Deathly Thoughts

[stuttermoan]

Been stewing on these for a while. DH spoilers.

1) Doe patronus = love of Lily?

Okay, it's already been discussed that someone's patronus can change due to loving someone. In HBP, Harry suspected Tonks's had turned into Sirius's animagus form, when it was actually Lupin's werewolf form. Both of these animal shapes were directly associated with the people in question. How was the doe in any way associated with Lily? James was the one with the stag animagus form. Was Lily an animagus too? Was her form a doe? Because otherwise it looks like even Snape somehow connected James's animagus form to Lily's identity, which, even not considering he hated James, doesn't make sense. Lily was her own person, not just a counterpart of James. In an odd way, this strikes me as completely...sexist?...on JKR's part. Lily deserved her own symbol, not a spinoff of James's.

2) Slytherin = still 99% evil!

Snape was a mean bastard, Slughorn was a manipulative social climber, the Malfoys were self-interested cowards, and even the portrait of Headmaster Black was, for the most part, unhelpful and irritatingly biased. We never got a good example of a completely admirable Slytherin. I know that people from the other houses had flaws as well, but not as many of them seemed to be so overwhelmingly defined by them.

3) Unsorted annoyances...

McGonagall still underutilized. Lupin OOC. "Albus Severus" -- I mean, are you fucking kidding me?

Comments

[armadillof.livejournal.com]

omg. you are the first person i think i agree completely with! I think the Albus Severus was pretty funny...but AWKWARD. The doe is not something I ever really pictured Lily as, unless Jo said somewhere that she had doe-eyes. I always pictured her as more of a lioness considering her bravery/courage/power. I guess Jo wanted to try and make it more obvious? I don't think Snape was entirely cruel...I think a lot of his shit came from bullying and he suffered as a character because of it.
I wish Jo didn't hate Slytherins as much since their house qualities make a lot of fantastic, wonderful people take care of themselves first so that they can better help others. I also think that consequently REALLY hurt her argument for the houses uniting. I mean Snape, Regulus, and the Malfoys are really only five people out of how many hundred slytherins, taking on everyone else? It doesn't add up in my mind.
I really disliked Lupin in this book and I was so disappointed. He has usually been included in my top five favourite characters. I could have handled his death better if he had done something cool and fantastic...then died. That came out of left-field and I completely thought he was imperiused. I thought Sirius was always going to be (out of the Marauders) the senseless meaningless, unfair death. I kept waiting for information on Harry's parents, their jobs, and some sort of life insight from Lupin instead of a mid-life crisis...and I think we did not get to see anywhere near as much awesome cool shit as we could or should have out of him. I feel so cheated as a result of reading all the detail in the previous books, and strung along by Jo from all the previous books. I mean 150 pages of the Quidditch World Cup, and you can't even give Lupin a paragraph on some frakking amazing magic before offing him? Pretty much ditto for Tonks whose powers were so amazing and unreal, and then nothing happened with them in the final book. I feel that Teddy's war-baby life has already been made an example of with Harry (as messed as his first 17 yrs were). SO. Yeah.
I also feel cheated in the epilogue and for right after the battle. I felt she owed more to me as a reader...which I don't like saying....it is just simply because of all the previous detail she put in the first 6-7 books. Her key to defeating Voldemort has always been in the people around Harry, being able to trust them, and knowing that EVERYBODY is important (especially on Harry's side) in this storyline. I feel strung along to love these people and care about these people and then she just tossed them aside, without any detail later. WTF. What happened with Snape's body? graves? Professions? 7th year? Rebuilding Hogwarts? Snape with a headmaster's portrait? The love room? The veil?
The Dumbledore storyline I'm pretty thrilled with since I've been expecting there to be a lot more to him for a long time...esp. after the Lightning-Struck Tower in HBP. Aberforth's jealousy(?) kind of pissed me off since he already resented him...but the way he handled those DEs was frakking awesome. Anyway...I'm going to be ranting more soon...though a lot of stuff still blew my mind in the best possible way.

I'm torn between absolute love and complete frustration.

[stuttermoan.livejournal.com]

"I'm torn between absolute love and complete frustration."

I feel exactly the same. I think during the series, JKR's view of her own series must have changed, because the approach she took to Harry and the importance of love was overshadowed by the Deathly Hallows artifacts. Her perception of Lupin and the whole Slytherin issue seemed to have changed as well. Ultimately though, when you're writing for a massive amount of people all over the world, it seems prudent to stick to the approaches to characters that you have already taken.

I'm baffled that she didn't clear up everything. Mugglenet had a list of loose ends that she could have easily printed out and used as a checklist, for crying out loud.

[nemesister.livejournal.com]

1) Exactly! Vaguely sexist and pretty darn stupid. Why would it be obvious to either Snape or Dumbledore that a doe represents Lily? It makes no sense and is my biggest peeve with the book (I think...). I like that his patronus represents Lily, just not a doe, please!

2) Regulus. (Although I have to agree with Sirius that he was a bit of an idiot. Don't kill yourself, that helped no one, least of all your family! :() Snape was defined as perhaps bravest man Harry ever met, wasn't he, and Phineas was actually very helpful, why would you call him unhelpful? So I don't really agree, although I don't know why she let none of the Slytherin students joined the fight against Voldemort - house loyalty, I guess.

"Albus Severus" -- I mean, are you fucking kidding me?

:D Why? Do you think Harry wouldn't do this or do you just not want to hear about it. I understand the latter, but I wouldn't put it past Harry at all.

[stuttermoan.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I suppose Phineas did help (for example, by telling Snape where the Trio was so he could direct Harry toward the sword), but my overall impression of him was more snark and "Slytherin-rules!" interjections. And of course Regulus was helpful, but, in Harry's eyes, as an exception from usual Slytherins and Death Eaters. Like I said in my post, Slytherin characters in general, more than any other house, seem to be defined almost exclusively by their flaws. And those flaws are viewed differently than the flaws of comparable Gryffindor characters (in which they seem to be both a weakness and strength). This is probably due to the fact that the story is still 3rd-person-limited from Harry's point of view. I guess I figured JKR would bother to eventually write a scene in which a Slytherin would shake Harry's stereotypes about the house before said Slytherin...oh, I don't know...DIED?

As far as "Albus Severus" goes, it's just cheesy to me. And it doesn't roll off the tongue; too many S's. It sounds like something out of a syrupy, badly-spelled fic.

[fayzbub.livejournal.com]

Just coming out of lurkdom for a moment as a thought just struck me. Everybody I've read is dissatisfied about Snape's doe patronus = Lily. But what if it was James who took his patronus and animagus form from Lily in the first place? He could have seen her make a patronus and we all know from Lupin and Sirius talking to Harry that he was sweet on Lily for a long time. Perhaps both Snape and James had their patronuses modified due to that fact, but in Snape's case it was his love for Lily that let his patronus become a doe, while James would not have anything so female defining him, his was a stag. We know that the Marauders didn't get their animagus forms sorted out for the first four/five years, so perhaps it was Lily's patronus in the first place that both Severus and James subconsciously imitated?

Just a thought; going back to lurking now! :D
Alison

[stuttermoan.livejournal.com]

Thanks for your comment! It's definitely an interesting line of thought, this whole doe thing. My thoughts on it are pretty convoluted, but here goes:

The explanation you mentioned definitely would have been a logical route I would have accepted, but only if it were hinted at sometime in the past 6 books (or even somewhere early on in the 7th book, I'm not terribly picky). To me it just didn't hold water because all this time we've been shown how unique patronuses (patroni?) are to their casters, and how they can become the form of something that someone loves. So how did Snape know that Lily's patronus was a doe? As stated in various places, Expecto Patronum is pretty advanced magic to be casting while one is still in school. We know Lily was brilliant, but when would she have a reason to cast it with Snape nearby to see it? I guess he could have overheard something about it too, but I think him actually seeing it would make for a much cooler scene.

I think in order for me to feel okay about the logical route you suggested, I'd need more support from canon backstory. Maybe some vague mention of how James liked Lily so much that the form he chose was influenced by her somehow. JKR has a knack for slipping innocuous-sounding hints in, so I'm sure she could have done that.

[fayzbub.livejournal.com]

Yes, I have to agree with you there. My idea would make more sense in fanfic; I may write one from that! Such a lot of things were left hanging IMO in DH that I felt a little let down at the end, as if we'd been built up and up in the previous books, and the ending was, to me at least, something of an anticlimax.
Alison