(no subject)

I've just finished reading Deathly Hallows.

Honestly.

And because reactions are considered spoilers, you may find my reactions and spoilers here.

Once I passed 661, I was done. The rest of the book was backfill and expos, most of which fandom had already theorised. My theory about Harry and the seventh Horcrux was right; that's no real comfort.

I was all right when Sirius died in OotP, but considering how broken up she seemed to be about a character she doesn't seem to like very much in the next two books, this one was a fucking bloodbath.

Frankly, I prefer Cartographer's Craft. Predominantly because 70% of the characters don't die.

Jesus Christ.

ETA: There are spoilers all over the comments. Caveat.

ETA II: If you wear an eyepatch and a peg leg, you don't need to comment, just email me. *grins*

(no subject)

This is the last I will say on the book until after the release because otherwise it's just going to get fucking annoying, especially to the people who are much more well-disciplined than I am and are waiting for hardcopy.

Do I need to warn you that there will be spoilers in comments? There will be.

This is not a critique of the book or a review or even a discussion; this is a meditation on how it impacts me, LC, and other fanfic I may write.

I don't see any real point, for me, in writing post-DH fic, by which I mean fanfic set after the end of the last chapter (pre-epilogue or post-epilogue) rather than fanfic written after reading DH. Why? Well, all the characters I was interested in writing are dead. Not all the interesting characters, just the ones that interested me. Teddy Lupin piques my interest, but I don't think I can write about him without writing about his father, and I'm not interested in dwelling on Remus Lupin's death.

It's not that DH has ruined me for fandom, it's just that all my favourite characters are killed off, and the rest become painfully domestic. No wild, windswept teenage Sirius becoming a Healer and changing the world, no middle-aged Remus Lupin fighting for werewolf rights, no Gabriel Laroux rekindling his passion for Remus, no venerable Headmaster Snape of advanced years, no Polaris Potter sitting on Draco Malfoy's lap in the parade.

NOW.

All that having been said, this has not killed my urge to write HP fanfic, not in the least. If it weren't for a solid-based longstanding AU that is not in any way a reaction to DH, I would be much more adrift than I am currently. As it stands, not only do I take comfort from the fact that I still have control over characters I love (as [info]metallumai wisely put it, "She gets the money; fandom gets the characters") but Deathly Hallows has given me a real reason to start the chain of events that will lead to the climax of Laocoon's Children in book seven. That climax exists in my head and parts of it have even been written; the events of Deathly Hallows will add entire new sets of dimensions to it.

Plus Laocoon's Children does give me control over the characters because after three novel-length fanfics and well over 300,000 words, I have made this version of them my own. They have no relation to Deathly Hallows. They will interact with it at some point, because the point of an AU is to always have a link to the source, but they will interact on my terms.

Which is deeply comforting.

Anyway, I won't be posting the fic I was going to, because it's funny and Lupincentric and totally noncanonical and now I don't know when I will finish it. But I will keep writing. :)