Oh Liverpool Lou, lovely Liverpool Lou,

Why won’t you blogwatch just like other girls do?

Cacciaguida takes a dip in Caesar’s Bath. I infest his comments-box. In the process I realized that I actually like many more things about the Harry Potter series than I thought, although many, many things about it drive me up a wall. And I don’t argue that others should read the books, since I understand that my own interest in them is spurred by particular and personal obsessions. Nonetheless, here’s what I love about them, in chronological order of when these elements began to intrigue me:
1. Snape. I’m all about men without a country. Snape is why I started reading the books (which means that JKR can be held responsible for my Alan Rickman obsession–I’d never seen him in anything before I Netflix’d HP and the American Children Are Not As Stupid As You Think Stone).
2. Those names! Oh, she’s so good at names.
3. They’re really inventive books–something always popping and crackling into life at the edge of the page.
4. The death imagery: thestrals, the Veil, the Death Eaters. I really hope something awesome comes of this.
5. She must have a better handle on psychology than she sometimes seems to, because she manages to capture so perfectly the roots of personal conflicts. Easy example: Sirius Black and Severus Snape are quite obviously mirror-images of each other, and yet the very few differences between them make me detest the former and instinctively want to defend the latter. This makes for a highly contentious fandom, since almost everyone has a point!–but it’s also a sign of perhaps-subconscious insight, I think.
6. I like the intermittent “books are threatening” imagery (the diary, the Monster Book of Monsters).

She still needs to enter a Capslock Methadone Program though.

Vernon Dent/Done With Mirrors: Carnival of the etymologies! Awesome. Via Dappled Things.

Stay home and love me, my Liverpool Lou…