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I feel weird writing this post, because I don't really feel like posting, yet it seems like I should, and then I think--what, do you imagine the public is waiting on pins and needles for your words? Get over yourself!:-D
Anyway, I didn't much like it. Perhaps my feelings will change, but stop here if you don’t want to read any negative stuff. I don't have any rants prepared or anything or want to harsh anybody's buzz. (But misery also loves company!) I was talking to someone who's asked me what I needed from the book, what I wanted to happen or what would have made me satisfied, and the truth is, I don't have an answer. I don't have a list of prescriptive criticism, or think things were done badly, or should have been done a different way.
Well, except one little thing, which couldn't be helped. When that white doe showed up I never doubted for a second it was Snape's Lily!Patronus (cause she's a lady!James!). We'd seen Arthur's and Kingsley's Patronuses talk, and oh, how I wanted that beautiful sparkly stag to come up to Harry and tell him to get this Quest going already in Snape's sarcastic voice.
I've never loved these books the way some do--which should not be taken as a criticism of people who do. I just mean that I know there are people who re-read the books over and over as comfort, and that's not something I ever did. I didn't ever want to re-read to spend time with these people or in this world. There are other books I do feel that way about, books that other people find meh. Basically, I felt like JKR was writing a story of good and evil, and life and death, that resonated with her and satisfied her, and felt like a triumph for her--just not me. So I was a bit left out of the story, objectively even seeing characters doing good, brave things, and just not sharing much in the emotions. More than once I felt like I was seeing more story outline/structure than story so that it seemed very contrived (a couple of times Harry himself seemed to admit it) and made it feel like nothing was building to anything.
What it mostly made me do is go over all the ways I was reading it wrong, making my issues more central than the author really considered them. I don't think I was ever so off as, say, a Harmonian banking on the Hippogriff o'love or anything like that, and some things that happened I did predict (Snape/Lily, obviously, and DDM!Snape). But in general I think I was reading Rowling a bit too much like a Tolkien fan, and maybe too much as a Jungian (not that I'm any expert on Jung, but I was reading from my own idea of his stuff). And I think when JKR said that she was Christian and if she talked about her faith we'd know the ending, I immediately began interrogating from the *wrong* Christian perspective and got that wrong too.
Contrary to what some may have thought at times-or not-I don't hate the good guys. Still don't hate them, just still would not want to spend time with them or re-read the books to spend time with them. The characters I liked the most I think less of now or am just kind of confused by, which is unfortunate. I find Harry affectionately naming his child Albus Severus downright creepy--but that wasn't the first time in the book where that kind of thing happened.
Not sure what I predict fanfic-wise. I wonder if people might not start writing some interesting stuff. I did at one point think how I wanted to take a favorite character and put him in a different story.
Oh, also I've been dreading the epilogue for years, because I've always hated epilogues. Even when I was too young to know the name for them I hated them. Some books I guess can make a case for them being appropriate. HP is really not one of them that I can see. There was no reason I could see for needing to see these people married with children. The one good thing I read about it was after it was leaked, before I read it, and I read a comment where someone said the epilogue read like any cliché H/G fic...or any cliché post-war H/D fic.;-)
Anyway, I didn't much like it. Perhaps my feelings will change, but stop here if you don’t want to read any negative stuff. I don't have any rants prepared or anything or want to harsh anybody's buzz. (But misery also loves company!) I was talking to someone who's asked me what I needed from the book, what I wanted to happen or what would have made me satisfied, and the truth is, I don't have an answer. I don't have a list of prescriptive criticism, or think things were done badly, or should have been done a different way.
Well, except one little thing, which couldn't be helped. When that white doe showed up I never doubted for a second it was Snape's Lily!Patronus (cause she's a lady!James!). We'd seen Arthur's and Kingsley's Patronuses talk, and oh, how I wanted that beautiful sparkly stag to come up to Harry and tell him to get this Quest going already in Snape's sarcastic voice.
I've never loved these books the way some do--which should not be taken as a criticism of people who do. I just mean that I know there are people who re-read the books over and over as comfort, and that's not something I ever did. I didn't ever want to re-read to spend time with these people or in this world. There are other books I do feel that way about, books that other people find meh. Basically, I felt like JKR was writing a story of good and evil, and life and death, that resonated with her and satisfied her, and felt like a triumph for her--just not me. So I was a bit left out of the story, objectively even seeing characters doing good, brave things, and just not sharing much in the emotions. More than once I felt like I was seeing more story outline/structure than story so that it seemed very contrived (a couple of times Harry himself seemed to admit it) and made it feel like nothing was building to anything.
What it mostly made me do is go over all the ways I was reading it wrong, making my issues more central than the author really considered them. I don't think I was ever so off as, say, a Harmonian banking on the Hippogriff o'love or anything like that, and some things that happened I did predict (Snape/Lily, obviously, and DDM!Snape). But in general I think I was reading Rowling a bit too much like a Tolkien fan, and maybe too much as a Jungian (not that I'm any expert on Jung, but I was reading from my own idea of his stuff). And I think when JKR said that she was Christian and if she talked about her faith we'd know the ending, I immediately began interrogating from the *wrong* Christian perspective and got that wrong too.
Contrary to what some may have thought at times-or not-I don't hate the good guys. Still don't hate them, just still would not want to spend time with them or re-read the books to spend time with them. The characters I liked the most I think less of now or am just kind of confused by, which is unfortunate. I find Harry affectionately naming his child Albus Severus downright creepy--but that wasn't the first time in the book where that kind of thing happened.
Not sure what I predict fanfic-wise. I wonder if people might not start writing some interesting stuff. I did at one point think how I wanted to take a favorite character and put him in a different story.
Oh, also I've been dreading the epilogue for years, because I've always hated epilogues. Even when I was too young to know the name for them I hated them. Some books I guess can make a case for them being appropriate. HP is really not one of them that I can see. There was no reason I could see for needing to see these people married with children. The one good thing I read about it was after it was leaked, before I read it, and I read a comment where someone said the epilogue read like any cliché H/G fic...or any cliché post-war H/D fic.;-)
From: (Anonymous)
Re: part I
IDK what the readers are meant to make of that. Like you, I read it as a disturbing sign that Snape is so emotionally stunted, he still can't feel anything for any human being except this one woman who's been dead for sixteen years. But Dumbledore (the old crocodile) tears up like it's the most moving, romantic thing since Casablanca. Are we supposed to take our cue from him? Yay the redemptive power of a lifelong
obsessionlove?(Personally, I fanwank that he had come to care a little about Harry but was deep in denial, but that's because I used to find Snape interesting and would like to believe that he wasn't quite as one-dimensional as the scene suggests.)
-L
From:
Re: part I
obsessionlove?Well, I think we're supposed to be moved by the fact that after all this time, Snape still loves Lily. Beyond that, I'm not sure what to make of it. On one hand, I don't have a problem with people carrying lifelong torches. OTOH, I think it's problematic as evidence that Snape in some way changed, or that the fact of the love for Lily ennobles him somehow. That Snape can feel love for at least one other person makes him akin to, like, 97% of the human population; it doesn't make him special. Yet I think Rowling wants me to have a take-away that's more than, "Snape's not a complete sociopath, yay!" And that's where what she's shown us falls down when it comes to what some are arguing she's trying to tell us. In other words, if I'm supposed to regard Snape as noble or heroic or genuinely good (in the 'morally unassailable and upright' sense of "good"), then I needed more than he feels regret that his questionable choices got this one particular person killed; he needs to feel regret about -- and try to right -- the choices themselves.
I'm sure it may seem to some reading this that I'm splitting hairs. But I think there's an important distinction to be made, in terms of questions of moral/ethical fortitude, between someone who's doing something because they're trying to atone for a single bad choice vs. someone who's doing something because it's the right thing to do in general. The effects of those two contexts might be the same, but the latter context is ... closer to being morally 'pure' (for lack of a better word); it's closer to being true Good. And I just don't think Snape was doing the latter; I think he was very much doing the former.
From:
Re: part I
This is where I thought Snape's story was going: he had some revelation - and I did cry out in the long, dark night, Please, not Love of Lily! - some moral turn-around or realization, didn't want to kill infants, didn't want to see actual people rather than abstract people sorts of things being killed, began on a path of redemption because he saw that it was the morally right thing to do.
It could have gone there, even for Love of Lily. He could have tried to model himself on what she would have wanted to see, and grown to do right for right's sake. I had some hope at first that this was supposed to be the message, and maybe it was, of his telling Phineas Nigellus not to use the word "Mudblood", but now I'm just afraid that this was another thing that he'd done to Lily and was trying to make up for having done. It could have been a great story, it could have been uplifting in the sense of hope for the WW (and us).
*mourns*