yudkowsky:

something that disturbs me every time I see it said, because the only part of HPMOR that I see as even arguing with Rowling is Ch. 39

What about ALL of the qudditch complaining? Cannon quidditch is basically a snarky mashup of Cricket and Football. While it’s not the best designed game (What do you expect from a game designed by wizards?), I think the snitch objection is just an Americanism that doesn’t hold water.

The variable legnth of the game (which cannonically could take up to months) is a jab at Test Cricket, which is EXTREMELY popluar in Britan, and typically takes 1-5 days. The game never got to “months” because cricket, unlike quidditch, can be cancelled due to weather, but knowing cricket fans, I have no doubt that if you sceduled a monthlong match between two very good teams, a LOT of fans would be all over that shit. Hell, I’d probably watch if my favoriate team was playing.

When you have these extremely long matches (I’m thinking JKR was initially imagining that pro [non-hogwarts] quidditch as typically being played over a few days just like cricket, but never depicted such a long game for storytelling reasons) a 15 goal bonus that comes with the snitch doesn’t seem like that much. On the other hand, if hogwarts qd matches are shorter (say, because they use easier-to-catch snitches for time constraints), this is explained as “a simulation of the real thing”. So JKR sucessfully created a role that make sense in professional play, but still makes your protag ‘special’ in amateur play. Incidentally, I think the same is true of amateur Football and Cricket.

[I think there were a few other things in MoR that felt like sneers at cannon, but they weren’t taken as seriously, so they had the tone of "fun little joke at JKR’s expense, but we’re not mad, we love the HP universe”]

(via yudkowsky)