Monday, June 23, 2003

So, as I said, our internet was out for several days. (Though obviously I slacked off blogging for about a week prior to that. ^^;; ) Saturday, fresh from my 9-12 class, I sped off to PowerPlant with Mom and Carlo, to have lunch and then make the foray into Fully Booked, the bookstore formerly known as Page One. Obviously, it was packed with people. In the children's section, they had some kind of HP party going on, where they were playing kiddy games like "Pass the Message", only they called it "Mugglephone". I think a much funner game would have been to build forts out of the huge towering stacks-upon-stacks of HP5 copies, and then lay siege to each other's forts. I would have played.

Anyway, after picking up my copy we moseyed on home. I tried to take a nap, seeing as I'd only slept three hours the previous night; but I soon realized the futility of it. I cracked open the book and just kept reading.

I'd finished HP5 by midnight last night, but the internet was being a bitch again, so I couldn't post anything about it.

Spoilers, obviously; just highlight below to read my ridiculously long ramble.

Wow, Harry was an asshole! It was very believable and also very infuriating. I wanted to smack him whenever he started yelling at Ron and Hermione. Sure, get mad at everyone else, but Ron and Hermione? Where would you be without them, you moron? >__< However, I can't say that his new highly-developed sense of sarcasm wasn't a joy to witness. "Gee, I wonder what it'd be like to have a difficult life." XD

Wow, Harry's dad was an asshole! O_O Though that hair thing he kept doing was pretty funny. XD It was nice to see Harry have a few moments of genuine sympathy for Snape. Of course, by the end he'd gone back to his "Grr I blame Snape for no particular reason despite the fact that he saved my ass yet again" thing.

Voldemort is the most retarded Dark Lord ever. If you think about it... he just spent a whole year trying to find out about some lame prophecy. Does he not have anything better to do? He could have saved himself so much time and energy for more Dark Lord-ish pursuits by simply going to the Ministry of Magic to pick it up himself; but he was all, "nooo, I don't want anyone in the Ministry to see me." But then when he found out the prophecy was smashed, he came anyway! And the Ministry did see him! GAH! Helloooo, Riddle! When they resurrected your body, did they forget to put the brain in? >__< However, I'm willing to forgive that particular boneheaded screw-up, because that Dumbledore-Voldemort duel was AWESOME. Dumbledore and Fawkes kick so much ass it's not funny.

Was it just me, or were there a LOT more girls in this book? I kinda got the impression that Rowling was trying to address criticisms about the HP series having too few important female characters. When she wasn't introducing new female characters (I rather liked Tonks, and Looney Lovegood was an endearing little space cadet), she was bringing previously-established but relatively minor characters to the fore and giving them more development. Hermione was Wonder Girl as usual, of course; but now Ginny's cool too! I don't think Angelina Johnson's ever had more than a couple of lines in each of the previous books, and now she's CAPTAIN ANGELINA! and member of Harry's little Justice League of Hogwarts. Even Cho finally got some character development. And McGonagall was always terribly cool, but in this book she stole the show from the other teachers. She had more cool scenes than Snape!

Speaking of Snape! (as if you couldn't see that coming) Oh my goodness, it has never been so completely apparent that Snape is a man still trapped in his childhood. The poor bastard. And when Harry looked into that pensieve, I thought, "Snape is going to freaking KILL HIM." When Harry felt Snape grab his arm, the thought of facing Snape's wrath literally scared me so much I had to put the book down for a minute.

I was all jumpy to begin with; knowing that one character was going to die, each of the close calls made me freak out. I didn't want anybody to die; I kept thinking, "Is this it? Is this it? Oh God I don't want to look!". As I approached the end of the book, I started freaking out even more, because I realized that it wasn't going to be Dumbledore, since he had yet to sit Harry down and do his big explanation of everything. I was terrified for Mr. Weasley, then for Hagrid, then for McGonagall, then for Sirius, then for Hermione (this despite the fact that only days before I had callously dismissed the notion that Hermione or Ron could ever be killed, that it was absolutely impossible. -_-;; Well, you have to understand I was caught up in the heat of the moment.) And then Neville started being all super-cool and heroic and I was so certain it would be him. And then when Sirius fell through that veil thing... well, I'm sorry to say I was incredibly relieved. I FINALLY knew who it was, so nobody else was going to die, and it wasn't even all that bad. No blood or screaming or anything.

All right, so I felt bad for Harry and Lupin. And I got a bit sniffly when Dumbledore shed his dramatic Single Tear. But even afterwards all I felt was exhiliration that the whole thing was finally resolved, and that all the other characters were safe until the next book.

...So that's out when, again?

Martians attacked at 06:54 p.m.! Where were you?

~