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[Glloyd]

Ol' Voldy poo was probably a poor example, but there's no excuse for the younger wizards to not consider them. When I was ten, I was obsessed with guns and those little plastic army men. For wizards who had a muggle upbringing, it's not a huge stretch that they would consider guns in the war that they are slowly losing.

EDIT: also, I think I've learned not to joke about fandom-related lore on Bay 12, everyone takes me way too seriously.

Either way, I did always wonder as a kid why wizards didn't use guns

[Fniff]

I like seeing urban fantasy where packing a gun is a smart idea even if you're a wizard. In fact, especially if you're a wizard.
Hence why I like Skullduggery Pleasant.

[Culise]

Heck, one interesting story that could be told in the Harry Potter 'verse is the idea where Harry Potter gets in the habit of carrying a gun with him after, say, Book 1 or Book 2.  Then, the first time they meet in person, he pulls it out and acquaints Voldemort with Messirs Smith and Wesson.  Alternately, and to make it worse, hold off until Voldemort's return is confirmed; you then have a situation where the wizarding world, one essentially founded on petty bureaucracy and a renunciation of outside reality based on their (legitimate) fears of the technologically- and numerically-superior world of Muggles, is suddenly confronted in full force with the culmination of those fears.  If the trio is lucky, the same head-in-sand principles that drove them to deny Voldemort's return originally would also cause the Ministry to reject what just happened and redouble their efforts to keep the wizarding world safe.  If they're unlucky, you suddenly have a trio of minors who are using Muggle Artefacts illegally (both by wizarding and muggle laws...how easy would it have been for a child to get a handgun even before the 1997 act?), and even worse, one of them is the child of the head of the Misuse of Muggle Artefacts Office - hello, blatant nepotism in the name of illegal acts.  At the least, the entire Weasley family would need to be thrown to the political wolves; at the most, it could bring down a government, especially depending on when this happens, and given the crop of politicians who are up (specifically, the same ones so thoroughly manipulated by Voldemort in the original story), that's not a pleasant option. 

Oh, and because of *how* Voldemort's continued survival was assured, specifically since Harry Potter himself is actually a horcrux/phylactery/soul-hidey-thingy, it wouldn't actually take...but no one outside of Dumbledore, Slughorn, and the Death Eaters would know that yet.  Heck, the witch hunts that could result would be an ideal climate for Voldy's Death Eaters.  It could be the core of a fascinating story, albeit one very different. 

[Fniff]

It's funny how guns are basically the muggles version of a fireball spell, but worse. Much much worse.

[Sergius]

There's this movie, Chronicle, that's about 3 boy that get superpowers from a meteor. It's filmed in "found footage" style, sorta. Gonna spoilerify the rest.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

(It's not really "found" footage since there's one boy remaining).

Anyway, near the end, one of the guys is all crazy and stuff and making mayhem in a hospital robe, the other guy (the "hero") is trying to reason with him to stop him, and there's cops everywhere. They're completely surrounded, the "bad guy" is basically a wreck, barely standing, but keeps pushing and shoving cars around with telekinesis. In the end, the hero gives up and impales him with a statue.

Thing is, at no point in this scene is either of the guys invincible! They're just there whining and shoving cars and cops and the cops are like "stop or we'll SHOOT!" "we really mean it!" "ok, for real this time, you propel one more cop thru the air and you're done!" "last chance!". The bad guy is just lashing out stupidly, the cops just keep moving around creating a "perimeter". This annoys me to no end. Neither of the "super" guys showed any ability to deflect bullets and even if they could the baddie isn't exactly super-Neo at this moment, he's barely conscious and stumbling.

[Sergius]

Re: Harry Potter wizards.

From what I've seen from the movies, the wizards in those movies/books are extremely ignorant of anything that's not wizardly-world related. Seriously, after a life education of faux latin words and pointing sticks and mixing hippopotagriff nutsack-juice potions, it's hard to believe that any of them can handle even basic math or know the difference between a mammal and a fern.

Sure, you occasionally get the "eccentric" wizard that knows what "petroleum" means, or maybe that the moon isn't made of magic cheese. And we're told they have "mug studies" or whatever, but as an elective because most wizards don't need to know that they shouldn't stick their fingers into an electric outlet. So other than the "super wise wizzards" like Dumbledore I don't expect wizards to know how the world works beyond a middle-ages era. Even when they're attacking mortals and being all superior they're more likely to just blow cars up without even knowing what they are.

It's fine if you're going to spend your entire life holed up in Hogwarts or similar places, but otherwise they just seem to willingly limit themselves.

[Il Palazzo]

There's this movie, Chronicle, that's about 3 boy that get superpowers from a meteor. It's filmed in "found footage" style, sorta. Gonna spoilerify the rest.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

(It's not really "found" footage since there's one boy remaining).

Anyway, near the end, one of the guys is all crazy and stuff and making mayhem in a hospital robe, the other guy (the "hero") is trying to reason with him to stop him, and there's cops everywhere. They're completely surrounded, the "bad guy" is basically a wreck, barely standing, but keeps pushing and shoving cars around with telekinesis. In the end, the hero gives up and impales him with a statue.

Thing is, at no point in this scene is either of the guys invincible! They're just there whining and shoving cars and cops and the cops are like "stop or we'll SHOOT!" "we really mean it!" "ok, for real this time, you propel one more cop thru the air and you're done!" "last chance!". The bad guy is just lashing out stupidly, the cops just keep moving around creating a "perimeter". This annoys me to no end. Neither of the "super" guys showed any ability to deflect bullets and even if they could the baddie isn't exactly super-Neo at this moment, he's barely conscious and stumbling.

It was easier to suspend disbelief pre-Ferguson, I guess.

[Tiruin]

There's this movie, Chronicle, that's about 3 boy that get superpowers from a meteor. It's filmed in "found footage" style, sorta. Gonna spoilerify the rest.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

(It's not really "found" footage since there's one boy remaining).

Anyway, near the end, one of the guys is all crazy and stuff and making mayhem in a hospital robe, the other guy (the "hero") is trying to reason with him to stop him, and there's cops everywhere. They're completely surrounded, the "bad guy" is basically a wreck, barely standing, but keeps pushing and shoving cars around with telekinesis. In the end, the hero gives up and impales him with a statue.

Thing is, at no point in this scene is either of the guys invincible! They're just there whining and shoving cars and cops and the cops are like "stop or we'll SHOOT!" "we really mean it!" "ok, for real this time, you propel one more cop thru the air and you're done!" "last chance!". The bad guy is just lashing out stupidly, the cops just keep moving around creating a "perimeter". This annoys me to no end. Neither of the "super" guys showed any ability to deflect bullets and even if they could the baddie isn't exactly super-Neo at this moment, he's barely conscious and stumbling.

Huh O_o I remember this one.
Though I vaguely remember how the cops acted in the last scene--there were bullet fire, I remember, and what I recall is the 'bad' guy repelled them or halted their weaponry/bullets.

[Jopax]

Spoiler: Chronicle (click to show/hide)

IIRC the thing that gets the "bad guy" into the hospital is him deflecting a shotgun blast the gas station worker aimed at him. He deflects it into a gas tank tho and gets fucked up. Also it's shown that the "bad guy" is the most skilled of the three with his powers constantly growing, so even if he couldn't deflect bullets early on (and he's able to stop some slower flying stuff like baseballs) I'm pretty sure that by the time he's flinging cars around he's perfectly capable of stopping anything else. So the only reason he gets impaled I think is that it was another mind bendy guy doing at and it also came from behind so he didn't really see it.

[Bohandas]

In Starship Troopers it always bugged me that they didn't simply nuke the planet from orbit.

Yeah, they wanted to capture a brain bug, but if they nuked the planet from orbit they wouldn't need to, except perhaps simply as a scientific curiousity.

[DJ]

It's funny how guns are basically the muggles version of a fireball spell, but worse. Much much worse.

Do they have full auto 50 cal belt fed fireball wands?

[Greiger]

I beleive the DnD name for that spell is meteor swarm.  Though I imagine that's more like a full auto grenade launcher.

I kinda figured guns were more like magic missile.  So much so that in a magitek fantasy setting I threw together once there was a weapons manufacturer that produced semi-auto rifles that were enchanted in such a way that they would fire a single magic missile(caster level 1) for each pull of the trigger.

The aiming was treated like a ranged touch though (gun had to be pointed at a valid magic missile target to actually fire or it would jam) so it kinda lost the always hit the target fun of an actual mage casting magic missile.

Just teach the hogwarts mages like that.  You pull this switch here and whatever you point it at gets magi missiled.  Who needs explaining how it works, say it's magic and I'm sure they'd pick it right up.

[Sergius]

There's this movie, Chronicle, that's about 3 boy that get superpowers from a meteor. It's filmed in "found footage" style, sorta. Gonna spoilerify the rest.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

(It's not really "found" footage since there's one boy remaining).

Anyway, near the end, one of the guys is all crazy and stuff and making mayhem in a hospital robe, the other guy (the "hero") is trying to reason with him to stop him, and there's cops everywhere. They're completely surrounded, the "bad guy" is basically a wreck, barely standing, but keeps pushing and shoving cars around with telekinesis. In the end, the hero gives up and impales him with a statue.

Thing is, at no point in this scene is either of the guys invincible! They're just there whining and shoving cars and cops and the cops are like "stop or we'll SHOOT!" "we really mean it!" "ok, for real this time, you propel one more cop thru the air and you're done!" "last chance!". The bad guy is just lashing out stupidly, the cops just keep moving around creating a "perimeter". This annoys me to no end. Neither of the "super" guys showed any ability to deflect bullets and even if they could the baddie isn't exactly super-Neo at this moment, he's barely conscious and stumbling.

Huh O_o I remember this one.
Though I vaguely remember how the cops acted in the last scene--there were bullet fire, I remember, and what I recall is the 'bad' guy repelled them or halted their weaponry/bullets.

You can see the whole scene here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4m7z7HGZY9M

There's a grand total of one bullet fired from a regular police handgun, which good guy catches (catching it actually injures his hand so).

This is because the good guy said he surrendered and had his hands in the air and asked them not to shoot, which apparently cops find very suspicious and demands swift and lethal action.

Then later they fly to a plaza where bad guy has 500 laser sights pointed at him by SWAT, who are known for their measured and cool headed response and completely incapable of escalating any situation. They order him to stand down, which he interprets as asking him to flail his arms menacingly and scream at them for a good 30 seconds, stumbling all over the place (maybe he thinks the lasers are a spotlight and he's supposed to do some interpretative dance for them?). So they shout at him some more to stand down (I'm sure at this point a few of them are thinking "maybe if we say please?")

Then he shoves a couple of cars and SWAT cops (one cop even manages to keep his rifle aimed at him the entire time he's flying backwards). Then a police helicopter shines a light at him for another minute without actually trying to stop him or anything, while he keeps screaming and attacking camera lenses, apparently.

[Neonivek]

Gonna add the song "A little bit of a Fixer Upper" from Frozen

Honestly there is a lot in the movie that bugs me, but they are things I could live with...

But that song... HOLY COW that song!

Not only is it a dumb forced romance song in a movie about NATURALLY PROGRESSING RELATIONSHIPS! But HOLY goodness... a song about looking past someone's terrible qualities by focusing on their terrible qualities and saying they are a fixer upper... and then that stupid throw away line about "how you can't really change people" DEAR GOODNESS MOVIE! I've never heard a more trite "no our song isn't bad... see we had a line saying how our lyrics mean something else completely RIGHT NEAR THE END!".

AHHHH!

[ChairmanPoo]

Just be glad Voldemort didn't buy a nuke with alchemized gold to blast Hogwarts off the face of the planet.

Relevant: http://twistedspeedo.com/?p=753