actually, sir, after all these years I just sort of go along with it

[fanbeatsman]

Saw Half-Blood Prince for the third time last night (hey, I never got to go see it in costume on opening night; I had to give my HP fangirlishness some kind of outlet), so by now I figure a review's probably in order :D

Comments

[shahni]

I read through everything you said, to pretty much just give you an uneducated and simple yes in response to most of everything that you said. When the movies first came out, I didn't want to judge between how true they stayed to the books and how they interpreted the books instead-- there's a lot of difference there and the visual aspects of presentation form those limits. I was willing to be lenient.

That said, they focused on the completely wrong portion of HBP for the movie and I'm only hoping that the things they removed in here will form some part of a director's cut or something, because honestly? These things just make no sense if you don't put them into the proper context-- or rather the depth of certain situations (like the things you mentioned about the love potion and Tom Riddle Sr.) is missed, which also play into other characters' histories. I guess some creative chop-and-cut is to be expected but it seems like their focus for this movie especially, was really off the mark

[fanbeatsman]

OH HAI <3 I've been absent too, sporadic tl;dr aside :( Work is stressing me out so much at the moment that I'm actually deliberately not letting myself get involved in fandom and online things right now, as I know that when I do that out of stress, I end up running away from work completely and I cannot afford to do that right now, ugh. ONE DAY WE WILL BE ONLINE AT THE SAME TIME, I PROMISE.

IKWYM re. focus - much as I loved how they handled the Draco plot, and much as I loved how well Tom Felton rose to the challenge, I think choosing to make that the most central of the three main plots was a mistake. There's too much crucial backstory and set-up in the Pensieve plot to underplay it as much as they did, and tbh they showed so little of the Half-Blood Prince plot (and hence lost bucketloads of the depths and ironies of Snape and Harry's relationship, but I may be alone in thinking that's as important as I do :3) that they might as well not have bothered. Maybe we will get a director's cut, though - I know with some of the earlier

[sarahofcroydon]

I'd love to see some fic recs from you one day. :3 Who are your main HP ships?

the random as fuck "let's set fire to the Burrow even though we kind of need it intact for the next film" scene inserted in the middle, for example, reads as unsatisfying because it doesn't really represent any kind of interpretation of the books. It's just action for the sake of action.YES. THIS. WHY. For the sake of bringing Harry & Ginny together?! They could have done without that whole sequence and used it to cement the 'invasion from within' theme, the WWII allegory that I always wish had been drawn a bit more. What I liked of HBP was the idea that the school was splitting apart because of the outside suspicion and tension, the idea that kids could be death eaters, that their loyalty might be to tradition and privilige and not to eachother, and that this subverted the 'sandwiches and ginger beer' everyone's-friends-type narrative of the first few books so well. I don't feel this was drawn to it's full potential; the fire scene could have been

[fanbeatsman]

Ooh, ships! There's a difference between what I ship and what I actually read - I mostly read Snape/Harry and Harry/Draco, simply because there's such a huge amount of great fic and great writers who write them. But I don't ship either in the "yeah, I could fit this into my head-canon" sense, although I do find them interesting (Snarry more than H/D; I think people project a more interesting dynamic onto Harry and Draco than is actually there). The ships I come out of the books squeeing or wondering about (aside from canon ones like Ron/Hermione and Arthur/Molly, which, LOVE - also Dumbledore/Grindlewald, but that's a different kind of love) would probably be Harry/Luna, Remus/Sirius, Snape/Lupin, Snape/Sirius, and I love the idea of either Fleur or Ginny femslash, possibly as a reaction to the fact that they always seem to be seen through a male gaze. AND my OTP when I first got into the fandom (I still love it in a nostalgic kind of way, even though no-one writes it any more and it makes no canon sense) was Snape/Lucius. In all

[way_j]

Just thought I'd say that I really enjoyed this post. Post-film, ended up re-reading Deathly Hallows, probably for the first time.

[fanbeatsman]

Cheers - I'm always sort of thrilled anyone actually makes it to the end of my really tl;dr stuff, so to hear that you enjoyed it makes me doubly happy.

It took me almost a year to re-read Deathly Hallows, I think perhaps because when I read it the first time, it was release night and I was exhausted and excited and emotional and I wanted to keep that very highly charged reading as my memory of the book. I've got a lot out of it on re-reads, though, although I do think it's one of the more flawed of the books.

[eulogytobiko]

"There are no characters - not even Ginny - that I wouldn't be interested in spending more time with, knowing more about."

I'll write you a story about Grawp for Christmas, then.

[fanbeatsman]

I had a feeling that sentence was a bold and perhaps foolish statement. That said, you know, I'd read a serious fic about Grawp - not least because I'd figure if someone cared enough to write it in the first place, they've probably got something pretty interesting to say about the character. Maybe.