Gcheung28's blog

Defend Your Favorite Fantasy Franchise

2013-05-06T16:51:28Z

Calling all Potterheads! Wikia is hosting a fantasy face-off and we are asking users to prove that the fantasy franchise they love is THE best, and each entrant will get a shot at winning a custom prize pack valued at $500!

While everyone is free to enter, only residents of the U.S. and U.K. are eligible to win, and submissions will be taken until May 17. If you have a favorite fantasy franchise, whether it's Harry Potter or something else, defend it now!

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Video Additions to the HP Wiki

2012-12-05T23:52:42Z

Hello all! As many of you must have noticed, there have been some changes to this wiki in terms of videos! Just to let you all know what is going on, I am going to list the changes that are being made (with permission from ProfessorTofty) of course.

A rotating gallery of videos has been added to the main page
A link to our Harry Potter video library has been added to the Community Messages
Videos are getting embedded into the film pages and multiple character pages. Because there are so many videos, an extra gallery page has been added to the film page (which you can access by going to the Videos section)

Unlike Youtube videos, these are all fully licensed by our partners and unlikely to get removed from the wiki. We will continue to add videos to this wiki, and we hope that you will enjoy them! Also, if you have any other suggestions for implementing videos on the Harry Potter wiki, feel free to let me know!

J.K.'s Casual Vacancy

2012-09-27T22:32:36Z

More J.K. Rowling news: her book Casual Vacancy is out! The book is available in U.S. bookstores, in addition to a digital edition. It's also supposed to be released in the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Germany.

In her adult novel, the unexpected death of a member of the parish council and the ensuing election sparks a war among a small town's residents. Press materials have called the book "blackly comic," while The New Yorker called the description of one family "ostentatiously unremitting: drugs, prostitution, the stink of diapers." Pretty intense, right?

Critical ReviewsEdit

Some critics also have had things to say. Check these reviews out:

“The Casual Vacancy will certainly sell, and it may also be liked. There are many nice touches, including Rowling’s portrait of the social worker’s gutless boyfriend, who relishes how, in an argument with a lover, you can 'obscure an emotional issue by appearing to seek precision.' The book’s political philosophy is generous, even if its analysis of class antagonisms is perhaps no more elaborate than that of Caddyshack. And, as the novel turns darker, toward a kind of Thomas Hardy finale, it hurtles along impressively. But whereas Rowling’s shepherding of readers was, in the Harry Potter series, an essential asset, in The Casual Vacancy her firm hand can feel constraining. She leaves little space for the peripheral or the ambiguous; hidden secrets are labeled as hidden secrets, and events are easy to predict. We seem to watch people move around Pagford as if they were on Harry’s magical parchment map of Hogwarts." -- Ian Parker of The New Yorker

"So look, here's the thing: This. Is. Not. A. Children's. Book. If you're looking for what made Harry Potter magical - Wizards! Spells! Flying Broomsticks! -- you're not going to find it. If you're looking for what makes J.K. Rowling magical -- emotion, heart -- you will. ... [The] ability to bring her characters to their emotional life was a hallmark of the Harry Potter series -- it didn't become a global phenomenon just because it was an exciting adventure, but because there was a real heart to it, characters who had both strengths and weaknesses, who struggled with their choices. That's what makes this book worth it, despite a slow start and sometimes too much of the descriptions and adjectives that added life to Harry Potter but at times tend to bog Rowling down here. That's what makes the book's ending scenes so heartbreaking -- turning the page seems unbearable, but not as much as putting down the book would be." -- Deepti Hajela of the Associated Press

"The Casual Vacancy is no masterpiece, but it's not bad at all: intelligent, workmanlike, and often funny. I could imagine it doing well without any association to the Rowling brand, perhaps creeping into the Richard and Judy Book Club, or being made into a three-part TV serial. The fanbase may find it a bit sour, as it lacks the Harry Potter books' warmth and charm; all the characters are fairly horrible or suicidally miserable or dead. But the worst you could say about it, really, is that it doesn't deserve the media frenzy surrounding it. And who nowadays thinks that merit and publicity have anything do with each other?" -- Theo Tait of the U.K.'s Guardian

SourceEdit

Hollywood Reporter

Did you buy The Casual Vacancy? What did you think of it? Leave your comments below!

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POSSIBLE HP SPINOFF

2012-09-27T19:09:09Z

Harry Potter fans, I come to you with some VERY exciting news:

J.K. Rowling is possibly considering a Harry Potter spinoff!

In a BBC interview, she said, "I don't want to go mechanically back into that world and pick up a load of odds and ends and glue them together and say, 'Here we go, we can sell this.' It would make a mockery of what those books were to me. But ... if I did have a great idea for something else, I probably would do it. I am very averse to the prequel-sequel idea. A sidestep could maybe ... well, we'll see."

Let's take a moment to soak that in...ok, now time to go crazy! Combine these and that's me (but times 10) right now:

Source: The Wrap

I would love to see either a prequel or a sequel...just give me SOMETHING, J.K.!! What would you rather see? Leave your thoughts in the comments below!

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The Wonders of Wonderbook

2012-09-24T23:30:01Z

As many Harry Potter fans know, Sony has been developing a cool project called Wonderbook, and you can now see what that project is going to be like! The first game is called Wonderbook: Book of Spells and is planned to be released November 13.

Players will use the PlayStation Move and Eye to learn about and cast spells from the Harry Potter series, including Incendio, Wingardium Leviosa, and Harry’s own signature spell, Expelliarmus (but dark spells like Crucio and Avada Kedavra will probably not be included on the family friendly game)!

Enough of the talking, check the video out now to get a look at how the game will be!

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HP and Shadow and Bone

2012-09-12T16:54:52Z

Harry Potter fans, check this out! DreamWorks has just picked up the movie rights to Leigh Bardugo’s bestseller Shadow and Bone, about an orphan girl whose ability to harness a rare magic makes her one of her nation’s most coveted warriors!

Remember David Heyman? The producer, who in the late ’90s had the wise instinct to secure the film rights to J.K. Rowling’s wizard-verse, will be producing Shadow and Bone! That means this series has to potential to be turned into the next Harry Potter-style film franchise, which would be pretty cool!

Check out the trailer here:

More on Shadow and BoneEdit

The book, which debuted in June, is set in a fantasy version of Russia called Ravka, which is bisected by a territory called the Shadow Fold, brimming with a breed of flying fiends who feast on human flesh. The leadership of Ravka studies children to find those who can wield the power of the elements — fire, wind, water — or can mystically heal, then recruits these powerful young ones into the elite monster-fighting squad known as The Grisha, while all others are conscripted into brutal life in the regular army. Alina Starkov is one of the latter — a seeming nobody who serves as a mere cartographer until her best friend, Mal, is wounded in an attack, triggering her latent ability to harness the power of light. Not many others in Ravka can do that, and Alina becomes both a prize and a target due to her rare abilities.

If you're interested, check out our Shadow and Bone wiki now!

SourceEdit

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