For anyone else who doesn't enjoy a story unless they know what's coming

[baratron]

It transpired last night that Richard had already decided he was going to go & pick up my copy of HP6. Aww :)

This is the spoiler for HP6. Do NOT click on the link unless you want to know everything.














It's not too late to stop reading...



















OK, so you really want to know?




















Severus Snape is the Half-Blood Prince. He calls himself this because his mother's surname was Prince.
Dumbledore dies.
Snape kills him.
No one else dies, but Bill Weasley is disfigured by a werewolf.
Tonks is in love with Lupin.

That's about it, I think.

Eeep, no, I forgot - Harry & Ginny finally get together. But after Dumbledore dies, Harry tells Ginny they can't stay together, because Voldemort kills everyone he loves.

Also, the Ron & Hermione mutual love-hate relationship is even more infuriating than usual.



Keep scrolling down for my opinions on what'll happen next...















I don't think Dumbledore's really dead. A large chunk of the story is given over to something called a Horcrux, which is a charm that someone can put part of their soul in to prevent them from complete death. It seems very likely (imo) that Dumbledore has done this, and that he WANTS Snape to kill him, so that Voldemort thinks he's truly dead. It fits in with the whole phoenix mythology.

No, I haven't read the whole book, only the ending and the first 11 chapters, but it portends. I'll be surprised if I'm wrong ;)

Comments

[griffen.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I think that the whole Dumbledore-Is-Dead thing is like the whole Kenobi-Is-Dead thing, or the whole Gandalf-Is-Dead thing. Most wizards don't die permanently... at least not old ones with staves and big white beards. *rolls eyes* *grins*

I think the reason Snape calls himself a Prince is a huge cheat, though.

[rivka.livejournal.com]

The biggest upset for the fanficcers? Blaise Zabini's gender is revealed. Half of them now unexpectedly find themselves slashers, and half of them find that they're not slashers anymore. ;-)

[johnckirk.livejournal.com]

I'm slightly confused on this - I originally thought that "slash" meant "gay pairings", but then I seem to recall baratron saying that it just meant any pairing, since "A/B" would be pronounced as "A slash B", e.g. "Ron slash Hermione" or "Harry slash Ginny". So, how does gender actually affect this?

[baratron.livejournal.com]

It's true that the / is where the name "slash" came from. But normally when people say slash fiction they mean m/m. The first acknowledged slash - in the sense of male/male pairings written by apparently heterosexual women - was by Star Trek fans in the 1960s. I did used to have a link to the history of slash, I'll have to try to find it again.

There's several different aspects to fan fiction. Some fans write extra chapters and backstory for the characters, some write new relationships, while others write erotica. Much fanfic falls into multiple categories ;) Generally, "slash" means m/m, but may mean f/f or m/f depending on who's saying it - but the implication of slash fiction is usually that it'll involve sex (although the sex may not be explicit). f/f pairings might be referred to as "femslash" to distinguish it from m/m slash. Also the Japanese words hentai, yaoi (or shonen-ai) and yuri are used:
hentai = adult (in the "adult movie" sense) - heterosexual
yaoi (pronounced "yowie") = male homosexual
shonen-ai = "boy love" - also male homosexual
yuri = female homosexual

Another convention that's found its way from doujinshi into English language fanfic is the use of colour coding to show how "extreme" it is in its depiction of sex: "lemon" means extremely explicitly sexual. I can't remember the other colours.

So Rivka's point is that, with Blaise Zabini having been mentioned by name in several of the HP books, but no other details given, many fanfic writers have assumed either that he's male or female. (I always assumed he had to be male, because the houses take 5 students of each gender in each year, and the other 4 Slytherin males are named). Some of these writers are now finding that they've written fiction that's different from what they'd intended.

[johnckirk.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure about Dumbledore using a Horcrux, since Slughorn said that you have to commit an act of ultimate evil to split your soul in half in the first place. However, if we was planning for something like this (which seems more likely now I come to think about it, to preserve Snape's cover story), then he may well go down the ghost route instead.

[chrismoose.livejournal.com]

I think Dumbledore will be back in some way too...

((Embarrassed that I have just cried over the ending of the book))

[johnckirk.livejournal.com]

The other option that occurs to me is that he may simply show up as a painting, to join the "council of former headmasters" on the walls.

[baratron.livejournal.com]

What's embarassing about that?

[baratron.livejournal.com]

True - I hadn't read the entire book when I came up with my conjecture. This person (http://www.livejournal.com/users/garlandgraves/3409.html) goes into a LOT more detail than me, and comes up with some things I'd missed. I agree totally with the "look of hatred and revulsion" - I was sure that Snape was killing Dumbledore because Dumbledore had asked him to (could that be the thing they'd argued about earlier in the year?).

[elynne.livejournal.com]

*nod* Highly unlikely that DD uses a Horcrux, though I did think of it, too, and consider it for a while. At the end of the last book, Harry asks Nearly Headless Nick if Sirius could come back as a ghost, and Nick is pretty put-offish. There was that phoenix-thing when the body/table was converted into the tomb... I strongly suspect that DD will be showing up somehow in some capacity in the next book.

And I'm all agog to know who the R*something*B is, who switched the lockets. I can't think of anybody it could possibly be... *is fretting*

Oh, and for the record: I don't think Snape turned to the dark side, I think DD knew that somebody was supposed to kill him, and was telling Snape it'd have to be him, and Snape didn't want to do it. But, we'll find out in the next book...

[baratron.livejournal.com]

Clicky the link in my comment above to find out who RAB might be. If you want to know :)