And now I am here

Yes.

Now I am here. The story of how I ended up here and all that happened on the road is now told for my part - at least, the parts of the story that I want to make public. I have made decisions and had experiences and thoughts apart from my Leaky Experiences that made me want to create a place like this. I am not going to share all of them.

But one reason I have no trouble discussing - it is what the heading says - the need for a place fit to contain all my essaylength rants, instead of weighing down diverse forums with them, epxloiting bandwidths and clogging discussions with my endless Torill Length Posts....

Now that the last Harry Potter book has been out for a month, the need for TLP space should have been greater than ever. But my initial reaction was wanting to throw the book at the wall and never read a Harry Potter book ever again. Leave the fandom and forget the whole thing...

But it's been a month. I have had some time to think, to discuss some parts with some friends - and now I think I am ready, finally, to use this place to investigate my reactions the way I thought I should before I read the book. Now, I think I consider the book to be a good one - if you disregard the epilogue, that is. I hate the epilogue. I am going to pretend that the epilogue was never included the next time I reread....

The book is not at all the kind of book I expected it to be. The whole series is not what I thought it was.

Harry ends up as someone dealing with his traumas through denial instead of maturing from them. At least, this is what the epilogue suggests. That disappointed me the most. I still haven't recoverd from that one.

Dumbledore was not a wise man. He had more in common with Voldemort than it is comfortable to contemplate, and his strategic planning was abysmally stupid. And that's putting it mildly. It is a marvel that it all went well for Harry in the end, when Dumbledore's plans and manipulations are taken into consideration. I expected none of this to be true. I have spent a considerable amount of energy during the last couple of years arguing against fandom theories that made Dumbledore deceitful and stupid - and now these theories are canon....

Snape is not only a deeply troubled character, wrecked and very far from good - I knew that already - but he is also pathetic.

The once intriguing Order of the Phoenix has turned out to be not intriguing at all. Instead, they come across as a strangely castrated and lame organisation, a band of yesmen seemingly without any discussions or reflections going on among them, wholly dependent on Dumbledore to tell them what to do, ready to accept any order from him without explanation. Sirius is the only exception, he based at least some of his judgements and decisions on something else than the motto: I trust Dumbledore. But he was completely castrated by his author in book five before she killed him off and explained away all his independence as immaturity or rashness. And what did the Order get for all their loyalty? Their leader sold them out for no valid strategic reason at all... Moody died because Dumbledore had ordered Snape to betray them. It was only luck that saved the rest of them from the same fate. But this, too, is accepted witout question. No one is to criticise Dumbledore. (At least it was accpeted by Harry - it is not clear whether he ever told anyone about this fact - or even allowed himself to realise what a betrayal it was)

Consequently, the Order is without much importance in the final war. (And perhaps they were without much importance in the first war too. After all, everyone lived in terror until the rebounding Avada.) The victory this time was ensured by the disobedient teenagers in Dumbledore's Army raising the fight, not by the adults in the Order. They needed someone else to act first, someone else to think of, choose and initiate actions not ordered by Dumbledore....

All of this sounds like I still hate the book and think it is bad - but I don't. None of the above makes a bad book in my opinon. What I needed to do to start appreciating it, though, was to completely abandon the idea that the Harry Potter books are about Good versus Evil. They are not that at all as I see them now. This is a series that investigates Power in its many variations, for good and for bad, with its many pitfalls, temptations and contradictions - and Harry is the hero because he didn't want Power for himself. It is also a series with a very strong Father/ Son theme, in an (almost) religious sense (thanks Therese!)

Still - I am not quite ready to appreciate this fully. I will need to discuss the themes above from a within the series positions first. A position where the characters and events are taken as real for as long as the discussion lasts. I am so disappointed with some of them, I need to get that out!

Eventually, I will be able to discuss the series from without as well, looking at meaning and underlying themes and how they are developed, etc. Only then may I be able to draw some conclusions about just how good the series is in my opinion.

I think I will need to start with Dumbledore. The deceitful, manipulative, slightly cruel Dumbledore with the high ideals and the good intentions, unable to trust anyone else but himself to make the right choices, for all his lip service to the motto: it is our choices that make us who we are. He wanted to believe in it I am sure, but he still thought he had to engage in all kinds of clever manipulations or open coercions to push people into making the choices he thought were the right ones. The control of information was perhaps the least evil of his manipulations, staging a murder the worst....

My first Torill Length Post from within the series will be about this worst of Dumbledore's several dubious acts - worst both in a moral and a strategic sense.

So, coming up next: A Death In Shame. Check back to read, but since it will be long, it may take a little while...