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[bedlamsbard]

Reading old HP fic is the best thing ever. I'm talking old here, guys -- not just post-GoF, but fic that was originally begun post-CoS.

Yeah. Old.

I mean, there's that tiny moment where you run into something that's been Jossed since, but it's relatively tiny, and we're fandom, we've been doing this forever anyway.

*goes to read more* I haven't gotten into fic like this in forever. War stories, and post-war stories, all made totally noncanon by HP7. Well, I like these better anyway.

Comments

[limmenel.livejournal.com]

(i have, like, three of your posts open in tabs to be replied to when i'm not totally brain dead and lazy)

You should, like, POST A REC LIST of all these awesome fics you're reading.

[bedlamsbard.livejournal.com]

Ha, they're really long, so there are only two of them right now (and one has a DVD commentary! and the other one's a prequel to the other!).

Transfigurations (http://trickster.org/res/transfig.html), and the prequel, Night-blooming Heartsease (http://yearningvoid.net/stories/julad/000080.html). Read Transfigurations first -- it's H/D, and then Night-blooming Heartsease is Neville/Snape, but not overly so. Both of them are really good, to the extent where I'm like, God, JKR, why did you fail so badly?

*cough*

[limmenel.livejournal.com]

Oh, I read Transfigurations, and I'm almost positive that I read the sequel. :D AWESOME fics!

[bedlamsbard.livejournal.com]

I feel that Rowling didn't live up to the story's potential, and it's really obvious because of all the awesome war fic out there. *sigh* Uh. Slight tangent.

[limmenel.livejournal.com]

Yeah, but so much of the war fic is so dark that it never would have worked as a children's novel... which is what I think a lot of people forget. While the HP books are marketed for adults as well, they're still first and foremost books for children, so of course fic written for adults, by adults, is going to be a hell of a lot better :D

[bedlamsbard.livejournal.com]

Lord of the Rings and Chronicles of Narnia are dark. So are the Dark is Rising books.

JKR stepped almost got there, but she stepped back from the edge -- it's not just a question of being dark, but about doing what the story calls for.

[limmenel.livejournal.com]

Okay, Lord of the Rings is most definitely not for kids. The Hobbit maybe is, but even that's a stretch. Narnia though? How is that overly dark? I mean, yeah, some of the books are a little darker than others, but it seems to me that it's no more dark than JKR's are. I can't speak for the DiR books, because I haven't read them since I was a kid.

She plotted these stories out from start to finish a decade ago, though, so maybe that is exactly what the story called for, in her mind. Maybe for her there was no other place it could go.

[bedlamsbard.livejournal.com]

Actually, you know what? Given some more thought, I'd say that DH is pretty damn dark. I've read post-HBP fic that's not as dark as DH is. I just think that Rowling wavered a bit on what she was doing: Harry and the Unforgivables, for example, which is a major point of contention other people have brought up. As well as contradicting OotP and HBP about having ALL the Hogwarts Houses join up, instead of just Gryffindor, Ravenclaw, and Hufflepuff, with none of the Slytherin students on the good side. And as far as I'm concerned in relation to that particular angle, some of the things she's said in post-DH interviews are unforgivable.

She plotted these stories out from start to finish a decade ago, though, so maybe that is exactly what the story called for, in her mind. Maybe for her there was no other place it could go.

Which is a little bit of the problem, maybe? I mean, I know she's said that she changed minor things from what she originally planned, but nothing major -- which is not a bad thing, especially since it's a seven book series, she has to set it up somehow. BUT. The story changes over time; it has to, and because Rowling herself has grown and the stories and characters have grown, it seems like she could have stepped back for another year and looked at all seven books and gone, "Okay, is this the absolute best I can do?" Because I've heard a lot of complaints about the past three books, and not about the first four.

And, and this is just me here, I think she gave out too many interviews, so it built up people's expectations unreasonably, especially she ends up contradicting herself in so many of them. If I remember correctly, she contradicted herself in two post-DH interviews given within days of each other, and about something major. I'd have to doublecheck to be sure, though.