HP7: finished
Jul. 21st, 2007 06:22 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rmEventually, I will write about the book as a book -- its structure and plot, the satisfaction it provides as a conclusion, its pacing, and what issues it raises in terms of cinematic adaptation.
I also don't know if this will be the deeply elegant post I eventually want to write about my emotional response. I want to try, but may simply be too wound up.
I am so, deeply, deeply angry at Dumbledore. I am angry at how he used Snape, underestimated seemingly everyone's capacity for love and good judgement and grief, and ultimately, forced people to be alone far more than they needed to be, and I am a believer in alone and in grief as forces not just of testing and refining, but sometimes of redemption. But wow, fuck youm Albus Dumbledore. You saw people's intelligence get them into trouble time and time again -- your own, Grindenwald's, Severus's, Hermione's, Voldemort's and then never trusted any of them to use that intelligence to get them back out of the messes they made. Skill led, justifiably to suspicion, but who were you to condemn people to all the various things you did? For the greater fucking good, indeed.
I'll probably have more sympathy for Dumedore when I calm down.
And while I always had trepidation about the Snape/Lily plotline, I was charmed by him as a small boy, and can live with the quiet way he carried his burden. Oh but I hated Dumbledore for being surprised he still felt for Lily. But I react poorly to people having contempt or surprise for love, even when it is unlikely, foolish or even limiting. It is the nebulous thing in the world that perhaps most enrages me.
Still?
Yes, still.
I hated, hated that Snape essentially died alone with far too much still to do and both solace for and condemnation of his sins in Harry's face, but then in my mind this thing I expected for so long was always some sort of awful public spectacle. I hated that it made me call Kali and blurt out "Oh my poor Severus," as if anything about those four words isn't just findamentally embarassing. But the thing about Snape is that he, of all the characters, belonged most to the fans, in large part, because he belonged least to anyone in the books. Harry had support in the novel; Snape only had support outside of it. Which is one of those things that for all of JKR's really sloppy writing ticks is profoundly elegant, and I loved, loved the cadence of the moment where Dumbledore agrees to keep the secret of "what is the best of you" even if his later actions imply he never really believed in it.
I know lots of people hate the epilogue. And I have issues with all these high school relationships being happily ever after, but who else could understand what these people went through? And as a strange, serious, frightened child, who asked very earnest questions my parents never knew how to answer, Albus Severus melted my heart. And I hope to hell he was sorted into Slytherin, a strange place for strange children.
And unrelated to all of that: Redemption of the house elves! Dobby's death gutted me. Kreacher's grief for Regulus and everythign about Regulus gutted me.
But at the end I must say this, which grieves me most of all because nothing I say could be precise enough, nuanced enough, could make it make sense to anyone it doesn't already make sense to. But Severus Snape was not so much my friend, as literary characters went, as I was his. And his creation kept me distracted and amused and strong, when I've have never been good at the first two, and always regretted my propopensity for the third -- perhaps, the best of me, as it were. And maybe that's why it matters, not because in the world of stories I love he was my strength, but maybe because my reading of these stories taught me that I could be someone else's strength, other than my own.
See, my life starts in fiction, over and over again.
But it never ends there.
But even with Descensus and fandom and the inevitable rereads and the movies, I will miss him.
I also don't know if this will be the deeply elegant post I eventually want to write about my emotional response. I want to try, but may simply be too wound up.
I am so, deeply, deeply angry at Dumbledore. I am angry at how he used Snape, underestimated seemingly everyone's capacity for love and good judgement and grief, and ultimately, forced people to be alone far more than they needed to be, and I am a believer in alone and in grief as forces not just of testing and refining, but sometimes of redemption. But wow, fuck youm Albus Dumbledore. You saw people's intelligence get them into trouble time and time again -- your own, Grindenwald's, Severus's, Hermione's, Voldemort's and then never trusted any of them to use that intelligence to get them back out of the messes they made. Skill led, justifiably to suspicion, but who were you to condemn people to all the various things you did? For the greater fucking good, indeed.
I'll probably have more sympathy for Dumedore when I calm down.
And while I always had trepidation about the Snape/Lily plotline, I was charmed by him as a small boy, and can live with the quiet way he carried his burden. Oh but I hated Dumbledore for being surprised he still felt for Lily. But I react poorly to people having contempt or surprise for love, even when it is unlikely, foolish or even limiting. It is the nebulous thing in the world that perhaps most enrages me.
Still?
Yes, still.
I hated, hated that Snape essentially died alone with far too much still to do and both solace for and condemnation of his sins in Harry's face, but then in my mind this thing I expected for so long was always some sort of awful public spectacle. I hated that it made me call Kali and blurt out "Oh my poor Severus," as if anything about those four words isn't just findamentally embarassing. But the thing about Snape is that he, of all the characters, belonged most to the fans, in large part, because he belonged least to anyone in the books. Harry had support in the novel; Snape only had support outside of it. Which is one of those things that for all of JKR's really sloppy writing ticks is profoundly elegant, and I loved, loved the cadence of the moment where Dumbledore agrees to keep the secret of "what is the best of you" even if his later actions imply he never really believed in it.
I know lots of people hate the epilogue. And I have issues with all these high school relationships being happily ever after, but who else could understand what these people went through? And as a strange, serious, frightened child, who asked very earnest questions my parents never knew how to answer, Albus Severus melted my heart. And I hope to hell he was sorted into Slytherin, a strange place for strange children.
And unrelated to all of that: Redemption of the house elves! Dobby's death gutted me. Kreacher's grief for Regulus and everythign about Regulus gutted me.
But at the end I must say this, which grieves me most of all because nothing I say could be precise enough, nuanced enough, could make it make sense to anyone it doesn't already make sense to. But Severus Snape was not so much my friend, as literary characters went, as I was his. And his creation kept me distracted and amused and strong, when I've have never been good at the first two, and always regretted my propopensity for the third -- perhaps, the best of me, as it were. And maybe that's why it matters, not because in the world of stories I love he was my strength, but maybe because my reading of these stories taught me that I could be someone else's strength, other than my own.
See, my life starts in fiction, over and over again.
But it never ends there.
But even with Descensus and fandom and the inevitable rereads and the movies, I will miss him.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2007-07-22 12:34 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-07-22 01:12 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-07-22 01:58 am (UTC)i love snape's big black coat as a child. and oh - flying!snape!
no subject
Date: 2007-07-22 03:00 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-07-22 11:43 am (UTC)are you satisfied? are all your questions answered?
no subject
Date: 2007-07-22 10:25 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-07-22 10:27 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-07-22 10:30 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-07-22 02:39 am (UTC)Dumbledore... I had come to dislike Dumbledore throughout the books, and yet felt oddly deflated to have my suspicions confirmed as valid. Whatever his grand reasons, I've come to think he lacked empathy or something like that. One wonders if Dumbledore ever loved anyone (and Hermione's calls of 'he did love Harry' came to feel like protesting too much).
I had wished for some redemption for members of Slytherin house, something other than the sense that it was possible for children to choose other houses-- especially when that choice felt presented very like a choice to choose not to do evil, which makes me uncomfortable when from a practical standpoint, one quarter of wizarding children must end up there.
no subject
Date: 2007-07-22 03:02 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-07-22 08:52 am (UTC)I just couldn't understand why Slytherin House continues to exist '19 years later' when it's still the vilified house, when it's still considered the house that poisons the minds of children. *I* can see the value of Slytherin (and Ravenclaw, and Hufflepuff, who got shafted less completely but--), however it felt like no one 'good' in the books saw the same.
I'd have rather Harry told Albus Severus that he'd love him no matter what house he was sorted into, that he'd been named for a Gryffindor and a Slytherin because Harry had respected both those men, and that a decision in one direction at 11 did not mean never making that decision ever again, than reassure him that one could ask for Gryffindor.
no subject
Date: 2007-07-22 05:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-07-22 04:21 am (UTC)And that, and the lack of redemption for Slytherin, and anger, and all those tangled things has made me already write nearly two thousand words of fanfic to try to ease or at least express some of it.
I hate to publish any of this crap out of order for some reason, but I'm this close to doing so anyway just because, well, apparently I'm not the only one who feels betrayed and hurt and left in the lurch.
no subject
Date: 2007-07-22 04:22 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-07-22 06:37 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-07-22 10:31 pm (UTC)