the hero who conquered the dark lord!

[aria]

I may need to take my laptop into the computer doctor. Laptop, just because I named you Methos, you should not take it as encouragement to repeatedly die and resurrect. Whatever, I am still running my own diagnostics at this stage, and I have successfully saved everything to my externals, so nothing should be lost as it was in The Great Hard Drive Death of Spring '11.

It is also a very convenient time for my laptop to be ill! I mean, there is no convenient time, I will pine if I don't get White Collar on time, and I had nefarious plans to write things this week, but even so. See, I have decided that it is high time to reread Harry Potter! These books have been a part of my life for about thirteen years, goddamn, and since it seems to be HARRY POTTER FEELINGS O'CLOCK right now I am taking advantage of it!

I'm only at the beginning of Philosopher's Stone right now, but oh my gosh, I want to go school shopping with wee Harry, and feed him birthday cake, and explain to him the difference between stalagmites and stalactites, and maybe PROTECT HIM FROM DUMBLEDORE, I swear to god, McGonagall deserves an award for restraint and adult behavior for not breaking Dumbledore's nose yet again when he left Harry on the Dursleys' doorstep. (Also, re: the conversation they have in the first chapter, and McGonagall being completely shattered that the Potters are dead -- I really wish we knew anything about them besides [a] Lily was an angel, James was kind of a dick as a teenager; [b] they were in the Order; [c] ...everyone who is not Snape seems to unconditionally love them both? I want to know what toweringly awesome things they did prior to dying for everyone to be such big fans. #Marauders girl at heart and FOREVER)

I am looking forward to EVERYTHING on this reread, by which I mean overanalyzing the worldbuilding, and caring about Slytherins, and shipping everything, and and and. HARRY POTTER FEELINGS O'CLOCK.

Comments

[gehayi]

Names of inanimate objects seems to shape them, and not always in a good way. My housemate's computer is named Richard after a character in her own writing. Unluckily, the computer ended up the way Richard ends up in the story--old and easily confused.

Name themes never seem to work well. Over the years, I've known people who have named their computers:

Lore (basically declared war on the entire universe, including the owner's own files)

Vader (alternated between being sluggish and sullen and attacking various programs)

Harry Potter (one particular program and the computer did NOT get along)

Nanny Ogg (became a magnet for porn spam)

TARDIS (constantly needing to be rebuilt practically from scratch)

HAL (had the most creepily appropriate playlist in the universe and had a knack for not shutting down)

John Adams (kept breaking down in ways that made it obnoxious and disliked)

This is why I refuse to name my computer or, in fact, any mechanical beastie. It's safer if I don't!

[aria]

...That is a terrifying cautionary tale. Perhaps if I named my next computer Fraser, it would occasionally be stubborn but mostly be extremely virus-free and helpful? Or maybe Hermione! It would always know the answers and it would survive through the end.

[minkhollow]

(As co-writer on the story Richard's in, it's more that Richard just... kinda stops working. William's the one who ends up old and easily confused - and that was the MP3 player that got itself lost, which is also eerily appropriate.)

In conclusion: I am never naming a computer HAL or GLaDOS. I like my computers non-psychotic. Hex, meanwhile, has needed the universe (or, well, its hard drive) reinstalled... and attracted ants my junior year. They were coming in my dorm by the plug I kept Hex at.

[songofsongs]

This is really hilarious. And kinda accurate. Neal (named after White Collar) is my sexy sexy external hard drive who is full of secrets and bigger on the inside (personality-wise) and incredibly competent. *pets Neal*

[aria]

I bet he is KEEPING SECRETS FROM YOU. But he still also does as he's told. :D

[sahiya]

I think McGonagall's reaction is pretty understandable, even without knowing more (though I agree, more backstory would've been awesome). She watched them grow up from age 11 to 17, presumably served with them in the Order. They died when they were only, what, 19? 20? Incredibly young, in any case. I think I'd be pretty devastated if I got that news about two young people I'd known for almost ten years.

On a slightly related but mostly tangential note, the devastation wrought on the entire Marauders generation seems much more tragic to me now than it did when I was young. rm pointed out that casting older actors as Snape and Sirius and Lupin sort of erased the fact that they're all about thirty when the books begin. I turn twenty-eight next month, and time has certainly shifted my perspective. None of that generation makes it to forty and none of them live to see their kids grow up, and they were barely done being kids themselves when it all began. It's really just so sad when you think about it.

[aria]

Ah, yeah, fair point! And I think -- my foggy memories of doing the necessary math have them dead at 21, so yeah, incredibly young; of course McGonagall would be devastated. But I still wish that we knew anything about them besides "Lily was amazing, James grew out of being a dick, and their friends loved them." Those are good things to know! But I wish we knew MORE.

And YES. None of them make it to forty! It is so, so much more awful when you realize that all of them are basically teenagers who had to deal with war and had some tragedy destroy their lives before they were even properly adults. I mean, honestly, no wonder Snape still more or less has the emotional range of a teenager! (Not that I don't love Rickman's Snape, but he is clearly actually capable of being an adult, and his dislike for Harry is much less UNCONDITIONAL RAGE AT JAMES' SON than it is frustration that this kid is so freaking dense. I like it both ways! But Rickman is much less tragic.)

[amaberis]

I am looking forward to EVERYTHING on this reread, by which I mean overanalyzing the worldbuilding, and caring about Slytherins, and shipping everything, and and and. HARRY POTTER FEELINGS O'CLOCK.

THIS. I've been listening to the audiobooks this summer (finally on HBP, which means I've reached the point at which I haven't read the books since they were published) and spending all my time doing exactly that. Particularly the overanalysis-of-worldbuilding bit, because the audiobooks give me a lot of extra time to think about details that I wouldn't have if I was reading them on my own.

[aria]

YES, EXCELLENT. I am not sure I could manage an audiobook -- I love those books, and I want to tear through them -- but it sounds like a very good way to catch nuances and worldbuilding things!

[kouredios]

I've been rereading the series by reading them to my six-year-old daughter, aloud, a chapter at a time before bed. I think I may have erred in letting her see the movies first, but possibly not, as she's been paying more attention to this reading (as opposed to The Hobbit, which we did a year ago) because she already has the images in her head. In any case, it's awesome seeing them through her eyes, since I was already out of college when Sorcerer's Stone came out.

She draws pictures of the characters and scenes as I read. I need to scan some of them and post (with her permission) soon. :)

[aria]

Oh, that sounds wonderful.

And I actually have hilarious agonies about the appropriate age to read Harry Potter to my theoretical child. I did grow up with them, in that I was ten when I read the first one, and nineteen when DH came out -- I basically grew up as Harry did, and so they were always absolutely age-appropriate for me. So I think it's excellent that she's enjoying them. :)

[kouredios]

I had only shown her the first two movies until recently, and she's only just seen Goblet of Fire for the first time today. We'll probably hover over the first four for a while, as things get even darker going forward. She's starting to crave more challenging fare, and I'd rather show her "older" HP or LOTR than put up with Zach and Cody or something. :P

[thornyrose42]

Caring about the Slytheirns was one of my main readerly duties towards the end of the series. Which I bet wouldn't have happened had I just read all the books in one go like the next crop of young Potter fans will have to do. I mean we had absolutely ages to wait between various books so we had time and incentive to explore as much as possible. I mean I went from planning my own personal Next Generation, to writing Marauders fic, to examining Sirius's childhood, to wondering about his cousins, to becoming obsessed by the Black Sisters, but all that took time. If I'd been able to read all seven books straight away there is absolutely no way that Andromeda would have become my muse character. And I'm so glad that she did.

[aria]

Oooh, that is an excellent point! I mean, on the one hand, because we had absolute ages, a part of me is convinced that everything after Goblet of Fire is basically optional canon, which is actually a little ridiculous. On the other hand, yeah, just accepting everything as The One And Only Story ... doesn't seem as fun, or remotely as much as could be done with this world. Oh writing the Marauders and being obsessed with the Blacks! GOOD TIMES.

[thornyrose42]

Exactly, we'd spent as much, if not more, time in that world as JKR. We'd loved those characters just as much, if not more, than she did. In some cases it was obvious that we had thought about some things an awful lot more than she had. And you know if we'd been trying to run DH through any sort of decent beta I bet that they would have been going: 'Sorry when in the last six fics did you mention these Deathly Hallows? Haven't you ever heard of Checkov's gun? Oh and now Harry's cloak is a Hallow? Really? You really want to pull that out of your arse at the last minute? Also it is very sweet that you wrote this last chapter ten years ago but do you think that you could re-write it using all the stuff that you've learnt about writing over the past ten years?'

Yeah, my issues, let me show them to you.

But yes, I do think that the whole growing up with all that time to play around in the world led to a pronounced feeling of... ownership. I mean yes there were degrees of canon sticklers but part of that was wanting to make sure that your version of the world was as good and true as it was possible to be. And I was definitely one of those people that could only just cope with the epilogue and felt like a lot of the interview answers were just a bit too much. There was a definite feeling amongst fandom that, you know what, you've had your fun, now could you please just back off a bit.

That might be partly why I don't think I'll be signing up to Pottermore any time soon.