HP7: broader commentary

[rm]

- Okay, when the whole sign of the Hallows thing started with Krum I was like "the awesome! This is going to parallel Nazi interest in occultism, this is so brilliant!" but then it turned into a game of Rock, Paper, Scissors. In fact the whole quest logic of the whole book breaks down around the Deathly Hallows, because this book is about two quests neither of which might actually be important, wha? Okay, anyway.

- Dumbledore, WHY THE FUCK DIDN"T YOU TELL SNAPE ABOUT THE FUCKING ELDER WAND? Even if his killing you didn't make him a master of it, it still would have been safer on his person than in your fucking tomb. Also, might be nice if he knew about the risk! I realize you don't trust Snape not to go on the quest for himself, but wow, the man has put twenty years of his life into this anti-Voldemort nightmare, do you really think he's just gonna go "fuck it, I want to be the msot powerful dude" now? Huh? If you're going to make everyone around them a tool, at least fucking respect them.

- Tonks & Lupin. As much as I loved Harry's confrontation about Lupin why and how did Lupin become an asshat? I wasn't buying the self-hating werewolf thing, and he wasn't a playboy like Sirius who would really hate marriage. So What the Fuck? It's like she wrote herself into a corner with them, gave up and killed them off camera. It was appalling.

- Hermione is a scary, intense woman. And I thought the stuff with her parents were a real gift to the fans who always thought she worked in a Snape/Hermioen way. Clearly.

- Luna is wonderful. Luna's bedroom made me cry.

- Again, so all about the houseleves in this one! And in fact they are one of the first instances of a lot of really important content about choice and freedom. almost everything in these books is a product of choise, not prophecy. In fact prophecies are incidental, incomplete or destroyed throughout the series. People are brave not because they have to be and not because of what they must endure, but because of the things they choose to put themselves in the way of. Almost everyone in these books had multiple options to take easier paths, and it's one of the things I love about the books, bravery being defined not how you endure the shitty hand you got dealt, but what choices you make with it.

- JKR's world is full of so much bigotry, but she only acnkowledges and condemns some of it, and that's icky as sin. Did anyone else feel like Potterwatch fetishized Muggles in a really creepy way? Or that the only Jew-figure redeemed in the whole mess is Snape and then only because he makes a christian-style sacrifice? The goblins are really, really, discomforting to me, and always have been. The death by molten treasure factor? *shudder* And let's not forget the muggleborns on blood-status trial at the ministry, all of whom seem reduced to snivelling, powerless children.

- Harry screams at Voldemort, "Snape wasn't yours; he was Dumbledore's." I get the point. I really do. But wow, Harry, you just finally, grokked that Snape was a human being. Human being's don't belong to people, and Snape's life was a misery, not just because he had once made poor choices and was now repenting, but because his life was not his own. Did you have to fucking phrase is that way and rub it in his porr dead face? Why wasn't Lupin alive at the end to help Harry with the complexity of understanding Snape after the final battle was all over.

- That said, I loved Harry in this book. Loved him walking to his death. And felt that JKR actually had real moments of sophistication in Harry's self-analysis of those moments.

- Okay, back to Snape -- Severus pouring out those memories at the end -- so speaks to how much power and how much presence of mind Snape has always had to fuckin do that. we've never seen such a thing before. It's not an ordinary part of wizarding death. She could have just given us an occulemency moment, but no. Awesome!

- Malfoys. I can deal with Draco being unredeemed, but he was so not complex, and I thought his failures in Book 6 were really going to give him some depth. I felt like she just said "fuck it, I don't care" here as well, and it made me angry.

- Which leads us to the failure of anything making any sense of Slytherin House! While one might argue that the only people in Slytherin by the time of the confrontation are purebloods, as any non-pureblood would be barred from Hogwarts , I can't believe that the Weasley's are the only pureblood family on the side of light. The utter non-redemption, not just of Slyterin House, but of anyone in it, is just lame and doesn't make sense and says that 25% of people are just entirely unreemable because they have a different code of personal priorities. At the end, when little Albus Severus (who I LOVE) is scared about winding up in Slytherin, I think Harry does a great job with him there, and Snape gets his due, but! why not say that there are good things about both houses, as oppsoed t the notion one can be brave or good despite being in Slytherin. ARGH!

- Dumbledore's story. OMG, awesome. fandom conscensus pretty quickly has become that the sister was raped or sexually abused, because everythign that stems from the attack on her is so insane.

- Neville. The awesome.

- McGonogall. Amazing in her brief appearances.

- Death Eaters. Yeah, all teh dark revel fics no longer look stupid, now do they?

Comments

[feyandstrange.livejournal.com]

Totally with you on the quests. What, did she need material to fill up the first half of the book with? All that tasty Nazi mysticism potential wasted!

The Elder Wand: I kind of feel like Dumbledore not telling anyone is just part and parcel of his many failures to trust anybody else because he knew he couldn't be trusted with the One Ring - so why should anyone else be trustworthy?

It's like - if this was a TV thing, the Tonks and Lupin actors couldn't be gotten back this season, so they got crappily written and written off as soon as they could. Lame. I *could* have seen it to work, esp. if Tonks was psycho what with hormones and maybe her family was psycho worried about the blood purity dangers and so on - but as it was, it's unsupportable and lame.

Hermione and her parents - oh, wow, for the win. Good to see that.

Luna's bedroom was one of the most touching things in the series.

I am going to work on the goblin thing a little; it's redeemable if you remember that objects can have souls or something like that, that all the goblin-mage things we've seen have been beautiful and magical, and that perhaps the goblins put something of themselves into their creations. Still, yuck.

And WTF with no redeemed Slytherins. Even poor stupid Slughorn doesn't get a redeeming moment. And no redeemable purebloods? Writing on that as well, obviously. Grr.

Dumbledore's backstory is awesome. And yeah, the sister thing, good creepy stuff there.

Neville wins.