4. Weird values! Only bad people are ever ugly in these books, and the overall message over and over again seems to be that there's something precious about maternal love. The most heroic woman in the series, Ron's mom, has like 29 children, and the significance of Lily's sacrifice is hammered the fuck home. The only redemption for an actual Death Eater, really, is for Draco's mom, who's moved to protect Harry not because she is opposed to Voldemort's plans to kill him, but simply because she wishes to know whether Draco's alive. (I think this was how it played out?) Contrast this to, say, Bellatrix, who is a loveless, childless monster, but who isn't given credit for being a powerful sorceress or competent threat, unlike most of Voldemort's male goons. Add to this the fact that every character meets and falls in love with their soul mate by age 12 and they all get married and have children by 20 -- it's just weird to me.
5. Lack of editing. There are just sequences that are totally unnecessary, that a writer who wasn’t selling millions of copies regardless of content would not have been able to keep in there. All of these holidays with Ron’s family and visits with Hagrid — these are emotional touchstones for readers, but a lot of them don’t further the plot and make no sense from a storytelling perspective.
But, I like the books! Or I like Harry Potter as a thing, or something. So I guess you can count me as someone who is a fan of the idea and the world she created, rather than her writing in the series. I think if you, like, got a really good editor and streamlined them into a tight, say, four-volume series of 400 to 500-page novels, you’d have something really brilliant. And I thoroughly enjoyed reading every moment until, like, I got to the epilogue. But then I sat back and sort of went, hey, wait a minute.
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branchandroot
And it's late so I'm not gonna edit this
Date: 2012-09-29 07:19 (UTC)4. Weird values! Only bad people are ever ugly in these books, and the overall message over and over again seems to be that there's something precious about maternal love. The most heroic woman in the series, Ron's mom, has like 29 children, and the significance of Lily's sacrifice is hammered the fuck home. The only redemption for an actual Death Eater, really, is for Draco's mom, who's moved to protect Harry not because she is opposed to Voldemort's plans to kill him, but simply because she wishes to know whether Draco's alive. (I think this was how it played out?) Contrast this to, say, Bellatrix, who is a loveless, childless monster, but who isn't given credit for being a powerful sorceress or competent threat, unlike most of Voldemort's male goons. Add to this the fact that every character meets and falls in love with their soul mate by age 12 and they all get married and have children by 20 -- it's just weird to me.
5. Lack of editing. There are just sequences that are totally unnecessary, that a writer who wasn’t selling millions of copies regardless of content would not have been able to keep in there. All of these holidays with Ron’s family and visits with Hagrid — these are emotional touchstones for readers, but a lot of them don’t further the plot and make no sense from a storytelling perspective.
But, I like the books! Or I like Harry Potter as a thing, or something. So I guess you can count me as someone who is a fan of the idea and the world she created, rather than her writing in the series. I think if you, like, got a really good editor and streamlined them into a tight, say, four-volume series of 400 to 500-page novels, you’d have something really brilliant. And I thoroughly enjoyed reading every moment until, like, I got to the epilogue. But then I sat back and sort of went, hey, wait a minute.