Disappointment Was: Deaths in DH WAS: Re: Dumbledore (but more Snape)

[sistermagpie]

No: HPFGUIDX 177487


> Alla:
> 
> So I just want to strongly disagree that the praise of DH means wish 
> fulfillment or filling in the blanks for what JKR meant to do but did 
> not.
> 
> I left in that exchange between you and Carol (hoping that I 
> correctly attributed Carol's words and yours) for a reason.

Magpie:
I could have read lealess wrong (loved the whole post) but I didn't 
think s/he said that praise of DH=wish fulfillment. I thought s/he 
meant, well, what I've seen as well, which is just to say that I've had 
the experience of reading specific posts very eloquently written, that 
were just completely unconvincing to me as an interpretation of what I 
saw in the text. It's not praise in general that's filling in the 
blanks etc., but I have definitely read arguments in different places 
that read like the reader fulfilling their wishes, filling in the 
blanks and writing for JKR.

Sometimes different opinions read as just a different interpretation 
that could be right--sometimes you can think more than one thing is 
potentially true based on the information you have. But sometimes 
things just aren't convincing to you as an interpretation (obviously--
if it was just a case of all our interpretations being beautiful unique 
snowflakes there'd be no point in debating or arguing and the text 
would be close to meaningless). It's like if I took my own themes that 
I would have liked to have seen, found neutral lines in the next that 
kind of related to them and built whole new things out of them mostly 
out of my own thoughts and words and ideas. 

I'm not saying that this is what anybody is intentionally doing--who 
would do that? Or that anything positive reads to me like that. But 
sometimes that's what it reads like. That's just what I thought of when 
I read lealess' post. 

Would I read DH again cover to cover? I might if I had some reason to, 
but I don't buy that I should or just didn't read the book on its own 
terms. How else would I read it? Of course I had expectations--reading 
always involves expectations and this is a series with six previous 
books. I've never needed to read one of them again to get close too 
what they mean or what my reaction to it is. But I honestly think I 
could have been convinced by a good story--my expectations weren't that 
specific. Frankly, I think that many of them came naturally out of the 
story and it's a valid to call it a flaw that they were raised and not 
addressed. Not because JKR needed to address the things I wanted 
addressed, but if she wasn't going to she would have had to give me 
something equally interesting and compelling and she didn't. 

Sometimes reading posts where people argue unconvincingly (to me) that 
these things were well-addressed make me think hey, obviously they 
should have been solved if somebody's going to these lengths to solve 
it themselves. (Ironically, sometimes these posts explain that not 
seeing this yourself means you're reading too simplistically, while to 
me it seems more like reading the book on its own terms.) Otoh, it's 
possible people only feel like they need to do these posts to answer 
the posts of others who call them flaws.

Whatever problems anybody has, I definitely reject the idea that this 
has something to do with these being children's books. Children's books 
*do not* have to be simplistic or black and white or really anything 
like that. Plus, the HP books by DH have long been YA, which deals with 
stuff in more sophisticated ways than HP all the time. 

-m