Deathly Hallows uberwank: Chapter 17, Bathilda's Secret
HAN SOLO: Our only hope now is to outrun that Imperial garbage scow, though. I'm going to lightspeed.
CHEWBACCA: Raoraowfl!
HAN SOLO: That's the spirit! You'll be celebrating Life Day before you know it! Stand by, here's where we say goodbye to our unpleasant friends.
- The Star Wars Holiday Special
You know, I was always a bit disappointed that Victoria's Secret is merely underwear. I continued to hope for many years that it would turn out her secret was that she had a face on her ass or her parents were brother and sister or she was really a dude, but no. It was just that she has underwear, which is a shitty secret. I mean, I wear underwear. So I do rather enjoy the fact that Bathilda's secret is - she's been dead for weeks and has been harbouring a giant snake!
Sigh. So, OK - chapter starts with Harry and Hermione hearing... a noise! And then deciding it was probably nothing. That takes up a little over a page. Right afterwards, Harry wanders along for a while, and then sees the house he once lived in with his parents. It's not really specified how they find this house - how they know to head that way - so I'm assuming this is up there with that time a bunch of guys they knew held a very useful conversation right outside the tent. Well, OK, as stupid coincidences go it's nowhere near as bad as that one, but still. I mean, Godric's Hollow is a village, but even villages have more than one road, right? But anyway, they just happen to find the house. A magical sign appears, which provides some useful exposition, including that the house is invisible to muggles and has been left ruined as a reminder of Halloween 1981. That's another moment I rather like, the house being left ruined I mean. There's a church in the centre of Plymouth that was bombed during World War II, and which has been kept for the same reason (although the fact that it's in the middle of a roundabout and flanked by a Primark and a Staples does diminish its impact a little).
They enjoy this for a while, and then an old woman shows up. Harry spends a page or so suspecting her of being Bathilda Bagshot (which she confirms), and then another two pages are taken up with them following her around the village and into her house. This part is, once again, like a boring section from a video game where you have to follow someone around and either not be seen or always keep them in sight. If I remember correctly there's a bit like that in Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker, where you have to follow some kid around and occasionally miaow so they think they're being followed by a cat and not a human (or Hylian? Whatever). Once in her house, they spend several pages having - ahem - a bad feeling about this, and then another page or so is taken up with Harry telling Hermione to wait in the frickin' car if she has to and following Bathilda upstairs to her bedroom (yay! Another random character's bedroom!), on the way stealing a photograph of Dumbledore's ex. Actually, scratch what I said before about this being like a video game. It's more like - well, if you've ever read The Princess Bride, you'll be aware that the book rests on the (false but entertaining) premise that William Goldman is abridging it from an earlier novel, cutting out all the bits that his father used to miss out while reading it aloud on the grounds they were boring. So, at various points in the text, the action stops and an author's note is inserted, explaining that originally there was an entire chapter here describing, say, the accepted ritual for hat-doffing, which was a very clever satire on Florinese history, but didn't make for a good story. This chapter, then, reads like the 21 pages describing the Queen's luggage that Goldman claims to have edited out.
Anyway, so Harry finds himself in Bathilda's bedroom, where he repeatedly asks Bathilda if she's got anything for him. Given the circumstances, not to mention how bored I am, this reads kind of like a very weird come-on. Eventually, Harry looks away for a second only to look back and OH FUCKING HELL IT'S A FUCKING SNAKE SHIT BOLLOCKS RUN OH JESUS FUCK.
Bathilda collapses and out comes the snake, which bites Harry and tries to squash him and stuff. Hermione runs upstairs and starts kicking ass, eventually pulling Harry out of the window and disapparating. We segue right into another instalment of Voldevision; this time it's a flashback of that one time Voldemort killed Harry's parents. Only it's from Voldemort's perspective, and includes his thoughts on yaoi murder and whatever. Innovative and stuff, or at least it would be if not for the fact that Wario Land: Super Mario Land 3 (tagline: be the bad guy!) was released in 1994. Here are some of the highlights:
I remember when, pre-HBP, JKR announced on her website that the first chapter of that book had almost taken place in several books previously. There was a great buzz and anticipation about it, and - perhaps not a general acceptance, but certainly a widespread belief that this first chapter would be the account of Halloween 1981. If I remember correctly, there were a fair few fics at the time which explored how things might have gone down, too. (In the event, the chapter we got was, of course, that stupid one about the Prime Minister.) And this was far from the first time people had written about that night - not least because some of what's here shows up in PoA too. So I can't help but feel this segment perhaps doesn't have the gravitas it should. I mean, if I really think about it - say, Lily trying vainly to protect Harry, and probably hearing James get AK'd - I feel quite sad, but my point is you shouldn't have to think about it to feel like that.
Anyway, back in the present, Harry comes round; he's back in the tent and being nursed by Hermione. They rehash and wangst and generally spell out everything that's just happened. They didn't kill the snake ANGST! They didn't get Gryffindor's sword ANGST! Oh and Harry's wand has snapped ANGST ANGST ANGST!
And there ends the chapter - a chapter which consisted almost entirely of various people wandering about a village. I have to say, it is becoming increasingly difficult to carry on writing this when, frankly, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows is crap. I get a lot done at work, because there's little else to do, but throw in a distraction or two and I'm gone.
Allow me to shoegaze fangirl illustrate my point. Right now on British TV, the first season of Heroes is starting to draw to a close. If you've watched it, then you'll be aware that Heroes features a selection of relatively well-developed characters, most with at least some level of moral ambiguity, or at least potentially conflicting reasons for acting the way they do; these characters spend their time engaged in multiple intertwining storylines with a variety of possible outcomes.
Whether a particular episode is massively action-packed and features most of the main cast, or alternatively focuses very intensely on a smaller subset of characters, it's not uncommon to feel - well, sort of tired after it finishes, because the show is so very action-packed and emotionally intense at the same time (although I suspect saying all this makes me officially a complete t00b). Actually, I'm hearing reports from the US that the second season is crap, so feel free to ignore everything I'm saying - but my point is, I'm really excited about Heroes right now.
Meanwhile, I've also been playing Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess. I'm part-way through what I believe is the penultimate dungeon (the Palace of Twilight), although I've left it behind for the moment to go and complete various side-quests. I've recently managed to get all the golden bugs, I only have a handful of poe souls left to find, and I managed to get almost 40 rooms into the cave of ordeals before getting utterly fucked by a couple of complete bastards in armour. But what really makes this game fun isn't just the amount of stuff to do; it's also that the plot is both intricate and engaging, many of the non-player characters - even some of the enemies - have their own distinct personalities and quirks, the visuals are gorgeous: in other words, in playing it you become completely immersed in the world of the game, and, again, can find yourself engaging with it at quite a deep level.
... And then there's this book.
Only last week I hacked-and-slashed the living fuck out of a gang of moblin archers, took the form of a wolf to destroy the souls of ghosts, and rounded things up by collecting some pretty golden bugs. Then, right after that, I watched in awe as Peter Petrelli and Sylar went head-to-head in a furious battle of Top Trumps Pokemon badass nuclear shapeshifting telekinesis an' shit. Also, I ate squid ink pasta. It was BLACK. And then I sat down and read a chapter of Harry Potter in which Harry walked around whining about how crap his life is. And it was one of the more eventful chapters in the book. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows doesn't match the standard of anything else I'm doing right now, including sleeping.
Oh, don't worry, I have every intention of going on with the uberwank - at least a bit because the first chapter I even wrote in any detail was the epilogue, which is going to be all kinds of snarky, and I'm looking forward to posting it; and really because I have had so much lovely and interesting feedback from you wonderful people and am way too insecure to knowingly throw that away. :) It's just that... when I talk about losing the will to live as I read, right, well, that's only sort of a joke.
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CHEWBACCA: Raoraowfl!
HAN SOLO: That's the spirit! You'll be celebrating Life Day before you know it! Stand by, here's where we say goodbye to our unpleasant friends.
- The Star Wars Holiday Special
You know, I was always a bit disappointed that Victoria's Secret is merely underwear. I continued to hope for many years that it would turn out her secret was that she had a face on her ass or her parents were brother and sister or she was really a dude, but no. It was just that she has underwear, which is a shitty secret. I mean, I wear underwear. So I do rather enjoy the fact that Bathilda's secret is - she's been dead for weeks and has been harbouring a giant snake!
Sigh. So, OK - chapter starts with Harry and Hermione hearing... a noise! And then deciding it was probably nothing. That takes up a little over a page. Right afterwards, Harry wanders along for a while, and then sees the house he once lived in with his parents. It's not really specified how they find this house - how they know to head that way - so I'm assuming this is up there with that time a bunch of guys they knew held a very useful conversation right outside the tent. Well, OK, as stupid coincidences go it's nowhere near as bad as that one, but still. I mean, Godric's Hollow is a village, but even villages have more than one road, right? But anyway, they just happen to find the house. A magical sign appears, which provides some useful exposition, including that the house is invisible to muggles and has been left ruined as a reminder of Halloween 1981. That's another moment I rather like, the house being left ruined I mean. There's a church in the centre of Plymouth that was bombed during World War II, and which has been kept for the same reason (although the fact that it's in the middle of a roundabout and flanked by a Primark and a Staples does diminish its impact a little).
They enjoy this for a while, and then an old woman shows up. Harry spends a page or so suspecting her of being Bathilda Bagshot (which she confirms), and then another two pages are taken up with them following her around the village and into her house. This part is, once again, like a boring section from a video game where you have to follow someone around and either not be seen or always keep them in sight. If I remember correctly there's a bit like that in Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker, where you have to follow some kid around and occasionally miaow so they think they're being followed by a cat and not a human (or Hylian? Whatever). Once in her house, they spend several pages having - ahem - a bad feeling about this, and then another page or so is taken up with Harry telling Hermione to wait in the frickin' car if she has to and following Bathilda upstairs to her bedroom (yay! Another random character's bedroom!), on the way stealing a photograph of Dumbledore's ex. Actually, scratch what I said before about this being like a video game. It's more like - well, if you've ever read The Princess Bride, you'll be aware that the book rests on the (false but entertaining) premise that William Goldman is abridging it from an earlier novel, cutting out all the bits that his father used to miss out while reading it aloud on the grounds they were boring. So, at various points in the text, the action stops and an author's note is inserted, explaining that originally there was an entire chapter here describing, say, the accepted ritual for hat-doffing, which was a very clever satire on Florinese history, but didn't make for a good story. This chapter, then, reads like the 21 pages describing the Queen's luggage that Goldman claims to have edited out.
Anyway, so Harry finds himself in Bathilda's bedroom, where he repeatedly asks Bathilda if she's got anything for him. Given the circumstances, not to mention how bored I am, this reads kind of like a very weird come-on. Eventually, Harry looks away for a second only to look back and OH FUCKING HELL IT'S A FUCKING SNAKE SHIT BOLLOCKS RUN OH JESUS FUCK.
Bathilda collapses and out comes the snake, which bites Harry and tries to squash him and stuff. Hermione runs upstairs and starts kicking ass, eventually pulling Harry out of the window and disapparating. We segue right into another instalment of Voldevision; this time it's a flashback of that one time Voldemort killed Harry's parents. Only it's from Voldemort's perspective, and includes his thoughts on yaoi murder and whatever. Innovative and stuff, or at least it would be if not for the fact that Wario Land: Super Mario Land 3 (tagline: be the bad guy!) was released in 1994. Here are some of the highlights:
- Voldemort walks to the Potters' house, on the way pausing to contemplate murdering a child who compliments him on his outfit. Voldemort scores low for style, dude.
- Having arrived, Voldemort kills James in the hallway. A significant factor in their deaths is the fact that James attempts to hold Voldemort off with no wand, while Lily tries to escape by running upstairs. This can be considered excellent evidence for a genetic factor in IQ. (Why didn't they apparate? Why didn't James transform into a stag and trample Voldemort? Why did they let Dumbledore borrow the invisibility cloak? Oh, that's right. Because they're really stupid.)
- Having dispatched James, Voldemort heads upstairs, where Lily is running in circles like a headless chicken. She shields Harry with her body, and says, "Not Harry" or "Take me instead" or some variation thereof no less than eleven times. This is presumably because, by this point, many of us had forgotten that LILY DIED TO SAVE HARRY ZOMG!!!1!
- Just to show what a jerk Voldemort is, we get a description of how much he will enjoy killing baby Harry, who he refers to as "it". Then we get a totally emo bit where Voldemort wangsts about being ripped from his body and feeling terrible pain. Oh, call the waaaaambulance.
I remember when, pre-HBP, JKR announced on her website that the first chapter of that book had almost taken place in several books previously. There was a great buzz and anticipation about it, and - perhaps not a general acceptance, but certainly a widespread belief that this first chapter would be the account of Halloween 1981. If I remember correctly, there were a fair few fics at the time which explored how things might have gone down, too. (In the event, the chapter we got was, of course, that stupid one about the Prime Minister.) And this was far from the first time people had written about that night - not least because some of what's here shows up in PoA too. So I can't help but feel this segment perhaps doesn't have the gravitas it should. I mean, if I really think about it - say, Lily trying vainly to protect Harry, and probably hearing James get AK'd - I feel quite sad, but my point is you shouldn't have to think about it to feel like that.
Anyway, back in the present, Harry comes round; he's back in the tent and being nursed by Hermione. They rehash and wangst and generally spell out everything that's just happened. They didn't kill the snake ANGST! They didn't get Gryffindor's sword ANGST! Oh and Harry's wand has snapped ANGST ANGST ANGST!
And there ends the chapter - a chapter which consisted almost entirely of various people wandering about a village. I have to say, it is becoming increasingly difficult to carry on writing this when, frankly, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows is crap. I get a lot done at work, because there's little else to do, but throw in a distraction or two and I'm gone.
Allow me to shoegaze fangirl illustrate my point. Right now on British TV, the first season of Heroes is starting to draw to a close. If you've watched it, then you'll be aware that Heroes features a selection of relatively well-developed characters, most with at least some level of moral ambiguity, or at least potentially conflicting reasons for acting the way they do; these characters spend their time engaged in multiple intertwining storylines with a variety of possible outcomes.
Whether a particular episode is massively action-packed and features most of the main cast, or alternatively focuses very intensely on a smaller subset of characters, it's not uncommon to feel - well, sort of tired after it finishes, because the show is so very action-packed and emotionally intense at the same time (although I suspect saying all this makes me officially a complete t00b). Actually, I'm hearing reports from the US that the second season is crap, so feel free to ignore everything I'm saying - but my point is, I'm really excited about Heroes right now.
Meanwhile, I've also been playing Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess. I'm part-way through what I believe is the penultimate dungeon (the Palace of Twilight), although I've left it behind for the moment to go and complete various side-quests. I've recently managed to get all the golden bugs, I only have a handful of poe souls left to find, and I managed to get almost 40 rooms into the cave of ordeals before getting utterly fucked by a couple of complete bastards in armour. But what really makes this game fun isn't just the amount of stuff to do; it's also that the plot is both intricate and engaging, many of the non-player characters - even some of the enemies - have their own distinct personalities and quirks, the visuals are gorgeous: in other words, in playing it you become completely immersed in the world of the game, and, again, can find yourself engaging with it at quite a deep level.
... And then there's this book.
Only last week I hacked-and-slashed the living fuck out of a gang of moblin archers, took the form of a wolf to destroy the souls of ghosts, and rounded things up by collecting some pretty golden bugs. Then, right after that, I watched in awe as Peter Petrelli and Sylar went head-to-head in a furious battle of Top Trumps Pokemon badass nuclear shapeshifting telekinesis an' shit. Also, I ate squid ink pasta. It was BLACK. And then I sat down and read a chapter of Harry Potter in which Harry walked around whining about how crap his life is. And it was one of the more eventful chapters in the book. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows doesn't match the standard of anything else I'm doing right now, including sleeping.
Oh, don't worry, I have every intention of going on with the uberwank - at least a bit because the first chapter I even wrote in any detail was the epilogue, which is going to be all kinds of snarky, and I'm looking forward to posting it; and really because I have had so much lovely and interesting feedback from you wonderful people and am way too insecure to knowingly throw that away. :) It's just that... when I talk about losing the will to live as I read, right, well, that's only sort of a joke.
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