JKR isn't very good at writing conflict.
Mar. 25th, 2006 12:36 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
logansrogueI know, this may sound odd, but I was thinking about it tonight. As far as wars go... the one she's doing for the end of the book series isn't totally impressing me much. (Oh, and if I sound high, it's because I am - thank you Codeine. But don't fault my argument on it. I think it's testament to the glaring problems in the books if I can still point them out and I'm this gone. They're that big).
Let's think about this here. This is a huge war. That's WAR, man. Now, war can be VERY entertaining in books. I mean, shit, Lord of the Rings? Those were some great motherfucking wars, man. Trolls, people dying left and right, swords, you fucking name it. It was hell on Middle Earth. And only three or four people in that book could actually DO magic, too.
Here's Harry Potter land. Everyone's got magic. Everyone that matters, anyway. Let's see, the last showdown in the book, we have:
- One dead old guy
- One kidnapped erstwhile ferret
- A rather unconvincing and very GAY traitor (Who, is so unconvincing we don't even know if he's bad or not - we're all undecided)
- Bat-bogie hex (which we discovered that, when it comes to the crunch, is good for sweet fuck all).
- the need for what amounts to a treasure hunt...
Seriously. What the fuck? We're at book six, Jo! It's time for some impressive fights! Now, if your fight in book five, at the end, was better than the big SCHOOL FIGHT at the end of book six? You know you've got some huge freaking problems. Now, what do we know that the Wizarding World is doing?
The good guys have got their Aurors. Yeah. A handful of elite wizards, right... and we've also got... well - that's it, isn't it? Oh - and look alert everyone. Question your relatives.
...
...
THAT'S IT? Jeezy-CREEZY, Jo! Voldie's got it! The game is HIS! I mean, if that's what's seriously happening. But you know what? IT shouldn't! I mean - sweet mother of all that is holy and good on this wide green earth!!
If there is a huge bunch of evil bad guys out to challenge the peace and freedom that has so deliciously enjoyed for the past fifteen to sixteen years, a government would NOT sit on their hands and wait and watch Harry Potter sport his first fucking boner in front of a girl. She is writing as if the main assumption is that Harry will save the day, as if we're ALL assuming that nothing can go wrong as long as Harry is in the game.
This is egocentric and unrealistic. Does she really think an entire world of people are going to blithely sit by and wait for a single teenager to save the day? No.
Where are the armed wizard forces? Where are the recruiting drives? Where is the wartime efforts? This is life or death here! I mean, she said so herself - wizards consider prophecies and that stuff to be a bit of an unreliable art. They're gonna want some muscle on their side, right? The bad guys have the giants and everyone else they can muster on theirs. She has so many damned opportunities to comment on the world, here. So many opportunities to write something really fucking amazing, and she doesn't, she just doesn't.
Shit. Not even Dumbledore's Army is around. She totally dropped the motherfucking ball there. It was a GREAT idea! And now Harry's like "War? What war? TITTIES!"
... Yeah right, Jo. Good one. I'm sorry, but at this point? The 'good guys' deserve to get their arses kicked.
Some of you might disagree, and say, "Hey? What about the bridge blowing up? What about all that stuff going on in the background?"
Well, from what I remember (and it's probably a bit fuzzy cause I'm high and I only went through the book once or twice-ish) it was the good guys losing people and getting their butts served to them on a plate. If the good guys ARE doing anything (Other than trying to screw like mad bunnies), it's obviously not enough. Nice work there, Dumbledore, go stick your head in a basin and contemplate Snape and Voldemort's fucking navel.
And now these Horcruxes are going to save the day. How very neat. How very nice. It sort of completely bypasses the growing doom, doesn't it? I just don't care any more at this point. JKR has lost me, and do you know why? The story's characters aren't real to me anymore. Why do I care if Harry loses someone else or not? He'll only get over it while I'm not looking. Harry doesn't care. If he cared, he'd still be upset about Sirius. Shit, it took me YEARS to get over losing my Grandmother at sixteen. I still miss her, and it's ten years later!
Why should I care about characters that were too busy contemplating their pink bits while the world fell down around their ears? There was REAL DRAMA going on, and Jo totally missed it. Fuck Hermione being jealous of Ron. I want to know what's going on on the front line. I want to be out there. Why didn't HARRY want to be out there, too? If he knew real shit was going down?
The problem is this. Jo has built this world, but the bitch ain't LIVING in it. She's treating them like pawns and not people. It's not a fluid space and it does not reflect the world we live in. It's clumsy, childish, naive and not engaging in the slightest.
I feel no danger in this world because death has no consequences. People die and we're told that it's very sad and all, but it's like moving a piece of a chess board - it's gone and the play moves on. But people aren't chess pieces - they're people. And grief is felt, even if it's just someone you kinda knew. Death is a creeping, depressing thing that people feel if there's a lot of it around. It creates a terrible fear. She captures none of that.
She grabs our attention by asking us questions and then not answering them. That's what's had us going. She's never left ample clues for us to figure it out on our own, and if she did, it was painfully EASY. I mean, I saw Ron and Hermione coming, but it was so OBVIOUS and clumsy and predictable that I didn't think she'd go down that road. And then she DID. I didn't think Snape was ever evil, because her pointing out that he was was so predictable. And WHOOPS - he WAS! Well - God damn!
Everybody is holding out for book seven. Everyone is all, "Ooh, I can't wait, I wonder how it's going to end!"
Me? No, I'm not. I don't know how it'll end, because she has no threads in her writing. She doesn't weave anything. She slaps it together like a bad lego construction. She doesn't lead the reader along in a gentle dance. She tugs you down the street on the end of a leash and doesn't like you stopping to smell random posts, flowers, and other dog's turds.
...
Okay, that analogy ran away with me there, but you get the point, right? She'll yank you away before you really get comfortable in a scene. She'll tell you one thing and show another. She has no idea how to show us anything, so what she shows and what she tells are usually VASTLY different.
So anyway. To sum up:
- She is bad at writing a good war
- The structure of the last book was absolutely terrible
- I want blood, damn it! And I want to care about it!
I'm a girl who loves an epic. You know what I come to expect after a damned good lead up to a fight? Lawrence of Arabia. The Matrix (First movie, before they started sucking). Or if we're going for one on one? Fist of Fury - Bruce Lee. Not the actual fight (cause Harry doesn't know Kung Fu) but the intensity of it all. The anger, the fear, the sweat, the vivid, living adrenaline that makes confrontation so gripping. After six books and all these years - it's what I want, Jo!
I'm sure I could have made more sense if it wasn't so late here and I wasn't so doped up.
ETA: I un-friends-locked. I'm sure I'll have some people that'll criticise this rant. And, ya know, yay them. If you do decide to give me shit in a rude or unfriendly way, just know that I'll probably ignore you. See how![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
bcp talked to me below? I don't mind responding to that, that's cool. Point being - I have surgery in four days, I'm mentally preparing and high on drugs, so I have zero energy for assholes. There we go. If you're an asshole, you will be ignored.
Oh, and read other comments before you post. I've elaborated some points. I should have written them here but, you know, drugs. Pain.
Let's think about this here. This is a huge war. That's WAR, man. Now, war can be VERY entertaining in books. I mean, shit, Lord of the Rings? Those were some great motherfucking wars, man. Trolls, people dying left and right, swords, you fucking name it. It was hell on Middle Earth. And only three or four people in that book could actually DO magic, too.
Here's Harry Potter land. Everyone's got magic. Everyone that matters, anyway. Let's see, the last showdown in the book, we have:
- One dead old guy
- One kidnapped erstwhile ferret
- A rather unconvincing and very GAY traitor (Who, is so unconvincing we don't even know if he's bad or not - we're all undecided)
- Bat-bogie hex (which we discovered that, when it comes to the crunch, is good for sweet fuck all).
- the need for what amounts to a treasure hunt...
Seriously. What the fuck? We're at book six, Jo! It's time for some impressive fights! Now, if your fight in book five, at the end, was better than the big SCHOOL FIGHT at the end of book six? You know you've got some huge freaking problems. Now, what do we know that the Wizarding World is doing?
The good guys have got their Aurors. Yeah. A handful of elite wizards, right... and we've also got... well - that's it, isn't it? Oh - and look alert everyone. Question your relatives.
...
...
THAT'S IT? Jeezy-CREEZY, Jo! Voldie's got it! The game is HIS! I mean, if that's what's seriously happening. But you know what? IT shouldn't! I mean - sweet mother of all that is holy and good on this wide green earth!!
If there is a huge bunch of evil bad guys out to challenge the peace and freedom that has so deliciously enjoyed for the past fifteen to sixteen years, a government would NOT sit on their hands and wait and watch Harry Potter sport his first fucking boner in front of a girl. She is writing as if the main assumption is that Harry will save the day, as if we're ALL assuming that nothing can go wrong as long as Harry is in the game.
This is egocentric and unrealistic. Does she really think an entire world of people are going to blithely sit by and wait for a single teenager to save the day? No.
Where are the armed wizard forces? Where are the recruiting drives? Where is the wartime efforts? This is life or death here! I mean, she said so herself - wizards consider prophecies and that stuff to be a bit of an unreliable art. They're gonna want some muscle on their side, right? The bad guys have the giants and everyone else they can muster on theirs. She has so many damned opportunities to comment on the world, here. So many opportunities to write something really fucking amazing, and she doesn't, she just doesn't.
Shit. Not even Dumbledore's Army is around. She totally dropped the motherfucking ball there. It was a GREAT idea! And now Harry's like "War? What war? TITTIES!"
... Yeah right, Jo. Good one. I'm sorry, but at this point? The 'good guys' deserve to get their arses kicked.
Some of you might disagree, and say, "Hey? What about the bridge blowing up? What about all that stuff going on in the background?"
Well, from what I remember (and it's probably a bit fuzzy cause I'm high and I only went through the book once or twice-ish) it was the good guys losing people and getting their butts served to them on a plate. If the good guys ARE doing anything (Other than trying to screw like mad bunnies), it's obviously not enough. Nice work there, Dumbledore, go stick your head in a basin and contemplate Snape and Voldemort's fucking navel.
And now these Horcruxes are going to save the day. How very neat. How very nice. It sort of completely bypasses the growing doom, doesn't it? I just don't care any more at this point. JKR has lost me, and do you know why? The story's characters aren't real to me anymore. Why do I care if Harry loses someone else or not? He'll only get over it while I'm not looking. Harry doesn't care. If he cared, he'd still be upset about Sirius. Shit, it took me YEARS to get over losing my Grandmother at sixteen. I still miss her, and it's ten years later!
Why should I care about characters that were too busy contemplating their pink bits while the world fell down around their ears? There was REAL DRAMA going on, and Jo totally missed it. Fuck Hermione being jealous of Ron. I want to know what's going on on the front line. I want to be out there. Why didn't HARRY want to be out there, too? If he knew real shit was going down?
The problem is this. Jo has built this world, but the bitch ain't LIVING in it. She's treating them like pawns and not people. It's not a fluid space and it does not reflect the world we live in. It's clumsy, childish, naive and not engaging in the slightest.
I feel no danger in this world because death has no consequences. People die and we're told that it's very sad and all, but it's like moving a piece of a chess board - it's gone and the play moves on. But people aren't chess pieces - they're people. And grief is felt, even if it's just someone you kinda knew. Death is a creeping, depressing thing that people feel if there's a lot of it around. It creates a terrible fear. She captures none of that.
She grabs our attention by asking us questions and then not answering them. That's what's had us going. She's never left ample clues for us to figure it out on our own, and if she did, it was painfully EASY. I mean, I saw Ron and Hermione coming, but it was so OBVIOUS and clumsy and predictable that I didn't think she'd go down that road. And then she DID. I didn't think Snape was ever evil, because her pointing out that he was was so predictable. And WHOOPS - he WAS! Well - God damn!
Everybody is holding out for book seven. Everyone is all, "Ooh, I can't wait, I wonder how it's going to end!"
Me? No, I'm not. I don't know how it'll end, because she has no threads in her writing. She doesn't weave anything. She slaps it together like a bad lego construction. She doesn't lead the reader along in a gentle dance. She tugs you down the street on the end of a leash and doesn't like you stopping to smell random posts, flowers, and other dog's turds.
...
Okay, that analogy ran away with me there, but you get the point, right? She'll yank you away before you really get comfortable in a scene. She'll tell you one thing and show another. She has no idea how to show us anything, so what she shows and what she tells are usually VASTLY different.
So anyway. To sum up:
- She is bad at writing a good war
- The structure of the last book was absolutely terrible
- I want blood, damn it! And I want to care about it!
I'm a girl who loves an epic. You know what I come to expect after a damned good lead up to a fight? Lawrence of Arabia. The Matrix (First movie, before they started sucking). Or if we're going for one on one? Fist of Fury - Bruce Lee. Not the actual fight (cause Harry doesn't know Kung Fu) but the intensity of it all. The anger, the fear, the sweat, the vivid, living adrenaline that makes confrontation so gripping. After six books and all these years - it's what I want, Jo!
I'm sure I could have made more sense if it wasn't so late here and I wasn't so doped up.
ETA: I un-friends-locked. I'm sure I'll have some people that'll criticise this rant. And, ya know, yay them. If you do decide to give me shit in a rude or unfriendly way, just know that I'll probably ignore you. See how
bcp talked to me below? I don't mind responding to that, that's cool. Point being - I have surgery in four days, I'm mentally preparing and high on drugs, so I have zero energy for assholes. There we go. If you're an asshole, you will be ignored.Oh, and read other comments before you post. I've elaborated some points. I should have written them here but, you know, drugs. Pain.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-24 04:56 pm (UTC)So, in short, your doped up codeine fix theory isn't as cracked as you think it is!
(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-25 02:30 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-25 02:31 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-24 05:22 pm (UTC)I feel no danger in this world because death has no consequences.
Yes. YES. That whole paragraph sums it all up perfectly for me! That was the first of many times that my heart dropped to my heels while reading HBP -- After all of the buildup of Sirius as father figure, the intensity of the choice to go the the DoM and the fight there (and HOLY SHIT the fight there!) when HBP threw Sirius a passing mention and Harry skipped off merrily to chase his flighty mistress for several sunlit days or whateverthefuck, I nearly cried. OotP tore my heart out because I felt Harry's frustration in trying to incite action against Voldemort in the face of large-scale government opposition. I mean, it was uncomfortable, it was gut-wrenching and it FIT. Sirius's brushoff was a slap in the face, not because I'm unnecessarily invested in the character and expected him to have OMG1000CHAPPIES devoted to him, it was because as a reader, I expected the characters to act like humans instead of pod-people.
The trio merely brushing off Hannah Abbot's mother's death as "O WELLZ SUX0RZ!" was just awful. It's not like they were particularly close to her, but damn. She was in the DA! She was one of the people who supported Harry throughout and none of them feel the need to even approach her and express grief. Some people are giving the excuse that they've become desensitized to death because of the volume of deaths that are occuring -- um...thefuck? If that were expressed at all instead of some throwaway references to reading the Prophet or the bits in the first chapter... but no! The war is new! Voldemort has only been corporeal for a year! This isn't a case of desensitization, this is a case of shittastic writing. So amen to you!
err *is sheepish*... /rant
So yes. You win 4 lyfe. Fantastic meta, IMO! Mind if I pimp it?
(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-25 02:33 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-24 07:11 pm (UTC)urgh, 3am, i dunno what i'm really saying here :) heh
but perspective... lord of the rings is a great exploration through the lands of middle earth... but to be honest, i can't really remember much about frodo. he's pretty much a flat character who doesn't change much, even after all he goes through. and we also see other parts of the story through some of the other characters.
but rowling seems (from foggy old memory) to just write through harry... it's harry's story, and harry is being kept safe from harm. protected and all. so he doesn't get to see much of all the fighting, and death, and stuff. state-controlled newspapers in a time of war usually tend to understate things going badly - do you think the prophet is really gonna go crazy reporting every death? spreading panic through the population? are the teachers at hogwarts going to do anything but try to keep rumours from spreading among the students? but mrs weasley, privy to sensitive ministry info, is going out of her little mind with worry.
actually mrs weasley... well i just want to hug her sometimes. poor thing.
and, dude, do you remember being a teenager? they're horribly self-obsessed. and all those pink bit are *very* interesting!
but, ah, yeah. i haven't actually wanted to read HBP more than twice, because it's just not that great a book. so you will kick my ass on the details ;) it's definitely missing something, but i'm not sure it's blood. (you keep that up, and she'll have hermione decapitated or something as a grand finale!)
(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-25 02:40 am (UTC)I want intensity. There is no intensity. There's no sense of immediacy and danger. I don't feel it could really hurt Harry - cause it's not the TIME to hurt Harry. I mean, Dumbledore isn't finished telling Harry about the past? Harry's safe for now!
That's not realistic. A bad guy wouldn't care how far along Harry is in Voldemort's Past 101 (Which could have been told in ONE NIGHT, for fuck's sake). I've read stuff about guerilla warfare - I've read books about William Wallace (The Wallace - Nigel Tranter. Romanticised, but gripping). He was an excellent commander of guerilla tactics.
But it's not the actual war I'm concerned about - it's the lead-up. The lead-up is dead. There's no fear. JKR made a mockery of the "Check to see if it's really your family/friend." She made a big joke about it. We don't care about it cause we're not aware of the consequences. It's just another game to play in the wizarding world.
Now, to address what you said about Harry POV in the beginning, you're right. But after all that he went through in book five, don't you think he'd be a bit sick of being out of the loop? Book five showed he HATED being out of the loop. He wanted to be in it - he wanted to KNOW what was going on, here and now. And suddenly he doesn't? Buh? Fuh? Doesn't make sense to me. But that's just me. :D
(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-25 11:21 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-25 04:15 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-25 06:32 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-27 03:34 am (UTC)And she was still a bitch about the Twins.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-24 10:35 pm (UTC)The problem is this. Jo has built this world, but the bitch ain't LIVING in it. She's treating them like pawns and not people.
This, to me, sums up the problem a lot of writers suffer. You know from talking to me and working with me writing things that the people and the places I work with a as real to me inside my head as the world I live in is real to me. It's that level of engagement with her writing, as you rightly said, is missing certainly in the later books from JKR.
I think part of that is that she's become a victim of her own success... and part of it is that she's be pumping out Potter... and not much (if anything) else to give herself a break to freshen up. I've read other writers of long serial novels have said that they write fresh things in between the installments so that they themselves don't get bored with what they're writing and can continue to give the reader the calibre of story they deserve. I think there's probably an element of that being missing in the case of JKR. I'm sure there are other things that factor in too... I feel them nipping at the heels of what I'm trying to say, but I'm just too mentally exhausted right now to voice them coherently... I guess sitting as a juror on a murder trial will do that to a gal.
So I won't ramble on any more... except to say - where ya been girl?
(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-25 02:42 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-25 04:15 am (UTC)you sound like muchu (Mulan) : ARE YOU QUESTIONING ME? THERE'S A WAR GOING ON! I SHOULD BE QUESTIONING YOU
ah ... eddie murphy ... good ol' times.
*sigh* yea...*crowls under a rock*
ps : point taken ^_^
(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-25 04:18 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-25 04:21 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-25 04:26 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-25 04:20 am (UTC)I hope book 7 will be all about the war (and not just the last 3 chapters) to make up for the mess she made in the last book.
talking about good fights?
last samourai. WIN!
(altho tom cruise is just ...ggrrrrrrr)
(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-25 12:47 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-25 04:15 pm (UTC)been wanting to share this w/someone and you seem apropriate
Date: 2006-03-26 07:20 pm (UTC)she Claims that she´s really bad at math.I´m too.
check it out: to make an horcrux, Voldy dear had to kill someone to split his soul, right? and he got 1/7 of his soul in his body by killing 6 or 7.
well,
let´s suppose that the diary was his first horcrux, he killed murtle and his soul was spllit in a half (1/2)
therefore, he had 1/2 of his soul in his body, while the diary contained 1/2, and when he made the second horcrux, he had only HALF of his soul... tehrefore, splitting to 1/4...
the other six horcruxes: him, 1/4, naginny(ha!) 1/4
him, 1/8, the locket 1/8
him 1/16, whatever 1/16
him 1/32, whatever 1/32
him, 1/64, whatever 1/64.
THAT WOULD MAKE VOLDY VERY WEAK, because harry would have already destroied the most powerful horcrux.(the diary)
or
J. o K e will ignore it,and give a funny (ha!)excuse.
and please, point out if there´s any flaw here, most likely it will.
if i´m right, then horcruxes, the most important thing in the next book, are lame, very lame. I have no idea how it´s going to turn out if I´m right.
oh, if I sound high, weel, it´s because I was high ;P
Re: been wanting to share this w/someone and you seem apropriate
Date: 2006-03-27 03:30 am (UTC)Well, it all depends on how the horcruxes were split up. But if they were split up like that you're right. She messed up. Hmm. I wonder how she worked it out?