Dreams and Thomas

So, my friend Eden recommended that I start posting my dreams on my blog, and I think I'm going to follow that advice. She finds them amusing, and most people find them annoying to listen to, so I think it's better all around if I post them online instead of ranting about them to my family. The other night I had two dreams. The first was probably Downton Abbey induced, for it centered around a sorcerer's inheritance dispute. A great sorcerer died, leaving only daughters with no legal claim to his fortune. The eldest daughter, determined, set off into an intense study of arcane magical law in search of some precedent for female inheritance.

There was only one example she could find, dated to about 500 AD. A great sorceress named Morgan found, upon her husband's death, that their entire fortune was to be lost. Unwilling to accept this, she worked powerful magics to send herself back in time and save her husband's life. Returning to the present, she then stabbed the man in the heart. By saving and then destroying his life, she demonstrated complete control over his very existence and, by this claim, demanded his inheritance.

The eldest daughter was slightly horrified by this account, but nonetheless set out to duplicate it. She was just working with her mother to try to discover some magic or medicine that would save her father's life in the past (he died of a heart attack) when I woke up.

After I rolled over and fell back to sleep I had another dream about babysitting on a spaceship. I had to take care of all the kids whose parents were in artificial hibernation. They kept trying to sneak out of the playroom to mess with the time machine down the hall, and I had to keep saying, "Kids, cut it out! You're going to create a time paradox!"

The source of that particular dream is pretty obvious, as I've been nannying in the city for the past couple weeks. In the course of my duties, I have watched a ridiculous amount of Thomas and his Friends in the past week. A couple questions: Why is Thomas "the cheeky one"? I found no grounds for this assessment within the episode. Also, why is "Really Useful" always capitalized? Even when they say it randomly in an episode, you can just hear the capitalization in the stress they put on the words. It's like a fantasy novel, but with British trains.

Speaking of fantasy, something struck me while I was watching the fourth Harry Potter recently. If Dumbledore is a sufficiently accomplished Legilimens to always know when someone is lying to him, how on earth did Barty Crouch Jr. pass himself off as Moody for so long? You could argue that an extremely talented Occlumens (like Snape) could have accomplished this task, but I find it very hard to believe that Crouch was any sort of Occlumens at all. He was extremely unstable, both mentally and emotionally, and the very core of Occlumency is control over your mind and feelings.

And thus ends my random rant for the day.

Weak Linchpins

Well, I haven't posted for about a year on this blog because I am very lazy. I think I might do a bit more this summer, however, seeing as I have nothing better to do. This particular post isn't a review so much as a mini-rant about things that don't make sense. For example, the way that Brandon Sanderson describes the construction of mistcloaks it would be physically impossible for them to have pockets. I should know this, seeing as I sewed one last year for a friend's Halloween costume. Despite this, all the mistborn in the books are forever taking vials and other things out of these mysterious pockets.

More specifically, I wanted to rant a little bit about an catastrophic event in the Harry Potter series that could have been very easily avoided, namely the escape of Peter Pettigrew at the end of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. I just finished re-reading the fourth book, and it struck me all of the sudden how much things would have changed had Peter been properly apprehended by the dementors. First of all, Sirius wouldn't be an outlaw and Harry would be free to go live with him. Second, Lord Voldemort would never have regained his body and probably would never have returned at all. Knowing this, it becomes clear that the entire rest of the series hinges upon Peter Pettigrew's escape, because without that singular event the third book could have ended, "And they all lived happily ever after."

In constructing such an important turning point, Rowling seems to have ignored one immensely obvious possibility: WHY THE HECK DIDN'T THEY STUN THE GUY BEFORE TRYING TO TAKE HIM UP TO THE CASTLE?! They were already floating around one unconscious body (Snape), why not another? Neither Sirius nor Lupin is stupid. They both expected escape attempts. ONE of them at least should have brought up stunning! Harry's admonition not to kill Peter certainly would not have precluded knocking him out. You'd think at least Hermione would mention it...

Anyways, there you go. Harry Potter completely solved and without conflict at the end of the third book. Of course, I love the series, so I'm rather glad it didn't turn out that way despite the loophole.