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sareaJade and I finally finished OotP a couple of days ago. It took us longer than we thought it would, because we were dealing with 1) different sleep schedules; 2) external interruptions (including an unexpected visitor in town who took up my entire Sunday, practically).
I tried to catch up on LJ and everyone's posts, but it was just too massive an undertaking. I read a few people's reactions to OotP, but decided that I couldn't read them all until I'd sorted out my own thoughts. So you might see comments/questions in here that have already been discussed elsewhere -- sorry for the repetition, if any. Also, I've only read it through once and don't have it with me, so some details may escape me.
All right, so. My thoughts wrt to OotP. This is long, if you couldn't already tell by your vertical scrollbar. I'm incapable of encapsulating my thoughts and reactions to such a massive book in a few short paragraphs. Succinctness has never been my forte. I'm working on it. I think the easiest way to do this is to go character by character, and hope that it all makes sense to more people than just me. But generally, I didn't love it or hate it. It was just ... canon. It was canon, and for that I treasure every page. JKR created a world I love, and she expanded upon it. I don't understand all the ranting and wailing and gnashing of teeth. Can we criticize the book? Sure. Can we dislike it? Sure. There were several things that didn't sit well with me. But this is JKR's world, has always been JKR's world, and it seems really, really silly to write off HP or the situations/characters that OotP introduced simply because it didn't all go as we had imagined it would. If it had, I daresay I would have been pretty disappointed.
Canon is not supposed to be fanon. And I hate to point out the obvious, but -- there are still two books to come. A couple of the responses I've come across are treating this book fatalistically, as if the bleakness we've seen in OotP is all and ever will be. Er, no. We've seen what it can be like, and now we've seen how else it can be like. The world is joyful and bleak all at the same time, and Harry's at a place now where he sees the bleakness and not the joy. And since we see things through his POV, we feel what he feels. But objectively, I understand that this is what Harry can and will eventually triumph over. And the victory will be that much sweeter because of the darkness he's faced and has overcome.
The Characters
Harry: So our little boy is growing up. He's an Angry Young Man. He provokes people, he loses his temper, he's clueless about girls, he's lost faith in the people he used to trust without question, he learns to accept a position of authority. He's confused and scared and feels alone, and who can blame him? He lost three father figures in this book. Dumbledore, who Harry had generally considered infallible; James, who Harry had placed on a pedestal (if he were alive, he would have fallen off of it around this time anyway, as Harry gets to that age); and Sirius, in both a literal and figurative sense. Sirius didn't bear the brunt of Harry's disappointment in viewing Snape's Pensieve memory, but neither he nor Lupin came out of it looking good. And of course, there was then Sirius' subsequent death, which leaves Harry plumb out of father figures. There's still Arthur Weasley, Remus Lupin, and Severus Snape, of course, but those pale in comparison (especially Snape, if he can even be put in this category) to the ones he's lost.
OotP reminded me that I actually like Harry. Since my fanon tastes are different, there was a point when I had started to dislike him a bit -- oh, poor little maligned orphan who now gets everything he wants and is the savior of the world, too. Well, he's still that person, but I'd forgotten how likeable he was. <g> There were a few occasions on which he lost me -- but that was usually because I forgot he was a 15-year-old boy. Still ... there are some things he can't get out of with that excuse. Minor as these things may be, they did affect my overall view of him:
Hermione: She didn't come through this looking as good as Harry, I'm afraid. She's always been somewhat irritating to me, but lovable in her own way; she really pushed that in this book. Her most baffling moment came when she roped Harry into speaking out to Rita Skeeter and having his story printed in The Quibbler. Considering his reaction to having the D.A. idea sprung at him from nowhere, I can't believe Hermione wouldn't at least mention the idea to him before getting Rita and Luna sitting at the table. It was a fairly big deal. And yet, inconsistently, Harry doesn't question it and goes along with it as the Harry of old might have. Hermione's slickness wrt how she deals with Rita has always bothered me somewhat -- no matter how smart she is, Hermione's just a teenager, without much worldly experience. Rita, supposedly, is savvy and ruthless. And there's also the fact that it's somewhat hypocritical of Hermione, who's constantly preaching at everyone to be aboveboard, to use such underhanded tactics as blackmail.
Where she completely lost me was when Harry had the dream about Sirius and was certain that the latter was in trouble. Her resistance, considering all that had happened up to that point, seemed inappropriate. Very Hermione, though, and for that I can excuse it (especially since she turned out to be right -- how surprising). However, once she had understood the urgency Harry was feeling and came up with the plan of using Umbridge's fireplace, it was completely beyond me when she didn't seem to think they meant to do it right then. When, exactly, did she think it was going to happen? Was she unable to read Harry's determination, his urgency? Honestly.
Still, Canon!Hermione is a thousand times more tolerable than fanfic Hermione, who is generally perfect in every way and whose infallibility is second only to Dumbledore. (Or when she does fail, it's always with grace, with everyone's best interests at heart, etc.) Canon!Hermione is annoying, but they like her anyway. And that makes me like her anyway. Fanon!Hermione, however, is rarely found annoying by the other characters. Instead, she is the epitome of what everyone should be like. Excuse me while I puke and then get back on track.
Ron: Had little to no issues with Ron. There was a period during GoF when I thought he was intolerable, but then he and Harry made up and I was fine with him as well. Never carried any grudges about it. I liked him in OotP. He's always been the "real" boy -- the boy we think Harry might be if he didn't have to carry around so much baggage and responsibility. He continued to play that role here, and I thought it was fine. I liked that he was made prefect and Gryffindor Keeper, but it didn't feel like too much. I liked that he was a friend to Harry without losing his own teenage-boy perspective. We only need one Harry Potter. I liked that he was funny without being overly comical. I liked that he was as loyal to Harry as I might have expected from Ron.
Sirius: I have the luxury of not being as enamored of Sirius as so many people are, so his death doesn't affect me much on a personal level. I actually liked him more in OotP than I have at any point prior (perhaps because he reminded me very much of Fanon!Draco <g>), and I would have felt more when he died ... if only it hadn't felt completely anticlimactic, instead. Going into OotP, I had wished that I didn't even know there was going to be a death, but it seems obvious now that they had always meant for that "spoiler" to leak. JKR put too many red herrings into the story for it not to be deliberate. She knew everyone was going to be looking for a death, and so we have that to thank for the rollercoaster of emotion wrt who it might be. It's Dumbledore! No, it's Hagrid! No, it's Mr. Weasley! No, it's McGonagall! No, it's Hermione! And so on and so forth.
So when it finally happened -- and not in an irrevocable, drawn-out way -- I went blithely on, wondering if he, too, would jump back into the fray as everyone else had. The fact that he didn't only made me shrug. I don't feel any resolution here, so I simply cannot see that this is a permanent situation. We never saw a body, and the veil thing was never explained. Not to mention the voices that Harry and Luna heard. I hate it when people die but don't really die, but I'm so used to it by now that it's inured. I went through it when watching XF and Buffy, and given that HP is another supernatural world, it's easy to think that Sirius will be back, given the uncertain circumstances of his "death." And if he really is dead, well, I can't bring myself to feel too sorry about it. Harry's foundation had to be rocked so that he could stand on his own two feet and determine, on his own, that this is a world still worth saving.
Snape: Prior to getting into fandom, my absolute favorite character was Snape. In the three years since GoF, however, that waned. I couldn't remember why I liked him so much. Now I remember. Snape rocks my world. He is caustic and strange and unfair and inadvertently funny and unsympathetic and dislikable and respected and feared and bears grudges and is fallible and malicious and temperamental and intolerant and tries to do the right thing. There is nothing about Snape in OotP that I didn't like -- and not because he's likable and I'm trying to make him out to be something he's not. He's completely unfair to Harry, he was wrong to stop teaching him Occlumency, and he hits below the belt. But he wouldn't be Snape if he didn't do those things, and he also wouldn't be Snape if he weren't risking his neck for the Order. I accept him just as he is, and he is by far my favorite character in canon. I can't wait to learn more. I have entertained the possibility that Snape is a double (or is it triple?) agent and doesn't mean to help the Order at all ... but I just can't bring myself to believe it. Dumbledore trusts him, and despite learning that the former makes mistakes after all, I do not question his judge of character.
Dumbledore: It was disappointing to learn that he can make errors of judgment. I'd almost rather he have died in his chapter and shake up Harry's foundation that way. It's hard not to have someone you can trust absolutely, but I'm guessing that's the point. We'll see in books 6 and 7.
Cho: I was very, very disappointed by her characterization. I've never understood the total hatred that people displayed toward Cho, as she seemed perfectly nice, well-liked, and un-girly. Harry wanted Cho, and so I wanted him to have her. But not this nitwit. She seemed like a completely different person than the girl portrayed in PoA and GoF -- but I suppose we, meaning Harry, never really knew her. (But thus, I don't understand the hatred people had, except that he liked her and they wanted him to like Ginny or Hermione or someone.) I thought Cho was just going to be dropped after GoF, that after the Cedric incident she would want nothing to do with Harry. It was heartening, at first, to see that she was able to look beyond the surface and believe in Harry ... but then she turned into this crazy person who I was heartily sick of. I'm sorry that JKR felt she had to make Cho into a blubbering shrew in order to finally have Harry get over her. It would have been preferable, and more fair to the character, imho, if the matter had simply been dropped and Cho was just someone Harry saw in the corridors.
Ginny: I don't know what to think yet. I'm a little annoyed by the way she was just suddenly there, and becoming temporary Seeker, and apparently becoming Hermione's friend, and getting boyfriends, and yet still seeming rather personality-less. Is JKR "preparing" a Ginny that would be right for Harry? I'm glad she's getting spunkier, and if she is to be with Harry she really needed to get over that infernal crush, but I'm not sure she's really all that likable right now. I like most of Fanon!Ginny's various incarnations, but this new Canon!Ginny, I don't know. I don't dislike her, but right now I don't think she's right for Harry, either. She seems to have gotten too spunky and mature in too short a time ... which is not necessarily her fault, since Harry doesn't notice her, but still.
Fred and George: The twins rock. What more can I say? Particularly loved the understanding that they and Peeves, another prankster, came to. I'm surprised we haven't heard more from Mrs. Weasley about them having left school, however. Saving that for later, JKR?
Percy: Hate him. My hatred of Percy is only surpassed by my hatred of
Umbridge: My God, I don't think I've ever hated a fictional character as much as I absolutely despise Umbridge. Her come-uppance, considering the havoc she wreaked, was not nearly enough.
Petunia Dursley: Hmm, I am intrigued. I think there's more here than is being let on. Not the least of which is that Dumbledore's missive to her was so cryptic ("remember my last"?) that I don't see how she would have understood it, if all he meant was his letter to her when he'd dropped Harry off as a baby.
Luna: She reminds me very, very much of Moaning Myrtle. And it's significant that Myrtle was practically the only character not to make a reappearance in OotP. Probably then the similarities would have been even more pronounced. I like that she's crushing on Ron. It's cute. Someone should crush on Ron, poor guy.
Neville: Felt bad for him, but I also don't <heart> him the way others do. I'm just glad Voldemort didn't choose Neville to be his worst enemy, or this series would have ended in book 1 w/ the whole wizarding world destroyed.
Voldemort/Tom: Still creepy, but I've also lost some respect for him that that stupid prophecy was all he was after. If he was going to put all that work into finding out what it was, why not go straight to the source and try and get Trelawney somehow? But Dumbledore calling him "Tom" reminded me of the person he had once been, and I want to know more. And I loved, loved, loved that he chose his own enemy in Harry. Talk about blunders.
Draco: Oh my poor little two-dimensional git. I was highly disappointed that Draco didn't go gray in this book. I suppose it's not too late, but imho it's starting to seem that JKR has no intention of ever making Draco more than the pointless little bully that he is. He's in no danger of dying if that's the case, because his death would affect no one. Canon!Draco makes me want to squash him like a bug. It's so infuriating to see him smirk when all you want to do is talk down to him and tell him to push off. Prime example of this is when the Inquisitorial Squad, Snape, Umbridge, and the Gryffindors are all in Umbridge's office. What Harry et al are concerned with is so far above Draco et al's understanding that you just want to tell Draco to get out of there and let the adults talk. Someone was talking about Draco's innocence, and I would have to concur. Draco is completely innocent. He knows nothing of what Harry knows. He's been protected and coddled all his life, and he, unlike Harry, still has his father on a pedestal. He couldn't see the thestrals, which means he's never seen death (quite significant considering who his father is), and the most he has to worry about -- or so it seems -- is his marks in school and Quidditch. I've heard some postulate that Lucius being in Azkaban could be a turning point for him, but I don't know. I don't feel that that's where JKR is headed, and I'm afraid to hope. At least it's a jumping off point for fanon, though ... at least until book 6. Sigh.
Lily/James/The Marauders: James was an enormous git, wasn't he? It was really interesting to see Harry's father in such an unfavorable light. We saw him start picking on Snape out of boredom, unprovoked, and I'm sorry, but Sirius' reasoning ("James hated the Dark Arts and Snape was all about the Dark Arts") was truly weak. And apparently he hexed people for fun, was insufferably arrogant, liked to show off, and even though he had everything going his way (likability, Quidditch, etc.), he still felt the need to pick on those who didn't have them. He was a Jock. Those stereotypical characters in movies that we all despise -- that's who he was. That makes him worse than Draco. At least Draco isn't a big "winner" like James is. He's a git but at least he has resentment and envy fueling him. What does James have for an excuse except that he's strong and thus likes to pick on the weak?
However. He -- they -- were 15. A very different 15 from Harry's 15, so perhaps excusable. His image is forever tarnished in my mind, but for all that he's now suddenly a far more interesting character. Previously, I had thought of James and Lily as the golden couple, Head Boy and Head Girl, everything was perfect, etc. In other words, totally boring. Now I'm interested to learn more of the back story of their relationship -- to see if there's any way for James to redeem himself in my eyes. Or perhaps he matured a bit and that was it. I hope that's not all there is to it.
McGonagall: McGonagall's another one of those characters I forget how much I like until I encounter her in canon. That or I just really, really liked her in OotP.
My OTP
The great thing about shipping Draco/Ginny is that it's never been based off of canon, anyway. Their characters have never been fleshed out, and the personalities they have in canon and in fanon are so different that they are nearly unrecognizable. So, I don't think OotP has affected my view of D/G much. I never expected it to happen in canon anyway, so what's changed, really?
The Other Ships
Harry compared Ron and Hermione to Mr. and Mrs. Weasley! Heehee. There sure was a lot of H/Hr if JKR's going for R/Hr. But I saw the tension in the latter, as well. I liked R/Hr perfectly fine until I got involved in the fandom, and then it dropped off considerably. But I find that I'm still into it in canon. Ron's little moments of jealousy wrt Viktor were amusing, and I can't wait to see where this all goes. H/G ... I've resigned myself to it, but it's not the utterly heinous prospect I once thought it was. I don't know; I guess in a way it's more indifference than anything else. I still don't need to read fanfic about it, as it's not an interesting or romantic pairing to me, but if it happens in canon, I can accept it. I don't like Luna enough to root for Luna/Ron (as it turns out I really like Ron), and I've already mentioned that I was disappointed by the way Harry/Cho fizzled out.
The "Plot" of OotP
Was v. weak, imo. That Voldemort was going after some lamebrain prophecy -- that that was the big weapon thing -- was seriously not gasp-worthy. But I saw this more as a book that sets up the foundation for everything that will follow, so I'm not going to be too hard on it. It reminds me of this last season's Angel, which pretty much did the same thing.
Overall, I enjoyed. And that it was new canon, I really enjoyed. It's going to take some time to really sink in and incorporate into my established views of canon, but it'll happen. Now I've gotta think about how much of TSA has completely been obliterated (several things already) and how I'm going to rework everything. It's likely that I will rewrite the currently posted prologue.
I tried to catch up on LJ and everyone's posts, but it was just too massive an undertaking. I read a few people's reactions to OotP, but decided that I couldn't read them all until I'd sorted out my own thoughts. So you might see comments/questions in here that have already been discussed elsewhere -- sorry for the repetition, if any. Also, I've only read it through once and don't have it with me, so some details may escape me.
All right, so. My thoughts wrt to OotP. This is long, if you couldn't already tell by your vertical scrollbar. I'm incapable of encapsulating my thoughts and reactions to such a massive book in a few short paragraphs. Succinctness has never been my forte. I'm working on it. I think the easiest way to do this is to go character by character, and hope that it all makes sense to more people than just me. But generally, I didn't love it or hate it. It was just ... canon. It was canon, and for that I treasure every page. JKR created a world I love, and she expanded upon it. I don't understand all the ranting and wailing and gnashing of teeth. Can we criticize the book? Sure. Can we dislike it? Sure. There were several things that didn't sit well with me. But this is JKR's world, has always been JKR's world, and it seems really, really silly to write off HP or the situations/characters that OotP introduced simply because it didn't all go as we had imagined it would. If it had, I daresay I would have been pretty disappointed.
Canon is not supposed to be fanon. And I hate to point out the obvious, but -- there are still two books to come. A couple of the responses I've come across are treating this book fatalistically, as if the bleakness we've seen in OotP is all and ever will be. Er, no. We've seen what it can be like, and now we've seen how else it can be like. The world is joyful and bleak all at the same time, and Harry's at a place now where he sees the bleakness and not the joy. And since we see things through his POV, we feel what he feels. But objectively, I understand that this is what Harry can and will eventually triumph over. And the victory will be that much sweeter because of the darkness he's faced and has overcome.
The Characters
Harry: So our little boy is growing up. He's an Angry Young Man. He provokes people, he loses his temper, he's clueless about girls, he's lost faith in the people he used to trust without question, he learns to accept a position of authority. He's confused and scared and feels alone, and who can blame him? He lost three father figures in this book. Dumbledore, who Harry had generally considered infallible; James, who Harry had placed on a pedestal (if he were alive, he would have fallen off of it around this time anyway, as Harry gets to that age); and Sirius, in both a literal and figurative sense. Sirius didn't bear the brunt of Harry's disappointment in viewing Snape's Pensieve memory, but neither he nor Lupin came out of it looking good. And of course, there was then Sirius' subsequent death, which leaves Harry plumb out of father figures. There's still Arthur Weasley, Remus Lupin, and Severus Snape, of course, but those pale in comparison (especially Snape, if he can even be put in this category) to the ones he's lost.
OotP reminded me that I actually like Harry. Since my fanon tastes are different, there was a point when I had started to dislike him a bit -- oh, poor little maligned orphan who now gets everything he wants and is the savior of the world, too. Well, he's still that person, but I'd forgotten how likeable he was. <g> There were a few occasions on which he lost me -- but that was usually because I forgot he was a 15-year-old boy. Still ... there are some things he can't get out of with that excuse. Minor as these things may be, they did affect my overall view of him:
- Why didn't he tell Hermione about Dobby taking all of the hats and other clothes she made? Sure, he didn't want her feelings hurt at first, but after it had gone on and on, and she was losing sleep trying to make them, etc., he should have told her. When does the line between not wanting to hurt someone's feelings and cowardice/selfishness/indifference get crossed? After awhile, it seemed less that he didn't want her feelings hurt than it did that he simply didn't want to bother w/ the hassle of her reaction when she found out. If I were Hermione, I'd be livid that he'd known for so long and continued to let me waste my time.
- Forgetting about Snape when he was all fired up to go rescue Sirius. Sure, there are lots of reasons to excuse this, and I'm not saying those aren't legitimate, but I can't help it, I thought he was a tool for not remembering Snape. He later castigates himself for this as well.
- Conveniently forgetting about the parting gift Sirius left him with so that they could get in contact, and instead going through the whole business of using Umbridge's fireplace and subsequently going to the Ministry. This, however, isn't so much Harry's fault as it is a blame I place on JKR. She had to get Harry to the Department of Mysteries, and conveniently has him forget Snape and this means of communication with Sirius. One of the two, I might be able to swallow without difficulty; both at once causes them to get stuck going down.
Hermione: She didn't come through this looking as good as Harry, I'm afraid. She's always been somewhat irritating to me, but lovable in her own way; she really pushed that in this book. Her most baffling moment came when she roped Harry into speaking out to Rita Skeeter and having his story printed in The Quibbler. Considering his reaction to having the D.A. idea sprung at him from nowhere, I can't believe Hermione wouldn't at least mention the idea to him before getting Rita and Luna sitting at the table. It was a fairly big deal. And yet, inconsistently, Harry doesn't question it and goes along with it as the Harry of old might have. Hermione's slickness wrt how she deals with Rita has always bothered me somewhat -- no matter how smart she is, Hermione's just a teenager, without much worldly experience. Rita, supposedly, is savvy and ruthless. And there's also the fact that it's somewhat hypocritical of Hermione, who's constantly preaching at everyone to be aboveboard, to use such underhanded tactics as blackmail.
Where she completely lost me was when Harry had the dream about Sirius and was certain that the latter was in trouble. Her resistance, considering all that had happened up to that point, seemed inappropriate. Very Hermione, though, and for that I can excuse it (especially since she turned out to be right -- how surprising). However, once she had understood the urgency Harry was feeling and came up with the plan of using Umbridge's fireplace, it was completely beyond me when she didn't seem to think they meant to do it right then. When, exactly, did she think it was going to happen? Was she unable to read Harry's determination, his urgency? Honestly.
Still, Canon!Hermione is a thousand times more tolerable than fanfic Hermione, who is generally perfect in every way and whose infallibility is second only to Dumbledore. (Or when she does fail, it's always with grace, with everyone's best interests at heart, etc.) Canon!Hermione is annoying, but they like her anyway. And that makes me like her anyway. Fanon!Hermione, however, is rarely found annoying by the other characters. Instead, she is the epitome of what everyone should be like. Excuse me while I puke and then get back on track.
Ron: Had little to no issues with Ron. There was a period during GoF when I thought he was intolerable, but then he and Harry made up and I was fine with him as well. Never carried any grudges about it. I liked him in OotP. He's always been the "real" boy -- the boy we think Harry might be if he didn't have to carry around so much baggage and responsibility. He continued to play that role here, and I thought it was fine. I liked that he was made prefect and Gryffindor Keeper, but it didn't feel like too much. I liked that he was a friend to Harry without losing his own teenage-boy perspective. We only need one Harry Potter. I liked that he was funny without being overly comical. I liked that he was as loyal to Harry as I might have expected from Ron.
Sirius: I have the luxury of not being as enamored of Sirius as so many people are, so his death doesn't affect me much on a personal level. I actually liked him more in OotP than I have at any point prior (perhaps because he reminded me very much of Fanon!Draco <g>), and I would have felt more when he died ... if only it hadn't felt completely anticlimactic, instead. Going into OotP, I had wished that I didn't even know there was going to be a death, but it seems obvious now that they had always meant for that "spoiler" to leak. JKR put too many red herrings into the story for it not to be deliberate. She knew everyone was going to be looking for a death, and so we have that to thank for the rollercoaster of emotion wrt who it might be. It's Dumbledore! No, it's Hagrid! No, it's Mr. Weasley! No, it's McGonagall! No, it's Hermione! And so on and so forth.
So when it finally happened -- and not in an irrevocable, drawn-out way -- I went blithely on, wondering if he, too, would jump back into the fray as everyone else had. The fact that he didn't only made me shrug. I don't feel any resolution here, so I simply cannot see that this is a permanent situation. We never saw a body, and the veil thing was never explained. Not to mention the voices that Harry and Luna heard. I hate it when people die but don't really die, but I'm so used to it by now that it's inured. I went through it when watching XF and Buffy, and given that HP is another supernatural world, it's easy to think that Sirius will be back, given the uncertain circumstances of his "death." And if he really is dead, well, I can't bring myself to feel too sorry about it. Harry's foundation had to be rocked so that he could stand on his own two feet and determine, on his own, that this is a world still worth saving.
Snape: Prior to getting into fandom, my absolute favorite character was Snape. In the three years since GoF, however, that waned. I couldn't remember why I liked him so much. Now I remember. Snape rocks my world. He is caustic and strange and unfair and inadvertently funny and unsympathetic and dislikable and respected and feared and bears grudges and is fallible and malicious and temperamental and intolerant and tries to do the right thing. There is nothing about Snape in OotP that I didn't like -- and not because he's likable and I'm trying to make him out to be something he's not. He's completely unfair to Harry, he was wrong to stop teaching him Occlumency, and he hits below the belt. But he wouldn't be Snape if he didn't do those things, and he also wouldn't be Snape if he weren't risking his neck for the Order. I accept him just as he is, and he is by far my favorite character in canon. I can't wait to learn more. I have entertained the possibility that Snape is a double (or is it triple?) agent and doesn't mean to help the Order at all ... but I just can't bring myself to believe it. Dumbledore trusts him, and despite learning that the former makes mistakes after all, I do not question his judge of character.
Dumbledore: It was disappointing to learn that he can make errors of judgment. I'd almost rather he have died in his chapter and shake up Harry's foundation that way. It's hard not to have someone you can trust absolutely, but I'm guessing that's the point. We'll see in books 6 and 7.
Cho: I was very, very disappointed by her characterization. I've never understood the total hatred that people displayed toward Cho, as she seemed perfectly nice, well-liked, and un-girly. Harry wanted Cho, and so I wanted him to have her. But not this nitwit. She seemed like a completely different person than the girl portrayed in PoA and GoF -- but I suppose we, meaning Harry, never really knew her. (But thus, I don't understand the hatred people had, except that he liked her and they wanted him to like Ginny or Hermione or someone.) I thought Cho was just going to be dropped after GoF, that after the Cedric incident she would want nothing to do with Harry. It was heartening, at first, to see that she was able to look beyond the surface and believe in Harry ... but then she turned into this crazy person who I was heartily sick of. I'm sorry that JKR felt she had to make Cho into a blubbering shrew in order to finally have Harry get over her. It would have been preferable, and more fair to the character, imho, if the matter had simply been dropped and Cho was just someone Harry saw in the corridors.
Ginny: I don't know what to think yet. I'm a little annoyed by the way she was just suddenly there, and becoming temporary Seeker, and apparently becoming Hermione's friend, and getting boyfriends, and yet still seeming rather personality-less. Is JKR "preparing" a Ginny that would be right for Harry? I'm glad she's getting spunkier, and if she is to be with Harry she really needed to get over that infernal crush, but I'm not sure she's really all that likable right now. I like most of Fanon!Ginny's various incarnations, but this new Canon!Ginny, I don't know. I don't dislike her, but right now I don't think she's right for Harry, either. She seems to have gotten too spunky and mature in too short a time ... which is not necessarily her fault, since Harry doesn't notice her, but still.
Fred and George: The twins rock. What more can I say? Particularly loved the understanding that they and Peeves, another prankster, came to. I'm surprised we haven't heard more from Mrs. Weasley about them having left school, however. Saving that for later, JKR?
Percy: Hate him. My hatred of Percy is only surpassed by my hatred of
Umbridge: My God, I don't think I've ever hated a fictional character as much as I absolutely despise Umbridge. Her come-uppance, considering the havoc she wreaked, was not nearly enough.
Petunia Dursley: Hmm, I am intrigued. I think there's more here than is being let on. Not the least of which is that Dumbledore's missive to her was so cryptic ("remember my last"?) that I don't see how she would have understood it, if all he meant was his letter to her when he'd dropped Harry off as a baby.
Luna: She reminds me very, very much of Moaning Myrtle. And it's significant that Myrtle was practically the only character not to make a reappearance in OotP. Probably then the similarities would have been even more pronounced. I like that she's crushing on Ron. It's cute. Someone should crush on Ron, poor guy.
Neville: Felt bad for him, but I also don't <heart> him the way others do. I'm just glad Voldemort didn't choose Neville to be his worst enemy, or this series would have ended in book 1 w/ the whole wizarding world destroyed.
Voldemort/Tom: Still creepy, but I've also lost some respect for him that that stupid prophecy was all he was after. If he was going to put all that work into finding out what it was, why not go straight to the source and try and get Trelawney somehow? But Dumbledore calling him "Tom" reminded me of the person he had once been, and I want to know more. And I loved, loved, loved that he chose his own enemy in Harry. Talk about blunders.
Draco: Oh my poor little two-dimensional git. I was highly disappointed that Draco didn't go gray in this book. I suppose it's not too late, but imho it's starting to seem that JKR has no intention of ever making Draco more than the pointless little bully that he is. He's in no danger of dying if that's the case, because his death would affect no one. Canon!Draco makes me want to squash him like a bug. It's so infuriating to see him smirk when all you want to do is talk down to him and tell him to push off. Prime example of this is when the Inquisitorial Squad, Snape, Umbridge, and the Gryffindors are all in Umbridge's office. What Harry et al are concerned with is so far above Draco et al's understanding that you just want to tell Draco to get out of there and let the adults talk. Someone was talking about Draco's innocence, and I would have to concur. Draco is completely innocent. He knows nothing of what Harry knows. He's been protected and coddled all his life, and he, unlike Harry, still has his father on a pedestal. He couldn't see the thestrals, which means he's never seen death (quite significant considering who his father is), and the most he has to worry about -- or so it seems -- is his marks in school and Quidditch. I've heard some postulate that Lucius being in Azkaban could be a turning point for him, but I don't know. I don't feel that that's where JKR is headed, and I'm afraid to hope. At least it's a jumping off point for fanon, though ... at least until book 6. Sigh.
Lily/James/The Marauders: James was an enormous git, wasn't he? It was really interesting to see Harry's father in such an unfavorable light. We saw him start picking on Snape out of boredom, unprovoked, and I'm sorry, but Sirius' reasoning ("James hated the Dark Arts and Snape was all about the Dark Arts") was truly weak. And apparently he hexed people for fun, was insufferably arrogant, liked to show off, and even though he had everything going his way (likability, Quidditch, etc.), he still felt the need to pick on those who didn't have them. He was a Jock. Those stereotypical characters in movies that we all despise -- that's who he was. That makes him worse than Draco. At least Draco isn't a big "winner" like James is. He's a git but at least he has resentment and envy fueling him. What does James have for an excuse except that he's strong and thus likes to pick on the weak?
However. He -- they -- were 15. A very different 15 from Harry's 15, so perhaps excusable. His image is forever tarnished in my mind, but for all that he's now suddenly a far more interesting character. Previously, I had thought of James and Lily as the golden couple, Head Boy and Head Girl, everything was perfect, etc. In other words, totally boring. Now I'm interested to learn more of the back story of their relationship -- to see if there's any way for James to redeem himself in my eyes. Or perhaps he matured a bit and that was it. I hope that's not all there is to it.
McGonagall: McGonagall's another one of those characters I forget how much I like until I encounter her in canon. That or I just really, really liked her in OotP.
My OTP
The great thing about shipping Draco/Ginny is that it's never been based off of canon, anyway. Their characters have never been fleshed out, and the personalities they have in canon and in fanon are so different that they are nearly unrecognizable. So, I don't think OotP has affected my view of D/G much. I never expected it to happen in canon anyway, so what's changed, really?
The Other Ships
Harry compared Ron and Hermione to Mr. and Mrs. Weasley! Heehee. There sure was a lot of H/Hr if JKR's going for R/Hr. But I saw the tension in the latter, as well. I liked R/Hr perfectly fine until I got involved in the fandom, and then it dropped off considerably. But I find that I'm still into it in canon. Ron's little moments of jealousy wrt Viktor were amusing, and I can't wait to see where this all goes. H/G ... I've resigned myself to it, but it's not the utterly heinous prospect I once thought it was. I don't know; I guess in a way it's more indifference than anything else. I still don't need to read fanfic about it, as it's not an interesting or romantic pairing to me, but if it happens in canon, I can accept it. I don't like Luna enough to root for Luna/Ron (as it turns out I really like Ron), and I've already mentioned that I was disappointed by the way Harry/Cho fizzled out.
The "Plot" of OotP
Was v. weak, imo. That Voldemort was going after some lamebrain prophecy -- that that was the big weapon thing -- was seriously not gasp-worthy. But I saw this more as a book that sets up the foundation for everything that will follow, so I'm not going to be too hard on it. It reminds me of this last season's Angel, which pretty much did the same thing.
Overall, I enjoyed. And that it was new canon, I really enjoyed. It's going to take some time to really sink in and incorporate into my established views of canon, but it'll happen. Now I've gotta think about how much of TSA has completely been obliterated (several things already) and how I'm going to rework everything. It's likely that I will rewrite the currently posted prologue.
