The 7th Harry Potter book [Spoilers]
I've finished the Deathly Hallows. And am sorely, sorely disappointed.
First and foremost... So it was some trite Lily thing? That's the biggest let-down of all, as anyone who knows me would have guessed from miles away.
Not to mention the way it was presented... As a girl smitten with Snape and prone to dreaming up his lovelife at the drop of a hat, it's not that I don't appreciate all the loving details, and I don't even care for a second that it's het. But. "Hello from Hogwarts; we're in the middle of the Final Battle, Voldemort strong as ever but look! Harry has all the Horcruxes destroyed but one! OMG what will happen when they finally meet!? And oh, BTW, let's stop the show here for an hour, so we can take a close look at what happened to one of the characters and his beautiful love-interest some twenty years ago..." You know what, that's something I would expect in one of the less well-written romance fanfics. The good romance fanfics actually take some care to integrate the romance plot into the canon-fitting part of their narratives, even though their main purpose of existence is the romance! WTF is up with Voldemort somehow suddenly conveniently stopping all his warfare just so Harry can go take a leisurely trip down Backstory Memory Lane?
And it's Lily. Fuck me but Lily. If you have enough time and curiosity to go skimming over fandom and be amused by ship-wars, you might as well learn the concept of Mary Sues by now, yeah? So that love (or more like "smitten lust" the way it's described) of Snape's is the defining motivation behind Harry's protection throughout his school years and thus ultimately saves the world? Why don't we make her eyes purple while we're at it? Oh wait, I forgot, they're already green.
I mean, my God, doesn't Rowling have what we all have -- betas? Or what do you call it, oh, professional editors? I'm not saying that just because your creation has been fanfictioned to death with the same saccharine cliche plot over and over again means you should refrain from doing the same thing in your canon writing; I'm just saying you should refrain from saccharine melodrama period, especially when you're writing a children's tale and not some harlequin novel or yaoi dojin. And that if the author didn't realize romance ain't her forte by the end of Book 6 (which is understandable -- this is the first time she's writing anything to be published, ever!) then somebody else goddamn well should have pointed it out to her. That's what people whose job it is to support a writer is paid to do.
And the whole Harry and his gang wandering around all over Britain without doing much of anything except whine and teen!angst each other and have pointless conversations and deal with the threat of starvation, which I had no idea until now that Wizards ever had to deal with... Wouldn't HBP with Merope's plight have been a good place to introduce the food-as-exception-to-the-rule idea? And really, what I've admired about the series until now has never been the build-up of subtle emotions or the description of subtle anything; it's always been the fast pacing, the deft plot-development, and this Potterian twist to the story that she's so good at... Subtlety of emotions always sort of flowed out of those plot lines, and flowed very well, on their own. Trying to focus on the character stuff to the extent that that is the plot? Not for you, Jo, not for you. My God, play to your strengths!
What's most disturbing to me, though, is the new-found knowledge that this (OMG! OMG!) is what happened to Dumbledore's characterization and then the author came out and told us in that interview that he is gay. What. The. Fuck. There's so many things wrong with that I can't even begin to calm down enough to articulate.
Although, that Dumbledore surprise -- that completely unexpected and therefore glass-sharp twist of the knife -- was the one thing I really liked about this finale. It's not completely out of the blue when you think back on things... Heck, most of us noticed what a hideous person Dumbledore is from the first book, with his smiling as he left Harry on the Dursleys' doorstep and doing nothing to stop their abuse. But I would never have expected that that's not some sloppy characterization on the author's part, or more accurately, some screwed-up sense of what's good and OK on her part, but an actual plot line. It never occurred to me to question the Good Patriarch of such a template-following story narrative being anything but a Good Person. And never mind the whole Grindelwald backstory... The final glimpse of the real Dumbledore, away from Harry's and the world's eyes, so fundamentally incapable of basic love and empathy, which yet in hindsight is so consistent with the other glimpses we've been given so far... Just, just, BRAVO. That's the Jo I'm in love with and constant awe of. Once my wound stops bleeding I can't help but marvel at the brilliance of her sword-work. But my God it hurts!
Doubly so because... Okay, the rest is going into a locked post.
First and foremost... So it was some trite Lily thing? That's the biggest let-down of all, as anyone who knows me would have guessed from miles away.
Not to mention the way it was presented... As a girl smitten with Snape and prone to dreaming up his lovelife at the drop of a hat, it's not that I don't appreciate all the loving details, and I don't even care for a second that it's het. But. "Hello from Hogwarts; we're in the middle of the Final Battle, Voldemort strong as ever but look! Harry has all the Horcruxes destroyed but one! OMG what will happen when they finally meet!? And oh, BTW, let's stop the show here for an hour, so we can take a close look at what happened to one of the characters and his beautiful love-interest some twenty years ago..." You know what, that's something I would expect in one of the less well-written romance fanfics. The good romance fanfics actually take some care to integrate the romance plot into the canon-fitting part of their narratives, even though their main purpose of existence is the romance! WTF is up with Voldemort somehow suddenly conveniently stopping all his warfare just so Harry can go take a leisurely trip down Backstory Memory Lane?
And it's Lily. Fuck me but Lily. If you have enough time and curiosity to go skimming over fandom and be amused by ship-wars, you might as well learn the concept of Mary Sues by now, yeah? So that love (or more like "smitten lust" the way it's described) of Snape's is the defining motivation behind Harry's protection throughout his school years and thus ultimately saves the world? Why don't we make her eyes purple while we're at it? Oh wait, I forgot, they're already green.
I mean, my God, doesn't Rowling have what we all have -- betas? Or what do you call it, oh, professional editors? I'm not saying that just because your creation has been fanfictioned to death with the same saccharine cliche plot over and over again means you should refrain from doing the same thing in your canon writing; I'm just saying you should refrain from saccharine melodrama period, especially when you're writing a children's tale and not some harlequin novel or yaoi dojin. And that if the author didn't realize romance ain't her forte by the end of Book 6 (which is understandable -- this is the first time she's writing anything to be published, ever!) then somebody else goddamn well should have pointed it out to her. That's what people whose job it is to support a writer is paid to do.
And the whole Harry and his gang wandering around all over Britain without doing much of anything except whine and teen!angst each other and have pointless conversations and deal with the threat of starvation, which I had no idea until now that Wizards ever had to deal with... Wouldn't HBP with Merope's plight have been a good place to introduce the food-as-exception-to-the-rule idea? And really, what I've admired about the series until now has never been the build-up of subtle emotions or the description of subtle anything; it's always been the fast pacing, the deft plot-development, and this Potterian twist to the story that she's so good at... Subtlety of emotions always sort of flowed out of those plot lines, and flowed very well, on their own. Trying to focus on the character stuff to the extent that that is the plot? Not for you, Jo, not for you. My God, play to your strengths!
What's most disturbing to me, though, is the new-found knowledge that this (OMG! OMG!) is what happened to Dumbledore's characterization and then the author came out and told us in that interview that he is gay. What. The. Fuck. There's so many things wrong with that I can't even begin to calm down enough to articulate.
Although, that Dumbledore surprise -- that completely unexpected and therefore glass-sharp twist of the knife -- was the one thing I really liked about this finale. It's not completely out of the blue when you think back on things... Heck, most of us noticed what a hideous person Dumbledore is from the first book, with his smiling as he left Harry on the Dursleys' doorstep and doing nothing to stop their abuse. But I would never have expected that that's not some sloppy characterization on the author's part, or more accurately, some screwed-up sense of what's good and OK on her part, but an actual plot line. It never occurred to me to question the Good Patriarch of such a template-following story narrative being anything but a Good Person. And never mind the whole Grindelwald backstory... The final glimpse of the real Dumbledore, away from Harry's and the world's eyes, so fundamentally incapable of basic love and empathy, which yet in hindsight is so consistent with the other glimpses we've been given so far... Just, just, BRAVO. That's the Jo I'm in love with and constant awe of. Once my wound stops bleeding I can't help but marvel at the brilliance of her sword-work. But my God it hurts!
Doubly so because... Okay, the rest is going into a locked post.