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SPOILERS FOR HARRY POTTER
QUESTIONS:
Does someone want to explain the whole, Voldemort has Harry's blood thing? Got the part about Harry being a Horcrux, and needing to sacrifice himself to live, and all the stuff about the wands, but didn't get the thing about part of Lily's sacrifice being transferred to Voldemort?
Did anyone spend a long time thinking the Malfoys were all dead?
Did anyone else find the epilogue kind of chilling?
Did anyone find the part where the trio were on the run, camping out in different spots, quite slow and a bit drag-y? Especially while Ron was off being a prat?
Who had the Lupins slated for death the moment their baby was born healthy?
How many times did you cry, and at what parts?
How many times did you laugh, or, uh. Possibly cheer or whoop? At what parts?
How long did it take you to read?
Phineas says, "Remember the part the Slytherins played!" What part did they play? We see Slugghorn running about helping--is there a suggestion, or did I just miss it, that the Syltherins who left when McGonagall said to prepare to fight, helped muster the forces of thestrals and families and whatnot?
*
OVERALL:
I loved this book. A lot.
To say the least, there was a lot of hype leading up to it. To me almost all of that seems justified now. Not the people being dickheads parts of the hype, but the general excitement.
As for myself, I had my own set of expectations. I've always liked HP. I've always liked it quite a bit, actually. And there were certain aspects I could get fannish about, but not the 'verse as a whole. I just thought the books were good, and fun, and entertaining, but certain things sat wrong with me and I couldn't ever see myself really dying of love for any of it. That changed about eight months ago. Something clicked in my head, and since then I've been pretty much mad for them. Some of you have seen me drooling over Harry/Draco but it wasn't just that; it was all of it.
The thing that clicked was I just started seeing the books in a different light. I started, uh, interrogating them from a different perspective. And I started thinking about what it all meant, what it would mean for book 7, where JKR would go with all this. And I formed a lot of ideas and theories about not just what was going to happen but what had to happen (particularly thematically). If they didn't happen, the could still be fun nice adventure books, but pretty much the way I had started to view the books would collapse. I could still hold that view, of course, but I'd have to discount book 7. It would've been a disappointment.
I had meant to write these ideas down, several large proofs about what I thought would happen and why. I wish I had now just for the pleasure of looking at them and saying, "OMG I was so smart! So right!" But that's just me liking to gloat--not over anyone--to just gloat for the sake of gloating. But mostly, I'm just happy the things I needed to happen for this world to work for me not only happened but happened and then some. Most of the points I wanted to be made were very explicit. Stuff like:
-Snape loving Lily. Snape turning from Voldemort because Voldemort was hunting Lily. Snape being Dumbledore's because of Lily. Dumbledore trusting Snape because he knew the power of Snape's love. Snape's love being a weapon against Voldemort.
-Harry having to sacrifice himself. Harry having to willingly die in order to live. Harry's sacrifice mirroring Lily's sacrifice, Harry's sacrifice defeating Voldemort, Harry living.
-Races uniting at the end, goblins and house elves being instrumental to getting Horcruxes/fighting Voldemort.
The things that I thought would really be important that weren't there was I thought Harry would have to have some big moment of forgiving and even loving the human part of Voldemort, the part that was still Tom Riddle, in order to defeat him. But the thing about Harry having to sacrifice himself in order to live took care of a lot of the themes I wanted to be covered on that front. I also thought we'd see a little more in House cooperation (namely the admission Slytherin isn't all bad, in more than just a cursory way).
(The latter would be why I find the epilogue chilling. HP is about 4 generations: Dumbledore's, Riddle's, James Potter's, and Harry Potters, and each of those generations has parallels and repetitions that circle, and circle, and circle. What it looked like to me on Platform 9 3/4 was just more history repeating: Ron telling his kid to give Draco's kid a tough time [omg. Draco's kid. *is momentarily manaical with glee!!!*], and there's still prejudice against Slytherin. There's a bit at the end which is maybe supposed to be nice, with Harry telling young Albus any House is alright, with that really amazing and to me completely unexpected tribute payed to Severus Snape. But it's told in whispers, so easily forgotten. Everything seems so much the same as it was in that scene on the train with James, Lily, Severus, and Sirius. As it must have been with Riddle, as it must have been with Albus. I can't figure out whether JKR meant to do that or not--I was so happy just before the epilogue and then the epilogue itself SENT CHILLS DOWN MY SPINE.
Oh, and I like how much happens at King's Cross, all that, too. I wrote a paper in undergrad about the symbolism of a train station in a Pynchon book. Anyway, that bit with Albus was in dreamscape!King's Cross, the Lily,Petunia fight at the station, the end with Harry and kidlets. Which just adds SO MUCH to Voldemort at the train station in movie 5. COOL.)
I have a lot more to say, but now I'm kinda splooging everywhere so I leave you with this.
ETA: I also thought there would be more about the inter-racial cooperation than there was. Some of the stuff about goblins still made me uncomfortable, like Harry wasn't really being fair.
Also, I fucking love this so hard I don't know what to do with myself now.
ETA2: Stoney linked to this; I link as well since it was exactly what popped into my head when I read that epilogue. LMAO.
Does someone want to explain the whole, Voldemort has Harry's blood thing? Got the part about Harry being a Horcrux, and needing to sacrifice himself to live, and all the stuff about the wands, but didn't get the thing about part of Lily's sacrifice being transferred to Voldemort?
Did anyone spend a long time thinking the Malfoys were all dead?
Did anyone else find the epilogue kind of chilling?
Did anyone find the part where the trio were on the run, camping out in different spots, quite slow and a bit drag-y? Especially while Ron was off being a prat?
Who had the Lupins slated for death the moment their baby was born healthy?
How many times did you cry, and at what parts?
How many times did you laugh, or, uh. Possibly cheer or whoop? At what parts?
How long did it take you to read?
Phineas says, "Remember the part the Slytherins played!" What part did they play? We see Slugghorn running about helping--is there a suggestion, or did I just miss it, that the Syltherins who left when McGonagall said to prepare to fight, helped muster the forces of thestrals and families and whatnot?
*
OVERALL:
I loved this book. A lot.
To say the least, there was a lot of hype leading up to it. To me almost all of that seems justified now. Not the people being dickheads parts of the hype, but the general excitement.
As for myself, I had my own set of expectations. I've always liked HP. I've always liked it quite a bit, actually. And there were certain aspects I could get fannish about, but not the 'verse as a whole. I just thought the books were good, and fun, and entertaining, but certain things sat wrong with me and I couldn't ever see myself really dying of love for any of it. That changed about eight months ago. Something clicked in my head, and since then I've been pretty much mad for them. Some of you have seen me drooling over Harry/Draco but it wasn't just that; it was all of it.
The thing that clicked was I just started seeing the books in a different light. I started, uh, interrogating them from a different perspective. And I started thinking about what it all meant, what it would mean for book 7, where JKR would go with all this. And I formed a lot of ideas and theories about not just what was going to happen but what had to happen (particularly thematically). If they didn't happen, the could still be fun nice adventure books, but pretty much the way I had started to view the books would collapse. I could still hold that view, of course, but I'd have to discount book 7. It would've been a disappointment.
I had meant to write these ideas down, several large proofs about what I thought would happen and why. I wish I had now just for the pleasure of looking at them and saying, "OMG I was so smart! So right!" But that's just me liking to gloat--not over anyone--to just gloat for the sake of gloating. But mostly, I'm just happy the things I needed to happen for this world to work for me not only happened but happened and then some. Most of the points I wanted to be made were very explicit. Stuff like:
-Snape loving Lily. Snape turning from Voldemort because Voldemort was hunting Lily. Snape being Dumbledore's because of Lily. Dumbledore trusting Snape because he knew the power of Snape's love. Snape's love being a weapon against Voldemort.
-Harry having to sacrifice himself. Harry having to willingly die in order to live. Harry's sacrifice mirroring Lily's sacrifice, Harry's sacrifice defeating Voldemort, Harry living.
-Races uniting at the end, goblins and house elves being instrumental to getting Horcruxes/fighting Voldemort.
The things that I thought would really be important that weren't there was I thought Harry would have to have some big moment of forgiving and even loving the human part of Voldemort, the part that was still Tom Riddle, in order to defeat him. But the thing about Harry having to sacrifice himself in order to live took care of a lot of the themes I wanted to be covered on that front. I also thought we'd see a little more in House cooperation (namely the admission Slytherin isn't all bad, in more than just a cursory way).
(The latter would be why I find the epilogue chilling. HP is about 4 generations: Dumbledore's, Riddle's, James Potter's, and Harry Potters, and each of those generations has parallels and repetitions that circle, and circle, and circle. What it looked like to me on Platform 9 3/4 was just more history repeating: Ron telling his kid to give Draco's kid a tough time [omg. Draco's kid. *is momentarily manaical with glee!!!*], and there's still prejudice against Slytherin. There's a bit at the end which is maybe supposed to be nice, with Harry telling young Albus any House is alright, with that really amazing and to me completely unexpected tribute payed to Severus Snape. But it's told in whispers, so easily forgotten. Everything seems so much the same as it was in that scene on the train with James, Lily, Severus, and Sirius. As it must have been with Riddle, as it must have been with Albus. I can't figure out whether JKR meant to do that or not--I was so happy just before the epilogue and then the epilogue itself SENT CHILLS DOWN MY SPINE.
Oh, and I like how much happens at King's Cross, all that, too. I wrote a paper in undergrad about the symbolism of a train station in a Pynchon book. Anyway, that bit with Albus was in dreamscape!King's Cross, the Lily,Petunia fight at the station, the end with Harry and kidlets. Which just adds SO MUCH to Voldemort at the train station in movie 5. COOL.)
I have a lot more to say, but now I'm kinda splooging everywhere so I leave you with this.
ETA: I also thought there would be more about the inter-racial cooperation than there was. Some of the stuff about goblins still made me uncomfortable, like Harry wasn't really being fair.
Also, I fucking love this so hard I don't know what to do with myself now.
ETA2: Stoney linked to this; I link as well since it was exactly what popped into my head when I read that epilogue. LMAO.
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At the moment, I think that the book really is great, that it's creepy and funny and touching. I even think JKR's prose style has improved. I loved the final battle, and I love the way so much of Lily's journey through Hogwarts is like Harry's journey inverted (the train scene paralleling Harry's meeting Ron, James talking about Slytherin and echoing what Malfoy said about Hufflepuff in the first book, and so on). The epilogue . . . doesn't bother me as much I think it bothers other people, but it's not my favorite moment by a long shot. I want to know what everyone's doing with their lives besides having babies, for one thing. But your idea with the cyclical generations is extremely interesting and really does make that scene more disturbing, now that I think about it.
I also agree with you about wanting to see more about Slytherin. I love to death the idea of Snape as Slytherin's redemption--but then we have that line of Dumbledore's about how they do the Sorting too young, which, what, means that Snape has been secretly a Gryffindor all along? That's not all that inclusive.
Anyway, questions:
Did anyone find the part where the trio were on the run, camping out in different spots, quite slow and a bit drag-y? Especially while Ron was off being a prat?
I don't think it was pleasant to read, but I didn't find it drag-y. I mean, it's all completely blurred together in my head right now, but I got a general impression of slow, relentless misery, which I think was really important to build up atmosphere for the climax.
How many times did you cry, and at what parts?
Oh, god. I started with Hedwig dying, and I think I did it again at every single death/maiming scene. I cried when Dobby died, and I didn't even like him that much.
How many times did you laugh, or, uh. Possibly cheer or whoop? At what parts?
If I hadn't been on the train when I read it, badass!Neville would have made me cheer a ridiculous amount.
How long did it take you to read?
All together, probably about six or seven hours, but I got interrupted a lot, so it ended up taking me most of the day.
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Dude, I must be the slowest reader on LJ. Everyone seems to have read it in five to seven hours. Well, it took me eleven. I read at about 75 pages per hours. Eleven was what I was expecting and eleven was what I got. I am floored by how fast people read around here.
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A lot of people say JKR might have good stories, but she's a bad writer. I really don't get that. I do not think she is a spectacular writer; sometimes her sentence structure is a little iffy, but she seems quite decent to me.
then we have that line of Dumbledore's about how they do the Sorting too young, which, what, means that Snape has been secretly a Gryffindor all along? That's not all that inclusive.
Yeah. Exactly. That line of Dumbledore's really bothered me. There's the implied dig to Slytherin. Also, I think if Snape was to be in any House not Slytherin, he should be in Hufflepuff, because Hufflepuff is about being loving and loyal. Both qualities were defining in Snape's life; they're why he was so brave. But of course, Hufflepuff is always treated as lesser, too. I still can't decide whether JKR leaves me feeling this uncomfortable on purpose! Sometimes I'm convinced she does; other times I think she's oblivious.
which I think was really important to build up atmosphere for the climax.
Yes, it certainly got it's point across. But I was miserable too!
I think I did it again at every single death/maiming scene.
I was wondering whether people mostly cried at the deaths. I find myself crying when I actually wanted to cheer--when Neville killed Nagini, when Kreacher showed up to fight, when Molly took on Bellatrix.
I agree with seraphcelene about feeling slow and shocked at how fast you guys read. It took me all day to read, but adding up the times I stopped and such and subtracting them--it took me 14 hours. But I have always been slow; I just think it's interesting.