First impressions vs in-depth character analysis

So. First of all let me thank all you people who have not defriended me despite the fact that I seem to have abandoned this journal. I have not, and I am hoping to return to it in full swing at some point in the near future, though I cannot say when. I was also floored to discover that there are some people who friended me in my absence. Thank you and welcome. Problem is that I have rather lost interest in fanfiction. As far as I remember I only wrote two fics last year - both for the reversathon challenge - and have entirely lost any inspiration to write more - and not only in the HP fandom, but in any and all fandoms I have ever been interested in. On plus side, I have started writing an original novel, which has to be a success when it's published because I desperately need the money - but that's only by the bye. Anyway, I'm sure you are all familiar with the symptoms so I will not bore you by going on and on about them.

All this made me consider how I came to love Harry Potter in the first place and what made me end up in fandom. I guess the books have always held great appeal to me because they didn't make me think. I studied fictional and non-fictional texts for the better part of my adult life, and there is always a part of my brain which feels obliged to question and analyse literature. Harry Potter, being a children's and a fantasy book, was ideal to just delve in and enjoy on a very visceral level. In a way, the books let me experience the wonderful feeling again that I used to experience as a child when immersing myself into fairy tales/adventure novels/fantasy books etc. Don't get me wrong - I love meta discussions, character analyses and wild theories (as I think should be quite obvious), but, being as they are intellectual by definition, they are the exact opposite of what the novels represent to me.

However, I am convinced that my evaluation of the characters is not an intellectual but a purely emotional process.* When I read the books for the first time, I developed preferences for and aversions against the individual characters that were entirely irrational. I only began to question my own likes and dislikes in order to justify or explain them in discussions, thus beginning to read the texts more closely and search for clues that "proved" my analysis is correct. I use the inverted commas, because of course a proof that one's analysis is correct does not exist. As we are all aware of, there are plenty of different ways to read and evaluate a character (which is one of the aspects that has always appealed a lot to me in fandom). So while I enjoy reading other people's takes, they won't change my overall impression of a character.

But this all isn't new. What I was really aiming at was presenting my - possibly lesser known - entirely personal opinions on some HP characters, all of them based entirely on my initial impression, which I have embellished over the years. ( Starting, of course, with Remus. )