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rhoddletAll right. So
Caveat: I read all 759 pages of the American edition in the course of something like the four hours, thirty minutes between 1AM and 5:30AM.
But oh Christ, JKR, it is called PLANNING. DO YOU KNOW IT, WOMAN? MEETING YOUR CHARACTER DEATH QUOTA FOR THE CHAPTER =/= PLANNING FOR A 700+ PAGE NOVEL.
Yeah, there was so much I loved. The foreshadowing about the twins. Kreacher's devotion ot Regulus. Narcissa lying to VOLDEMORT'S FUCKING FACE to save her son and the fascinating contrast between her standard of blood loyalty and that of Bellatrix's. I even shed a tear for Snape, and oh my God, oh my God, Dumbledore, simultaneously want to die and write one hundred million fics about brotherhood and where he doesn't trust Tom Riddle because he sees too much of himself in Tom. The blind, chained-up dragon. The story about wizards and truth being hidden in a children's story.
JKR has so, so, so many awesome ideas. Sweet holy God.
Still, though. Her technical instincts ain't the greatest, and she needed an editor she could trust so, so badly.
The Horcruxes were a bad deal. Cool in theory. Bad in practice to introduce in the penultimate book of a massive seven book series. You and I and the little birds all know it. Once JKR put book six out, she should have fucking rolled with the punches and invested wholeheartedly in the Horcruxes good because Lord knows she's good enough to do it when she's disciplined. I mean, look at the start of the book when she stops fucking around with floating blocks of Death Eater dialogue and comes back to Harry, near and dear and familiar to her heart. The quality of wri is so much higher that it's ridiculous. Maybe she was making some kind of point by contrasting Real Magic Artifiacts versus Voldemort's Shitty Artifacts, Both Born Out of Fear of Death But [insert some appropriate JKR-style point about selflessness and dealing with death], but it was motherfucking painful, especially with the huge expository/explanatory paragraphs where she had to explain the convolutedness of it all. Christ almighty, the stuff about the WAND TESTOSTERONE and so forth.
In fact, the last 200 pages of the book or so were like getting slapped in the face with a trout, what with the Return of the Son of the Bride of the Final Showdown at Hogwarts and Oh This Is a Death Sequence But Not Really and the Epilogue of Ten Thousand Fanfiction.net Chapter Fics. JKR was trying so hard to tie up all the loose ends.
Alas, I just ended up wondering whether there's some kind of wizarding law that requires marriage once you've had sex with somebody _____ number of times.
Caveat: I read all 759 pages of the American edition in the course of something like the four hours, thirty minutes between 1AM and 5:30AM.
But oh Christ, JKR, it is called PLANNING. DO YOU KNOW IT, WOMAN? MEETING YOUR CHARACTER DEATH QUOTA FOR THE CHAPTER =/= PLANNING FOR A 700+ PAGE NOVEL.
Yeah, there was so much I loved. The foreshadowing about the twins. Kreacher's devotion ot Regulus. Narcissa lying to VOLDEMORT'S FUCKING FACE to save her son and the fascinating contrast between her standard of blood loyalty and that of Bellatrix's. I even shed a tear for Snape, and oh my God, oh my God, Dumbledore, simultaneously want to die and write one hundred million fics about brotherhood and where he doesn't trust Tom Riddle because he sees too much of himself in Tom. The blind, chained-up dragon. The story about wizards and truth being hidden in a children's story.
JKR has so, so, so many awesome ideas. Sweet holy God.
Still, though. Her technical instincts ain't the greatest, and she needed an editor she could trust so, so badly.
The Horcruxes were a bad deal. Cool in theory. Bad in practice to introduce in the penultimate book of a massive seven book series. You and I and the little birds all know it. Once JKR put book six out, she should have fucking rolled with the punches and invested wholeheartedly in the Horcruxes good because Lord knows she's good enough to do it when she's disciplined. I mean, look at the start of the book when she stops fucking around with floating blocks of Death Eater dialogue and comes back to Harry, near and dear and familiar to her heart. The quality of wri is so much higher that it's ridiculous. Maybe she was making some kind of point by contrasting Real Magic Artifiacts versus Voldemort's Shitty Artifacts, Both Born Out of Fear of Death But [insert some appropriate JKR-style point about selflessness and dealing with death], but it was motherfucking painful, especially with the huge expository/explanatory paragraphs where she had to explain the convolutedness of it all. Christ almighty, the stuff about the WAND TESTOSTERONE and so forth.
In fact, the last 200 pages of the book or so were like getting slapped in the face with a trout, what with the Return of the Son of the Bride of the Final Showdown at Hogwarts and Oh This Is a Death Sequence But Not Really and the Epilogue of Ten Thousand Fanfiction.net Chapter Fics. JKR was trying so hard to tie up all the loose ends.
Alas, I just ended up wondering whether there's some kind of wizarding law that requires marriage once you've had sex with somebody _____ number of times.
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no subject
Date: 2007-07-26 05:25 pm (UTC)Rhod, you said everything about the book that I wanted to say.
Plz to be writing all those fics re: Dumbledore and Tom?
*rises, all ghosty and mist-like*
Date: 2007-07-26 05:45 pm (UTC)And yeah. Snape's death hit me like a ton of bricks. Dumbledore's hit me, but Snape dying was dropped the floor from under me. One moment he was living, and in the next, he wasn't, and oh my God, the idea that he went over to Dumbledore the moment that Voldemort threatened Lily. HOMFG AHHHH.
The stuff about sparing Lily and Snape's parentage really makes me think about Voldemort's poliitcal ideology -- on the one hand, it seems obvious that he doesn't actually care about parentage and is just using it as a power base because it resonates with the DE's, but my God, how dumb do they have to be?
Re: *rises, all ghosty and mist-like*
Date: 2007-07-26 07:05 pm (UTC)Also: Hey girls, good to see you around. <3
Re: *rises, all ghosty and mist-like*
Date: 2007-07-26 07:33 pm (UTC)And yeah. I've been thinking a lot about Riddle and Dumbledore and the way that they match up. They're fascinating versions of each other both with and without -- Dumbledore almost definitely wished, while he was a kid, that he didn't have a family. Behold, Tom Riddle is a complete orphan.
It makes me wonder when Tom Riddle stopped feeling lonely.
Re: *rises, all ghosty and mist-like*
Date: 2007-07-26 07:53 pm (UTC)Loneliness, on the other hand, is far more insidious, lingering, complicated in that you can be lonely and still be surrounded by adoring peers.
Re: *rises, all ghosty and mist-like*
Date: 2007-07-26 09:12 pm (UTC)Dumbledore almost definitely wished, while he was a kid, that he didn't have a family. Behold, Tom Riddle is a complete orphan.
Ohgod, yes. That's perfect. Dumbledore recognizing it in Tom, recognizing himself and hating Tom but himself more, and making mistakes because he's not thinking rationally. The (literal) quest to destroy Tom is a (metaphorical) quest to destroy his own past, which he passes on to Harry- who has to die both literally and metaphorically. Which is a fairly weird thing I hadn't thought about. Seriously, how many times does this boy have to be AK'd?
Also, Harry as an amalgam of Dumbledore's crushing sense of responsibility (from where?- birth, the scar, the Boy Who Lived possibly) and Tom's orphan-child status.
Re: Tom and loneliness. Death Eaters as some sort of attempt at family-of-choice? Really the pureblood notion is such a transparent attempt at common ground, a family brought together by ideology instead of blood? (My personal opinion is that in this case JKR was probably riffing on Hitler's 'Deutschland' blond-hair-and-blue-eyes fixation even though he was Austrian and far from the Aryan ideal)
Re: *rises, all ghosty and mist-like*
Date: 2007-07-26 11:54 pm (UTC)Harry as an amalgam of Dumbledore and Riddle -- BRILLIANT. Holy shit. That's the perfect way to situate him. And I've been trying to figure out whether the Three Brothers story can be viewed as an analogy to the present day, like with Harry as the youngest brother who gets it right and . . . Tom as the first brother, who wants to conquer death with magic? And Dumbledore, who wants to conquer death by remedying the errors of the past?
The Boy Who Lived title gets to be kind of interesting in light of how Harry wins his final victory over Voldemort.
Re: *rises, all ghosty and mist-like*
Date: 2007-07-27 09:35 pm (UTC)Although I have to say, Harry's title is getting longer and longer, ie: The Boy Who Lived Then Died Then Lived Again? Which is kind of way cooler that just The Boy Who Lived, but I cannot help but imagine someone casually poking Harry's supposedly dead body with a stick as he lays motionless on the ground before Voldemort. It was probably Rookwood. It's always fucking Rookwood.
Re: *rises, all ghosty and mist-like*
Date: 2007-07-27 09:39 pm (UTC)Re: *rises, all ghosty and mist-like*
Date: 2007-07-27 10:20 pm (UTC)Oh dear. What is actually hilarious is the wank and subsequent defending of people getting Dark Mark tattoos on
Re: *rises, all ghosty and mist-like*
Date: 2007-07-27 10:39 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-07-26 05:58 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-07-26 06:46 pm (UTC)It kind of disappointed me that instead of showing how rough life after victory can be, JKR skipped to nineteen years afterward and had the kids running off to school and uh, yeah.
no subject
Date: 2007-07-26 09:58 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-07-26 06:15 pm (UTC)Motto.
no subject
Date: 2007-07-26 06:48 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-07-26 11:32 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-07-26 11:43 pm (UTC)And yeah. I had to read the sentence, like, four times before I actually understood that Percy was back. WTF, sudden much? In my mental version of DH, I think Harry and Hermione and Co only get into the Ministry because Percy helps them.
no subject
Date: 2007-07-26 11:45 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-07-27 02:17 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-07-27 06:48 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-07-27 12:30 pm (UTC)PLEASE WRITE DUMBLEDORE/GRINDELWALD. Because, you know, the SET-UP ALONE: summer, Albus is young, bored and restless. Doesn't want to be an adult, doesn't want to be a child, definitely doesn't want to deal with his sister. He's bound for better things and all of a sudden his options have been cut short. Lying in the grass, thinking of the 7th possible use of dragon's blood - he'll come up with 12 later, but he's still stuck on 7 for now - and suddenly there's a pair of feet obscuring his view of the lazy summer sky, and Ms Bagshot is saying, as if from a great distance, "You boys should get along just fine."
PLEASE. Also, Gellert is apparently Hungarian for Gerard, which is a MUCH HOTTER NAME for him. So says wikipedia, which as we know is the fount of all knowledge.
no subject
Date: 2007-07-27 06:50 pm (UTC)I THINK I SHOULD BEG YOU FOR DUMBLEDORE/GRINDELWALD INSTEAD. And Gerard is far hotter than Gellert, and thanks to you, I really want something dirty and wrong and kind of kinky about DUMBLEDORE and GELLERT and DRAGON'S BLOOD. God, JKR really has a thing for beautiful evil dudes, doesn't she? 10,000 references in HBP to how Tom Riddle is the hottiest hottie ever and 10,0001 references to Gellert's blond curls and beautifulness.
And Dumbledore's blue eyes. XD Between him and Gellert, there's a whole Nazi dream! Or something.
So many good parts about this book, and so much hair-ripping-out awful, too. >:|
no subject
Date: 2007-07-27 09:38 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-07-28 10:18 am (UTC)I swear, the Nazi thing, and the entire "FOR THE GREATER GOOD" - vindication is sweet. Although if you think about it, none of the dates match up (yes, I have been reading wikipedia again, since my older brother STOLE my copy of the book): in the first book, we learn from a chocolate frog's card that Dumbledore defeated G in 1945 (which is also the date of - dum dum dummmm!) But in DH, we find out that Dumbledore says he hesitated for a few years before confronting G, and then defeating him - considering they met when they were around 19, this makes no sense. This would mean Dumbledore was born in the early 1900s, when I think he's closer to being born in the late 1800s.
Plus, you know - Numengard/ Nuremberg. OH JK YOU SLAY ME SO.