HBP II: Still Not Done, but I've skimmed it.
Dude, obviously someone in England had a penny sale on elipses.
I remember Horcruxes! Back in 2002, I wrote my IB extended essay on The Picture of Dorian Gray, and a great deal of it was centred on "the dangers of the bourgeois habit of separating body and soul" and how "the separation between Dorian's body and his soul [...] makes him unnatural." :D Actual quotes, man!
OK, so, on the one hand, I do understand getting the Horcruxes: any means necessary for immortality, you know? If I believed there were any way On the other hand, dude. Why didn't he test the multiple Horcrux theory on a few of his Death Eaters first? Just to see if they suffered any ill effects? For example, massive onset of stupidity. Tom Riddle was pretty sharp (although obviously lacking taste, given that he chose the name 'Voldemort' and went out of his way to be obvious about shows of power and sucking up). Current-day Voldemort has a serious competence problem. I mean, there's a point where you can no longer blame your underlings, man, and he passed it long ago. I'm guessing, then, that splitting a soul means, in some way, that one's splitting one's intelligence as well. (At which point I think: in your years of travel, V, you should have searched out Orochimaru. He seems to be handling this immortality thing pretty well so far. But I'd back it up with a single soul split, just in case there's not a suitable, ready body to jump into.)
BTW, how is Tom so universally well-regarded, especially by teachers (who aren't Dumbledore), when he has a gang & there are hints (although no proof) that nasty things happen to those who oppose him? It's his pretty face, isn't it?
On the non-romance Harry front: again, WTF! Using spells without any idea what they do? (One would expect that Harry would at least have checked a Latin dictionary for a clue about a new spell before using it, but it is Harry.) And Unforgivables? I hope Hermione and Ron will actually function as restraining influences next book; they were kind of pathetic (and dead wrong in every way that counts) in this one. They didn't even do well as emotional support. I'm beginning to worry, though; nearly everyone in the WW seems to grow into his worst qualities as he ages, as though the whole House system were formed to allow kids to develop their extreme traits even further. Ron doesn't seem to be much the "heart" of the trio I've seen him touted as in fandom before; he's become really quite nasty, and I'm not sure how long I've failed to notice that, and he's always been petty and jealous. Hermione continues with her need to be better and always right--although she's less often right these days--and she's just as disapproving & spirit-dampening as always, but has grown into her hypocrisy ("No running in the halls! ...but I can interfere with Quidditch trials, because that Cormac isn't Ron a very nice boy anyway"). Harry gets moodier and more arrogant & secretive & self-involved as the years pass, and I'm not noticing much compassion or concern for people who aren't directly part of his group, the brief Malfoy-pitying aside. And although he really hates when people don't tell him absolutely everything, he doesn't hesitate to lie and try to trick people to benefit himself and make his life easier. What's come of Ron's strategic mind, and Hermione's upright intelligence, and Harry's... uh... not being an ass? Maybe I'm just in a negative mood; I should skim the book again trying to see them all in a positive light, to see how they're grown into their good qualities, too.
:/! I would have much preferred Tonks/Sirius to Tonks/Remus. Flamboyance, even pathetic flamboyance, is always better than that dusty defeated air Remus infects the air around him with. I would rather see Tonks/Draco--actually, now that I say that, I do want to see that, so that's maybe a bad example. Anyone, really, is better than Remus. Anyway, all of his protestations read a little like "Oh man, how do I wriggle out of this without coming straight out and saying that I'm not at all attracted to my friend?" I hope the hand-holding scene was there to show that they've come to some agreement and are now friendly again, but not dating. (I won't protest Hermione/Ron, though; it's barely there, and I saw it coming from miles away. Even if the execution leaves something to be desired.)
But overall, I'm actually a little disappointed by the behaviour of nearly every female character. (Not so much by people like Narcissa, Bellatrix, Rosmerta, McGonagall, Sprout, even Fleur. But all the rest...!) Did Rowling ever have female friends, or was she always sort of contemptuous of girls and the way she assumes they behave?
The weirdest thing--just now, I read something about how some people think that Snape has been revealed in HBP to be evil all along.
...what? Did I totally read this book wrong? It never even occurred to me that that was a possibility. I mean, I know Harry believes it, because he's believed it since the beginning. I know Harry's friends and the adults in the Order believe it by the end, because the only one with the whole story is Harry--all anyone else knows is that Snape killed Dumbledore.
But we got the whole story. Unlike his Death Eater friends, we know that he's a double agent; of course he would act as though he were totally for Voldemort in their presence, because he doesn't want to DIE. (I figured that chapter two was there to show that Snape & Peter are watching one another, that Narcissa cares about her family and Voldemort is pushing it there, that Bellatrix is actually pretty sharp, and that not everyone believes that Snape is totally loyal--not that Snape was evil.) We got the bit where Dumbledore gets Harry to help him drink that potion, sobbing and pleading for Harry not to make him drink any more, and ends up so weak that Harry has to get them back to Hogwarts. We get the part where Dumbledore and Draco explain things to one another, and the part where he's having trouble keeping himself upright. We know that Dumbledore knows two things: he's in really bad shape from the potion he made Harry feed him, and Draco has to kill him or lose his parents & die. (And, actually, does he know that Snape is bound by the Unbreakable Vow to help Draco? I somewhat remember that coming up, but could just be imagining it.)
So, you know, he could have been pleading for Snape to show him mercy. But it's far more likely that he's pleading for Snape to take the responsibility of his (inevitable) death away from either of those young boys, and knows: Snape will do it, Snape can benefit from it, Draco will thus have someone on the right side looking out for him in Voldemort's ranks, Harry will be fired up for the fight more than disheartened as he might be if Dumbledore died after a drawn-out weakness brought on by the potion he fed him. I do think that Dumbledore has a good reason for being sure of Snape; he's never wavered in his belief. You don't believe like that for no reason.
And Snape is less mean towards Harry as he runs away than he is in class, man. He's running away from Hogwarts and his role as Dumbledore's man, and not only does he refrain from killing Harry or letting anyone else kill him--he's Voldemort's, he says, and how can you argue with that?--he doesn't even throw hexes back at him. He just stops Harry from hexing him or Draco. His aura of evil overwhelms me. :D It kind of baffles me that anyone could have read it as "evil all along", and I'll be very surprised if Snape does turn out to be evil.*
*However, this won't necessarily stop me from enjoying the last book. I'll be a little disappointed and will have to read the series again to see if there were clues I missed and whether Harry ever actually gets the chance to be substantially wrong, but it's not on the level of, say, Percy returning to the Burrow with apologies for his behaviour and no expectation of the same from his family. (Since when do you have to apologise for being a dick to your family, anyway? Fred & George never seem to have to, and it's not really a big thing outside of books, either.)
Ahhh Percy...! :/ I will probably never forgive Arthur for his behaviour regarding Percy; he's immature in so many ways, but this is the one example of it that I can't wave away. It is so easy to completely crush your kid's self-esteem, especially when they're as outward-looking and apparently fragile as Percy is. Arthur either doesn't have a clue how important a parent's approval is, or he doesn't care. (I am sensitive and unable to compromise about this. I cannot in any way sympathise with parents' cutting down their kids or dismissing their accomplishments; it's one of the things that sends straight to my gut immediate twinges of anger that I can't reason away. This is one of the issues that consistently and strongly affects me, even in literature; I don't really understand why, but there it is.)
It's obvious that Molly, for one, loves Percy, but her love is kind of smothering & scary. If I were Percy, I wouldn't contemplate going back to the Burrow, either, when what you have waiting is Molly's stifling brand of love and six unfriendly faces (Arthur, who tries to be sure that Percy knows that he couldn't possibly have risen in the Ministry due to merit; the twins, who have always played cruel jokes on anyone in reach, but seem to find particular pleasure in getting to him; Ron, who would "feel better" if he could punch Percy for the crime of... showing up at Dumbledore's funeral in the Minister's entourage; Ginny, who just generally seems to resent him probably because he got out before she could; and Harry, who's more a member of the family already than it looks like Percy ever was)--the reasonable sons, of course, are already mostly absent.
(I do wonder if the problem is just that WW values are very, very different from ours. Although it does bring to mind those Funniest Home Video shows, which I never found funny: I can't laugh at people nearly breaking their necks on camera, when it's not fictional. I suspect I'd be very unpopular in the WW. I mean, everyone raised in the WW seems to take the Marauders' bullying & the twins' bullying in stride, and actually think it's pretty funny--or at least not serious--until it actually nearly causes a death. Percy's biggest crime seems to be that he's uptight and "overly" hard-working, like Hermione, and that he doesn't seem to have a sense of humour. It seems odd to me that Ron and Ginny like the twins much more than they like Percy, when Percy shows concern for them--actually noticing that something was wrong with Ginny during CoS, as an example--and the twins play hugely dangerous and scarring pranks on them, like Ron's spider thing and the Unbreakable Vow they tried to force him into. No one in the books seems to find it strange at all, though--in their minds, of course Ginny and Ron would like the twins more, because they're cool and successful, and Percy is a sycophantic prat.)
---
Wrote a little AU Death Note fic here, although it was more an exercise in characterisation and an idea about memory & the death notes than anything else. (I would never have expected L to be the first one of them I'd write about.)
I remember Horcruxes! Back in 2002, I wrote my IB extended essay on The Picture of Dorian Gray, and a great deal of it was centred on "the dangers of the bourgeois habit of separating body and soul" and how "the separation between Dorian's body and his soul [...] makes him unnatural." :D Actual quotes, man!
OK, so, on the one hand, I do understand getting the Horcruxes: any means necessary for immortality, you know? If I believed there were any way On the other hand, dude. Why didn't he test the multiple Horcrux theory on a few of his Death Eaters first? Just to see if they suffered any ill effects? For example, massive onset of stupidity. Tom Riddle was pretty sharp (although obviously lacking taste, given that he chose the name 'Voldemort' and went out of his way to be obvious about shows of power and sucking up). Current-day Voldemort has a serious competence problem. I mean, there's a point where you can no longer blame your underlings, man, and he passed it long ago. I'm guessing, then, that splitting a soul means, in some way, that one's splitting one's intelligence as well. (At which point I think: in your years of travel, V, you should have searched out Orochimaru. He seems to be handling this immortality thing pretty well so far. But I'd back it up with a single soul split, just in case there's not a suitable, ready body to jump into.)
BTW, how is Tom so universally well-regarded, especially by teachers (who aren't Dumbledore), when he has a gang & there are hints (although no proof) that nasty things happen to those who oppose him? It's his pretty face, isn't it?
On the non-romance Harry front: again, WTF! Using spells without any idea what they do? (One would expect that Harry would at least have checked a Latin dictionary for a clue about a new spell before using it, but it is Harry.) And Unforgivables? I hope Hermione and Ron will actually function as restraining influences next book; they were kind of pathetic (and dead wrong in every way that counts) in this one. They didn't even do well as emotional support. I'm beginning to worry, though; nearly everyone in the WW seems to grow into his worst qualities as he ages, as though the whole House system were formed to allow kids to develop their extreme traits even further. Ron doesn't seem to be much the "heart" of the trio I've seen him touted as in fandom before; he's become really quite nasty, and I'm not sure how long I've failed to notice that, and he's always been petty and jealous. Hermione continues with her need to be better and always right--although she's less often right these days--and she's just as disapproving & spirit-dampening as always, but has grown into her hypocrisy ("No running in the halls! ...but I can interfere with Quidditch trials, because that Cormac isn't Ron a very nice boy anyway"). Harry gets moodier and more arrogant & secretive & self-involved as the years pass, and I'm not noticing much compassion or concern for people who aren't directly part of his group, the brief Malfoy-pitying aside. And although he really hates when people don't tell him absolutely everything, he doesn't hesitate to lie and try to trick people to benefit himself and make his life easier. What's come of Ron's strategic mind, and Hermione's upright intelligence, and Harry's... uh... not being an ass? Maybe I'm just in a negative mood; I should skim the book again trying to see them all in a positive light, to see how they're grown into their good qualities, too.
:/! I would have much preferred Tonks/Sirius to Tonks/Remus. Flamboyance, even pathetic flamboyance, is always better than that dusty defeated air Remus infects the air around him with. I would rather see Tonks/Draco--actually, now that I say that, I do want to see that, so that's maybe a bad example. Anyone, really, is better than Remus. Anyway, all of his protestations read a little like "Oh man, how do I wriggle out of this without coming straight out and saying that I'm not at all attracted to my friend?" I hope the hand-holding scene was there to show that they've come to some agreement and are now friendly again, but not dating. (I won't protest Hermione/Ron, though; it's barely there, and I saw it coming from miles away. Even if the execution leaves something to be desired.)
But overall, I'm actually a little disappointed by the behaviour of nearly every female character. (Not so much by people like Narcissa, Bellatrix, Rosmerta, McGonagall, Sprout, even Fleur. But all the rest...!) Did Rowling ever have female friends, or was she always sort of contemptuous of girls and the way she assumes they behave?
The weirdest thing--just now, I read something about how some people think that Snape has been revealed in HBP to be evil all along.
...what? Did I totally read this book wrong? It never even occurred to me that that was a possibility. I mean, I know Harry believes it, because he's believed it since the beginning. I know Harry's friends and the adults in the Order believe it by the end, because the only one with the whole story is Harry--all anyone else knows is that Snape killed Dumbledore.
But we got the whole story. Unlike his Death Eater friends, we know that he's a double agent; of course he would act as though he were totally for Voldemort in their presence, because he doesn't want to DIE. (I figured that chapter two was there to show that Snape & Peter are watching one another, that Narcissa cares about her family and Voldemort is pushing it there, that Bellatrix is actually pretty sharp, and that not everyone believes that Snape is totally loyal--not that Snape was evil.) We got the bit where Dumbledore gets Harry to help him drink that potion, sobbing and pleading for Harry not to make him drink any more, and ends up so weak that Harry has to get them back to Hogwarts. We get the part where Dumbledore and Draco explain things to one another, and the part where he's having trouble keeping himself upright. We know that Dumbledore knows two things: he's in really bad shape from the potion he made Harry feed him, and Draco has to kill him or lose his parents & die. (And, actually, does he know that Snape is bound by the Unbreakable Vow to help Draco? I somewhat remember that coming up, but could just be imagining it.)
So, you know, he could have been pleading for Snape to show him mercy. But it's far more likely that he's pleading for Snape to take the responsibility of his (inevitable) death away from either of those young boys, and knows: Snape will do it, Snape can benefit from it, Draco will thus have someone on the right side looking out for him in Voldemort's ranks, Harry will be fired up for the fight more than disheartened as he might be if Dumbledore died after a drawn-out weakness brought on by the potion he fed him. I do think that Dumbledore has a good reason for being sure of Snape; he's never wavered in his belief. You don't believe like that for no reason.
And Snape is less mean towards Harry as he runs away than he is in class, man. He's running away from Hogwarts and his role as Dumbledore's man, and not only does he refrain from killing Harry or letting anyone else kill him--he's Voldemort's, he says, and how can you argue with that?--he doesn't even throw hexes back at him. He just stops Harry from hexing him or Draco. His aura of evil overwhelms me. :D It kind of baffles me that anyone could have read it as "evil all along", and I'll be very surprised if Snape does turn out to be evil.*
*However, this won't necessarily stop me from enjoying the last book. I'll be a little disappointed and will have to read the series again to see if there were clues I missed and whether Harry ever actually gets the chance to be substantially wrong, but it's not on the level of, say, Percy returning to the Burrow with apologies for his behaviour and no expectation of the same from his family. (Since when do you have to apologise for being a dick to your family, anyway? Fred & George never seem to have to, and it's not really a big thing outside of books, either.)
Ahhh Percy...! :/ I will probably never forgive Arthur for his behaviour regarding Percy; he's immature in so many ways, but this is the one example of it that I can't wave away. It is so easy to completely crush your kid's self-esteem, especially when they're as outward-looking and apparently fragile as Percy is. Arthur either doesn't have a clue how important a parent's approval is, or he doesn't care. (I am sensitive and unable to compromise about this. I cannot in any way sympathise with parents' cutting down their kids or dismissing their accomplishments; it's one of the things that sends straight to my gut immediate twinges of anger that I can't reason away. This is one of the issues that consistently and strongly affects me, even in literature; I don't really understand why, but there it is.)
It's obvious that Molly, for one, loves Percy, but her love is kind of smothering & scary. If I were Percy, I wouldn't contemplate going back to the Burrow, either, when what you have waiting is Molly's stifling brand of love and six unfriendly faces (Arthur, who tries to be sure that Percy knows that he couldn't possibly have risen in the Ministry due to merit; the twins, who have always played cruel jokes on anyone in reach, but seem to find particular pleasure in getting to him; Ron, who would "feel better" if he could punch Percy for the crime of... showing up at Dumbledore's funeral in the Minister's entourage; Ginny, who just generally seems to resent him probably because he got out before she could; and Harry, who's more a member of the family already than it looks like Percy ever was)--the reasonable sons, of course, are already mostly absent.
(I do wonder if the problem is just that WW values are very, very different from ours. Although it does bring to mind those Funniest Home Video shows, which I never found funny: I can't laugh at people nearly breaking their necks on camera, when it's not fictional. I suspect I'd be very unpopular in the WW. I mean, everyone raised in the WW seems to take the Marauders' bullying & the twins' bullying in stride, and actually think it's pretty funny--or at least not serious--until it actually nearly causes a death. Percy's biggest crime seems to be that he's uptight and "overly" hard-working, like Hermione, and that he doesn't seem to have a sense of humour. It seems odd to me that Ron and Ginny like the twins much more than they like Percy, when Percy shows concern for them--actually noticing that something was wrong with Ginny during CoS, as an example--and the twins play hugely dangerous and scarring pranks on them, like Ron's spider thing and the Unbreakable Vow they tried to force him into. No one in the books seems to find it strange at all, though--in their minds, of course Ginny and Ron would like the twins more, because they're cool and successful, and Percy is a sycophantic prat.)
---
Wrote a little AU Death Note fic here, although it was more an exercise in characterisation and an idea about memory & the death notes than anything else. (I would never have expected L to be the first one of them I'd write about.)