Writer's Block: By Any Other Name

If you could rename yourself in real life, what would you choose, and why?

Good question, as I've spent most of my life hating my name. I've grown used to my last name (I have one of those names that no one ever pronounces correctly when they see it written out, and never spells correctly after they've heard it said). Although I've grown weary of spelling it out, I changed the pronunciation a bit, and I'm really very happy with the way the name flows now. It's nowhere near it's proper French pronunciation, but it works much better for me. All the same, my goal in life is to marry a guy whose last name is something simple like Archer or Murray so that my kids will never have to deal with any of that. 

As for my first name, oh, I despise it, but I don't know what I would change it to instead. It's not like I sit around and think, My parents missed the boat. I'd have made a really brilliant Susannah. I covet my sisters' names, both of which I think are prettier than mine, but those are *their* names, so I won't disturb them. 

So, in the end, even if  I could rename myself, I think I'd leave it. It seems like a lot of trouble anyway. You have to get used to some other name that means you, that causes you to automatically turn your head in its direction when you hear it. You have to settle on a new signature, a new manner of initialing things -- oh, it just all seems like a lot of bother.

I would change my middle name to Helen, a family name through three generations that my mother hated so much that she didn't give it to me. But I chose it as my Confirmation name, so theoretically I already could use it as my middle name.

On Harry Potter

I finally went to go see Order of the Phoenix tonight. I feel like I was the last person in the world to go see this movie. When did the thing to do become going to midnight showings in the middle of the week? I'm way too old for stuff like that. It'll have to wait for the special occasion of the seventh movie.

I went with my parents, which is the tradition. We have seen every Harry Potter movie together. I find that interesting, because I like to hear what my father thinks, viewing the movie from the perspective of not having read (and re-read) the books. I always think he must be so confused, but he's really not. It's just that I always have in my head all of the complexities that are stripped from the movies, and I always feel like he cannot possibly understand the movie without knowing those complexities, but apparently it is not so.

I didn't quite finish my re-read. I'm about halfway through. The fifth book has become, I think, my favorite. I especially love how alienated Harry feels the whole time, because I feel it as a reader, too. I am desperate, all book, no matter how many times I read it, for Dumbledore to just talk to him, tell him what's going on.

I think the movie did a tremendous job getting across how hurt Harry was by Dumbledore's distance. Dumbeldore sweeping wordlessly by him at the hearing had way more impact in the movie than it did when I just recently re-read it in the book. But Dumbledore himself has always been a huge disappointment in the movies. I have never been satisfied that movie!Dumbledore was ever accurately representing the true and pure awesomeness of book!Dumbledore. Book!Dumbledore may be one of my all-time favorite characters: wise and fallible and funny and powerful and sympathetic. Movie!Dumbledore feels to me like the first layer of a great character.

That's actually my issue with all of the Harry Potter movies: I feel like they're just Cliffs Notes versions of the books. Which is not to say that they're not good Cliffs Notes versions, but you get a character like Sirius, whose psyche gets a lot of analysis in the fifth book from the fretful Hermione, and there are maybe two sentences (if you stretch it) about his recklessness. Instead, he comes across as basically stable and just what Harry needs, where I think the book has the room and the sprawl to be far more ambivalent about it. It's true that the book is maybe not the most streamlined plot, but that isn't the *point* of the book. The book covers a whole year in a story that, arguably, is seventeen years long (even longer if you include the backstory of James and Sirius and Snape), and I like that she takes the room to make it feel real, full, lengthy. But it does make it so that the characters that flow together so seamlessly in the novels seem to be dropped into the movies to make hasty cameos.

Anyway, Sirius's death scene was very interesting. I've always hated the fact that Sirius dies. I know why she does it, but he was my favorite, and I still miss him in the books. But I don't remember him dying in the book from Avada Kedavra. I thought he died from disappearing through the archway. His being hit with the Avada Kedavra curse in the movie made me realize that Sirius really must be dead. But then they gave Luna that line, about the things you lose coming back to you in the most unlikely ways. Is that in the book? I'm going to have to finish the re-read so I can remember Sirius's death scene more clearly. All I remember is that I *hated* that she had him taunt Bellatrix as his last words. At least the movie saved Sirius that indignity...although they had his last words calling Harry "James," which was almost as bad, especially as I thought the movie didn't build that up correctly.

Possibly the most disappointing part of the movie was Dumbledore's apology. Much of my deep affection for Book Five is based on that apology, which, my first time through, I hated, and, my second time through, made me cry. The apology is brilliant, tender and touching, and it goes on for several pages, while Dumbledore takes us through every book, every triumphant moment of Harry's life, with the prophecy hanging over his head the whole time. It's a tour de force, possibly Dumbledore's finest moment as a character...and, naturally, the movie cheats Dumbledore out of it. Dumbledore still apologizes to Harry but it's short and to the point and not full of all of the emotion that it has in the book. It was practically over before it began, and my mother did ask why Dumbledore had ignored Harry all year, leading me to believe that the hurried apology didn't tie up the ends of the movie the way it should have.

Fred and George, however, still got their brilliant exit scene, possibly my favorite scene in the whole book series, and I couldn't help but smile as their "W" exploded in the sky. She'd better not kill one of the twins. After Sirius and Dumbledore, I couldn't bear it.

Another scene that did not disappoint was the climax in the Ministry of Magic. From Harry & Friends' fight with the Death Eaters, to Sirius awesomely punching Lucius Malfoy, to that glorious fight scene between Dumbledore and Voldemort. I had forgotten that Dumbledore and Voldemort meet face-to-face in Book Five, so it was a delight to see it happen on screen. That was what the Sylar/Peter fight should have been like on "Heroes." It was totally, completely awesome.

The occlumency lessons with Snape seemed to be hurriedly pushed into the movie, but they did make clear the huge advantage of keeping the same children for all of the movies. It was so sweet to see the much younger Daniel Radcliffe looking at himself in the mirror.

I also really liked the conceit of the newspaper articles, considering how much time the book devotes to the machinations of the Daily Prophet. And the music was surpassingly excellent (do I notice music more in my post-Murray Gold era?).

One watches the movies almost to see what they leave out. J.K. Rowling supervises each script to make sure it's not missing something that turns out to be vital later, which is why what gets left out becomes so important as evidently being *not* important. So the shortened version of the prophecy we got was fascinating. There was no ambiguity introduced about whether the prophecy concerned Harry or Neville. I really thought that would be a major plot point in the seventh book. Now I'm not so sure.

And, of course, next week at this time, I should know everything. Isn't it unbelievable to think that? Next week at this time, I'll know how Harry Potter's story ends. My father thought this was the last movie, for some reason, and he was disappointed that the story didn't end, which rather perplexed me, because I've grown so used to *not* knowing how the story ends that the concept of Harry Potter being over strikes me as both incomprehensible and very, very sad. "The Shakespeare Code" was the Doctor Who episode on Sci-Fi last night, appropriate, as the Doctor has a line in which he says about Harry Potter, "Wait until you read the seventh book. I cried." When I first heard the Doctor deliver that line, when the season was airing in the UK, I chuckled and thought it was adorable. Oh, that time-traveling scamp of a Doctor! The seventh book, even then, seemed so impossibly far away. And now it looms, in less than a week.