30 Days of HP Meme - Day 3
Jul. 19th, 2010 03:25 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kelly_chamblissSince I've done only two days of this meme so far, I'm taking the liberty of replacing my original set of questions with a new set that I like better (stolen from pale_moonlite's version). The first two questions are the same on both memes, so it's not cheating. (Hey, I take my memes very seriously. A meme started is a meme committed to. Just like a card laid is a card played. Except when you want to make changes. [Yes, cards can get laid. Just think of the possibilities of queen/knave porn.])
01. Discuss how you got into Harry Potter.
02. Your favorite book
Day 3 Least favorite book.
I'll say Deathly Hallows, but it's a choice that comes with many qualifiers. I don't hate the book; in fact, I think it has many passages of power and reasonable literary merit. I give JKR a lot of credit for crafting an overall ending (not counting the epilogue) that isn't anti-climactic. (Good endings are damned hard, and endings for beloved epics are even harder, and yet, I think she pulls it off.)
Still, I do have problems with DH, from both literary and fannish standpoints.
Literary
--That editor problem again; JKR really did become self-indulgent in the later books, and while I can understand why the editors at Scholastic/Bloomsbury might have decided against reining in their proven champion, I wish they hadn't given her her head quite so much.
--The aimlessness of the first half of the book. It may be that JKR was trying to suggest some of the realities of war: it doesn't march forward in an obvious linear progress; there are frustrating reversals and times of stasis and deadlock, just as we see in the interminable camping scenes. Yet such is not always the stuff of good fiction.
--The epilogue IS an anti-climax, although a good case can be made that it works in terms of genre. Perhaps more than anything, the HP books are boarding-school stories, and if nothing else, the epilogue functions to assure us that the real main character of the books -- Hogwarts -- endures.
--It's because of the centrality of Hogwarts as a character that I question the wisdom of setting so much of the last book outside the school. On the one hand, it makes the final return to Hogwarts for the battle loom that much larger and more effective; otoh, it dilutes the focus a bit too much.
--An unfortunate mixture of tones. JKR is often an excellent humor writer, but she sometimes can't resist a throw-away joke at a time that it just doesn't fit. The effect is like a wrong note hit at the peak of an aria. I'm thinking off-hand of the "Snape-shaped hole" in the Battle of Hogwarts, but there are other examples, too.
Fannish
--She killed Snape? And Moody? Waaaaaaah! (Snape makes thematic sense, however much I hated to see him go. But Moody seemed gratuitous. Still, I thank JKR forever for not showing us their bodies -- because it means, of course, that they aren't really dead.)
--the relentless heteronormativity of the epilogue. JKR herself said that the books are "an extended plea for tolerance," and yet she couldn't include a single textually queer character? (No, I don't count Dumbledore. If his sexuality mattered, it should have been a part of the story. What does it say about queerness that it can only be contained in the narrative in the person of a sexless, ancient man who is essentially a sidekick and whose sexuality, whatever it is, has to be completely erased from the text? And I don't buy arguments that say, "well, the books are from Harry's pov, and kids don't think about adult sexuality." For one thing, they most definitely do, and for another, sexuality can be made clear without being a teen's focus. We're always aware of Molly's and Arthur's heterosexuality, for instance, just by virtue of their behavior and their marriage and their gazillion kids.)
--I liked the moral murkiness of Harry's and McGonagall's behavior (using unnecessary Unforgivables) with the Carrows in the Ravenclaw common room, but I didn't like that the book doesn't examine this behavior -- doesn't question it or present it as at all problematic. (But the Aberforth scene does complicate Albus's character, so at least the book's morality isn't completely black-and-white.)
--the way that JKR seemed to be writing with a movie camera in her head -- so much is described in cinematic terms that I sometimes felt that I was reading a screenplay.
Stuff I Loved
--Kick-ass Augusta Longbottom
--McGonagall and "we duel to kill" and the three (count 'em -- three!) simultaneous Patronuses, and the duel with Severus (sob -- but they didn't kill each other, and they could have. So Minerva/Severus -- canon, right here.)
--"We teachers are rather good at magic."
--Warrior!Pomona and warrior!Filius
--Auntie Muriel Weasley ("Xeno Lovegood looks like an omelet")
I could go on, but I'm reaching the limit of the procrastination time I allowed myself to write this entry.
Day 4 Favorite female character.
Day 5 Favorite male character.
Day 6 Least favorite female character.
Day 7 Least favorite male Character.
Day 8 Thoughts on fanfic.
Day 9 Favorite Hogwarts Professor.
Day 10 Dead character you want to bring back most.
Day 11 House you would be in.
Day 12 Hogwarts subject you would most like to take.
Day 13 Spell you wish you could work without a wand.
Day 14 Thoughts on fanart (+ A favorite fanart).
Day 15 Favorite movie.
Day 16 Least favorite movie.
Day 17 Books vs. films.
Day 18 A part of the books/movies that makes you cry.
Day 19 Favorite 'ship(s).
Day 20 Your favorite villain.
Day 21 Favorite location.
Day 22 Thoughts on wizard rock.
Day 23 Character you think you are most like.
Day 24 Horcruxes vs. Hallows?
Day 25 Something you wish JKR had written about more.
Day 26 Marauders vs. Snape.
Day 27 The Invisibility Cloak, The Resurrection Stone or The Elder Wand.
Day 28 The Next Generation.
Day 29 How have you participated in the fandom over the years?
Day 30 In general, the effects of Harry Potter on your life..
pale_moonlite's version). The first two questions are the same on both memes, so it's not cheating. (Hey, I take my memes very seriously. A meme started is a meme committed to. Just like a card laid is a card played. Except when you want to make changes. [Yes, cards can get laid. Just think of the possibilities of queen/knave porn.])01. Discuss how you got into Harry Potter.
02. Your favorite book
Day 3 Least favorite book.
I'll say Deathly Hallows, but it's a choice that comes with many qualifiers. I don't hate the book; in fact, I think it has many passages of power and reasonable literary merit. I give JKR a lot of credit for crafting an overall ending (not counting the epilogue) that isn't anti-climactic. (Good endings are damned hard, and endings for beloved epics are even harder, and yet, I think she pulls it off.)
Still, I do have problems with DH, from both literary and fannish standpoints.
Literary
--That editor problem again; JKR really did become self-indulgent in the later books, and while I can understand why the editors at Scholastic/Bloomsbury might have decided against reining in their proven champion, I wish they hadn't given her her head quite so much.
--The aimlessness of the first half of the book. It may be that JKR was trying to suggest some of the realities of war: it doesn't march forward in an obvious linear progress; there are frustrating reversals and times of stasis and deadlock, just as we see in the interminable camping scenes. Yet such is not always the stuff of good fiction.
--The epilogue IS an anti-climax, although a good case can be made that it works in terms of genre. Perhaps more than anything, the HP books are boarding-school stories, and if nothing else, the epilogue functions to assure us that the real main character of the books -- Hogwarts -- endures.
--It's because of the centrality of Hogwarts as a character that I question the wisdom of setting so much of the last book outside the school. On the one hand, it makes the final return to Hogwarts for the battle loom that much larger and more effective; otoh, it dilutes the focus a bit too much.
--An unfortunate mixture of tones. JKR is often an excellent humor writer, but she sometimes can't resist a throw-away joke at a time that it just doesn't fit. The effect is like a wrong note hit at the peak of an aria. I'm thinking off-hand of the "Snape-shaped hole" in the Battle of Hogwarts, but there are other examples, too.
Fannish
--She killed Snape? And Moody? Waaaaaaah! (Snape makes thematic sense, however much I hated to see him go. But Moody seemed gratuitous. Still, I thank JKR forever for not showing us their bodies -- because it means, of course, that they aren't really dead.)
--the relentless heteronormativity of the epilogue. JKR herself said that the books are "an extended plea for tolerance," and yet she couldn't include a single textually queer character? (No, I don't count Dumbledore. If his sexuality mattered, it should have been a part of the story. What does it say about queerness that it can only be contained in the narrative in the person of a sexless, ancient man who is essentially a sidekick and whose sexuality, whatever it is, has to be completely erased from the text? And I don't buy arguments that say, "well, the books are from Harry's pov, and kids don't think about adult sexuality." For one thing, they most definitely do, and for another, sexuality can be made clear without being a teen's focus. We're always aware of Molly's and Arthur's heterosexuality, for instance, just by virtue of their behavior and their marriage and their gazillion kids.)
--I liked the moral murkiness of Harry's and McGonagall's behavior (using unnecessary Unforgivables) with the Carrows in the Ravenclaw common room, but I didn't like that the book doesn't examine this behavior -- doesn't question it or present it as at all problematic. (But the Aberforth scene does complicate Albus's character, so at least the book's morality isn't completely black-and-white.)
--the way that JKR seemed to be writing with a movie camera in her head -- so much is described in cinematic terms that I sometimes felt that I was reading a screenplay.
Stuff I Loved
--Kick-ass Augusta Longbottom
--McGonagall and "we duel to kill" and the three (count 'em -- three!) simultaneous Patronuses, and the duel with Severus (sob -- but they didn't kill each other, and they could have. So Minerva/Severus -- canon, right here.)
--"We teachers are rather good at magic."
--Warrior!Pomona and warrior!Filius
--Auntie Muriel Weasley ("Xeno Lovegood looks like an omelet")
I could go on, but I'm reaching the limit of the procrastination time I allowed myself to write this entry.
Day 4 Favorite female character.
Day 5 Favorite male character.
Day 6 Least favorite female character.
Day 7 Least favorite male Character.
Day 8 Thoughts on fanfic.
Day 9 Favorite Hogwarts Professor.
Day 10 Dead character you want to bring back most.
Day 11 House you would be in.
Day 12 Hogwarts subject you would most like to take.
Day 13 Spell you wish you could work without a wand.
Day 14 Thoughts on fanart (+ A favorite fanart).
Day 15 Favorite movie.
Day 16 Least favorite movie.
Day 17 Books vs. films.
Day 18 A part of the books/movies that makes you cry.
Day 19 Favorite 'ship(s).
Day 20 Your favorite villain.
Day 21 Favorite location.
Day 22 Thoughts on wizard rock.
Day 23 Character you think you are most like.
Day 24 Horcruxes vs. Hallows?
Day 25 Something you wish JKR had written about more.
Day 26 Marauders vs. Snape.
Day 27 The Invisibility Cloak, The Resurrection Stone or The Elder Wand.
Day 28 The Next Generation.
Day 29 How have you participated in the fandom over the years?
Day 30 In general, the effects of Harry Potter on your life..