Dithering--about Spoilers and BOS
Spoiler Policy on Deathly Hallows
For the record, since many have been posting on the subject, I won’t do any spoilers in titles of posts or within a post except under a LJ cut until at least mid-August.
I thought I wanted to know ASAP. I did join shiv5468’s community dh_oh_shit. (Shiv has said she’ll be getting the book on midnight GMT time the day of release, will start reading with the last chapter and blogging as she goes, so if you want to be spoiled-go there.) However, today I just saw a post on a LJ community purporting to be a spoiler posted without a LJ cut and I was shaking mad. Please don’t do that! After that I found I’m not so sure I want to be spoiled after all.
After a couple weeks into August however, I think it’s ridiculous to have a spoiler policy. As others have said, this is fandom-we’re all supposed to be more obsessed than that. Asking for no spoilers for more than a month imo is ridiculous.
Predictions
1. Snape will die saving Harry-he is a white hat and acted under Dumbledore’s orders. The other character to die in the final confrontation will be Voldemort. Duh!
2. The Trio will survive and Rowling will give us a Happy-Ever-After Shipping ending where Harry/Ginny’s and Ron/Hermione’s brats are sorted into Houses-just watch. I think Draco is safe-I just do. I have a feeling Lucius will survive too.
3. My understanding is not that Rowling said only two characters would die, but two in the final confrontation. So others on both sides are on the chopping board. I think certainly Bella or Peter if anyone on the DE side. And if I were a betting woman, I’d predict a Weasley brother-Not-Ron. Other very possible casualties imo are Remus, Neville, Hagrid. JKR supposedly cried as she was writing one of the last chapters (but not the very last-so I don’t think the tears were because she had come to the end of her journey). I just don’t see her crying for Snape. So I think it has to be one of the three above.
4. Dumbledore really is dead-but he, and Sirius-will find some way to communicate beyond the veil whether via portrait or other means.
Alternate Endings
Oh, and about BOS-you know, that WIP Book of Shadows I love to whinge about you (and I) all wish I’d finish so I’d shut up? Well, in a new wrinkle, I’m dithering over two different chapter endings and can’t make up my mind and my betas are split so yeah, this decision is completely mine-and the chapter is with the Britpicker and I’m still not sure. But I sent her the longer version and the alternate ending is just a cut and rearrangement of some words.
Ending A:
1) Is longer and I rather liked what I wrote, and in some ways think it makes the more moving chapter closer.
2) In some ways the original suits the characters better as I see them-at least as written in my story.
3) I like what it says not just in the implications for the main relationship but that between two other characters.
Ending B
1) This may very well be the braver, more honest place to leave the chapter. I worry that if I choose the other, it’s because it’s the lazier thing to do, and I’m too attached to my own prose. There’s an argument that most people not-Hermione wouldn’t act the way I’m having her do. And something in Ending A does strike me as perhaps too glib.
2) It fits the title chapter title beautifully.
3) I didn’t want the characters at the point I’m leaving them in Ending A so quickly anyway.
4) This take balances the earlier chapter well.
5) It makes a good cliffhanger in its way.
6) There’s a fitting be-careful-what-you-wish-for irony to it.
7) Part of what makes the Ending A arguably implausible isn’t so much the act-but that we didn’t get to see Hermione’s thinking process-if I break earlier as in Ending B-I can still write the scene where Hermione comes to terms in the next chapter from Hermione's POV-a scene which in Ending A is off scene.
I’ve never dithered so much about a writing decision. I’ve kept going back and forth and still am not sure what to do. Which is why I figure I’d post on it. Even if no one comments, or no comments help me decide, just writing down the pros and cons might help-eventually.
And then part of me asks why I even care when it’s quite possible that after DH I won’t have the heart to read or write in the ship anymore?