Reactions to Order of the Phoenix
Jun. 23rd, 2003 11:29 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gwendolyngraceWell, I read it. I read it in 13 hours, including the first three that were on tape. I didn't intend to read it that quickly, but it became clear I needed to in order to be able to proceed with conference planning.
My feelings? Mixed, as I knew they'd be. I've been saying for months, that it's not so much a question of "liking" or "hating" what she did, as adjusting to accept that all our ideas are not right.
I want to take a slower read-through to check in more detail for my hit rate of right concepts vs. wrong concepts, but in general, I feel like I was about half right.
Concerns: well, in broad strokes, my concern is that perhaps this is not as adult a book as we all believed it might become. She took many easy choices, many easy routes, to get to her story. I've no doubt that they are what she always intended, and that we are the ones who read more in to the story than may have been there. For so many characters with potential - both for good and ill - many choices I found disappointing and obvious.
I kept some notes, though as I said, I want to take time (later) to read the book more slowly and put together a better analysis. And of course those first 6 chapters were Jim Dale's reading, so I'd like to re-read that on my own. The UK edition should arrive in a week or so and I can maybe go through it.
But :
1. Right off the bat, I noticed with interest that Jim Dale has changed his pronunciation of Voldemort. He used to pronounce it as if it were French, so it came out "Vuldemore". Now he definitely has a hard T sound at the end, aligned with Stephen Fry and the films. Personally, I think Voldemort sounds more ominous without the T, but whatever.
2. An "I was right" moment - the Minister of Magic prior to Fudge was female.
3. A possible "I was wrong" moment on House Elves. Kreacher has obviously been able to survive without anyone to work for... except that perhaps because he took "orders" from his mistress's portrait, he counted that as service, so I might still be right about that. Jury's out, will wait for 6 and 7.
4. Narcissa Black? Okay... this whole Sirius Black backstory thing is not working for me right now. First of all, eh, oh, look, a poor rich kid. It seems she did the "family of dark wizards" thing here as well as for Malfoy, and Sirius is the "black sheep" merely because he turned out to be good. Well and good for a reversal, but man, if they're that rich and well off and well connected, to be named Black? Doesn't compute. And wouldn't his father have been the one with the family ties? Why is Mom the one who's so obviously in charge?
5. Percy! Wah! So disappointing. I hope she fixes it in 6 and he wakes up to what his toadying did for him.
6. Bill/Fleur? Say it ain't so, Jo. At least we didn't have to see much of them, especially Fleur.
7. "Everyone's in the Order of the Phoenix!" of course. Right.
8. This note says "Sirius and Remus switched?" which is a reference to our backstories for them in BtL. Sirius is our lower-class one; Remus is also not well-off, but higher born and mostly pure blooded (there's a few Muggles in the family, but not so inbred as Sirius). This is also a reference to their positions in the Order - in BtL, Sirius is the more involved; Remus is not. In some ways, this reversal (where Remus is more in charge) makes some sense.
9. Remus is so dom. What a wonderful little Alpha. I knew it. Always.
10. Lupin was the prefect? Others I've seen have picked up on this too. What? I can accept it sort of, but not really. For one thing, James was Head Boy. You generally don't get to be Head Boy if you didn't make prefect. Secondly, Remus would have been out of classes too much, IMO, to be an effective prefect. Thirdly, while he's assertive enough as an adult to be a prefect, and I think he probably had it in him to be appropriately assertive as a teen, I don't think Remus would have wanted the attention or the spotlight. He was trying to protect his secret - he wouldn't want to be singled out for the stigma or the attraction of being prefect.
11. Potter family was nice; Blacks were not. So disappointing.
12. Podmore - descended from Delaney-Podmore?
13. Goldstein! A Jew! I knew it. Another I Was Right moment.
14. THE TUTSHILL TORNADOS! p.193. Go Twisters! (BtL moment).
15. Kenmare Kestrels! Hee. P. 217. Another Remus-backstory moment for me.
16. Pg. 282. Hedwig has the letter in her beak? Not leg? A Flint, perhaps?
17. Lucius Malfoy is 41 - I had him 7 years older, which is not bad, considering the range of possible age we had. It does point *either* toward an overlapping time with the Marauders/Snape, which I don't really care for, or to even younger Marauders/Snape (i.e., having Harry really young, right out of school, for example), which I *really* don't care for. But it's something to ponder. Plus, the mansion is in Wiltshire, which makes sense. Good to know.
18. P. 347. Ginny *finally* lost the crush! Thank you. I thought she was feeling much better about Harry toward the end of GoF. Also, she's dating a Ravenclaw - another "I was right" prediction. And finally, the most "I was right" of all, which was the way she threw in Harry's face that she, too, has had dealings with Voldemort in one form or other, and can be a resource as far as understanding that touch of darkness that results. Woot.
19. Snape started teaching in 81, eh? Right after Voldemort disappeared, I'll bet. Unless he's hedging and really he started teaching the next term - i.e., autumn of 82 (because I don't think he would have taken a teaching job there *before* Harry was attacked). So what was he doing in the intervening year(s) between leaving school and teaching? Again, depends on whether he is older as I thought and his time overlapped Lucius's, or whether they were all in school almost up until the time of the attack. However, that doesn't make as much sense because of Moody's photos. Sirius also makes comments about living in London, so it sounds as if they had at least a year or two before the war ended. Supports a Snape who began as a Death Eater while still in school, though, so for now I'll say "I was right."
20. ...But I was wrong about the DADA. He did want it; he apparently has applied. Which means Hagrid may have been saving face for him in CoS, by saying that Lockhart was the only candidate. Oh, well. Poor guy. You'd think he'd either have it out with Dumbledore or get the point. Then again... the home life flashback argues against him wanting confrontation with an authority figure.
21. Flint - page 389. The map was still in Crouch Jr.'s possession at the end of GoF.
22. When we saw the Ministry, I thought "okay!" and there's our magical location. Get Smart overtones and all. Somehow I knew it would be underground. But St. Mungo's, too! That I didn't think would necessarily be in London. It's nice that we finally leave Hogwarts for Christmas (I was more or less leaving that alone, but if you count Christmas at the Malfoys then I was right...), and clever of her to do it so that we get to other locations and have a chance to learn more about the wizarding world outside Hogwarts. The concentric circle theory strikes again - a mini I was right.
23. Have to check HMSS, but I think that Dumbledore's password in one of my chapters was Fizzing Whizbee. If so, IWR.
24. p. 469. Ah! He uses the pictures to see what's going on at school. A small concern here: the portraits and the other artifacts, such as the Pensieve, are turning out to be some powerful magic. Dangerous magic. I have some concern that magic in this system tends to be extreme - it either is minute, involving not a lot of implication, or it is sweepingly powerful. The portraits might be such a situation. Particularly later when it sounds like all images and likenesses of a person are able to communicate with other images and likenesses of that person. Is this true of wizard photographs? They don't speak, like portraits do. Perhaps I'm still right in parts about the portrait theory. Will have to wait and see.
25. 562. How disappointing. I know she's confused and conflicted about her feelings for Cedric and Harry, but she's really using Harry to try to work through her grief. I expected better of her. I'm at least glad that they don't *stay* together.
26. 591-2. A RESOUNDING I was right about Snape's homelife and backstory. Abused, and poor to boot. Yes!
27. The flashback/Pensieve scene and aftermath. Well... I'm glad that James and Sirius have been taken down a peg or two. It's more realistic than James being a Clark Kent, but it does rather bother me that they were *so* cruel to Snape. I am at least happy that she had them explain that Snape generally gave back as good as he got, but that one went too far. And what is it with Jo and turning people upside-down to show their skivvies? Poor Snape. He *really* needs to learn to laugh at himself, but it's clear from this and the previous memory flashes that he was never given any circumstances in which it would be safe to do so. How tragic.
28. 670-2. They are *so* a couple. My OTP is devastated, but lives on in backstory. So many more slashy hints in this book, though. I hope now that Remus definitely doesn't wind up with someone else. And it's good to know that James and Lily didn't start dating until their 7th year - in fact, I think that's another I was Right. Will check our BtL notes, but I'm pretty sure. Though it argues that perhaps they were in the same class year, which we deliberately didn't do.
29. Inside the Department of Mysteries. Important Rule, Harry: Do Not Split the Party. Okay - and here's something else. WHY THE FUCK didn't anyone just freaking tell him that Voldemort could be sending him false signals? It was so damn obvious it was sickening, and all anyone had to do was tell him that's why he needed to block it. Okay, Harry was being incredibly teenaged and belligerent and thick, but jesus h! It would have been a simple courtesy and something that would have made his - and Snape's - life a hell of a lot easier. Grrrr.
30. Right. Well. Here's my problem. I could see, all through the book, how Sirius's PTSD was affecting him, especially being cooped up in Grimmauld Place. But this? I think the saddest part of it is that he never had a chance to even begin to heal, really heal, from Azkaban. Dumbledore should have freaking sent him to the country if there was nothing else he could do there. I strongly dislike how everyone ignored Sirius's self-destructiveness and it led to his own downfall. Rather like how they've been ignoring Harry's self-destructiveness in this volume, too, because Harry himself has some trauma that he should be working through. Damn it. I am not happy.
31. Here, and during the DA sequences: Go Neville! I am so right about that boy.
32. P. 833. Snape supplied fake veritaserum for the purposes of protecting the Order. I am SO RIGHT. Fifty points for my house! The centerpiece of HMSS appeared in OoP - the single most important fact about veritaserum *had* to be its resemblence to water.
33. Out of order here, but that Snape is able to trick Voldemort. Okay, I was wrong about Voldy "just being really good at guessing" but I was *right* about Snape as spy. She did not fail fantasy 101 on that point. I do hope we learn more about all that in the next ones.
So, that's my initial reactions. A thought as I was typing these up - do you think any of Sirius's instability both as a kid and as an adult has anything to do with the inbreeding? I expected Bellatrix (which for me, btw, is a fighting household, not a Mrs. Lestrange) to have one eye or something.
Oh - and something else, now that I'm on it. All these DE's broke out of Azkaban. But Dementors are supposed to drain a wizard of powers, and even if they backed off early due to Voldemort's intervention (which actually is *not* supported since Umbridge sicced them on Harry, not Voldy), I would much have preferred to see *some* of the Death Eaters not survive, or be permanently damaged, or at least much more mad and deranged. Lestrange had her fanaticism, but were they all that devoted? Were they all that able to cling to their obsession that they could keep their minds clear? Sirius's experience of Dementors, and Harry's, and this - they just don't add up.
I know I've got a lot more to say about this book, but that's all I have time for now. Lots of good, lots of bad. Lots of adjustment to go through. My inner Remus cried himself to sleep last night, while assuring everyone that he didn't need to be put on suicide watch. Poor man. God, I hope against hope that we haven't seen the last of Sirius in some way. I really don't think that's true.
Oh, and note to self: Have to revise Werewolf Registry Regs to include an "Employment" section.
Yeeks. Three weeks to Nimbus - and what a con this is going to be.
My feelings? Mixed, as I knew they'd be. I've been saying for months, that it's not so much a question of "liking" or "hating" what she did, as adjusting to accept that all our ideas are not right.
I want to take a slower read-through to check in more detail for my hit rate of right concepts vs. wrong concepts, but in general, I feel like I was about half right.
Concerns: well, in broad strokes, my concern is that perhaps this is not as adult a book as we all believed it might become. She took many easy choices, many easy routes, to get to her story. I've no doubt that they are what she always intended, and that we are the ones who read more in to the story than may have been there. For so many characters with potential - both for good and ill - many choices I found disappointing and obvious.
I kept some notes, though as I said, I want to take time (later) to read the book more slowly and put together a better analysis. And of course those first 6 chapters were Jim Dale's reading, so I'd like to re-read that on my own. The UK edition should arrive in a week or so and I can maybe go through it.
But :
1. Right off the bat, I noticed with interest that Jim Dale has changed his pronunciation of Voldemort. He used to pronounce it as if it were French, so it came out "Vuldemore". Now he definitely has a hard T sound at the end, aligned with Stephen Fry and the films. Personally, I think Voldemort sounds more ominous without the T, but whatever.
2. An "I was right" moment - the Minister of Magic prior to Fudge was female.
3. A possible "I was wrong" moment on House Elves. Kreacher has obviously been able to survive without anyone to work for... except that perhaps because he took "orders" from his mistress's portrait, he counted that as service, so I might still be right about that. Jury's out, will wait for 6 and 7.
4. Narcissa Black? Okay... this whole Sirius Black backstory thing is not working for me right now. First of all, eh, oh, look, a poor rich kid. It seems she did the "family of dark wizards" thing here as well as for Malfoy, and Sirius is the "black sheep" merely because he turned out to be good. Well and good for a reversal, but man, if they're that rich and well off and well connected, to be named Black? Doesn't compute. And wouldn't his father have been the one with the family ties? Why is Mom the one who's so obviously in charge?
5. Percy! Wah! So disappointing. I hope she fixes it in 6 and he wakes up to what his toadying did for him.
6. Bill/Fleur? Say it ain't so, Jo. At least we didn't have to see much of them, especially Fleur.
7. "Everyone's in the Order of the Phoenix!" of course. Right.
8. This note says "Sirius and Remus switched?" which is a reference to our backstories for them in BtL. Sirius is our lower-class one; Remus is also not well-off, but higher born and mostly pure blooded (there's a few Muggles in the family, but not so inbred as Sirius). This is also a reference to their positions in the Order - in BtL, Sirius is the more involved; Remus is not. In some ways, this reversal (where Remus is more in charge) makes some sense.
9. Remus is so dom. What a wonderful little Alpha. I knew it. Always.
10. Lupin was the prefect? Others I've seen have picked up on this too. What? I can accept it sort of, but not really. For one thing, James was Head Boy. You generally don't get to be Head Boy if you didn't make prefect. Secondly, Remus would have been out of classes too much, IMO, to be an effective prefect. Thirdly, while he's assertive enough as an adult to be a prefect, and I think he probably had it in him to be appropriately assertive as a teen, I don't think Remus would have wanted the attention or the spotlight. He was trying to protect his secret - he wouldn't want to be singled out for the stigma or the attraction of being prefect.
11. Potter family was nice; Blacks were not. So disappointing.
12. Podmore - descended from Delaney-Podmore?
13. Goldstein! A Jew! I knew it. Another I Was Right moment.
14. THE TUTSHILL TORNADOS! p.193. Go Twisters! (BtL moment).
15. Kenmare Kestrels! Hee. P. 217. Another Remus-backstory moment for me.
16. Pg. 282. Hedwig has the letter in her beak? Not leg? A Flint, perhaps?
17. Lucius Malfoy is 41 - I had him 7 years older, which is not bad, considering the range of possible age we had. It does point *either* toward an overlapping time with the Marauders/Snape, which I don't really care for, or to even younger Marauders/Snape (i.e., having Harry really young, right out of school, for example), which I *really* don't care for. But it's something to ponder. Plus, the mansion is in Wiltshire, which makes sense. Good to know.
18. P. 347. Ginny *finally* lost the crush! Thank you. I thought she was feeling much better about Harry toward the end of GoF. Also, she's dating a Ravenclaw - another "I was right" prediction. And finally, the most "I was right" of all, which was the way she threw in Harry's face that she, too, has had dealings with Voldemort in one form or other, and can be a resource as far as understanding that touch of darkness that results. Woot.
19. Snape started teaching in 81, eh? Right after Voldemort disappeared, I'll bet. Unless he's hedging and really he started teaching the next term - i.e., autumn of 82 (because I don't think he would have taken a teaching job there *before* Harry was attacked). So what was he doing in the intervening year(s) between leaving school and teaching? Again, depends on whether he is older as I thought and his time overlapped Lucius's, or whether they were all in school almost up until the time of the attack. However, that doesn't make as much sense because of Moody's photos. Sirius also makes comments about living in London, so it sounds as if they had at least a year or two before the war ended. Supports a Snape who began as a Death Eater while still in school, though, so for now I'll say "I was right."
20. ...But I was wrong about the DADA. He did want it; he apparently has applied. Which means Hagrid may have been saving face for him in CoS, by saying that Lockhart was the only candidate. Oh, well. Poor guy. You'd think he'd either have it out with Dumbledore or get the point. Then again... the home life flashback argues against him wanting confrontation with an authority figure.
21. Flint - page 389. The map was still in Crouch Jr.'s possession at the end of GoF.
22. When we saw the Ministry, I thought "okay!" and there's our magical location. Get Smart overtones and all. Somehow I knew it would be underground. But St. Mungo's, too! That I didn't think would necessarily be in London. It's nice that we finally leave Hogwarts for Christmas (I was more or less leaving that alone, but if you count Christmas at the Malfoys then I was right...), and clever of her to do it so that we get to other locations and have a chance to learn more about the wizarding world outside Hogwarts. The concentric circle theory strikes again - a mini I was right.
23. Have to check HMSS, but I think that Dumbledore's password in one of my chapters was Fizzing Whizbee. If so, IWR.
24. p. 469. Ah! He uses the pictures to see what's going on at school. A small concern here: the portraits and the other artifacts, such as the Pensieve, are turning out to be some powerful magic. Dangerous magic. I have some concern that magic in this system tends to be extreme - it either is minute, involving not a lot of implication, or it is sweepingly powerful. The portraits might be such a situation. Particularly later when it sounds like all images and likenesses of a person are able to communicate with other images and likenesses of that person. Is this true of wizard photographs? They don't speak, like portraits do. Perhaps I'm still right in parts about the portrait theory. Will have to wait and see.
25. 562. How disappointing. I know she's confused and conflicted about her feelings for Cedric and Harry, but she's really using Harry to try to work through her grief. I expected better of her. I'm at least glad that they don't *stay* together.
26. 591-2. A RESOUNDING I was right about Snape's homelife and backstory. Abused, and poor to boot. Yes!
27. The flashback/Pensieve scene and aftermath. Well... I'm glad that James and Sirius have been taken down a peg or two. It's more realistic than James being a Clark Kent, but it does rather bother me that they were *so* cruel to Snape. I am at least happy that she had them explain that Snape generally gave back as good as he got, but that one went too far. And what is it with Jo and turning people upside-down to show their skivvies? Poor Snape. He *really* needs to learn to laugh at himself, but it's clear from this and the previous memory flashes that he was never given any circumstances in which it would be safe to do so. How tragic.
28. 670-2. They are *so* a couple. My OTP is devastated, but lives on in backstory. So many more slashy hints in this book, though. I hope now that Remus definitely doesn't wind up with someone else. And it's good to know that James and Lily didn't start dating until their 7th year - in fact, I think that's another I was Right. Will check our BtL notes, but I'm pretty sure. Though it argues that perhaps they were in the same class year, which we deliberately didn't do.
29. Inside the Department of Mysteries. Important Rule, Harry: Do Not Split the Party. Okay - and here's something else. WHY THE FUCK didn't anyone just freaking tell him that Voldemort could be sending him false signals? It was so damn obvious it was sickening, and all anyone had to do was tell him that's why he needed to block it. Okay, Harry was being incredibly teenaged and belligerent and thick, but jesus h! It would have been a simple courtesy and something that would have made his - and Snape's - life a hell of a lot easier. Grrrr.
30. Right. Well. Here's my problem. I could see, all through the book, how Sirius's PTSD was affecting him, especially being cooped up in Grimmauld Place. But this? I think the saddest part of it is that he never had a chance to even begin to heal, really heal, from Azkaban. Dumbledore should have freaking sent him to the country if there was nothing else he could do there. I strongly dislike how everyone ignored Sirius's self-destructiveness and it led to his own downfall. Rather like how they've been ignoring Harry's self-destructiveness in this volume, too, because Harry himself has some trauma that he should be working through. Damn it. I am not happy.
31. Here, and during the DA sequences: Go Neville! I am so right about that boy.
32. P. 833. Snape supplied fake veritaserum for the purposes of protecting the Order. I am SO RIGHT. Fifty points for my house! The centerpiece of HMSS appeared in OoP - the single most important fact about veritaserum *had* to be its resemblence to water.
33. Out of order here, but that Snape is able to trick Voldemort. Okay, I was wrong about Voldy "just being really good at guessing" but I was *right* about Snape as spy. She did not fail fantasy 101 on that point. I do hope we learn more about all that in the next ones.
So, that's my initial reactions. A thought as I was typing these up - do you think any of Sirius's instability both as a kid and as an adult has anything to do with the inbreeding? I expected Bellatrix (which for me, btw, is a fighting household, not a Mrs. Lestrange) to have one eye or something.
Oh - and something else, now that I'm on it. All these DE's broke out of Azkaban. But Dementors are supposed to drain a wizard of powers, and even if they backed off early due to Voldemort's intervention (which actually is *not* supported since Umbridge sicced them on Harry, not Voldy), I would much have preferred to see *some* of the Death Eaters not survive, or be permanently damaged, or at least much more mad and deranged. Lestrange had her fanaticism, but were they all that devoted? Were they all that able to cling to their obsession that they could keep their minds clear? Sirius's experience of Dementors, and Harry's, and this - they just don't add up.
I know I've got a lot more to say about this book, but that's all I have time for now. Lots of good, lots of bad. Lots of adjustment to go through. My inner Remus cried himself to sleep last night, while assuring everyone that he didn't need to be put on suicide watch. Poor man. God, I hope against hope that we haven't seen the last of Sirius in some way. I really don't think that's true.
Oh, and note to self: Have to revise Werewolf Registry Regs to include an "Employment" section.
Yeeks. Three weeks to Nimbus - and what a con this is going to be.
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