this is, as they say, your party

[labellementeuse]

obligatory HP spoiler post of doom:


Hmm, OK, obviously it was a blast and I adored it, especially the Trio throughout, as well as the three from the track (to apply one fandom to another... is six a super-special number?) I was actually really surprised by how few people she killed. Mandatory tears shed for Fred, Dobby, Remus and Tonks - especially Fred, because OH, GEORGE, and Remus because he's my favourite. I had a strong worry that she'd kill one of the twins so I saw it with a certain inevitability, and Snape was pretty doomed no matter his allegiance. OTOH, colour me SHOCKED and relieved that Percy, Hagrid, McGonagall and all the rest of the Weasleys survived. Dobby's appearance and death were rather beautiful and appropriate. THRILLED that Ron survived, thank you, doubters!

I was pretty weirded out by Fleur's sudden transformation into Mrs Weasley 2.0, not to mention Tonks' surprise pregnancy! although I can handwave Fleur into someone who would at least want to want to be a homemaker, especially just after her wedding, Tonks randomly deciding to get pregnant weirds me out - and it was, as we all see, a fundamentally stupid decision: hi, baby-with-dead-parents! The overwhelming stench of heteronormativity did bother me and I feel no compunction in admitting that I continue to be frustrated by the portrayal of ultimate happiness as a heterosexual, childbearing marriage.

I thought it was interesting that Harry and Ginny and Ron and Hermione all appeared to be living muggleside (in reference to comments about driving and why's everyone looking at dad? Also, Ron was thoroughly adorable in the epilogue.)

Other moments of awesome: the DA; Neville, every single time he appeared (making up for not being in most of the book by being CONCENTRATED AWESOMENESS, I guess); McGonagall, Flitwick, Trewlawney, Sprout, but particularly Minerva with her fleet of Transfigured desks and her 'CHARGE' - such a goddess; Aberforth - good job, fandom; RAB, always obvious, but still; Harry being a Horcrux, which I had guessed just like everyone else in fandom; the Room of Requirement, which came to me independently but I'm sure was pretty guessed at by fandom as a whole, too; KREACHER, dude, awesome. The occasional echoes of PS were pretty fabulous - "I hope I'm not in Slytherin, I think I'd leave, wouldn't you?" - Charming, James. "Are you a wizard or not?" Mrs Weasley, of course and always.

Actually, a second thought in re: deaths. I am just as glad that she killed as few people as she did, so don't misconstrue this as a complaint, but saying that fifty people have died or whatever, and then having Harry choose not to look at the bodies, strikes me as a particularly obvious and cheap trick to avoid having to actually name any of those people. Not that I'm complaining that Ernie and Zacharias and the Patils and Lavender and Cho and Marietta and Justin and Dean and Seamus and Luna are all still alive, or presumed alive - it's just, well, way to pull your punches, JKR. NOT that I'm not sad enough already, of course. *sniff*

Comments

[angry-in-pink.livejournal.com]

Yay! Now I don't have to read the book! (j/k...I already read the wikipedia entry, lol)

I only read the books for Neville and Luna. And when I do, it will be fanfiction tiem! AHAHA. (All those secondary characters)

[aimeesworld.livejournal.com]

Yay Ron! My heart just overflows with love for him. And Hermione. And Harry. And everyone. And McG and Neville for being made of awesome.
Mrs Weasley kicked some serious ass.

[schmidtey.livejournal.com]

Just finished. 10 minuts ago, I see you did a good job on the whole reading thing but then, I no longer feel like I rushed it.

Firstly, book was amazing, like, met and exceeding all expectations and it should keep interesting discussions going for the next few months.

The catch-phrase of HBP was "Snape kills Dumbledore!" and I'm guessing the one for this is "Molly kills Bellatrix!" - totally unexpected but totally bloody awesome. They managed to explain so much stuff, like the "gleam of triumph" in Dumbledore's eyes and stuff. Although the sword out of the hat at the end was a bit weird, I know Neville was being brave and all but what happened to Griphook?

And yeah, to what you said, it seemed that a twin would die, and not George cause he'd already been, changed as it were. As soon as Lupin asked Harry to be Godfather I would've put money on both Lupin and Tonks dying which was a bit sad.

Wow, long comment, one final thing, I really wished that Arthur Weasley had more of a role, he kinda disappeared at the end there.

[bad-mushroom.livejournal.com]

I just pretty much died with happiness over Snape being good. Also, Horcrux!Harry--exceedingly obvious, throughout and before the book.

Actually the only bit where I cried was the part in the graveyard in Godric's Hollow--by the time we got to Snape!Bathilda, I could barely read and had to go over that passage again and again to grasp what happened.

[bad-mushroom.livejournal.com]

Not Snape!Bathilda, dur. Nagini!Bathilda.

[gianp.livejournal.com]

"Tonks randomly deciding to get pregnant weirds me out - and it was, as we all see, a fundamentally stupid decision: hi, baby-with-dead-parents! The overwhelming stench of heteronormativity did bother me and I feel no compunction in admitting that I continue to be frustrated by the portrayal of ultimate happiness as a heterosexual, childbearing marriage."

Oh my god. Yes!

I really enjoyed it, but that one thing just sticks in my throat. The whole thing just had shades of really juvenille preoccupation with happy families, as though we are playing dress ups with dolls. ("Mummy and Daddy get married and they have a baby and they all live happily ever after"). Are wizarding marriage success rates magical too? Are we to believe that every couple who shacked up in school are still together 19 years later, and have all decided to produce offspring? I'm willing to bet that they would all be carrying a bit of emotional baggage after seeing their families killed off and going through countless near-death situations.

Bit lame really.

Other than that though, a good (and apt) resolution.

[gianp.livejournal.com]

Draco should have turned up in the epilogue with a rough trick named Jim and their adopted Cambodian baby. That would have just made it all better.

[kitsunerei88]

I'm just happy I got the book today (cancelled online preorder because they wouldn't even SHIP it until Monday and I totally NEEDED this book. . .)

I was really surprised that so few people died! But really happy too, of course. ^^ Yaaaaay.

*still absorbing the book*

[amarynth.livejournal.com]

The overwhelming stench of heteronormativity did bother me and I feel no compunction in admitting that I continue to be frustrated by the portrayal of ultimate happiness as a heterosexual, childbearing marriage.

I find this kind of amusing, given that you are IMO one of the most pro-marriage people I know.

[miriamus.livejournal.com]

Oh so fun. Is it possible for something to be both predictable and cracky though? Because this was.... In a good way, though.

[glitterdemon.livejournal.com]

lulz.

[glitterdemon.livejournal.com]

Hello! I found you through ethrosdemon and think you're probably my brain twin. completely agree with everything.

[labellementeuse.livejournal.com]

OK, Neville in this book is SO FABULOUS AND WONDERFUL that I can basically not contain my sudden Neville love. of course, he doesn't shot up for the first three quarters of the book, but it's like he decided, i'm only going to be in a little bit, so I'm going to be CONCENTRATEDLY AWESOME.

[labellementeuse.livejournal.com]

Yeah. I'm really just pathetically squeeful...

[labellementeuse.livejournal.com]

Dude, my BFF finished it in like THREE HOURS, I really feel that she's mentally ill.

hahah, I don't know if molly/bellatrix (AHAHAHA pairing for the AGES) was really the er, monumental moment it was in HBP. I think the equivalent Sirius-dies-snape-kills-dumbledore moment is probably voldemort-kills-harry-but-it-doesn't-stick. But you're right that Molly-kills-Bellatrix is more dramatic!!!

As soon as Lupin asked Harry to be Godfather I would've put money on both Lupin and Tonks dying which was a bit sad.

For some reason this didn't occur to me on my first readthrough, but in retrospect, yeah, horribly obvious.

Yeah, actually, Arthur was pretty quiet. I feel like after Fred died the Weasleys except Ron & Ginny were probably pretty subdued and I see Arthur as being a lot less able to get up and fuck shit up than molly after the death of his son, you know?

[labellementeuse.livejournal.com]

I did find the Godric's Hollow (I typoed Godrix Hollow and now I think I want to actively spell it that way? anyway) I found it pretty but not all that meaningful, I guess, so it didn't move me that much. But yeah.

[labellementeuse.livejournal.com]

Yeah, exactly, what you said, &c. I fight with Lucy about this issue A LOT (she recently said to me "I don't want to keep having this argument with you because you'll always think heteronormativity is wrong!" Statements like that are why I will continue to have that argument with her.) and she said that the epilogue didn't feature everyone else married and that because of Harry's scarred childhood, etc, for Harry to really have a happy ending it was required that he have family, children, etc. And I can see that, it's just that of all the people we saw in the epilogue, the only thing we knew about them was that they were a) heterosexual b) married and c) parents. That was ALL that was important about their lives. And that's tiresome.

[labellementeuse.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that is why i would NEVER order this kind of thing OL even if I did have a credit card - the MENTAL TRAUMA, honestly.

I think it's going to take awhile for this all to sink in. Fred is still alive in my head. :-/

[labellementeuse.livejournal.com]

*takes a bow* Actually, this ties into a discussion I was having with sixth_light recently about slash fic and kidfic and why I LOVE slash kidfic, and actually het kidfic too in those fandoms where I read het (although, uh, only for a certain type of fandomn and pairing and it has to be done right.) I mean, I think marriage and parenthood is great, and I think it's really important to acknowledge that for a lot of people that is their idea of being fulfilled, which is why to my mind the right to marriage is essential and not something that should be restricted to het couples. But that doesn't preclude my acknowledgement of the fact that there are problems with traditional marriage and that there is a problem with the privileging of that type of relationship as the only thing that is or can be fulfilling. Slash kidfic breaks that trope because, uh, it's slash, so on the one hand I get to see my characters happy, and I also get to see a subversion of the traditional marriage act. I will also note that in slash kidfic the marriage tends to be a lot less traditional in other aspects. Authors will get very creative in allowing both parents to work, having neither parent work, having them trade off, or having one parent stay home to rear the kids in a way that makes sense within both character and career and fundamentally is not controlled by gender. Whereas het kidfic often more closely reflects the normative het marriage. Which I dislike.


blah blah blah, I'm totally just navel gazing at this point, but.

[labellementeuse.livejournal.com]

That's actually quite a good description. Some stuff like the Hallows just came so far out of left field - just like the Horcruxes actually - that I'm left wondering whether she wanted to leak a bit of that info earlier in the series but just ran out of room. And then some stuff (epilogue) was just always going to be that way.

[bad-mushroom.livejournal.com]

(That's kind of awesome. Godrix Hollow. Sounds witchy.)

I dunno, for some reason at three in the morning it was the saddest thing I'd ever read.

[amarynth.livejournal.com]

I'm not really well informed enough about fic to comment on the role of heterosexual or non heterosexual marriage in it. I think to me the crucial part of what you've said is this:

But that doesn't preclude my acknowledgement of the fact that there are problems with traditional marriage and that there is a problem with the privileging of that type of relationship as the only thing that is or can be fulfilling.

I've got two questions:

1. Do you think there are problems with non-traditional marriage?
2. Do you think that depicting characters in fiction participating in traditional marriage constitutes an attempt to implicitly privilege it?

I'm presuming that by traditional marriage you're referring to heterosexual, child-bearing marriage, btw. Please let me know if I'm wrong.

[labellementeuse.livejournal.com]

reposted to get rid of HEINOUS GRAMMAR and html error.

You are correct about my definition of traditional marriage.

1. Uh... without a working definition of non-traditional marriage, that's kind of like asking me if I like non-vanilla ice cream. I love chocolate but I hate boysenberry. Similarly, a non-traditional marriage is going to be different for everybody. Do I think that, intrinsically, a public declaration of romantic committment and a set of legal benefits to go acknowledge that are bad? Not really. Do I think they can be? Sure.

Another note about marriage; I think that what marriage means is so bound up in society it's kind of difficult to say that marriage itself is the root of the problem. say there's a stat that purports to show marriage shortens the lifespan of women, but not of men. I'm not going to immediately say marriage is bad, because what I think is more likely is that the women in question are more likely to have children than women in general, and that socially the division of labour when children enter the equation is still unfairly tilted towards the woman.

Additionally, even if this kind of committed relationship completely sans children did result in, say, a shortening of the lifespan, even that would not (to me) indicate that marriage is bad. Presumably the rewards of marriage are such to counter the side effects (like rearing children, actually.)

2. Not always, indeed. In this specific case? yes, and frequently? also yes. I mean, not a conscious attempt, obviously, just a perpetuation, but yep.

(Reply to this)(Parent)

[amarynth.livejournal.com]

The reason I asked the traditional marriage question is that you have, if I can be so crass as to drag in previous posts, extolled the virtues of marriage as a concept and criticised New Zealand law for excluding large numbers of couples from its embrace, but now you are shying away from such blanket statements by saying that it's difficult to attribute problems to the institution - surely it's equally difficult to attribute benefits to it? For instance, I would vigorously dispute the idea that children benefit from having parents who are married - all other things being equal, of course. And having said all this, I don't really see how all the problems that exist in traditional marriage situations potentially don't exist in childless, or heterosexual, or polyamorous relationships. You've always argued in favour of gay marriage on a basis of equal rights - that is, the idea that it's wrong to differentiate between gay and straight couples - but now you do appear to be making that differentiation.

As for question number two, I guess what I have to ask is, what is it about this depiction of straight marriage that seems to be denigrating queer marriage where, say, the marriage scene at the end of Napoleon Dynamite doesn't? Or if you feel that this marriage scene does, or haven't seen Napoleon Dynamite, any other example of a portrayal of traditional marriage that isn't denigrating.

Also I'd be interested by what you mean by frequently - frequently within the works of a single author? Frequently within a single book? Or frequently across an entire genre (eg novels), with every author sharing some of the blame?