in which I witter
Hello darlings. Haven't read anyone else's reactions yet. Normally I tend to tidy and edit my reaction posts for clarity, but I have no time and if I don't post now I won't bother, so THIS IS LARGELY RAMBLY, REPETITIVE, INCOHERENT AND REPETITIVE.1
I dunno what to say, really. Am just all peaceful and washed-out and feel a bit like a convalescent. Er. It was a much better book than OTP and HBP, which is pleasing. It was both rub and great, which was the best I was realistically hoping for. I mean. I enjoyed reading it a lot. It was tight and plotty and surprising and it made me scream and go OMFG and bite my nails and cry and screech, just like it used to.
I. Hmmm. It's a bit sad, with HP, because I remember when I finished Book 4 I was just buzzing, I was flailing and screaming and demented with excitement and OMFG CAN'T WAIT HAVE TO KNOW WHAT HAPPENS NOW NOW NOW, and then Book 5 came out and it was... pretty rubbish, really. And that effectively knocked my mad fannishness on the head for HP. HBP probably couldn't have recovered it even if it'd been a very good book, which it wasn't. And okay, so I was never going to love it again as much as I loved it at the end of GoF, but I really enjoyed this one, and it delivered twists and turns and surprises and action and I enjoyed it a lot, so on the whole I'm pleased, within the framework of my massively reduced expectations.
The thing is, I think with a lot of the really good stories, there's a moment in the plot where everything's opened out to its maximum of possibilities. Like a story starts off at a single point and then it grows and expands to its maximum of plot where every thread has been introduced and nothing has been resolved yet and you have no idea what's going to happen and yet everything's still there all glittery and amazing and driving you wild, and it hangs there at that point of maximum expansion for a moment like a beautiful firework, and then things start getting resolved and possibilities start to shut down and it starts shrinking back down to the endpoint.2 HP reached that point for me at the end of GoF, I think, where the apocalyptic scale of it had become apparent but we still didn't know what was going on but we knew that LOTS OF THINGS WERE and OMFG GLEAM OF SATISFACTION IN DUMBLEDORE'S EYES WHAT and SNAPE LOOKS PALE AND RESOLUTE WHAT and Cedric Diggory omg had died and WHO IS EVIL WHO IS GOOD WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON and I just hadn't expected that expansion to come out of the modest scale of Book 1 and it was marvellous. And then in book 5 she started shutting down the possibilities, and I think an awful lot of what happened in books 5 and 6 lacked grace or scope or appropriateness, which obviously saddens me a bit. And I suppose she was never going to manage to make the rest of it live up to that promise, but I really thought she might. Writers very often don't, though. There are lots of books I wish I'd never finished, because they were at their greatest at that particular point, and the end simply isn't worthy. A good example I can think of of a book that doesn't do that is Lord of the Rings, which manages to keep increasing the scale and scale of the story until the appendices at the end where it effectively runs off into infinity.
HP is a massively different universe from LOTR, obviously, and I think most of its appeal lies in its variegated charm, all the little throwaway sketches of people and things that she chucks in just to add texture. And clearly you can't properly capitalise on all of those things, they're just there as decoration, and the author can't really help which bits people get hung up on and build beautiful theories around. She's not a great writer. She's a charming, exciting, good and lively writer who's not afraid of adding stuff in, and she does great plottiness, and honestly I still can't work out what she's done so right to make them so appealing to everyone but she has and good on her. It's great really. And I suppose mostly I feel a bit sad for all those endings which certainly weren't the Platonic ideals of the endings to Harry Potter that I imagine exist somewhere in the universe. Remus and Tonks' possibilities all shut down by marrying each other, then just being killed. Neville didn't get to be all of the things we speculated he might be. Draco didn't get anything very interesting really, only the most halfhearted sort of treatment. Snape. Harry and Ginny could have done anything and married anyone and gone anywhere in that big lovely universe, but they didn't. Seventy percent of the time she just took the most unimaginative route from A to B 3. The list is endless. But I was mostly resigned to this, so I am fairly calm and accepting about most of it. All these problems are, of course, what fandom's for. I am a little bit sad for the great Harry Potter story I once thought I was going to read. But I am quite pleased about the good one I did.
MORAL QUIBBLINGS
The only thing I am disappointed about with any sort of actual concern is the fact that she never really dealt with the house elf issue, or the racism, or the House prejudices. She'll make a vague gesture towards it, but then never really follow it up. And I know it's a kid's book and that's not what it's for, but why not? Kids tend to think in terms of good/evil narratives that parallel the sort of interpersonal conflicts you get in real life. I don't think that ever changes much, I think we all do this almost all the time. But learning to judge and recognise your society for what it is is one of the most important skills in life, and none of us are very good at it, and it can never be too early to start practicing confronting that. It upsets me that after a bit of cursory acknowledgment by Hermione it was all sort of just left. Wizards and goblins will carry on being racist to each other and the house elf system will continue and it's not perfect but it's just The Way Things Are. It would have been nice if JKR had taken the opportunity to slip something else into people's heads. I know, I am all moralistic and prescriptive about art, A BIT LIKE AN OPPRESSIVE MINISTER FOR CULTURAL AFFAIRS IN THE SOVIET UNION. If I had my way LOTS of stories would be MUCH MORE BORING and art would be MUCH HAMPERED.
Oh, but, I dunno. I just get very twitchy about immoralities woven into fictional universes. I don't know. I think there are some aspects in which the real world is more important than anything else, and you shouldn't try to escape it ever, not for the sake of any story. This is muchly a personal crazy bugbear for me that I should maybe not try to project too much onto the world of Harry Potter, but I can't help it. I think worrying a lot at the moment about the dishonest narratives we keep in our heads is probably a natural side-effect of reading a bit of history and paying attention to the news. I don't know. I would like to express this more coherently but I AM TIRED AND CRAZY.
SPECIFICS
There are so many things I am sorry didn't get dealt with that I can't list them all and no longer can be bothered to worry about it. I expect fandom will fix it.
Snape. I still love him best. I'm glad he got the redemption, because I love him the most forever and always. I missed him all through the book and I love him. Obviously I am not all that impressed by the Loving Lily thing, but I am not coruscated with hate for it either. I don't like that it's totally limiting. It basically makes him a bit like a dog, with only one motivation for anything, ever, and no moral dimension at all, which even most of the Deatheaters have. I hoped for more, but I suppose it's not that sort of book. And I love him. I love the snappy way he talks to Dumbledore. I love how brave he is. I love how right to the end he never gave the least damn whether anyone liked him. I love him. Love.
Luna HEART. Hermione HEART. Draco's parents HEART. Draco himself, especially protecting crabbe, HEART. Plot-twists HEART. I thought the bit with Nagini disguised as Bathilda was AMAZING. I loved that they spent months living out of a tent being hungry and aimless and tired. I love that she didn't deal much with what everyone else was doing at the time, meaning that fanfic writers have a FREE HAND in ALL THE INTERESTING THINGS THAT WERE HAPPENING ELSEWHERE THAT YEAR. The Gringotts robbery was amazing. I got very excited at one point thinking that Dumbledore had CREATED HORCRUXES HIMSELF, possibly by KILLING HIS SISTER, and then GIFTED THEM TO HH&H IN HIS WILL, but alas no. I am a bit more in love with morallyambiguous!fanon!Dumbledore than I should be. I like it absolutely best when he's a necrophiliac paedophile. I love Lily a bit. OH GOD GRINDELWALD I LOVE HIM RATHER A LOT and cannot WAIT for all the stories about all the magical gay sex he had with Dumbledore. Dumbledore is very much redeemed by magical gay sex. OH GOD I LOVE SNAPE. Molly Weasley duelling Bellatrix HEART. Molly was never an Auror, was she? I THINK SECRETLY SHE WAS. I like how JKR tried to thwart the gay Weasley incest. GOOD LUCK WITH THAT ONE, LOVE. Percy came back HEART he has always been my favourite Weasley. OH SNAPE OH. I love Hermione's bag and apparating and OH HERMIONE OH. Ron is still rubbish. No change there. OH KREACHER OH. OH REGULUS BLACK. I love Regulus Black. Did he ever hang out with Snape? THEY ARE THE TWO BEST PEOPLE IN THE BOOK. OH DUDLEY WAS LOVELY AND ALSO HAS BEEN TRANSFORMED INTO A MUSCLE MAN OH. Perhaps he and Draco can now be an OTP. OH THE BLOODY BARON AND HELENA RAVENCLAW OH. The coda was exactly what happens in bad fanfic, but I can't say it didn't warm my cockles a bit. I am pleased that Snape got the all-important acknowledgement from Harry, but nonetheless EYEROLL EYEROLL. It makes me laugh that they all started pushing out babies so fast. OH NEVILLE BECAME A PROFESSOR OH. Oh, Neville and the sword and the unbinding himself, OH. Do you suppose angsty!closeted!Draco and professor!Neville are having an ANGSTY AFFAIR? I like to think so. I love Snape. I really like Ollivander for reasons inexplicable. OH SNAPE. OH REGULUS. OH KREACHER. OH EVERYONE. HEART.
IN SUMMARY
I ENJOYED IT PLENTY. I HEART FANDOM. AND SNAPE. AND PROBABLY YOU. The End.
1. And also repetitive.
2. Like a rhombus. YES A RHOMBUS. I KNOW MY GEOMETRY.
3. But of course sometimes she doesn't, and it's those times that make you throw the book in the air with joy and go OMFGWTFBBQ THIS BOOK IS SO FUCKING ACE. Oh, HP. JUST WHEN I THINK I'M OUT, YOU PULL ME BACK IIIIN.
Annnd now I must go and do my shift at the bar, and when I come back I will read everyone else's reactions because FANDOM IS LIKE RAINBOWS AND UNICORNS. Thank you.
I dunno what to say, really. Am just all peaceful and washed-out and feel a bit like a convalescent. Er. It was a much better book than OTP and HBP, which is pleasing. It was both rub and great, which was the best I was realistically hoping for. I mean. I enjoyed reading it a lot. It was tight and plotty and surprising and it made me scream and go OMFG and bite my nails and cry and screech, just like it used to.
I. Hmmm. It's a bit sad, with HP, because I remember when I finished Book 4 I was just buzzing, I was flailing and screaming and demented with excitement and OMFG CAN'T WAIT HAVE TO KNOW WHAT HAPPENS NOW NOW NOW, and then Book 5 came out and it was... pretty rubbish, really. And that effectively knocked my mad fannishness on the head for HP. HBP probably couldn't have recovered it even if it'd been a very good book, which it wasn't. And okay, so I was never going to love it again as much as I loved it at the end of GoF, but I really enjoyed this one, and it delivered twists and turns and surprises and action and I enjoyed it a lot, so on the whole I'm pleased, within the framework of my massively reduced expectations.
The thing is, I think with a lot of the really good stories, there's a moment in the plot where everything's opened out to its maximum of possibilities. Like a story starts off at a single point and then it grows and expands to its maximum of plot where every thread has been introduced and nothing has been resolved yet and you have no idea what's going to happen and yet everything's still there all glittery and amazing and driving you wild, and it hangs there at that point of maximum expansion for a moment like a beautiful firework, and then things start getting resolved and possibilities start to shut down and it starts shrinking back down to the endpoint.2 HP reached that point for me at the end of GoF, I think, where the apocalyptic scale of it had become apparent but we still didn't know what was going on but we knew that LOTS OF THINGS WERE and OMFG GLEAM OF SATISFACTION IN DUMBLEDORE'S EYES WHAT and SNAPE LOOKS PALE AND RESOLUTE WHAT and Cedric Diggory omg had died and WHO IS EVIL WHO IS GOOD WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON and I just hadn't expected that expansion to come out of the modest scale of Book 1 and it was marvellous. And then in book 5 she started shutting down the possibilities, and I think an awful lot of what happened in books 5 and 6 lacked grace or scope or appropriateness, which obviously saddens me a bit. And I suppose she was never going to manage to make the rest of it live up to that promise, but I really thought she might. Writers very often don't, though. There are lots of books I wish I'd never finished, because they were at their greatest at that particular point, and the end simply isn't worthy. A good example I can think of of a book that doesn't do that is Lord of the Rings, which manages to keep increasing the scale and scale of the story until the appendices at the end where it effectively runs off into infinity.
HP is a massively different universe from LOTR, obviously, and I think most of its appeal lies in its variegated charm, all the little throwaway sketches of people and things that she chucks in just to add texture. And clearly you can't properly capitalise on all of those things, they're just there as decoration, and the author can't really help which bits people get hung up on and build beautiful theories around. She's not a great writer. She's a charming, exciting, good and lively writer who's not afraid of adding stuff in, and she does great plottiness, and honestly I still can't work out what she's done so right to make them so appealing to everyone but she has and good on her. It's great really. And I suppose mostly I feel a bit sad for all those endings which certainly weren't the Platonic ideals of the endings to Harry Potter that I imagine exist somewhere in the universe. Remus and Tonks' possibilities all shut down by marrying each other, then just being killed. Neville didn't get to be all of the things we speculated he might be. Draco didn't get anything very interesting really, only the most halfhearted sort of treatment. Snape. Harry and Ginny could have done anything and married anyone and gone anywhere in that big lovely universe, but they didn't. Seventy percent of the time she just took the most unimaginative route from A to B 3. The list is endless. But I was mostly resigned to this, so I am fairly calm and accepting about most of it. All these problems are, of course, what fandom's for. I am a little bit sad for the great Harry Potter story I once thought I was going to read. But I am quite pleased about the good one I did.
MORAL QUIBBLINGS
The only thing I am disappointed about with any sort of actual concern is the fact that she never really dealt with the house elf issue, or the racism, or the House prejudices. She'll make a vague gesture towards it, but then never really follow it up. And I know it's a kid's book and that's not what it's for, but why not? Kids tend to think in terms of good/evil narratives that parallel the sort of interpersonal conflicts you get in real life. I don't think that ever changes much, I think we all do this almost all the time. But learning to judge and recognise your society for what it is is one of the most important skills in life, and none of us are very good at it, and it can never be too early to start practicing confronting that. It upsets me that after a bit of cursory acknowledgment by Hermione it was all sort of just left. Wizards and goblins will carry on being racist to each other and the house elf system will continue and it's not perfect but it's just The Way Things Are. It would have been nice if JKR had taken the opportunity to slip something else into people's heads. I know, I am all moralistic and prescriptive about art, A BIT LIKE AN OPPRESSIVE MINISTER FOR CULTURAL AFFAIRS IN THE SOVIET UNION. If I had my way LOTS of stories would be MUCH MORE BORING and art would be MUCH HAMPERED.
Oh, but, I dunno. I just get very twitchy about immoralities woven into fictional universes. I don't know. I think there are some aspects in which the real world is more important than anything else, and you shouldn't try to escape it ever, not for the sake of any story. This is muchly a personal crazy bugbear for me that I should maybe not try to project too much onto the world of Harry Potter, but I can't help it. I think worrying a lot at the moment about the dishonest narratives we keep in our heads is probably a natural side-effect of reading a bit of history and paying attention to the news. I don't know. I would like to express this more coherently but I AM TIRED AND CRAZY.
SPECIFICS
There are so many things I am sorry didn't get dealt with that I can't list them all and no longer can be bothered to worry about it. I expect fandom will fix it.
Snape. I still love him best. I'm glad he got the redemption, because I love him the most forever and always. I missed him all through the book and I love him. Obviously I am not all that impressed by the Loving Lily thing, but I am not coruscated with hate for it either. I don't like that it's totally limiting. It basically makes him a bit like a dog, with only one motivation for anything, ever, and no moral dimension at all, which even most of the Deatheaters have. I hoped for more, but I suppose it's not that sort of book. And I love him. I love the snappy way he talks to Dumbledore. I love how brave he is. I love how right to the end he never gave the least damn whether anyone liked him. I love him. Love.
Luna HEART. Hermione HEART. Draco's parents HEART. Draco himself, especially protecting crabbe, HEART. Plot-twists HEART. I thought the bit with Nagini disguised as Bathilda was AMAZING. I loved that they spent months living out of a tent being hungry and aimless and tired. I love that she didn't deal much with what everyone else was doing at the time, meaning that fanfic writers have a FREE HAND in ALL THE INTERESTING THINGS THAT WERE HAPPENING ELSEWHERE THAT YEAR. The Gringotts robbery was amazing. I got very excited at one point thinking that Dumbledore had CREATED HORCRUXES HIMSELF, possibly by KILLING HIS SISTER, and then GIFTED THEM TO HH&H IN HIS WILL, but alas no. I am a bit more in love with morallyambiguous!fanon!Dumbledore than I should be. I like it absolutely best when he's a necrophiliac paedophile. I love Lily a bit. OH GOD GRINDELWALD I LOVE HIM RATHER A LOT and cannot WAIT for all the stories about all the magical gay sex he had with Dumbledore. Dumbledore is very much redeemed by magical gay sex. OH GOD I LOVE SNAPE. Molly Weasley duelling Bellatrix HEART. Molly was never an Auror, was she? I THINK SECRETLY SHE WAS. I like how JKR tried to thwart the gay Weasley incest. GOOD LUCK WITH THAT ONE, LOVE. Percy came back HEART he has always been my favourite Weasley. OH SNAPE OH. I love Hermione's bag and apparating and OH HERMIONE OH. Ron is still rubbish. No change there. OH KREACHER OH. OH REGULUS BLACK. I love Regulus Black. Did he ever hang out with Snape? THEY ARE THE TWO BEST PEOPLE IN THE BOOK. OH DUDLEY WAS LOVELY AND ALSO HAS BEEN TRANSFORMED INTO A MUSCLE MAN OH. Perhaps he and Draco can now be an OTP. OH THE BLOODY BARON AND HELENA RAVENCLAW OH. The coda was exactly what happens in bad fanfic, but I can't say it didn't warm my cockles a bit. I am pleased that Snape got the all-important acknowledgement from Harry, but nonetheless EYEROLL EYEROLL. It makes me laugh that they all started pushing out babies so fast. OH NEVILLE BECAME A PROFESSOR OH. Oh, Neville and the sword and the unbinding himself, OH. Do you suppose angsty!closeted!Draco and professor!Neville are having an ANGSTY AFFAIR? I like to think so. I love Snape. I really like Ollivander for reasons inexplicable. OH SNAPE. OH REGULUS. OH KREACHER. OH EVERYONE. HEART.
IN SUMMARY
I ENJOYED IT PLENTY. I HEART FANDOM. AND SNAPE. AND PROBABLY YOU. The End.
1. And also repetitive.
2. Like a rhombus. YES A RHOMBUS. I KNOW MY GEOMETRY.
3. But of course sometimes she doesn't, and it's those times that make you throw the book in the air with joy and go OMFGWTFBBQ THIS BOOK IS SO FUCKING ACE. Oh, HP. JUST WHEN I THINK I'M OUT, YOU PULL ME BACK IIIIN.
Annnd now I must go and do my shift at the bar, and when I come back I will read everyone else's reactions because FANDOM IS LIKE RAINBOWS AND UNICORNS. Thank you.