A few post-DH thoughts before going outside to write

[thrihyrne]

First off, it was fun to read the book straight through. I really enjoyed being a part of a literally world-wide group of friends and strangers — reading en masse. That in and of itself is quite cool.


I don't even think I can write very much as I'm itching to get back to my threesome story and my own universes which, while they do have martyrs, they're not heavy-handed and they come to their own self-awareness without authority figures guiding them along and telling them every little element about their past.

EDIT: Totally didn't write about swordwielding!Ron. That was fabulous. Combined with dripping and freezing Harry, it was a great scene. Ron's tremendous.

‡ I really can't believe that I wrote about Fred and George being taken hostage, Fred tortured and killed, and then having dead!Fred and survivor!George be my own canon, and this has been the case for 2 1/2 years. Wow. And now— it's real canon. I'm flabbergasted, to say the least. Obviously the execution is different, but, um, wow.

‡ Maybe it's me, but I wasn't emotionally invested in this book. I didn't cry or even find myself close to tears along the way. I felt as though I was being fed a plot-based succession of answers to questions, and then they were all done. And then there was the most unnecessary and, to my mind, nauseating epilogue to it all. I'll freely admit it: I'm a slash writer. I'm all about the non-heteronormative state of the world. And this just made me more than happy to get back to reading fanfiction.

‡ More and more I keep seeing elements from LotR in this, and I just want to roll my eyes. The Inferi/Dead Marshes, the locket around the neck/The One Ring on a chain. I realize as creators and authors we're all pulling out of the Universal Collective Unconscious and we're all ladling out of the one large Soup Bowl of Stories and that there's really nothing new, only new ways to tell the stories, but, urgh. I was talking to wolfiekins yesterday about the soundtrack for OotP and how the music for the fireworks scene with the twins is even in the same key as the fireworks scene in LotR. In movie OotP the music for the dragon chasing Umbridge is very, very similar to that in Bilbo's birthday scene, also featuring a fireworks dragon 'chasing' Bilbo and the other hobbits. Not that that has anything to do with the book, of course.

‡ That's not to say that the book didn't have its moments; one of the key ones was Harry seeing himself (albeit with the stinging jinx) in the mirror at Malfoy Manor with his shoulder-length hair and stubble on his jaw. That was a lovely image, which I promptly then also imposed onto Ron. I'm a Ron fangirl, after all.

‡ I did appreciate Harry's internal "OMG, how is the world still spinning when this atrocity happened?" thoughts when he realizes Fred's been killed. I do think that's how a person would react, though if he'd seen his own parents killed while in Voldemort's head, I'm sortof surprised at his lack of reaction there. Perhaps because he's had years to ruminate on those particular murders.

‡ The whole thing seemed very heavy to me, in the sense of being a Huge Tome of Tying Up Loose Ends. I suppose it was dark, but unlike some exquisitely crafted fanfic I've read, there really wasn't much grit to go along with it. I suppose there was some appreciated ambiguity with Griphook, as well as the Malfoys, who were never really redeemed but ended up surviving regardless.

‡ The whole Snape pining/loving Lily for a lifetime? Never saw that coming. So, yay for being surprised! :)


That's it for now. Perhaps I'll feel more positive about it after time has passed.