jedi_of_urth | HP sigh

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harry potter,
twop

HP sigh

So, because I could I wound up reading the TWoP HBP photo show and well...it reminded me why I hate that book.

All they seemed to talk about was the Hogwarts 90210 aspects, which I was really hoping they would tone down from the book. The plot of the book, though kind of thin, could have made up a good chuck of a movie length story without it having to give so much weight to the crappy ships of the book.

It was only my ability to hope that the 90210 aspects would be played down that had me all that interested in the movie, now that I'm back thinking they're going to make sure to sell that, and reminded of how much I hated it the first and only time I read the book, I'm back to not caring.

I will say that DH redeemed the series somewhat after the dren of HBP, but my love affair with the HP series died with HBP the first time around. Still, somehow I'm still worried the movie will manage to kill it more dead.

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Yeah, that was pretty much where my enthusiasm for the books got killed. Of course, that was also the book she murdered Hermione's character, brought Ginny back out from the sidelines, and generally realized she'd fucked up somewhere in the last five books and needed to get the plot back on the rails.

Though I am curious that the trailers I keep seeing have more Harry and Hermione (once where she thwacks him and once where she is sitting really, really close (and alone) with him) so maybe the movies will continue this whole trend of overtly going along with the 'canon' ships and giving the H/Hr fans subtext consistent with, you know, the first five books/movies.

Haha, you noticed that too? I think it's a little too much for the H/Hr fans to hope for, tbh. I'm guessing it's just because Daniel and Emma have the most chemistry out of any of the four actors, and it's only natural they display their strongest scenes in the trailers. So yeah, I don't know how much of that earlier subtext was intended - perhaps when the writers also believed that H/Hr might happen? - and how much was just a result of those two. ~~It was really Dan and Emam that made me ship them, more so than the book characters. :D~~

Likely. But, seeing as I'll get dragged to it anyway, I'll be looking for all the subtext I can.

I think the writers really did believe H/Hr would happen. People say R/H was obvious since book four and, tbh, I found a lot of H/Hr moments in there--more than for the other side, and I think the filmmakers made the book from the same perspective.

Also: They do have really good chemistry together. Rupert and Emma have good friend!chemistry, but Emma and Dan really have that spark--which makes the subtext all the better.

Haha, exactly! Got to get enjoyment out of the film somehow, right?

Perhaps. I have to say that I honestly did reckon that R/H was fairly obvious from Book Four - mostly because I can never seeing Harry and Hermione betraying someone as easily upset as Ron. But perhaps I was always hoping that JKR would pull a rabbit out of a hat and suprise us. It was really the Ginny/Harry that came out of nowhere, tbh and bugs me more than the R/H.

Exactly! Emma and Dan really do have that spark... and shallow!point? They look so much better together!

Pretty much.

I'm usually the first one calling it when a Slap Slap Kiss couple is going to end up together, but until book six, I was a little bit baffled by the idea that R/H was omg tru luv 4ever or whatever. Which I don't know if that's willful denial on my part or just me expecting more out of her writing than I got, but whatever.

But, you know, friends, pairing up the trio, blah blah blah, I get that. Ginny herself came from nowhere in book 6, and, frankly, made things all a bit too Oedipal for me to ever be completely comfortable with Ginny/Harry...

They do! Rupert's a great actor, and he's Hollywood Homely, if anything, but he's far more suited for the goofy, occasionally awesome, comic relief, tbh.

I'm not real fond of very many slap slap kiss couples. I can handle a few but most don't work for me. And R/Hr is definitely one that doesn't work for me. They make each other miserable and/or act like idiots, I just can't ship that. Especially next to H/Hr with all it's awesomeness.

I remember when HBP came out and I was so disheartened just by the cover, because for some reason Ginny got to be equal to Ron and Hermione as members of Harry's gang, I loved the sextet in OOTP and if Neville and Luna had also gotten raises in importance it might have come off better, but it didn't happen, just as the cover foretold. And Ginny was the least interesting of the sextet.

You know, I'm bordering on going on a serious rant about this, I'm losing my HP zen at the first chance to get back on the subject.

I am more than I realized. But only couples like the Tsundere/Jerk with a Heart of Gold dichotomies. Those hit my buttons, because they complete each other, they make each other better like that--instead, yeah, they make each other miserable. It isn't a slap-slap-kiss couple--it was trying to be one and fell on its face.

I once saw a Photoshopped romance cover (for a contest) of a bodice ripper novel. The 'heroine' had long flowing red hair and the shopper had put glasses and a scar on the hulky, black-haired hero. The title? 'The Weasley Slut That Came From Nowhere'. I laughed so hard I cried.

Neville and Luna should have gotten more book time, it's very true. They were more fun, and actually had substantial roles in the preceding books!

Right, right, HP zen, right.

I think the problem is that it was trying to combine the slap=slap-kiss cliche with R/Hr being supposed friends, which really isn't a good combination in my mind, so it got tangled around itself and yeah fell on its face. It really failed to convince me that they were really either without Harry which is why the only time I buy R/Hr is when it's part of the OT3 where Harry's the glue.

After the way OOTP set it up to be the sextet adventures, and fandom ran with it awesomely, the fact that Neville and Luna got virtually nothing to do in HBP made me angry. Less so in DH, especially since they were obviously off being awesome in their own story and the point of DH was to be about the Trio.

Not that I really liked DH either, but at least some of my problems with HBP were less glaring there. Some.

Yeah, with Harry it works. Without him, it's like pairing up the two sidekicks and thinking that should work fine. And it didn't.

That remains one of my favorite scenes in OotP, is the sextet fighting in the Ministry. Very cool, and she actually pulled it off (even if the reason they were there made me yell at Harry for being a dummy and the consequences were sad). And then she squished it.

DH...it was fine, and I had fewer issues with it--until she basically equated H/Hr shippers with Voldemort in that one scene. Then I (at first) got pissed, and then I decided it was so ridiculous the only reaction was to think the whole thing ridiculous and go from there. It worked out okay.

Two sidekicks with very little in common, or connection outside of Harry. I mean, I love Willow/Xander and all, but they had their own relationship outside of Buffy whereas R/Hr is entirely formed round Harry.

Yeah, the sextet in the Ministry is great, and I feel like I should be kind of head smacky at Harry for falling for it because Harry is a far from perfect character. But that dynamic could have been the foundation for some awesome storytelling, but she just didn't go there, for reasons that I'm not wholly clear on, besides it not fitting with her outline which makes you wonder why she had it happen in the first place.

I've forgotten that part, I remember the "love her like a sister" bit which make me make faces at the book and have to walk away for a bit, until I just decided to laugh at it, because it was really just dumb. But as far as story structure I had fewer issues at least. Or I just cared less by then.

Hmm, see I never thought Ron would get all that upset if Harry and Hermione got together, mostly because I didn't think he really had that strong a feelings for Hermione. Once I accept that he could I can see your point maybe, but even then I'd end up treating Ron's jealousy as more of a "He's Harry Potter so he gets everything" kind of deal and not because he was hugely upset he didn't get Hermione herself. In my head he just decided he wanted her to be his girl, and yeah might have been hurt that she loved Harry, but in the long run he'd realize they were avtually happy together.

Yeah, I have for a long time had R/Hr issues.

Harry/Ginny is just weird, and really wrong. Not hot wrong, just regular wrong. H/G is basically everything Harry never wanted in the books where the characters actually made sense to me.

It was the books that made me a shipper, I'd heard mumbling of HP fandom and R/Hr shipping, but I came to my shipping choices on my own (once I found fandom though I'll admit it was what turned me onto Ron/Luna, but I withheld judgment on it until book six when it suddenly made sense to me (even though at that stage I really doubt JKR intended it)). And once I realized it and I read the book in that light everything made sense...and then I found out people though R/Hr was also obvious and I was baffled because it wasn't to me.

So yeah, I wouldn't be surprised if the movie writers were at least keeping the ship options open until JKR came down firmly on a side, but now...we'll see I guess because as much as I may have issues I'm sure I'll end up seeing it before too long.

It was the books that made me a shipper too, on my own as well. (Ron/Luna would have actually been really cute, and, yeah, it was fandom that got me to look at that.) And, yeah, I read the books through a lens of H/Hr from about book three onward. R/Hr always, always confused me. I get some of the reasons people like the ship, but the evidence I found in the books was always overwhelmingly H/Hr, in my opinion.

We'll see how it goes, eh?

H/Hr pretty much only hit me upside the head in OOTP, but I'd probably always been leaning that way, I just hadn't checked in with it on a shipping level until then. It hardly came out of nowhere it just grabbed me and *made* me ship it there and woke me up to all the details that had lead up to it being so glaringly *obvious* in OOTP that H/Hr was total true love.

Funny story, I went to go see GoF with a friend of mine who shipped canon couples, she came out thinking the movies had a decided H/Hr leaning, I came out thinking they cut out the most awesome H/Hr moments in the books. I'm not sure what this says about either of us, but I always remember it.

OotP was the big H/Hr book. I think that's the point where she let the story get the furthest away from her, regarding the shipping, though it had been going on all along (without her realizing).

Haha, I think both are true. They did cut out some of the best H/Hr moments--but they also gave it quite a strong H/Hr slant, curiously. Funny, that.

I think I agree with you. Without realizing she wrote such a beautiful friendship ship which in OOTP converted a lot of people like me who weren't committed to a ship before, especially in a book which implied that the power of love was Harry's greatest weapon against Voldemort (has always bugged me that that really wasn't such a big deal afterward). But there are several noticeable and sudden character changes after that, which is sad since I really liked the characters in OOTP and not really in HBP.

You're also right there. There is a fair H/Hr leaning in the movies, it just isn't because they kept the same reasons for it as in the books.

Spoilers from seeing the movie! (although not terribly spoilery).
There was a lot of H/Hr on-screen stuff, but they framed it as simply platonic. There was a lot less R/Hr stuff than in the book, imo.

Good to know, on both fronts (even if they had to frame it ad platonic). Did they keep the hysterical bird throwing scene in that totally proves to me why H/Hr works and R/Hr doesn't? Plus how's the H/G stuff manage?

Lol... slow!responder is slow at responding. I'm guessing you've seen the movie by now, so answering that they left in the awesome bird scene is kinda irrelevant. *sigh*

Well yes, I have seen it. And the bird scene was even more decisive in the movie than the book as to which ship it *should* be in the end. Now with extra H/Hr cuddles and togetherness.

A decent part of me does think the movie PTB are total H/Hr shippers because the sure don't shy away from letting it show up.

A decent part of me does think the movie PTB are total H/Hr shippers because the sure don't shy away from letting it show up.

Yup, especially since they seem (at least in this movie) to play up the H/Hr parts and downplay (somewhat) the R/Hr parts.

generally realized she'd fucked up somewhere in the last five books and needed to get the plot back on the rails.

Except the plot had been doing just fine, it just wasn't the plot she had had in mind when she started, but along the line characters take on a life of their own and as long as the overall plot still makes sense you should respect that. Not in the sense of "listen to the fans" or "the fans have rights to these characters", from my own experience with writing (though much more minor and unpaid and mostly in fanfic) I say at some point the character will start telling the story themselves. And at that point you can either tell an awesome story, or you can follow JKR's example and wrench it back into the form you thought it would have years before.

maybe the movies will continue this whole trend of overtly going along with the 'canon' ships and giving the H/Hr fans subtext consistent with, you know, the first five books/movies.

They do do that yeah. I can't decide if that makes me wish they'd waited to make the movies or not, because at least then they could have planned it out, but we might have missed some awesome H/Hr movie moments.

Precisely what I mean though. She, as an author, didn't let the plot go on its own to the conclusion it wanted to come to. She had written the epilogue at the very, very start of the series, and instead of abandoning that, forced the story back on to the rails she wanted it to follow.

And I agree completely about these things taking on a life of their own--trust me, I can't get through a Nano without it happening. And the reason I didn't win my nano last year? Was that I tried forcing the story back to what I thought it should be, instead of what it wanted to be. And it failed.

I also have to wonder if there aren't a few people on the cast and crew who agree more with the side presented here. Which, well, subtext is enough for me, after being called 'delusional' and other things by the author.

I'm all for outlines, but outlines need to be consulted regularly, so that you don't get too far into an area where it won't hold up or to edit it with the new info. They're not an excuse for poorly wrenching the story back to a previously decided on ending.

A part of me agrees with the saying that the only thing worse than shipping H/Hr after HBP (and being called delusional) would be shipping R/Hr and having *that* be the story of your ship. Because seriously, I'll take the "delusional" BFF ship over that dren any day.

Precisely. And if you need to take that editing machete to your ending too? So be it. But I think after book three or so she kind of got editing immunity, and wasn't subject to things like, you know, character continuity.

Yeaaah. That's pretty much the source of my zen regarding HP. Sure, I didn't get the ship I liked--but ...yeah, it could be worse. Rowling could have written them with that ending. Bleh.

I think she should have had to reread her own stories between writing, as well as keeping them on hand for fact checking (to this day it bugs me that in SS we're told no witch or wizard who went bad wasn't in Slytherin, in POA we're told Sirius was considered the worst of Voldemort's followers, and yet apparently Sirius was a Gryffindor; I can fanwank an explanation for this plot hole but I would have liked a real one). Not just counting her piles of money and checking in with her outline that could have used a relook occasionally.

I think the crappiness of the canon romances helps with my HP zen too. Not only is it part of why I ship the couples I ship in the first place, and it keeps me from being confused about whether I have any draw to the canon pairs, it helps me feel better about it not happening because it could have been worse, it could have been canon.

I've heard that Dan and Emma have more chemistry than the other two canon ships which kind of makes me laugh - albeit, in a "if only I still cared" kind of way.

I think I've moved on from HP enough so that I can sit through the movie without caring overly much. But HBP was also what killed my HP love, so I can't honestly say that I'm bouncing with joy to see it or anything.

I've heard that Dan and Emma have more chemistry than the other two canon ships which kind of makes me laugh - albeit, in a "if only I still cared" kind of way.

If I still cared yeah. And if that really surprised me. Their characters just naturally make sense, so why wouldn't they have more chemistry?

I'm not rushing out to see the movie, or bouncing for joy just because hey it's a HP movie by any means. And I thought I'd reached fandom zen place with HP, but this has given me a chance to dig back into those issues and I'm fast realizing I haven't gotten over it.

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