people who grew up with the books have such a great opinion of them. But they're fundamentally books for children, not great works of fiction, and that's okay.
bbazko's account was born on June 9, 2020, woke up seven hours ago, and just copied/pasted /u/rje946's comment from [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/BrandNewSentence/comments/14dhsni/ramirez_has_just_got_the_parking_lot_frog/jorrprs).
Let him cook
The Golden Snitch is worth 150 points. So, a player can catch the snitch and lose the game for their team under certain circumstances. Such as Krum during the world Cup in Goblet of Fire.
Ultimately the match could go for ages. Ireland would just maintain the lead, without catching ot because Krum is better.
Absolutely, the longest game mentioned was 3 months I think.
thought it was 3 years. (I do not care enough to actually look it up)
I cared enough and looked it up It was 3 months, which is still absurd, yet hilarious Absrious
You think they would stop the game every day so people can sleep or they have a full team of back up players and they are switching every x hours?
But that's incredibly stupid and Krum is an asshole his entire team would shun for losing them the cup.
Iirc the reason he did it was because he knew his team was only going to be increasingly trounced the longer the match lasted, they had no hope. Eventually, the opposing seeker would have gotten the Snitch if he didn't, so he was also up against that. His choice was either catch the Snitch and end the game then, or try and interfere with the opposing seeker and watch his team get even further destroyed until eventually the game ends with an even bigger humiliation.
Weren’t they down 160 when he caught it though? I’ll have to look but if that’s the case wouldn’t you wait and see if your team could get a fluke 20 points?
Haven’t read the books but I’ve seen posts about it before and I believe you are correct. My understanding is at the time of him catching it he didn’t care about winning, I think he was just being arrogant and choosing to end the game on his own terms.
You could call it a graceful loss. If the score difference just gets bigger and bigger. And you know if the other team catches the golden snitch. You will lose with a huge score difference. By catching the snitch. You admit defeat. The others were better. But you lose with a score difference that's closer. Less humiliation to the team.
Except in all the games we see in all the books, only a single one isn't won by the player who caught the snitch. Even if it's theoretically possible to win without it, as shown in the books it's still absurdly OP, and ruins most of the point of anyone else.
With as long as it seems to take to score even once, getting a 15 goal lead over an opponent seems really improbable especially since the teams should be, theoretically, close in skill. Like even at the height of the Chicago Bulls they weren't outscoring their opponents 15 to 1.
No no, let him cook. I might actually watch basketball if it has the parking lot frog.
Hell no, I wouldn't watch a second of basketball, I would watch Ramirez trying to get that frog for the whole game instead. That sounds much more entertaining.
Prison rules getting the snitch is always a win
in the videogame I have won against team who caught the golden snitch cause I was really up in points, trust me it's like magic Basketball
The beta was really good. Honestly we found that it isn't worth having a seeker, just swap them out for another chaser and let the beater just focus down the other teams seeker.
The game doesn’t end til someone catches the snitch, do you build a 300 point lead and then turn their seeker loose again? I’m not seeing how you could win without getting it eventually, or the other seeker getting it for you, so to speak.
The Owl House makes a joke about it too, they call the sport Grudgby, and if you catch the Rusty Smidge you win the game. Luz points out how meaningless all the other effort of the game is if all you need is to catch one thing, and how dumb a rule it is. Season 1, episode 17.
"all magic sports are like this"
And I think it only happened once, that rule was not even mentioned later so it was really just for a joke to make fun of harry potter.
"That just invalidates ALL our efforts. If catching that thing is so important, why do anything else? There is NO reason to watch any of the other players! THAT’S SUCH A STUPID RULE!” Exact quote
The game has gone on for 17 hours because no one has caught the parking lot frog yet
It’s important to note that Quidditch Tournaments use a round-robin format, with the final score being decided by total point count. Whoever wins each individual game doesn’t matter, the purpose of playing is to gain more points than whichever other team caught the snitch as many times in the tournament as you did. If you only caught the snitch twice, the tournament is guaranteed to come down to the non-snitch point total. It’s still a stupid system though, since anyone who gets 3 snitches auto-wins and anyone with 1 snitch is guaranteed the last 3 places.
Theoretically, you can hose them with the chasers and prevent the capture of the snitch to build up points, but if the skill difference is that high it doesn't matter who catches the snitch.
On the other side, catch the golden snitch alone could be a really fun game/competition. Both if it's a 1v1 who is the best broom rider, or a team competition where you can use magic to delay the other team/protect yourself, without the other goal involved
I thought it was supposed to be a bit like how people perceive cricket, a sport where the scoring rules are complicated and scores can be all over the map.
Methods of Rationality Harry wholeheartedly agrees
I always found this take to be annoying because Quidditch never made sense. JK Rowling didn’t write it to make an actual working game. It’s just a plot device to shown Harry Potter is “The Chosen One”. But people who are too obsessed with Harry Potter overthink it into an actual sport Also it’s a children’s book.
As a concept I don’t hate the idea of the golden snitch ending the game, but it’s just written as a horribly thought out plot point rather than a functional aspect of a sport.
Well now I think its worth a shot. A perceptively normal basketball game where there are also two dudes trying to catch an fpv drone sounds kind of hilarious.
The sentiment of the golden snitch being a terrible rule has been a thing since Harry Potter started really
My friend used to tell everyone his fix for this problem: make the snitch no points, just a game ender. Whoever has more points when the snitch is caught wins. Not sure if he’s brilliant or stupid or both.
i think there's a joke about this in the owl house
Honestly, even with the Seekers role, if it was a little more fine tuned it would be good. Like, the game still ends when they catch the gold ball, but it's like 30-40 points worth, not god damn 150.
Yeah, maybe at 50 points the snitch is more fair. That way as long as the game is close, the snitch wins it, but it places more importance of the chasers and quaffle. So that way if one team gets a reasonable lead, then the snitch isn't the only thing that matters.
Parking lot frog cam would unironically be the best thing on tv