Harry Potter

Top 5 Science Fiction and Fantasy Foods that Sound Good Enough to Eat

May 10, 2013 by • Life at Warp 10, Marcy's Blog • Tags: , , , , , • 18 Comments

 

Turkish Delight C.S. Lewis The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe

By Marcy Kennedy (@MarcyKennedy)

One of the things I love most is when the creator of another world makes me crave a food or drink that doesn’t exist. For fun, I thought I’d make a list of the top 5 I’m desperate to try.

Klingon Raktajino from Star Trek

My husband frequently jokes that he’s going to buy me a shirt that reads “Instant human. Just add coffee.” So, as you might imagine, a coffee was going to make this list.

Raktajino is a strong, dark coffee introduced to Federation citizens by the Klingons. Barely an episode of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine goes by when someone doesn’t order one. I’ll take mine extra sweet, thank you.

Butterbeer from J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter Series

I want to go to the Wizarding World of Harry Potter at Universal Studios in Orlando just so I can try a butterbeer. Based on the Harry Potter movies, it looks thick and creamy, and it’s topped with foam. I’ve heard talk that it tastes like butterscotch.

EAT ME Cakes and DRINK ME Bottles from Lewis Carol’s Alice in Wonderland

I’d only want to try these in a controlled environment (after all, I don’t want to be eaten by my own cats or crash through the roof of my house), but it’d be a lot of fun to be giant or tiny for a little while.

Turkish Delights from C.S. Lewis’s The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe

Turkish Delights exist in our world. They’re basically flavored gelatin coated in powdered sugar or covered in chocolate. They’re a bit like a giant jelly bean center really.

The Turkish Delights in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe are enchanted so that once you eat one, you desperately want another and will keep eating them until someone stops you or you die. I don’t like that aspect of it, but my theory is that means they’re the most delicious thing you’ve ever tasted. I’d just need to make sure to eat them with someone trustworthy around to stop me.

Fizzy Lifting Drinks from Roald Dahl’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

I read all Roald Dahl’s books multiple times as a kid. While I would also love to drink from the chocolate river and try the gum that tastes like a whole meal (as long as I didn’t end up as a giant blueberry), the treat that appealed to me most were the drinks that would make you float. I’ve always wanted to fly 🙂

Your turn—what imaginary food or drink would you love to try?

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What Skill Do You Wish You Had?

February 8, 2013 by • Life at Warp 10, Marcy's Blog • Tags: , , , , • 15 Comments

I’m in awe of skilled musicians. Because I play the flute myself (and a few other instruments), I know how long it takes to become even quasi-proficient.

For this month’s fantasy music feature, I wanted to share the Harry Potter theme played by Jarrod Radnich of The Piano Guys. Watch his fingers.

What’s your favorite movie soundtrack? And what skill are you in awe of?

What’s the Point of Fairy Tales?

May 11, 2012 by • Behind the Scenes • Tags: , , , , , , , , , • 22 Comments

Tales of Beedle the Bard fairy tales from Harry PotterLast weekend I sat down with a long-awaited treat—The Tales of Beedle the Bard. If you’ve read Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows or watched the movie, then you’ll recognize The Tales of Beedle the Bard as the book of wizarding-world fairy tales containing “The Tale of the Three Brothers” (who owned the Deathly Hallows).

Before I tell you what I thought of the book, I think we have to answer one essential question. What’s the point of fairy tales?

Like all stories, fairy tales are meant to entertain, but that’s secondary. Unlike today’s novels, their main purpose is to give a moral in a way the audience will remember. They exist to teach a clear lesson.

In this, the stories in The Tales of Beedle the Bard only partially succeed.

I can hear the argument now. Yes, but The Tales of Beedle the Bard are supposed to be fairy tales for wizarding children, not Muggles. People can’t actually perform magic, so you can’t expect a moral for us.

Paranormal romance author Kait Nolan (who I interviewed last year on her YA fairy tale reboot Red) pointed out in her excellent “What Makes a Fairy Tale?” post that what sets fairy tales apart is that magic or some kind of enchantment is basically required as part of the story. That magic doesn’t lessen the need for a universal truth. “Variations of the same stories can be heard all over the world,” Kait wrote, “because they spark something in our imaginations and hearts, such that we’re still telling stories that originated hundreds of years ago.”

Magic, enchantments, and witches show up all the time in fairy tales. The Tales of Beedle the Bard aren’t unique in that way. And they’re not exempt from needing to teach a lesson to anyone who reads them.

Okay, you might say, but The Tales of Beedle the Bard are just supposed to be something fun and extra for people who loved the Harry Potter books.

I’m a huge Harry Potter fan. (Don’t believe me? I ate Bertie Bott’s Every Flavor Beans.)

Part of what made the Harry Potter series popular was we could still relate to the stories even though we couldn’t perform magic and would never need to fight a dark wizard. The stories and characters transcended the details of the magical world to tell a story of a boy who longed for a family that loved him, who just wanted to fit in, who struggled to figure out the line between right and wrong, and who learned that some things are worth fighting and dying for. You don’t need to be a witch or wizard to relate.

The lessons in Harry Potter, while secondary to an entertaining story, are what made it so loved by people who wouldn’t otherwise read a fantasy. It’s also what makes them re-readable.

If you didn’t like the Harry Potter books, The Tales of Beedle the Bard aren’t worth reading.

For those of you who are curious, here are the five tales in the book.

The Wizard and the Hopping Pot

A wizard refuses to use his magic to help the local Muggles. His cooking pot starts to hop, sprout warts, cry, and otherwise show the wizard that the people he refused were suffering. Eventually he gives in, and once he helps, the pot returns to normal. The wizard moral seems to be that wizards should help Muggles. I guess we could really stretch this to the Muggle moral of “we should help those less fortunate than ourselves.”

The Fountain of Fair Fortune

Three witches and a knight overcome obstacles to try to bathe in the Fountain of Fair Fortune, which is supposed to give good fortune to one person per year. They get through the obstacles based on luck and, in the end, none of the three witches need to go in because their problems are already solved. The knight goes in and, made brave, proposes marriage to one of the witches. They all leave happy, and “none of them ever knew or suspected that the Fountain’s waters carried no enchantment at all” (35). The moral would likely be that we make our own good fortune in life, but the fact that a lot of things in the story happen due to luck rather than skill or hard work actually dilutes this moral.

The Warlock’s Hairy Heart

A wizard thinks people act foolishly when they fall in love, so he takes his heart from his chest and locks it away. Left in isolation, it grows withered, dark, and hairy like a beast. When he finally takes it out again, he ends up killing a maiden and cutting out her heart because he wants to replace his with hers. The wizard moral is that even magic can’t make you invulnerable to every physical, mental, and emotional pain. The Muggle moral could perhaps be that, if we don’t open ourselves up to love, we shrivel and become savage?

Babbitty Rabbitty and Her Cackling Stump

A king wants to be the only one in the kingdom to possess magic, so he gives an order to hunt down all magical folk. An old witch tricks him into rescinding this order. Honestly, while this is a cute story, I can’t figure out what the moral for magical children would be. As for the moral for us non-magic folk…“don’t lie” is the best I can come up with, but it doesn’t entirely fit the story.

The Tale of the Three Brothers

Three brothers cheat death by building a magical bridge over a dangerous river. Death gives them each a wish. The aggressive first brother wants an unbeatable wand. The arrogant second brother wants a stone that will bring the dead back to life. The wise third brother wants to remain unseen by Death. The first and second brothers end up dead because of their wishes. The third brother meets Death as an equal once he’s old. The moral for magic folk and Muggles alike is that death is inevitable. The best you can hope for is to postpone it until you are old and live a full life. This is the best of the fairy tales in the book, and the only one that I think works perfectly.

Do you think I’m wrong about the purpose of a fairy tale? If you’ve read The Tales of Beedle the Bard, am I being too harsh?

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Grab Bag of Links (March 3)

March 3, 2012 by • Grab Bag • Tags: , , , , , , , , • 5 Comments

Go ahead. Reach your hand in and grab some word candy. You know you want to 🙂

For Fantasy and Science Fiction Lovers

Why Luna Lovegood Should Have Been Harry Potter’s Girlfriend by Ellie Ann on Slacker Heroes – I’ve never been a fan of the Harry-Ginny pairing. I always thought Harry and Hermione should have ended up together, but I have to admit that Ellie makes a really good case for Luna being the perfect match for Harry.

What Buffy the Vampire Slayer Taught Me by Julie Glover – Even if you don’t like fantasy, this post has some great insights.

The Castle of Vlad Dracula “The Impaler” by Debra Kristi – The real story behind the rise of the vampire myths is creepy and doesn’t sparkle.

The Meaning of Life

Playing to Your Strengths by Jenny Hansen on Gene Lempp’s blog – Why is it that we spend so much time trying to fix our weaknesses? Wouldn’t we be better off focusing on our strengths?

My Best Relationship Was In Third Grade by Emma Burcart – Excellent relationship lessons no matter your age.

For Writers

Leaping Smart: Useful Steps for Authors by August McLaughlin – Common sense is an uncommon virtue sometimes, which makes me grateful for the posts full of wisdom and common sense August routinely writes.

6 Simple Steps for Customizing Your Facebook Timeline by Laura Christianson – If you’re like me, you hope Facebook stops making so many changes. In the meantime, here’s a quick tutorial to help you get set up on the new timeline.

The Visceral Connect by Rachel Marks on Speculative Faith – Keys for making your readers feel the emotions your characters are feeling.

Jane Friedman’s Secret to Battling Procrastination – Time is a limited commodity. Jane Friedman has some good advice for making the most of it.

Do you have a favorite link you’d like to nominate for my next grab bag?

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Did I Eat All The Bertie Bott’s Beans Flavors?

December 15, 2011 by • Behind the Scenes, Life at Warp 10 • Tags: , , , , , , • 39 Comments

Earlier this week, in my Behind the Scenes post on Bertie Bott’s Every Flavor Beans, I let you vote on whether you wanted to know how my box of Every Flavor Beans tasted and whether I ate them all—even the vomit-, booger-, and rotten egg-flavored ones. Since I received a resounding “yes” . . .

After arranging our beans in the order we each planned to eat them (we ended up being opposite), my husband and I used a round of rock-paper-scissors to decide who’d eat the first bean. I lost.

Until I chewed, I honestly believed those little Jelly Bellies were going to taste good and be awful in name only. I was wrong. Oh so wrong.

“How was it?” my husband asked.

I swallowed and turned pleading eyes to him. “It tastes just like sweet grass.”

The black pepper tasted just like black pepper, the soap like when you get shampoo in your mouth in the shower. The earwax, despite its name, tasted like the wax lips I used to have as a kid at Halloween.

Overall, none of them were that terrible, but I knew from my husband’s reaction that the worst was yet to come.

The dirt bean came next and tasted like wet bark and mud (please don’t ask how I know what that tastes like). The sausage? Well, let’s just say meat and jelly beans should never go together.

And then all I had left was the earthworm, the vomit, the booger, and the rotten egg.

Earthworm apparently tastes like raw, moldy beets.

I’d be lying if I said that by the time I finished the earthworm bean I didn’t consider simply swallowing the vomit, booger, and rotten egg beans whole like pills. Then I could honestly say I’d eaten them, but I wouldn’t have had to taste them. Except that would have been cheating. So I chewed that vomit bean.

And I’m sad to report it reminded me exactly of the taste you get in your mouth when you almost throw up.

I looked at my husband, who only had black pepper, soap, and grass left (and who was smirking at me).

“Someone had to taste test these,” I said. “Can you imagine?”

“I hope they got hazard pay.” He popped soap into his mouth. “You’re up again.”

His plan of eating the terrible ones first suddenly looked brilliant.

I stared down my booger bean, and it stared back at me in all its mocking greenness, looking innocently like what I’d come to expect a juicy pear Jelly Belly to look like.

And I chewed and I swallowed. And then, in between chugging down a Diet Pepsi to try to purge my taste buds, I asked my OCD husband (who insists on even numbers of everything), “Are you really going to eat two of these?”

He shook his head. “My OCD can go to h*ll.”

And I forgave him the mild profanity because that’s exactly where the booger bean belonged.

Only one bean now stood between me and being able to claim the distinction of having eaten every awful Bertie Bott’s Every Flavor Beans flavor that came in our boxes—rotten egg.

For the love of all things good, if you do buy a box of Bertie Bott’s Beans, do not eat this flavor. I tried. I really did. But this is like the Death Star of jelly beans. I couldn’t manage to get it down.

Not only could I not get it down, I spent a couple minutes gagging over our kitchen sink while my husband laughed.

To think I once thought cinnamon jelly beans were as bad as it got. I can safely say that we won’t be buying Bertie Bott’s Every Flavor Beans again. At the same time, it was the most we’d laughed in weeks, and for that alone, it was worth it. Next time, though, I think I’ll stick to chocolate frogs.

If you still want to try these or if you’re throwing a Harry Potter-themed party, you can buy them from Jelly Belly or from Amazon.com. (My apologies to my Canadian readers. As far as I know, you can’t get them in Canada.)

If you want to go even farther behind the scenes, Jelly Belly also sells Bean Boozled, where flavors like chocolate pudding and canned dog food look identical. You won’t know what you’re eating until you chew.

Is there a flavor of jelly bean that you would absolutely refuse to try?

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Behind the Scenes: Bertie Bott’s Every Flavor Beans

December 12, 2011 by • Behind the Scenes • Tags: , , , , , • 26 Comments

[Harry] finally tore his eyes away from the druidess Cliodna, who was scratching her nose, to open a bag of Bertie Bott’s Every Flavor Beans.

“You want to be careful with those,” Ron warned Harry. “When they say every flavor, they mean every flavor—you know, you get all the ordinary ones like chocolate and peppermint and marmalade, but then you get spinach and liver and tripe. George reckons he had a booger-flavored one once.”

—J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, pg. 103-104

My husband and I found them while on a quest for jelly belly jelly beans—Bertie Bott’s Every Flavor Beans.

As huge fans of the Harry Potter books and movies, we couldn’t resist. Since any jelly beans we bought were going to be part of my mother-in-law’s early Christmas gift to us, we each got ourselves two of the palm-sized boxes.  

On the drive back to our hotel, I pulled a box from my bag and started reading the flavors. All the ordinary ones were listed—banana, blueberry, candy floss, cherry, green apple, marshmallow, lemon, tutti-frutti, and watermelon.

But the box also held some of the strange flavors like earwax, black pepper, and yes, even booger, that the Bertie Bott’s Every Flavor Beans in the books are so famous for. I read them out to my husband.

“You don’t think they actually taste . . . bad, do you?” I asked. “Who would ever buy them a second time if they really do taste like dirt or rotten eggs?”

My husband, Harry Potter expert that he is, argued that maybe they would taste just as terrible as in the books. After all, not knowing what flavor you’re going to get, whether it will be delicious or disgusting, is part of the appeal of Bertie Bott’s Every Flavor Beans.

Maybe if I was a 10-year-old boy, I’d agree with him. I can still remember being ten years old and being tricked into eating a sour gumball a boy in my class promised was coated in sugar. He laughed hysterically at my puckered face.

But I’m not a 10-year-old boy, and the mere thought of eating jelly beans that might really taste like earthworm or soap made my stomach turn.

I decided I’d start with the dirt-flavored Bertie Bott’s bean, and if it wasn’t too terrible, I’d move on to the sausage, working my way through the flavors.  

As we divvied up our boxes to make sure we each got to taste every flavor, the question became, if the dirt bean tasted like dirt, would I throw myself on the altar of providing the full story and try every one? Would I even try the vomit-flavored one?

But I thought I’d take a vote to find out if you’d like to know whether they taste good or bad 🙂 Send out a tweet, @ me in a Google+ post, or comment to let me know your vote.

Yes = Please tell us if the dirt bean really tasted like dirt, and if you ate the vomit, booger, and rotten egg beans anyway.

No = I’d rather not know.

If Bertie Bott’s Every Flavor Beans really did taste like every flavor, would you still try them? And would you like to know if they taste good or bad?

The answer to the question Did I Eat All the Bertie Bott’s Flavors? is now posted!

 

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December 10 Grab Bag

December 10, 2011 by • Grab Bag • Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , • 10 Comments

I used to love candy grab bags growing up. You never knew what goodies were going to be inside, but you knew they were going to be good. Like the posts you can find at these links . . .

For Writers

5 Types of Platform and Which Is Right for You? – Jeff Goins explains five different “voices” or “tones” your platform can take and what personality types are best suited for each.

When Grammar Elements Go Out Drinking – The ladies at Edittorent made me laugh out loud. If you don’t get the joke, make sure you hire an editor before trying to publish your book.

Is Your Novel a Spineless Weakling? – A story can succeed or fail based on the antagonist. Yet another great post from Kristen Lamb on how to make sure your novel has the backbone it needs to survive. 

For Speculative Fiction and Fantasy Lovers

Rules to Survive a Horror Movie – You’ll be chuckling and nodding your head over these tips by Liz Schulte on how to survive if you ever find yourself in a horror movie. Many thanks to Jessica O’Neal for hosting this guest post. And because no horror movie is complete without a sequel, go by Liz Schulte’s Bat Country for How to Survive a Horror Movie Part 2.

The Characters of Harry Potter: Neville – The latest instalment in Jessica O’Neal’s series on the characters of Harry Potter doesn’t disappoint as she tackles one of my favorites. Neville’s innate humility and surprising bravery immediately drew me to him. Find out why else Jess thinks he’s one of the most well-developed characters in the books.

The Hunger Games: Team Peeta vs. Team Gale – Jess Witkins’ Happiness Project pits the two men in Katniss Everdeen’s life against each other. While I didn’t care about Twilight and picking sides, I’m Team Peeta all the way in this one.

The Meaning of Life

Confessions of a Hoarder – On her blog Of Martians and Marshmallows, Lynette M. Burrows comes clean on her personal hoarding obsession. It’ll make you take a fresh look at your own house.

Learning to #EpicFail . . . with Style – Kristen Lamb shares how failure can actually be a good thing if we learn how to use it to our advantage.

The Grinch Is Pregnant -The never-disappointing Myndi Shafer makes an extraordinarily good case that The Grinch is actually pregnant. Yes, even though he’s a boy.

From My Co-Writer Lisa Hall-Wilson at Through the Fire

Why I Hate Christmas – Not everyone loves Christmas and sometimes that’s okay. What matters is what you do with it.

Mermaids Off the Port Bow – Could the myths about mermaids have originated from a real society?

“It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat.” — Theodore Roosevelt

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