Finished.....
Jul. 21st, 2007 09:16 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gwendolyngraceSo, yeah, a couple days ago I started reading the jpg version (bite me). I knew I needed to just Get It Over With and I also knew that I read too slowly to be able to spend all day reading....
I had got through Chapter 30 by 4 PM Friday.
We stood in line at Harvard Square for 2 hours for our wristbands, then Moony and I found dinner at the OMG slowest IHOP in the world, walked (way too far) to the hotel, changed quickly, and got a cab back to Harvard Square just in time to miss the Harry and the Potters concert. People were already starting to queue for the book, so we got in line, and aside from occasional forays to hand out Portus swag, stayed in line for another 2 1/2 hours until midnight. We actually got our books in half an hour! Got another cab back to the hotel, settled in to finish reading by about... 1:30? Ordered pizza. Took a couple breaks, for food, for vending machines, for a little breathing....
Finished it at 4:36 am.
I left the room at about 5:45, got home via bus and my two feet at 7:30, showered, tried to sleep, cannot sleep, and talked to Heidi.
I am now at 27 hours without sleep.
I wish I were not a. so tired; b. PMS'ing; and c. so Holy Crap, it's Over about the whole thing.
Okay. Let me just say straight off the bat that JKR writes one heck of a page-turner. But I'm not sure if that's because it's really "can't put it down" or because we're all so invested in our pet characters that we *have to know* what happens.
The incredibly frustrating thing about her books is that they are SUCH a mix of brilliant ingenuity and total fucking CRAP.
The first thing that made me AUDIBLY RESPOND to the book was on page 10. Yeah, you know what I'm talking about. FOUR WEEKS?!? SJAJK:DHAK:SD:RIO STFU. Hello? NO ONE moves that fast. I don't care if it IS wartime.
I was not upset by Hedwig. Sorry. Nor Moody. When I read that Hagrid had gone down, I thought, "YES!" but then "NO!" when it turned out to be a fakeout.
Tonks = cipher.
Ginny = sort of a nothing character, in sum.
Luna = MADE OF WIN. If things with Xeno had gone differently, I think Harry/Luna would have been a much bigger possibility. I still think it would have made a hell of a pairing.
RON comes forward SO FAR in this book. OMG. It's *almost* enough to accept R/H, though I'm still not in love with the idea.
NEVILLE = Heir of Gryffindor. Thank you, goodnight.
Okay. Now, here's the thing. First of all, it took them ZOMG so long to figure out the obvious. And why the fuck didn't they include Helga's cup in their list of possible horcruxes - um, Harry? Dumbledore's lessons? Duh. But by the time they found the locket (and yes, Heidi, yes, your Regulus was perfectly done, though I'm not so sold on the transformation of Kreacher), we started ripping of LOTR. "It's ours, precioussss" and all of that. The endless camping out? WTF? This all felt incredibly stretched out so that it would take a year - and SOLELY because that's her formula, and we must stick to formula, of course, yes, we must, preciouss... Ahem. Oh, and because *we have to include 9 months so Tonks can spawn*. Yeesh. Plot points, not characters.
Yeah, yeah, I get that Remus was justified in freaking out (though apparently he was completely wrong about the little cub being, well, a cub), but I didn't actually care for Harry's reaction at all. This was one point where I had to stop. And call Heidi. And say: "I made a terrible mistake when I married Tonks and I've been regretting it ever since. BECAUSE I'M GAY!!!!" I mean, jeez, Harry - wtf do you know about it? Can you imagine how much you could have accomplished if Remus had helped you? You might have wrapped up the whole story by, oh, I dunno, Christmas. Oops, that's outside formula.
Speaking of, were we surprised AT ALL that the wedding turned into a battle? Nup.
(Um, yeah, and when Dean showed up? I was actually disappointed it wasn't Dean Winchester. I'm a t00b.)
Olivander - Well, first, I'm insanely happy I wrote my little Olivander fic. I knew we'd see him again! I knew he'd turn out to be important. (Oh, and Harry? Get a little quicker on the uptake. Grigorovich. Duh.)
Albus + Grindelwald.... well, if you change this story around slightly, you get what I thought was a viable backstory for Lucius's father (Lazarus, not Abraxus - my own 'verse) and... Voldemort. Not in the details, but in the essence. Except without a mentally damaged sister. Though I really would have liked to have seen the Squib angle - a family that covered up a Squib child for the shame of it (something similar figured into my original Snape backstory).
I'll go with the crowd and say not quite enough Hogwarts. Each book is a concentric circle around the circumference of the previous book, with Hogwarts at the center and the outside world covered more by each successive circle/book, but this one tipped the balance too far away from Hogwarts (though we knew it would). Room of Requirement became the Plot Device Of Overuse Doom - from the time we first heard about it to its last appearance, it gained steadily more page time than some of the flesh-and-blood characters.
Speaking of flesh-and-blood, or rather the antithesis, Grey Lady - good thinking (for once) Harry! But did the ghosts' stories seem a little too pat to anyone else? Contrived, even? Hm.
Oh, and big battle? COMPANY NUMBER! For chrissakes, *EVERYONE* shows up, practically.
Okay, the two major things. Lupin and Snape, of course.
The whole Lupin arc....still doesn't quite work for me. When he comes in all manic because Ted has been born (btw, did anyone else immediately think, "What? His name is Teddy Ruxpin?"), I was like....er...WTF just happened? Yeah, he's happy, he's overjoyed, but...um...pointless appearance much? And what's with Remus being bi-polar, from "OMG, Yikes!" to "YAYZ I IZ A DADDY!" - it's again, a plot point, and IMO something that could have played out less lame. (And of course, I must be bitter and grrrrr at "Remus _John_ Lupin" making it into the book. Grrrrr.)
We can justify it by saying that he and Sirius get to be happy together in death (and thank the gods Tonks didn't show up there at the end), but Daym, what it took to get them there? Yeah, I'll take non-death over afterlife, thanks.
So the sole purpose of this arc is to give Lupin offspring, give him that fleeting sense of fulfillment that comes of being a parent...and then to make Harry said offspring's godparent. Then we kill both parents, but it appears that Harry didn't actually raise Teddy Ruxpin (ymmv). ...Right. Le Sigh.
Two more things on this: The throwaway-ness of their deaths. I think JKR was so destroyed by writing the death of Sirius that she just *couldn't* go through it again with Remus. She did it in a manner that doesn't hit right away (I had to read the sentence three times), and (wisely, actually) withholds *Harry's* reaction until a later point, when it's much more impactful. Because while I stared in shock and horror, I didn't cry just at that moment. I cried when Harry Brought Them BACK (I'm crying right now, again, dammit). DAMN YOU, JKR! That's when it hurt. Hurts. So while I will never forgive her, just as I'll never forgive her for Sirius's death, I have to hand it to the woman: She knows how to tug heartstrings.
And finally: Personally, I think Tonks showing up to the fight is what ultimately Got Him Killed - i.e., she was so frantic to find him that I think she may just have distracted him at the wrong moment and got him axed (throwing herself kamikaze-style at whomever when he popped his werewolf clogs). And once again, JKR took two characters who could have been major-cool and made them... eh.
Okay...this brings me to Snape. Well. My worst fears come to life in this. Minute I saw the silver doe, I knew: it was for Lily. We were getting Snape-loved-Lily (the HPFGU theory LOLLIPOPS). :HEADDESK. It *helped* that they met prior to Hogwarts. But. LAME. LAME LAME LAME. And BTW: "silver doe. Silver stag. Oh, how terribly precious and cutesy. Gag." Um... I'm going with no on this. No. C'est quoi? Snape: "BFF's, k right?" Lily: "Mm... nuh, cuz ur friendz, they're teh ebbil." Snape: "But don't you love meeeeee?" Lily: "Dude, get a grip. Ur not boyfriend material." Snape: PINES.
Fucking gag me. Though it does at least give us canon evidence of someone calling him Sev. And his death? Totally shocked me. I thought he was going to die, but not at the hands of Voldemort (well, technically Nagini). And while I still HATE Snape having a thing for Lily, it was very touching to see him give Harry his life, and to ask to see Lily's eyes as his last vision. So, again, pulling at my heartstrings while simultaneously wanting to make me hurl. DAMN YOU, JKR!
Now, on that subject... Moony posted that my final reaction on reading the Epilogue was "Oh, Jesus Christ! And it was. But it was for a couple reasons. First and foremost, because it was so patently a case of the author tying up her story in a nice, neat little bow, with curley-queue ribbons and shiny wrapping paper, and it was just too cute - as in the old aunt who leans in the pram and baby-talks and pinches cheeks cute. Bleah. But second and almost as importantly... "Albus Severus"!? WTF, Harry? Saddle the poor kid with two names like those - even given what they stand for? Zoicks. Moreover, it *REALLY BUGGED ME* that he'd name his kid after Severus, but that there was literally NO CLOSURE on the issue of what Severus had done for him. Yes, he made sure to vindicate Sev in the eyes of, well, EVERYONE, but there was absolutely no personal acknowledgment on Harry's behalf toward Severus after the pensieve told his tale. And Harry had at least one (and arguably two) opportunities: The Resurrection Stone and (possibly) a portrait. Now, he may not have had a portrait - it's not mentioned, so it may not be there. Umbridge's portrait also isn't mentioned, so we don't know how magical and/or automatic Headmaster/mistress portraits are. But still. Dude. You could have called him back to thank him, Harry, and apologize. Bad form, mate.
I honestly don't know which of these deaths breaks me more. Fred's was very hard to take, but isn't one of the ones I keep coming back to. I also teared (but didn't cry) not at Dobby's death, but at Luna's eulogy.
Okay, so I have a hefty amount of wank for this book (I know there's more I haven't said, but, well. I'm on hour 28 now, after typing this). But there are things I loved, too. Luna, Neville, Aberforth, how far Ron comes, George after losing his ear, McGonagall, the real Grindelwald & Dumbledore story, Voldemort's final defeat at the "hands" of the Elder Wand, Lee Jordan's broadcast, KINGSLEY for MINISTER, Sirius's teenager bedroom (complete with Muggle pinups to put his parents off his pansy scent!), Draco's arc, LUCIUS and NARCISSA!, McGonagall casting substitutiary locomotion (TM Mary Norton) on the Hogwarts statues and suits of armor (All together, now: "Traguna, Macoides, Trecorum, Satis Dee!"), Luna's bedroom, FIXING PERCY (because yeah, she'd better have done that! And now he can be with Oliver, yay!), Molly calling Bellatrix a BITCH (whoo!), and I'm sure there's more of the good, too.
Of course, no post about this book would be complete without some mention of HARRY THE HORCRUX. I'll admit, I never thought the *scar* was a horcrux, but I didn't think she'd make *all of Harry* into a horcrux, whole cloth. On the one hand, she did it fucking brilliantly. On the other, it's so... Christ died for your sins. Huh? John Granger's going to have a field day with this. Field Day. He'll be insufferable, I tell you - highly entertaining, but man, I'm betting satisfied as all get out. And yet, the allegory is so overpoweringly strong that I can't help but both feel uncomfortable with it, and simultaneously wonder if it's *too* obvious and is just a sign that we really are reading a retread - a wicked clever retread, but a retread nonetheless. I feel that with the presence of the Elder Wand, Harry-the-Horcrux wasn't actually needed...except that without that plot device, he might not have had to die, and without having to die, he might not have been able to master the stone. But... that has a circular logic and I'm just not sure it was necessary to get to the tricksy part that foiled moldyVoldy. It may be a while before I work that out for myself.
Oh - Heidi asked whether this makes Harry the Heir of Slytherin... I said no, because I rather got the impression from the Peverell story that the Peverells really *weren't* descended from Slytherin... either that Gaunt was wrong, or... am I remembering right, did he actually say it was Slytherin's ring? I think it was only the locket.... Yes, I'm right! Gaunt points out the ring as being Peverell's and the locket as Slytherin's, NOT both Slytherin's.....
Well... 28+ hours, no sleep. Must sleep. Probably have to resort to Movie and/or some alcohol to help.... Can't stop crying. Damn PMS. 10 years.
A while ago I posted about my car's name. My car is Ashley-Pitt. I choose car names not as females, but for characters who give of themselves, take a lot of punishment, and wholly sacrifice for their comrades. Well, I think my next car, depending on what it turns out to be, will have to be named Severus Snape.
I had got through Chapter 30 by 4 PM Friday.
We stood in line at Harvard Square for 2 hours for our wristbands, then Moony and I found dinner at the OMG slowest IHOP in the world, walked (way too far) to the hotel, changed quickly, and got a cab back to Harvard Square just in time to miss the Harry and the Potters concert. People were already starting to queue for the book, so we got in line, and aside from occasional forays to hand out Portus swag, stayed in line for another 2 1/2 hours until midnight. We actually got our books in half an hour! Got another cab back to the hotel, settled in to finish reading by about... 1:30? Ordered pizza. Took a couple breaks, for food, for vending machines, for a little breathing....
Finished it at 4:36 am.
I left the room at about 5:45, got home via bus and my two feet at 7:30, showered, tried to sleep, cannot sleep, and talked to Heidi.
I am now at 27 hours without sleep.
I wish I were not a. so tired; b. PMS'ing; and c. so Holy Crap, it's Over about the whole thing.
Okay. Let me just say straight off the bat that JKR writes one heck of a page-turner. But I'm not sure if that's because it's really "can't put it down" or because we're all so invested in our pet characters that we *have to know* what happens.
The incredibly frustrating thing about her books is that they are SUCH a mix of brilliant ingenuity and total fucking CRAP.
The first thing that made me AUDIBLY RESPOND to the book was on page 10. Yeah, you know what I'm talking about. FOUR WEEKS?!? SJAJK:DHAK:SD:RIO STFU. Hello? NO ONE moves that fast. I don't care if it IS wartime.
I was not upset by Hedwig. Sorry. Nor Moody. When I read that Hagrid had gone down, I thought, "YES!" but then "NO!" when it turned out to be a fakeout.
Tonks = cipher.
Ginny = sort of a nothing character, in sum.
Luna = MADE OF WIN. If things with Xeno had gone differently, I think Harry/Luna would have been a much bigger possibility. I still think it would have made a hell of a pairing.
RON comes forward SO FAR in this book. OMG. It's *almost* enough to accept R/H, though I'm still not in love with the idea.
NEVILLE = Heir of Gryffindor. Thank you, goodnight.
Okay. Now, here's the thing. First of all, it took them ZOMG so long to figure out the obvious. And why the fuck didn't they include Helga's cup in their list of possible horcruxes - um, Harry? Dumbledore's lessons? Duh. But by the time they found the locket (and yes, Heidi, yes, your Regulus was perfectly done, though I'm not so sold on the transformation of Kreacher), we started ripping of LOTR. "It's ours, precioussss" and all of that. The endless camping out? WTF? This all felt incredibly stretched out so that it would take a year - and SOLELY because that's her formula, and we must stick to formula, of course, yes, we must, preciouss... Ahem. Oh, and because *we have to include 9 months so Tonks can spawn*. Yeesh. Plot points, not characters.
Yeah, yeah, I get that Remus was justified in freaking out (though apparently he was completely wrong about the little cub being, well, a cub), but I didn't actually care for Harry's reaction at all. This was one point where I had to stop. And call Heidi. And say: "I made a terrible mistake when I married Tonks and I've been regretting it ever since. BECAUSE I'M GAY!!!!" I mean, jeez, Harry - wtf do you know about it? Can you imagine how much you could have accomplished if Remus had helped you? You might have wrapped up the whole story by, oh, I dunno, Christmas. Oops, that's outside formula.
Speaking of, were we surprised AT ALL that the wedding turned into a battle? Nup.
(Um, yeah, and when Dean showed up? I was actually disappointed it wasn't Dean Winchester. I'm a t00b.)
Olivander - Well, first, I'm insanely happy I wrote my little Olivander fic. I knew we'd see him again! I knew he'd turn out to be important. (Oh, and Harry? Get a little quicker on the uptake. Grigorovich. Duh.)
Albus + Grindelwald.... well, if you change this story around slightly, you get what I thought was a viable backstory for Lucius's father (Lazarus, not Abraxus - my own 'verse) and... Voldemort. Not in the details, but in the essence. Except without a mentally damaged sister. Though I really would have liked to have seen the Squib angle - a family that covered up a Squib child for the shame of it (something similar figured into my original Snape backstory).
I'll go with the crowd and say not quite enough Hogwarts. Each book is a concentric circle around the circumference of the previous book, with Hogwarts at the center and the outside world covered more by each successive circle/book, but this one tipped the balance too far away from Hogwarts (though we knew it would). Room of Requirement became the Plot Device Of Overuse Doom - from the time we first heard about it to its last appearance, it gained steadily more page time than some of the flesh-and-blood characters.
Speaking of flesh-and-blood, or rather the antithesis, Grey Lady - good thinking (for once) Harry! But did the ghosts' stories seem a little too pat to anyone else? Contrived, even? Hm.
Oh, and big battle? COMPANY NUMBER! For chrissakes, *EVERYONE* shows up, practically.
Okay, the two major things. Lupin and Snape, of course.
The whole Lupin arc....still doesn't quite work for me. When he comes in all manic because Ted has been born (btw, did anyone else immediately think, "What? His name is Teddy Ruxpin?"), I was like....er...WTF just happened? Yeah, he's happy, he's overjoyed, but...um...pointless appearance much? And what's with Remus being bi-polar, from "OMG, Yikes!" to "YAYZ I IZ A DADDY!" - it's again, a plot point, and IMO something that could have played out less lame. (And of course, I must be bitter and grrrrr at "Remus _John_ Lupin" making it into the book. Grrrrr.)
We can justify it by saying that he and Sirius get to be happy together in death (and thank the gods Tonks didn't show up there at the end), but Daym, what it took to get them there? Yeah, I'll take non-death over afterlife, thanks.
So the sole purpose of this arc is to give Lupin offspring, give him that fleeting sense of fulfillment that comes of being a parent...and then to make Harry said offspring's godparent. Then we kill both parents, but it appears that Harry didn't actually raise Teddy Ruxpin (ymmv). ...Right. Le Sigh.
Two more things on this: The throwaway-ness of their deaths. I think JKR was so destroyed by writing the death of Sirius that she just *couldn't* go through it again with Remus. She did it in a manner that doesn't hit right away (I had to read the sentence three times), and (wisely, actually) withholds *Harry's* reaction until a later point, when it's much more impactful. Because while I stared in shock and horror, I didn't cry just at that moment. I cried when Harry Brought Them BACK (I'm crying right now, again, dammit). DAMN YOU, JKR! That's when it hurt. Hurts. So while I will never forgive her, just as I'll never forgive her for Sirius's death, I have to hand it to the woman: She knows how to tug heartstrings.
And finally: Personally, I think Tonks showing up to the fight is what ultimately Got Him Killed - i.e., she was so frantic to find him that I think she may just have distracted him at the wrong moment and got him axed (throwing herself kamikaze-style at whomever when he popped his werewolf clogs). And once again, JKR took two characters who could have been major-cool and made them... eh.
Okay...this brings me to Snape. Well. My worst fears come to life in this. Minute I saw the silver doe, I knew: it was for Lily. We were getting Snape-loved-Lily (the HPFGU theory LOLLIPOPS). :HEADDESK. It *helped* that they met prior to Hogwarts. But. LAME. LAME LAME LAME. And BTW: "silver doe. Silver stag. Oh, how terribly precious and cutesy. Gag." Um... I'm going with no on this. No. C'est quoi? Snape: "BFF's, k right?" Lily: "Mm... nuh, cuz ur friendz, they're teh ebbil." Snape: "But don't you love meeeeee?" Lily: "Dude, get a grip. Ur not boyfriend material." Snape: PINES.
Fucking gag me. Though it does at least give us canon evidence of someone calling him Sev. And his death? Totally shocked me. I thought he was going to die, but not at the hands of Voldemort (well, technically Nagini). And while I still HATE Snape having a thing for Lily, it was very touching to see him give Harry his life, and to ask to see Lily's eyes as his last vision. So, again, pulling at my heartstrings while simultaneously wanting to make me hurl. DAMN YOU, JKR!
Now, on that subject... Moony posted that my final reaction on reading the Epilogue was "Oh, Jesus Christ! And it was. But it was for a couple reasons. First and foremost, because it was so patently a case of the author tying up her story in a nice, neat little bow, with curley-queue ribbons and shiny wrapping paper, and it was just too cute - as in the old aunt who leans in the pram and baby-talks and pinches cheeks cute. Bleah. But second and almost as importantly... "Albus Severus"!? WTF, Harry? Saddle the poor kid with two names like those - even given what they stand for? Zoicks. Moreover, it *REALLY BUGGED ME* that he'd name his kid after Severus, but that there was literally NO CLOSURE on the issue of what Severus had done for him. Yes, he made sure to vindicate Sev in the eyes of, well, EVERYONE, but there was absolutely no personal acknowledgment on Harry's behalf toward Severus after the pensieve told his tale. And Harry had at least one (and arguably two) opportunities: The Resurrection Stone and (possibly) a portrait. Now, he may not have had a portrait - it's not mentioned, so it may not be there. Umbridge's portrait also isn't mentioned, so we don't know how magical and/or automatic Headmaster/mistress portraits are. But still. Dude. You could have called him back to thank him, Harry, and apologize. Bad form, mate.
I honestly don't know which of these deaths breaks me more. Fred's was very hard to take, but isn't one of the ones I keep coming back to. I also teared (but didn't cry) not at Dobby's death, but at Luna's eulogy.
Okay, so I have a hefty amount of wank for this book (I know there's more I haven't said, but, well. I'm on hour 28 now, after typing this). But there are things I loved, too. Luna, Neville, Aberforth, how far Ron comes, George after losing his ear, McGonagall, the real Grindelwald & Dumbledore story, Voldemort's final defeat at the "hands" of the Elder Wand, Lee Jordan's broadcast, KINGSLEY for MINISTER, Sirius's teenager bedroom (complete with Muggle pinups to put his parents off his pansy scent!), Draco's arc, LUCIUS and NARCISSA!, McGonagall casting substitutiary locomotion (TM Mary Norton) on the Hogwarts statues and suits of armor (All together, now: "Traguna, Macoides, Trecorum, Satis Dee!"), Luna's bedroom, FIXING PERCY (because yeah, she'd better have done that! And now he can be with Oliver, yay!), Molly calling Bellatrix a BITCH (whoo!), and I'm sure there's more of the good, too.
Of course, no post about this book would be complete without some mention of HARRY THE HORCRUX. I'll admit, I never thought the *scar* was a horcrux, but I didn't think she'd make *all of Harry* into a horcrux, whole cloth. On the one hand, she did it fucking brilliantly. On the other, it's so... Christ died for your sins. Huh? John Granger's going to have a field day with this. Field Day. He'll be insufferable, I tell you - highly entertaining, but man, I'm betting satisfied as all get out. And yet, the allegory is so overpoweringly strong that I can't help but both feel uncomfortable with it, and simultaneously wonder if it's *too* obvious and is just a sign that we really are reading a retread - a wicked clever retread, but a retread nonetheless. I feel that with the presence of the Elder Wand, Harry-the-Horcrux wasn't actually needed...except that without that plot device, he might not have had to die, and without having to die, he might not have been able to master the stone. But... that has a circular logic and I'm just not sure it was necessary to get to the tricksy part that foiled moldyVoldy. It may be a while before I work that out for myself.
Oh - Heidi asked whether this makes Harry the Heir of Slytherin... I said no, because I rather got the impression from the Peverell story that the Peverells really *weren't* descended from Slytherin... either that Gaunt was wrong, or... am I remembering right, did he actually say it was Slytherin's ring? I think it was only the locket.... Yes, I'm right! Gaunt points out the ring as being Peverell's and the locket as Slytherin's, NOT both Slytherin's.....
Well... 28+ hours, no sleep. Must sleep. Probably have to resort to Movie and/or some alcohol to help.... Can't stop crying. Damn PMS. 10 years.
A while ago I posted about my car's name. My car is Ashley-Pitt. I choose car names not as females, but for characters who give of themselves, take a lot of punishment, and wholly sacrifice for their comrades. Well, I think my next car, depending on what it turns out to be, will have to be named Severus Snape.
