Pötterdämmerung

[neotoma]

In a word, Squee!

What a wild ride! Starting with the first death, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows just rolled on like a steam engine.

JKR pulled out all the stops, killing far more people than I thought she would. Oddly enough, none of the death shocked me that much except Hedwig's -- every other character seemed like a likely target. I was rather surprised that all of the Trio survived, but asking JKR to kill *all* of her darlings would have been a bit much.

The plot was fairly tight, and all of the Chekov's guns were taken off the wall and used -- always a plus.

I'm not sure how I feel about Snape's devotion to Lily. Unrequited love is kind of depressing, and long-term unrequited love feels like emotional stuntedness in the lover. However, that's why JKR would never say what his Patronus was -- way too much detail in that.

I loved that Remus and Tonks were having a difficult marriage -- I always felt it was a bad idea for the two of them to be together and frankly if they had both survived, I can imagine them divorcing in a few years.

I foresee some young Dumbledore/Grindelwald slash now.

Also, Neville is SQUEE! As is Luna. And Neville's grandmother probably is a lot like A J Hall wrote her -- I think it took some very brave or foolish DEs to go after her.


More of a thinky post later...

Comments

[ellid.livejournal.com]

I loved that Remus and Tonks were having a difficult marriage -- I always felt it was a bad idea for the two of them to be together and frankly if they had both survived, I can imagine them divorcing in a few years.

I wonder if that was her original plan? She did say that two characters died that were originally supposed to live, and having them split up after the War (or be miserable together) would be just as good a reason for Teddy to be over at the Potter house every chance he could get as any.

[neotoma.livejournal.com]

Lupin/Tonks was just weird... it's like she had no idea what to do with them, so she married them off and then killed them!

It can't be a good sign that my thoughts as I was reading the sequence were roughly :

A) "They got married?! That was quick! And the marriage is unhappy because Lupin is gay and Tonks won't admit it and let him go"

B) "Tonks is pregnant already? Was she *before* they got married? Is Lupin even the father, because I could totally see him doing something as stupid as marrying her to give the baby a name?"

C) "Lupin has been replaced by a Death Eater because the whole 'it is I, Remus John Lupin' sounds like he's about to start singing 'Lord of La Mancha'"

D) "Lupin is giddy over the baby because he never though he'd be a father (gay, you know, and also a werewolf) and this is the best thing ever"

E) "WTF? Does being pregnant and a mom make you *stupid*? Tonks is desperate to find Lupin? Where the *HELL* did the kickass Auror go? Srsly, JKR, this is insulting to all women who have kids *and* careers."

Really, it's one of those times where I wonder what kind of message JKR is trying to write in.

Snape is another, because I'm waffling between "Unrequited love was his motivation? Ugh, did he never grow up?" and "He protected his best friend's son because she would have wanted him to, that's amazingly cool..."

I do not that Snape was obsessed with Lily the same way Sirius was obsessed with James -- I wonder if JKR intended that.

[ellid.livejournal.com]

The whole Remus/Tonks subplot would have been better served if it had been a) started earlier, like partway through OotP, and b) less forced. I consider it prime evidence that this book was poorly edited.

[tekalynn.livejournal.com]

Was baby-dyke, smart-arse Metamorphmagus Tonks only created to fall in star-crossed love, have a baby, and die at her man's side? There's something so OFF about this.

Did she ever even have a chance to use her powers at any time to further the plot?

[ellid.livejournal.com]

Not that I could see.

Considering how ALL the women (except the spinsters) were ultimately defined by their men and children, this isn't a real surprise. Think about it:

Molly's greatest moment is done out of maternal love.

Ditto Lily's. Poor Lily doesn't even have a patronus of her own, since hers is but a female version of James'.

Ginny barely does anything (so much for the promises of "something spectacular" that Rowling made in her infamous Mugglenet/Leaky Cauldron interview in 2005) except date lots of boys, play quidditch decently, and eventually have three children. I'm not even sure she casts that bat-bogey hex Slughorn admired.

Hermione only has two kids, but the fact that NOTHING was mentioned about her having any sort of life except with Ron disturbed me. A lot. Of all the females, she was the one whom I expected would NOT marry her high school sweetheart, especially since she's smart enough to know that statistically speaking, teenage relationships simply don't last. Unless there's a lot of backstory Rowling is refusing to give out (which seems likely, since she skipped nineteen years), I am very disappointed by this.

Tonks. Dear God. She has a fascinating power that would make her a perfect spy, and she never uses it. She's cheerful and impudent and rebellious until she crushes on Remus, and then becomes an obsessive, whiny idiot who only wants marriage and babies. And then, in the ultimate bit of bad, frigid characterization, she leaves a newborn with her mother and follows Remus into battle even though she knows full well that either or both of them could die.

Absolutely horrible. Why Rowling did this, why she forced the romance plot down our throats at all, is beyond me. It seriously damaged the book for me, as well as my opinion of her as an author.

[neotoma.livejournal.com]

JKR is not a feminist writer by any means.

And if anyone should have stayed home with baby Teddy, it's Lupin. Tonks was the trained Auror. But JKR writing a stay-at-home dad is going to happen when they start handing out ice skates in hell.

There's going to be a lot of fic set between the last chapter and the epilogue. Hopefully some of it will be written by people with clues.

[skull-bearer.livejournal.com]

since hers is but a female version of James'

To be fair, Harry's is a copy of his father's too.

Agreement on all the others though.

[neotoma.livejournal.com]

It certainly looks like, doesn't it. God, I need a fic where it's all the result of a super-strong love potion disaster or something...