Why doesn’t Frankie have an imaginary friend?
She seems to have a vivid enough imagination, and I can’t imagine that they would have adopted hers out, since Mr. Herriman is still around. Perhaps she didn’t need one because she grew up with a whole houseful and didn’t need her own.
6/3/06 - It seems as though there will be a TV movie addressing the Wilt issue later this year. Fun times.
And then there’s the issue of Wilt. In “Adoptcalypse Now,” Bloo and Mac attempt to prevent all of their friends from being adopted, though it doesn’t seem as though Wilt is in any danger of being adopted, and he is, in fact, somewhat in charge of the process. Do they just assume that he has no chance of being adopted (given that he’s a touch on the raggedy side), or does he have adoption immunity? And could there be some connection between Wilt’s immunity and Frankie’s mysterious lack of a friend?
Wow, I’m a loser... Sorry for the ridiculously long wait, guys.
Let us now (since it’s already June...Sorry, guys...) bid goodbye to the Year of the Monkey by pondering the enigma that is Lord Monty Fiske. Much of the following has been culled from conversations with Lady Fiske herself, Captain Chaotica!!
How crazy _is_ Monkey Fist, anyway? This takes us back to the age-old question most commonly explored in discussions of Quackerjack and Megavolt, Darkwing Duck’s slightly psychotic foes: Is it more crazy to purposefully, methodically act crazy, or to have no control over losing your sanity? I’d say that Lord Fiske falls firmly on the side of the former – he may be obsessive compulsive, but I don’t think he qualifies for any of the other major psychological disorders. In fact, he seems to be one of the most rational, logical villains on the show. So, again: Megavolt may be clinically insane, but Quackerjack (and Monkey Fist) both choose to act that way. So, are they more or less crazy?
How long ago did he have his surgery? Fiske is probably, what, in his thirties? So, barring a series of _quite_ unfortunate events, it probably hasn’t been too terribly long since all of his relatives passed away. And we can pretty much assume that all of his relatives must have been either deceased or incapacitated when he went through with his mutation, since it’s highly unlikely that anyone let him go ahead with blowing the fortune that way.
How serious is his relationship with DNAmy? He doesn’t ever mention her (not that the opportunity really ever came up), and her head seems rather easily turned (see “Partners” and “Downhill”). Something tells me this is one of those Steelbeak/Ammonia Pine type things. Except, you know, Monty isn’t much of a womanizer.
What does Mystical Monkey Power actually DO for you? It seemed to make Ron slightly less clumsy, and apparently made both him and Rufus able to control the Lotus Blade, but it doesn’t seem to have done anything for Monkey Fist beyond the Blade thing. Why exactly was he so eager to get it? Perhaps it would have affected him more if he wasn’t already just about as agile as he could be.
Ah, who knows? I’ve obviously been pondering these for several months now and have nothing to show for myself...
MAJOR Half-Blood Prince spoilers in the following. Like, I spoil everything. So, here’s your obligatory spoiler space. Use it.
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Alright, that’s probably sufficient.
I have several issues with the sixth book in the Harry Potter series, but most of them are more along the lines of “Lupin and Tonks...?! What the...?!” or “Well, then. THAT didn’t seem rushed or awkwardly written,” or “ARGH! Lupin is a full werewolf, and he’s standing rightTHERE! Stop acting like Bill would be better off dead!” BUT, disagreements with the characters or author aside, there was one thing that stuck out to me as particularly...not well thought out.
What the heck were Harry and Dumbledore thinking?
During the whole Poisoning Dumbledore scene, never once does either of them question that the poison has to be consumed, or that one of them has to consume it. Now, I’m sure that Good Ole Voldie could have created a potion that knew it was being drunk – Rowling’s Wizarding World really doesn’t seem to have any rules as to just exactly how smart the magic can be, or what can and cannot be done with it. But neither Harry nor Dumbledore even tries to dump the stuff on the ground. I suppose there’s always a chance that it wouldn’t pour out, or that the individual doing the pouring would meet some unfortunate fate, like having one arm flop off, or the poison opening a chasm in the middle of the dais thing they were standing on. But I believe I would have given it a try sooner than I would have blindly chugged a basinful of unknown potion.
I’m sure at this point at least one of you has already started yelling at me about how Dumbledore tells Harry that the stuff can’t be “scooped up.” You’re right. He does. And that’s another thing I planned to bring up. What precisely is the difference between being scooped up in order to be dumped out and being scooped up in order to be drunk? If Harry would have had to pour the potion directly from the basin into Dumbledore’s mouth, that would get around the inability to “scoop it up,” but that’s not what happened (and that brings up another point – did Dumbledore ever try to bore a hole into the basin and let it run out?). The only reason I can figure the potion knew the difference between one and the other is that Harry used a goblet – a container almost always associated with drinking – to scoop it up to feed to Dumbledore. Now, I could be persuaded that the potion could tell the difference between a goblet and a hand, or some other cup-shaped object. But after it was in the goblet...? Can it tell that it has passed over someone’s lips? And then would it know if it were spit back out? It really just seems to me like they didn’t exhaust all of their options in trying to find a way around drinking the stuff.
And what exactly did the potion do? I mean, it seemed for a bit there like it was making Dumbledore hallucinate, perhaps – and this is just a guess I hazard purely form the impression I got from my first reading – that he was somehow causing harm to befall his students. Whatever the effects were, though, they wore off rather conveniently fast. Obviously Dumbledore was still weakened physically, but I would have thought the damage would have been _mental_ rather than physical. I kind of suspect that’s why I wasn’t as creeped out by the whole proceeding as I should have been: Dumbledore didn’t lose his true strength in the ordeal, therefore it wasn’t terribly upsetting. And the Inferi were not terribly difficult to destroy in the end. Anyone who survived the first few trials would certainly have been able to deal with them relatively easily (and obviously at least two sets of individuals have been able to do so). You’re supposed to save your biggest booby traps for last, Voldie dearest. Anyone who has played Super Mario Brothers knows that much.
And while we’re covering inexplicable things that happened to Dumbledore that we most likely will never get full answers to now that the primary resource is...permanently indisposed, what actually happened to his hand? He gave us a very vague idea, but I’m not satisfied.
I also have to wonder what is going to happen to Trelawney now that Dumbledore’s not around to make sure there’s a place to keep her safe and out of the way...
I guess the basic gist of this month’s pondering is that Rowling has a LOT to cover in a relatively short space, and I’ve basically gotten to the point where I don’t really care what happens, so long as my three characters come out alright. It’s pretty much guaranteed that at least one of them won’t, though, and I wouldn’t be at all surprised if all three don’t get severely screwed, one way or another. So here's to the eleventh hour...which is going to last a few years...
