Deathly Hallows

[philomytha]

Since my son is actually doing a full day of school today - one of his very first full days of school, a taster day at the special school where he'll start properly next term - I decided to be utterly decadent this morning and went to see the HP film.

Comments

[avanti_90]

To be honest, I was thoroughly fed up of the series after book 6, where Hermione and the canary attack killed my interest. And then much later HPMoR came along and stamped on the remains. I read through DH going 'aargh this is cheesy and why are they being so stupid and where did these hallows come from anyway? But I have to know the end and be done with this thing.'
But having said all that, I still adore Professor McGonagall. She was possibly one of very few characters who remained uniformly awesome throughout the series.

[philomytha]

I think I may have initially read DH in pretty much that spirit. I am curious to know how it'll all look now. Quite different, I suspect, in some interesting ways. I think it will probably help to be personally further from agonisingly embarrassing teenage romance and therefore able to smile indulgently at it and enjoy it instead of cringing and trying to hide under the pillows.

The first character in the books I fell in love with was Lupin, but after PoA he got steadily less awesome in the books, and I find David Thewlis unusually hideous, which didn't help. And I'd loved Snape too, but he crossed several of my moral event horizons in HBP and I never quite knew what to do with him after that. But oh, Professor McGonagall - well, I adore older powerful women whenever I come across them, but she's particularly fantastic and makes up for a lot. Plus, for a change, she doesn't get killed off.

[avanti_90]

Ha, yes. I think I spent about four-fifths of HBP cringing and hiding under pillows and going "Why? Why?"
I loved Snape the instant he said that "maybe he's waiting to find out why you two didn't come by the train like everyone else" line in CoS. For sheer style, nobody ever beat Snape. It just seemed to me like ninety per cent of the characters got steadily less awesome after HBP, except for wonderful people like McGonagall.

[philomytha]

Yeah, they did rather. But the thing is that the films made me not mind particularly, because they were just fun to watch and enjoy. I suspect I'll find in the reread that the first books are still the best.

Unrelatedly, 'Lobachevsky' is being utterly, utterly earworming, even after the HP theme tune, which is quite a good counter-earworm. I am going to be singing that one for days.

[shimotsuki]

Glad to hear you enjoyed the DH film! I don't tend to catch the HP movies on a regular basis -- I'm more of a book fan in general -- but I may see this one, since it's the end of an era.

I wasn't thrilled about DH, either (too much camping in the woods, and not enough of a look at what the Order and the DA were doing, and the Hallows concept would have worked much better if we'd heard of Beedle before...and don't get me started on how I feel about the whole Lupin thing, which has driven me to write a fair amount of denial!fic, which is not something I had ever imagined I would do, heh). But the book did have its moments (hooray for Neville, for one), and it might be worth giving it a second read. I was in something like shock for the hundred pages after we learned that Lupin and Tonks had died -- and yes, it's ridiculous that I reacted that way to the death of fictional characters, but it was what it was! -- so it might be nice to read the end again in full possession of my faculties.

[philomytha]

Well, I never took the films as canon, but I always went to watch them anyway ;-). And yes, certainly many flaws in the book. In fact, the nice thing about this film is that the silly and boring bits of the book were in the previous one, so this one just has all the action plot at the end. And yes, Neville ♥.

OT, I have a fic rec for you: On the Desk of Simon Illyan, a Vorkosigan/Thief of Attolia crossover of genius.

[shimotsuki]

Thanks for the rec -- that was brilliant! Hee.