DH review from CSM (SPOILERS): A Story is About Moral Struggle & Change

[slashpine]

Hmmm. Is this reviewer a fan, or just a very astute reader who should be? And a Snape-centric one, at that.

Snape: the authentic protagonist

Comments

[quivo]

It's those little choices that are the real moral killers
Exactly! And really, societies usually ignore those in favour of bigging up the life/death, love/not love crap because the latter seem to matter more. Which is silly, because I can't count how many times the little things someone says or does turns me completely off them, or how I still remember the small things, cruel or kind, that people have done to me and to others I know.

And about the suddenly-supposedly-suave!Ron, I just tried to ignore the blatant stupidity there. X(

... well, I do get the feel that the Trio are Marauders redux, no growth (i.e. morality, or if you prefer, thoughtfulness) required
Exactly, again. I think she may have tried to go for growth- just not the type of growth that we as readers find laudable or even truly credible. That the Marautrio was where she wanted the Trio to end up, sort of.

I think a LOT of fanfic is going for growth type 2, because the evidence for growth/change inside the story is so weak, or erratic.
That makes a huge amount of sense, definitely. E.g., in the Vorkosigan fandom, most of the fic I've seen tends to be shippy or about character introspection. I haven't found any so far that do major, major reinventing of the plot of canon in that fandom (that don't start from the premise of shipping two main characters together XD. My fave fics in the fandom do reinvent a lot to slash two characters, but it's mostly stuff that comes after one of the characters speaks out to the other one about his feelings). Why? Because the Vorkosigan books are bloody strong in that regard. Plotting is something their author is really good at, and there are enough dramatic premises floating around in the universe to interest anybody.

In comparison, the supposed reason for the entire plot, the Hallows, are only introduced in the last book. There are numerous plot holes in the timeline, and the conversation and action of most of the 'good' characters give off strong whiffs of various unsavoury isms. So everyone falls over themselves to try and correct or emphasize or say how they think it really happened before they play with anything else.

But this may be more than the reviewer said.
Yeah. I think she was pretty much going for the 'moral journey' thing. I wholeheartedly agree about skipping that word, too - it's essentially meaningless unless you use it specifically to mean "to do with the mores" (of the character). Because a story about someone's mores changing for the worse can be about as interesting as the reverse :)

PS: Thinking about the fanfic thing and why HP attracts the kind it does, I wonder if there's any way to write a well-plotted, interesting story that is not LOTR and still attract mounds of really interesting plot-based fanfic...