The Half-Blood Prince Inconsistency Theory
I posted this at HF, but I thought I'd share it on LJ as well because it's the nagging idea that's keeping me sane.
After calming down a bit and pondering the events of HBP all day, I have to admit that there is something seriously wrong about the book, to the point where it's suspicious how OOC everyone was and how much the book read like forced VOMIT fanfic. The one consistent phrase I found myself muttering as I read the novel was, "This doesn't make sense. None of this makes any sense. Why would Rowling write this? This is pure bull, and she just has to know it's bull. She can't be that stupid."
This can't be JKR's best work yet. Place HBP side by side with the past five books, and it sticks out like a sore thumb.
Why? Because it's inconsistent. Its characters are inconsistent. It does not belong in the set.
A part of me that clings to my abused faith in Rowling's ability believes that she knows HBP doesn't match the other books. That could only mean that she deliberately wrote HBP this way, which in turn draws suspicion to what JKR ominously said about HBP in the first place: it did what it was supposed to do and a lot of people weren't going to like it.
What was it supposed to do, then, and why were people not going to like it? Is it merely about Dumbledore's demise, or is there something more going on about the ships and the characters, something more that we're not supposed to realize until the end?
After five decent books, could Rowling really be that horrific of an author? A proponent of Ginny Sue, dropping cruel, mocking insults about hippogriff tattoos and Witherwings?
Or is she writing the ultimate red herring with H/G and Hr/R, presenting the lie so completely in order to shake the foundations of even the staunchest Harmonians and fool the sharpest, and at times most stubborn, minority of the fandom?
As infuriated and bleary as I was when I first finished the book, I hearkened back to all the essays we've got supporting the H/Hr ship, and recalled all the canon evidence we collected for so many years. Five whole books. Canon that could not be refuted by any VOMITer who previously tried.
Even Rowling would be hard-pressed to write OBHWF and keep the characters intact, which is why everyone's characterization suffered in HBP. Maybe I'm in denial, but there really has to be more to this character slaughter/Mary Sue fest than meets the eye. There are bits of the old Harmony connection in the initial chapters of HBP, before it all went completely downhill.
HBP does NOT make any sense, and I suspect it has to do with being the first half of what should have been just one book.
I hope to glean a bit more from JKR's interviews. Perhaps she'll drop a few hints that all is not lost for our ship, because no matter how much I loathe what JKR has done in HBP, I still have a sliver of (foolish) hope that this is not the end, that Rowling is not as terrible a writer as she now appears to be.
H.M.S. Harmony cannot and should not go down like this.
After calming down a bit and pondering the events of HBP all day, I have to admit that there is something seriously wrong about the book, to the point where it's suspicious how OOC everyone was and how much the book read like forced VOMIT fanfic. The one consistent phrase I found myself muttering as I read the novel was, "This doesn't make sense. None of this makes any sense. Why would Rowling write this? This is pure bull, and she just has to know it's bull. She can't be that stupid."
This can't be JKR's best work yet. Place HBP side by side with the past five books, and it sticks out like a sore thumb.
Why? Because it's inconsistent. Its characters are inconsistent. It does not belong in the set.
A part of me that clings to my abused faith in Rowling's ability believes that she knows HBP doesn't match the other books. That could only mean that she deliberately wrote HBP this way, which in turn draws suspicion to what JKR ominously said about HBP in the first place: it did what it was supposed to do and a lot of people weren't going to like it.
What was it supposed to do, then, and why were people not going to like it? Is it merely about Dumbledore's demise, or is there something more going on about the ships and the characters, something more that we're not supposed to realize until the end?
After five decent books, could Rowling really be that horrific of an author? A proponent of Ginny Sue, dropping cruel, mocking insults about hippogriff tattoos and Witherwings?
Or is she writing the ultimate red herring with H/G and Hr/R, presenting the lie so completely in order to shake the foundations of even the staunchest Harmonians and fool the sharpest, and at times most stubborn, minority of the fandom?
As infuriated and bleary as I was when I first finished the book, I hearkened back to all the essays we've got supporting the H/Hr ship, and recalled all the canon evidence we collected for so many years. Five whole books. Canon that could not be refuted by any VOMITer who previously tried.
Even Rowling would be hard-pressed to write OBHWF and keep the characters intact, which is why everyone's characterization suffered in HBP. Maybe I'm in denial, but there really has to be more to this character slaughter/Mary Sue fest than meets the eye. There are bits of the old Harmony connection in the initial chapters of HBP, before it all went completely downhill.
HBP does NOT make any sense, and I suspect it has to do with being the first half of what should have been just one book.
I hope to glean a bit more from JKR's interviews. Perhaps she'll drop a few hints that all is not lost for our ship, because no matter how much I loathe what JKR has done in HBP, I still have a sliver of (foolish) hope that this is not the end, that Rowling is not as terrible a writer as she now appears to be.
H.M.S. Harmony cannot and should not go down like this.