Countdown to small gifts 5/7: Back to canon

[smallgiftsmods]

Hi, folks! If you're just joining us, we're on DAY FIVE of seven days of discussion before Small Gifts begins posting. Start off by introducing yourself (and meeting fellow participants and watchers) over here!

Day 4: Back to canon

What's your favorite book and/or movie, and why?

Comments

[necessarian]

as an r/s shipper, this may be obvious, but, PoA for both! i love the book because of how perfectly encapsulated it is, how tight the plot is, and how much remus lupin there is. he really is the star of the show!

the movie is not (IMO) a great adaptation of the book, but i think it's a fantastic film in its own right. the directing is very strong and i do love the acting. (unpopular opinion?)

[ruinsplume]

POA. It's the book that gave us Remus and Sirius, for one. Also, to my mind it's the best-constructed novel of the series. It's got a very complex plot (especially that time turner stuff) but it's never draggy or bloated (I'm looking at you, camping chapters in book 7). Also, I think I like it best in part because Voldemort's not in it. Some of the later books are pretty damn frightening in a horror-genre way (as opposed to a political allegory way) and I have trouble with horror.

Also, POA the book gave us POA the movie, and without movie!POA I would not even be here in fandom at all.

[sostrata.livejournal.com]

Can I pick JKR's short story about Sirius and James battling Death Eaters? ;)

[museinabsentia]

So, PoA is the short answer, the easy answer, and mostly the full answer. I'll really say probably the first three, though. I love all of them, or I wouldn't be here, but the first three are when Harry and company are still young, so the books aren't as heavy. I understand that they grew with him, but I liked the lighter tone and more playful moments in between where everything wasn't just gloom, doom and everyone is going to die soon.

As for PoA specifically, I could go the easy route and say it's the book that gave us the boys, and that's true, and a large part of it. But it's also the book with the most detail about classes and exams. We get details about Hogwarts, we get introduced to Hogsmead, there's just a lot of Wizarding culture in that book. Hagrid gets to be a teacher! It just gives us a lot of the good things that help carry through the darker stuff later.

The movies? I haven't seen them. I've seen small snippets of the first three, but that's as far as that goes. I was so put off by some of the decisions made (costumes... the costumes killed me... how do you make all the Muggle clothes jokes if they wear Muggle clothes!!! A lot of the incidental humor was going to go away that way.) that I couldn't make myself sit through them. Now that I'm more patient and could probably watch and enjoy them I rarely have the time for movies anymore.

[magnetic_pole]

Wait, no OotP? Joint gifts? Grimmauld Place? "Sirius, sit down?"

I love OotP for the politics and for Umbridge and for Grimmauld Place as a setting more generally, and the fact that's it's also got (apparent) queer domesticity just makes it that much better. Queer domesticity must be my thing--that's how I started shipping Holmes/Watson back in the day.

(Wow--I've never put it that way before, and now I'm shocked by how accurate that is--queer domesticity is totally my thing. Hm. Good to know.)

Like others here, I'm not such a big fan of the movies--PoA was stylish and fun and my favorite among them. But I loved the queer sensibility of PoA. M.