In which we discuss the ending of Harry Potter

Hey, I wanted add something to your comments about the lack of gay characters/themes. I didn't expect any gay content, exactly, but I was still really disappointed when I read the last book and yep, it was confirmed: gay people don't really exist. It's not that Rowlings has an obligation to the gay community, at all. In fact, her obligation as an author is to do what's right for the story she's telling. But it does mean that in thousands of pages and over 300 named characters, homosexuality remains completely excluded and ignored. Maybe the exclusion is like abstaining from the issue. But my question is, can an abstention be truly neutral? If it’s not part of the solution, is it part of the problem? Perpetuating the media invisibility of gay people foments ignorance and prejudice, contributing to misinformation like the idea that homosexuality is rarer than it really is, or even not real. I don't mean to accuse the author personally; but she is part of an over-arching media issue.

Upfront, I give Rowling credit for actually having a plot. You know, where things happen. There was a set-up in the first book, it developed, and there was a resolution. Faaaaaar too many books are the author OBVIOUSLY just winging it, writing whatever comes into his or her head, and then pulling home half-baked ending out of his or her ass. No structure.

At least Rowling obviously gave the series some thought.

That said, it was SUCH a clunky ending. The scenes in the tent? I have no idea what that was all about. And the actual ending, I mean, basically Harry just has to show up. MAJOR deus ex machina going on. I've ALWAYS thought that Harry having this "special" connection to Voldemort, being able to see through his eyes but the reverse not being true, to be a MAJOR plot contrivance. But the whole bit about the piece of soul and the reverberating wand...come on. Basically, Voldemort, supposedly this all-powering wizard, was a blithering idiot. He couldn't have predicted any of this? Why not? Dumbledore did. A good ending is one where the antagonist IS more powerful than the protagonist, and is all set to smite him like a bug...but them the protagonist changes. Grows. Becomes bigger. Makes a leap of faith. The antaongist's plans, which are perfectly conceived in any other universe, become thwarted by the protagonists sudden new way of seeing things.

In H.P., however, Harry was just sort of an empty shell, enacting Dumbledore's plan which was set in place back in book one.

Also, if it was just a question of Voldemort trying to kill Harry and ending up killing himself, why did we go through seven books? Why didn't Dumbledore just find a way to get Voldemore the Dealthy Hollows wand and just offer him up Harry? Problem solved, no fuss, no mess.

I admit that I SERIOUSLY don't get these books or this series.

But yeah, AZKABAN was a great movie, and the best book. (The GOBLET OF FIRE, meanwhile, and the Christopher Columbus debacles? Ug.)

Read my books! Explore "Brent's Brain" at http://www.brenthartinger.com

I was so disappointed with the final book, it's not even funny. I've gone on about this in great lengths in my own livejournal (and other people's) and just when I wanted to let it rest: here you are!

So without further ado...
About the lack of gay characters, to me it's a real shame. Here we have this "different" world, people have to keep their magic a *secret*, no-one is allowed to know, there are different rules, different social classes, different habits... how easy would it have been to include a gay character in this already different world?

What angered me most of all is that throughout the series there were quite a few characters that made my gaydar bleep. For instance, Tonks, a young female Auror with short spikey pink hair (we all know that's what lesbians look like ;-)) and a T-shirt of the "Weird Sisters". Or Lupin, who always had to keep his lycanthropy a secret, had to "come out" to his best friends and was terrified they'd reject him, gets outed by Snape, and at one point says to Harry "parents don't want people like me teaching their children". Come on! He also seemed terribly chummy with Sirius -especially in the films-. Then there's Snape, played by Alan Rickman as Camp Personified. I could go on (Percy Weasley, for instance, the outsider in a family of seven)...
What does JK do with these characters (and she must know that they're often paired together in slash fiction, since she admitted to reading (het) fanfiction)? She marries them off or invents a heterosexual storyline for them. Tonks suddenly -without any reason that we know of- fancies Lupin. Snape's always been pining after one woman. Oh please.

She could've easily mentioned Tonks e.g. had a girlfriend or -in Lupin's case- not mentioning anything would for me -and a lot of other crazy obsessive HP fans- have been enough. But no. She made them explicitly straight. On purpose or not? Who can tell.

What also irked me (there are so many things that didn't add up, but this is the main thing) was the fact that all of Slytherin House was portrayed as "beyond redemption". What kind of message is that? Slytherins are hated throughout the school, and apparently "people were right to do so". Not a single Slytherin remained to fight. Snape, oh he's still a bully, he only defected because he was in love with Lily. And in that nauseating epilogue we're right back where we started, Albus (Harry's son), not wanting to be in Slytherin.

*sigh* She created this fantastic world, with so much promise, but she could have done so much more. I feel like a schoolteacher "you can do better, JK". She definitely needs a good editor.

Only a few weeks ago my partner and myself went to see the latest HP movie.  I am not a big HP fan but when you're in a relationship you compromise on a lot of things so we saw that instead of Die Hard 4 (my choice).  While the previous films were somewhat worth watching, we both agreed that this last installment sucked.  I saw it as something of a filler to build up to what I thought would be an action-packed ending for the series.  The latest HP book went on sale shortly before my partner's birthday so guess what he got for one of his presents.  As I have a more flexible schedule, I was able to read it first simply because I was courious as to who was going to die and how.  I figured after all the hype, the author would have put in a special effort to make this series finale something memorable considering the success of the franchise.  After wading through seemingly endless pages about setting up camp  and running around searching for minor clues, which mainly seem to come to Harry in the form of headaches, the story finally concludes rather weakly with none of the 3 main characters actually dead.  The best analogy I could come up with is comparing it to watching 18 holes of golf on tv ( no offense meant if you actually like golf) and on the 18th hole a lightning storm disrupts the game killing 2 caddys.  I thought the finale, indeed the whole series, was much overblown and overrated.

As far as not including gay charaters, it's perfectly understandable to me.  It's all about the money.  The author already put her neck on the line with the religious right by making those children satanic magic users.  If there had been GAY satanic magic users as well, her books may very well have been banned by the Pope (sarcasm).  One could also argue though, that the whole witch/magic user thing IS an analogy for the GLBT community similar to the mutant theme in X-Men.  They both show a minority suffering discrimination for being different.  Have more to say but one of those pesky summer storms is coming and I don't want to get my computer fried.

i completely agree with what was said... there was a ton of potential for gay characters *cough*Sirius/Remus*cough* (I mean, hello Remus didn't want anything to do with Tonks! And he clearly only married her because she was distantly related to Sirius whom Remus clearly loved... but that's just my opinion)

For those who disliked the last book I would recommend reading the condensed parody version that is quite clever here: http://diogenes-sinope.blogspot.com/2007/07/potterdammerung-mega-spoilers.html

There are so many annoying flaws in the HP plot. The most important is:

* what happened to the time turner thing that Hermione used to save Sirius in the Azkaban book/movie? Couldn't Harry of used it to fix his f-ups? (it was his fault that Sirius had to come rescue him in Order of the Phoenix and then get killed)

(clearly I am a big Sirius fan... his pointless death bothers me so much)

There are some great fan fiction out there.  People who took Rawlings idea and made it more detailed or gayer in many cases.  One of the best is thsi one a alternate universe version of HP.

http://www.fanfiction.net/~lightningonthewave

 Check it out you won't be dissapointed.

But one of the HP series' greatest strengths was how direct it was about everything, from the presence of evil in our everyday lives to the corruption of governments to the icky realities of puberty and sexual attraction. So the argument that the vague "outsider" metaphor could be interpreted as a gay metaphor just doesn't do it for me, in this case. Plus, the "outsider" metaphor in the series was mostly related to race, as with the Pureblood/Mudblood/Muggle concern and eventual near genocide, and even the werewolf analogy doesn't really feel like it aligns with repressed sexuality in this case (it's more of an AIDS metaphor than anything, really). I think if kids are ready to see their literary friends blown to bits and macking on one another left and right, they can handle a gay character. I think we're past the point of settling for catchall metaphors by this point, but maybe I'm too optimistic. Which would certainly be a first.

i completely agree with what was said... there was a ton of potential for gay characters *cough*Sirius/Remus*cough* (I mean, hello Remus didn't want anything to do with Tonks! And he clearly only married her because she was distantly related to Sirius whom Remus clearly loved... but that's just my opinion)

thank god i'm not the only one who thought that!  i was very disappointed with the lupin/tonks relationship- in a book about wizards and witches, i thought that was one her more unbelievable plotlines.

also, i also thought that snape really had a thing for james, harry's father, rather than lily, harry's mother. 

and really, no gay people @ all?  in a story that takes place in a british boarding school? 

As a lifetime HP fan (and one who was mildly annoyed by the final volume but certainly didn't have the negative reaction that I see here), I have to say that I was appalled by the lack of gay characters by the end.  I seriously thought that we would at least get some strong indications... my first comment to my sister upon finishing the book was about the ridiculousness of the epilogue, followed quickly by the fact that no one had actually come out.

That having been said, she has been slowly revealing some info about the rest of the characters that we didn't get in the epilogue - maybe there is still some hope?  In any case, I have been reading slash fiction for years and can say that JKR has definitively stated that she does not approve of slash fiction.  Not fanfiction in general, but specifically slash fiction.  Does anyone remember that whole media THING awhile back when there was a complaint about that on her website?  That was before book six, which of course had the oh-by-the-way-Tonks-loves-Lupin storyline.  I don't mean to be silly but I really do believe that she threw that in there because there were so many Sirius/Lupin fans out there.  I was waiting for the Tonks/Lupin pairing to be important because until it was, I would believe that she had just thrown it in there because of the slash.  I thought that Teddy Lupin might be an indication that the relationship wasn't just an afterthought (and that maybe he would help Harry get that family he had always wanted), but in the end we never even found out who Teddy spent the formative years of his life with (it wasn't his godfather), so I am left believing that it really was just insignificant.

Perhaps it is an indication of my eagerness to see a gay character, that when I read that while Fred and George were off with a couple of Delacour cousins, Charlie was singing songs with Hagrid, I thought "hey, we haven't heard anything romantic about Charlie... maybe just maybe...".  It is ridiculous the straws that I was clutching at.