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quote:"I wrote the Hermione/Ron relationship as a form of wish fulfillment," she said. "That's how it was conceived, really. For reasons that have very little to do with literature and far more to do with me clinging to the plot as I first imagined it, Hermione ended up with Ron." Well I know she's said that she identifies with Hermione but that's not necessarily why she paired Hermione and Ron up. I interpreted wish fulfillment and clinging to the plot to mean that she decided to let them live happy ever after in the end, even when she sort of knew that they are very different personalities and argue too much to be the kind of relationship that realistically lasts. That's the main criticism of the Hermione/Ron relationship. But you can levy a lot of criticisms to the romances in Harry Potter; none of them were done very well from a literary standpoint, in my opinion. Maybe Arthur/Molly.
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Feb 2, 2014 08:39
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JesusSinfulHands posted:Umm the headline says "J.K. Rowling Wishes Harry & Hermione Would Have Ended Up Together" but if you read the quote its more like "Ron and Hermione were a bad fit for each other". Wheres the complete interview? It goes up on Thursday, apparently. I should go for a re-read/re-watch one of these weekends, haven't read the books in ages and it's been even longer since I watched the films. EDIT: While I'm here, how is Pottermore? I never really looked at it much outside of the initial announcement. Is it worth it for fans of the series? Grinnblade fucked around with this message at 09:54 on Feb 2, 2014 |
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Feb 2, 2014 09:47
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Grinnblade posted:EDIT: While I'm here, how is Pottermore? I never really looked at it much outside of the initial announcement. Is it worth it for fans of the series? Do you feel like playing the same 20 minutes worth of a point and click flash game across the course of a year?
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Feb 2, 2014 10:53
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Play it to find out what house you belong to and to find out "behind the scenes" information like the unexplored back-stories of the supporting cast, then ignore it completely until they release new content. Do otherwise and you are wasting your time. Also do not start over just because you were sorted into Hufflepuff, that's what real losers do.
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Feb 2, 2014 10:57
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Am I the only one who wishes that JK would stop talking about all the things in the book that she didn't write/wrote wrong/etc? It was cute at first (Dumbledore's gay!), but at this point it's been seven years and she sounds like the girl who can't stop talking about her ex-boyfriend years after the break-up. The books are published; let them stand on their own now. I can buy that she believes that Ron and Hermione weren't a good match--I don't think the pairing of their personality types was as unbelievable as some do, but I don't think Rowling wrote them in a way that made their ending up together believable. But I don't buy that Harry would have been a better partner for her, and I think the books would have been much weaker had she actually written them that way. re: what "wish fulfillment means," JK Rowling has said that she identifies with Hermione and that Ron was based off her friend Sean Harris. Even before this interview, there was fan speculation that JK had a thing for Sean that never worked out (I don't follow this poo poo closely enough to know where that impression came from; he was in a documentary with her a while back, so maybe from that? or just interviews where she talked about him?), so this'll add some more fuel to the fire. At any rate, it will be interesting to read the quotes in context.
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Feb 2, 2014 12:36
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thexerox123 posted:She is in it, but just barely, when they're at Platform 9 3/4. All she wants to do is see Harry
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Feb 2, 2014 15:10
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Honestly, this makes perfect sense to me. Hermione and Ron ending up a couple at the end of the story made very little sense, they wouldn't even be friends if it were not for Harry. I don't know if Harry and Hermione would have worked(although I like to think it would have)as a couple in the long run, but I do think that it would have been way way better than Hermione ending up with Ron, and Harry with Ginny. Her transformation from the awkward younger sister into Harry's every desire was also handled extremely badly. I still cringe thinking about "the monster inside Harry". Now excuse me, because its 2007 again and I need to go update my loving Livejournal... Really, writing that paragraph and having to stop myself from ranting reminds me why I stopped talking to people about Harry Potter, It brings out the worst in me.  bobkatt013 posted:All she wants to do is see Harry Like pretty much everyone from the wizarding community at that point.
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Feb 2, 2014 17:06
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I wish that Harry, Hermione and Ron just remained friends and the books finished without the shoehorned in romance. Then we would have been spared that loving terrible epilogue.
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Feb 2, 2014 17:13
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TheHeadSage posted:I wish that Harry, Hermione and Ron just remained friends and the books finished without the shoehorned in romance. Then we would have been spared that loving terrible epilogue. Amen, this would have been the best case scenario.
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Feb 2, 2014 17:13
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aslan posted:Am I the only one who wishes that JK would stop talking about all the things in the book that she didn't write/wrote wrong/etc? It was cute at first (Dumbledore's gay!), but at this point it's been seven years and she sounds like the girl who can't stop talking about her ex-boyfriend years after the break-up. The books are published; let them stand on their own now. Eh, I get that, but this is less "expanded universe" and more her looking back and thinking on what she could have done better. Personally I'm a sucker for writers looking back on their series with some perspective gained after a few years and saying "Yeah, I think this didn't work out as well as it could have. What would I have done differently?"
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Feb 2, 2014 17:33
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FiftySeven posted:Amen, this would have been the best case scenario. If JKR was so dead set on having an epilogue, then you could easily go 5+ years in the future, have Harry & Ron standing on Platform 9 3/4 as Aurors watching people go to Hogwarts, while providing some commentary that things are nice and peaceful now, ending with that scar line she was mentioning since GoF. Would have been a heap better than what we got, which I still swear was someone's fan fiction that got added by mistake.
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Feb 2, 2014 18:03
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Is anyone running a Harmonians.txt or something? I'd love to know how all this is going down in those circles.aslan posted:Am I the only one who wishes that JK would stop talking about all the things in the book that she didn't write/wrote wrong/etc? It was cute at first (Dumbledore's gay!), but at this point it's been seven years and she sounds like the girl who can't stop talking about her ex-boyfriend years after the break-up. Since book 7 she's written three more novels and done a shitload of philanthropy. She also has absolutely no love lost for the media in general, so I presume that the main reason she keeps talking about Harry Potter is because people are still asking about it, and she likes answering the questions sometimes because it makes the fans happy.
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Feb 2, 2014 19:55
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I dunno, I didn't have any problem with it. Until very recently, the last book I read was Goblet of Fire when I was thirteen. I thought Harry hooking up with Hermione was a given at that age, but I was also dumb, thirteen, and played too many JRPGs with obligatory shoehorned romances. Going through the series and finishing it up a decade plus change later, that pairing wasn't telegraphed in the text at all.
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Feb 2, 2014 20:32
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The epilogue really makes everything worse because it locks in all these high school romances as "true loves" - I can totally buy that Ron and Hermione hooked up after Deathly Hallows and great that's awesome for them. I don't buy that turning into a marriage and having a clutch of kids. Rowling really is awful for adding additional information after the fact. Let us have our imaginations!
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Feb 3, 2014 01:24
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Paragon8 posted:The epilogue really makes everything worse because it locks in all these high school romances as "true loves" - I can totally buy that Ron and Hermione hooked up after Deathly Hallows and great that's awesome for them. I don't buy that turning into a marriage and having a clutch of kids. I agree. But I think a lot of people fixate on this element of the epilogue when criticising it. The big problem with the epilogue is that it restores the status quo from the beginning of the series after four books spent revealing that the Wizarding world is a really lovely place and has been for a very long time, without even the tiniest shred of irony of self awareness. I believe that Rowling is on record as saying that the epilogue was written or planned right from beginning, before the series developed what it developed in to, and I have no trouble believing that.
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Feb 3, 2014 03:01
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High Warlord Zog posted:I agree. But I think a lot of people fixate on this element of the epilogue when criticising it. The big problem with the epilogue is that it restores the status quo from the beginning of the series after four books spent revealing that the Wizarding world is a really lovely place and has been for a very long time, without even the tiniest shred of irony of self awareness. Rowling could have really used a year or two more space somewhere. She gets locked into the epilogue with all those pairings yet it seems like the pulled The Deathly Hallows out of nowhere in the last book.
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Feb 3, 2014 03:11
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High Warlord Zog posted:I agree. But I think a lot of people fixate on this element of the epilogue when criticising it. The big problem with the epilogue is that it restores the status quo from the beginning of the series after four books spent revealing that the Wizarding world is a really lovely place and has been for a very long time, without even the tiniest shred of irony of self awareness. Yeah, it'd be impossible for the Wizarding world to be full of sunshine and puppies again, unless they underwent something similar Denazification process that Germany did after WW2.
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Feb 3, 2014 05:30
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High Warlord Zog posted:I agree. But I think a lot of people fixate on this element of the epilogue when criticising it. The big problem with the epilogue is that it restores the status quo from the beginning of the series after four books spent revealing that the Wizarding world is a really lovely place and has been for a very long time, without even the tiniest shred of irony of self awareness. There was a little bit of discussion on this earlier (specifically that the Wizarding community is messed up), but I don't really buy this. The only "status quo" it really restores is that young wizards and witches go to Hogwarts and they all leave from King's Cross Station. And I guess that wizards and witches are more likely to have magical children, maybe. I don't see how this necessarily reflects on the rest of the Wizarding world as an insular and lovely place. The only other real bit of information you hear about the Wizarding community and its relation to the outside world is when Harry and Ron are talking about getting their driver's licenses. I would like to think this implies that the two worlds are becoming more integrated; or at least that Hermione, Harry and Ron in their capacity at the Ministry are becoming ambassadors to the outside world. Unless you think that wizarding schools in general should be abolished entirely at this point, and that all these kids should be going to school with regular children. Which is admirable but probably not practical. Even if you assume that wizards "came out" to the real world shortly after the events of Voldemort's defeat, it probably makes more sense for places like Hogwarts to adopt curriculum to reflect the rest of society, rather than to figure out how to integrate a bunch of kids who might accidentally melt off their classmate's faces into regular public schools.
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Feb 3, 2014 17:27
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Paragon8 posted:Rowling could have really used a year or two more space somewhere. She gets locked into the epilogue with all those pairings yet it seems like the pulled The Deathly Hallows out of nowhere in the last book. I think she must have been flailing a little writing Deathly Hallows and had to introduce plot objects, new laws of magic (Hello winning another person's wand! Where were you for six years?), etc. with no foreshadowing. The Elder Wand and wandlore in general always seemed like something that Harry should have already known a little about. It's strange mostly because it's new and vital world information that, unlike most such information in Harry Potter, isn't just subtly slipped into an earlier book.
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Feb 3, 2014 22:38
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Jazerus posted:I think she must have been flailing a little writing Deathly Hallows and had to introduce plot objects, new laws of magic (Hello winning another person's wand! Where were you for six years?), etc. with no foreshadowing. The Elder Wand and wandlore in general always seemed like something that Harry should have already known a little about. It's strange mostly because it's new and vital world information that, unlike most such information in Harry Potter, isn't just subtly slipped into an earlier book. The wand thing was sort of hinted at in the first book also with Ron and Nevile. Their magic ability got a shotload better when they got their own wands.
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Feb 3, 2014 22:42
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Jazerus posted:I think she must have been flailing a little writing Deathly Hallows and had to introduce plot objects, new laws of magic (Hello winning another person's wand! Where were you for six years?), etc. with no foreshadowing. The Elder Wand and wandlore in general always seemed like something that Harry should have already known a little about. It's strange mostly because it's new and vital world information that, unlike most such information in Harry Potter, isn't just subtly slipped into an earlier book. This is really the biggest reason why I loved the first six books and only sort of liked the seventh.
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Feb 3, 2014 22:43
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bobkatt013 posted:The wand thing was sort of hinted at in the first book also with Ron and Nevile. Their magic ability got a shotload better when they got their own wands. Of course everyone knew that a person is best with a wand that is perfectly suited for them - the missing piece of information that came out of nowhere was that Ron or Neville could have just mugged a dude for his wand and as long as they had beaten the wand in a fight it would be magically theirs.
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Feb 3, 2014 22:47
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Jazerus posted:Of course everyone knew that a person is best with a wand that is perfectly suited for them - the missing piece of information that came out of nowhere was that Ron or Neville could have just mugged a dude for his wand and as long as they had beaten the wand in a fight it would be magically theirs. I thought that was just a thing that only the Elder Wand ascribed to? As in, normal Olivanders wands still only work best if it suits you. EDIT: If Neville or Ron wants to take on Dumbledore then I want to watch.
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Feb 3, 2014 22:50
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Xachariah posted:I thought that was just a thing that only the Elder Wand ascribed to? As in, normal Olivanders wands still only work best if it suits you. Harry wins Malfoy's regular wand too and Ollivander acts like it's no big thing.
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Feb 3, 2014 22:53
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I thought Harry jacked Malfoy's wand or something, and that transitively also gave him ownership over the elder wand (that was also Malfoy's, but nobody knew that). Which seems like it would only make sense if wands in general could be meaningfully taken.
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Feb 3, 2014 22:55
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Sigh I guess I'm the only one who was happy that Harry and Ginny ended up together.
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Feb 4, 2014 00:13
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No, I was too! 
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Feb 4, 2014 01:43
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returnh posted:This is really the biggest reason why I loved the first six books and only sort of liked the seventh. The 7th book had a lot of pretty weird choices. The sudden inclusion of wand logic and The Deathly Hallows being the first. The whole screwing over Griphook thing was a weird thematic choice too. Well I guess not so weird that after years of SPEW we ended up with "yeah most House Elves are cool with indentured servitude , Dobby is just weird" The whole goblin thing ends up being "It's okay to be untrustworthy if you think a shifty goblin is going to screw you over when he can too?" Could have been a nice opportunity for Harry to bridge the gap between wizards and goblins and have the goblins counter the giants/werewolves in the final battle.
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Feb 4, 2014 02:03
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Paragon8 posted:The 7th book had a lot of pretty weird choices. The sudden inclusion of wand logic and The Deathly Hallows being the first. The whole screwing over Griphook thing was a weird thematic choice too. Well I guess not so weird that after years of SPEW we ended up with "yeah most House Elves are cool with indentured servitude , Dobby is just weird" I like to think there will soon be a massive Goblin rebellion because of Harry and Co.'s antics at Gringotts. The Goblins are just biding their time.
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Feb 4, 2014 02:24
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geeves posted:I like to think there will soon be a massive Goblin rebellion because of Harry and Co.'s antics at Gringotts. The Goblins are just biding their time. It always blows my mind that an author that wrote a near perfect allegory of the dangers of bureaucracy fumbles so badly with race/class relations with house elves and goblins.
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Feb 4, 2014 02:48
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edit: wrong thread. Thanks for the info about Pottermore, though.
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Feb 4, 2014 03:12
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I think that other fantasy, sci-fi, and YA lit is so stuffed full of stupid ~racism~ analogies that I'm glad Rowling chose to gloss over them in HP.
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Feb 4, 2014 04:04
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She didn't gloss over them. She almost took the exact opposite stance. House Elves are essentially a slave class that she dances around emancipating early on. The whole Dobby subplot resolved perfectly for that initially - we see how bad the Malfoys are for mistreating their servant and Harry shows character in rejecting that wizarding world norm and sets up Dobby's freedom. Then we find out house elves are a fairly common in the upper classes and even Hogwarts. Lots of inequality in the magical community, Hermione gets all geared up to fight it. She then gets mocked and eye rolled for SPEW. Then added to that House Elves turn out to really enjoy being indentured servants, it's part of their nature to be servants to wizards. Dobby is now an aberration. The message from that seems to be leave poo poo alone and it's silly to try and agitate for change. That seems awful in a series that does attempt to handle racism in the terms of wizard blood purity. Yet as soon as we're not talking about humans Rowling doesn't care. The Goblin thing is almost more egregious because Charlie basically gives a roadmap of what'll happen and sets up a chance for the trio to genuinely surprise the goblins by honoring their word. Instead we get the trio falling in line with prejudiced reasoning that ends up being justified within the story because of course the goblins are bad just like all the biased history lessons they had. YA/Children's SHOULD attempt to tackle issues like this because of the nature of the genre. Rowling squandered two storylines that could have been super awesome teaching points. Even worse than just dropping them, she essentially lets them send an almost dangerous message. It seems like a crazy oversight for someone who wrote so fluidly about the danger of the modern media, how bureaucracy is a kind of evil, human on human racism etc.
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Feb 4, 2014 04:26
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Paragon8 posted:She didn't gloss over them. She almost took the exact opposite stance. I doubt the people that could have taught would have learned a damned thing if those plots were changed. The Harry Potter fandom has people whole-heartedly, and with all seriousness, writing stories where they do poo poo like making Hermione a pureblood who shits all over those filthy mudbloods. And I'm fairly sure that lesson could not have been more clear.
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Feb 4, 2014 05:52
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Davros1 posted:Sigh I guess I'm the only one who was happy that Harry and Ginny ended up together. I liked the idea of Harry and Ginny together. (I also liked the idea of Ron and Hermione together.) She gives him a way to become a legitimate member of the Weasley family. She can empathize with what it's like to experience trauma, and particularly Voldemort-inflicted trauma. I liked that after having a puppy-dog crush on Harry, she goes away and has fun with other boys so that a) she doesn't end up marrying the first guy she ever dates and b) when she and Harry do date, it's on a more equal footing. She has an interesting personality arc where she starts out shy and comes into her own. In theory, all of these things should make her and Harry really great together. But J.K. just has no idea how to write relationships in an interesting or believable fashion. And to be fair, it is hard to write interesting, believable relationships that will appeal to both 10-year-old readers and 45-year-old ones. But she fails for both ends of the spectrum. quote:I think that other fantasy, sci-fi, and YA lit is so stuffed full of stupid ~racism~ analogies that I'm glad Rowling chose to gloss over them in HP. She doesn't at all, though. The house elves = slaves and pureblood = race analogies couldn't be more explicit. And I think one of the problems with the series is the lack of consistency on those issues. I don't fault her for not realizing, when she published book one, that Harry Potter would become the global phenomenon it did. But it is sort of bizarre how the series shifts from a very nostalgic British school story (a pretty conservative genre, complete with all the trappings of a super-white Enid Blyton novel) into a Holocaust analogy. And then again it's weird how she builds up this big SPEW plot and then drops it. There's some thematic whiplash there.
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Feb 4, 2014 07:39
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I don't get why Griphook thought he could keep the sword anyway, even if it was given to him. He seemed to know all about the bloody thing, and I don't think it was a secret anyway that the sword could just up and teleport to any worthy Gryffindor in desperate need of it. Also, Harry could have just said "You can have it after Voldemort's dead, I need it to kill him." Which is technically true. There, problem solved. The whole deal was just a problem that really didn't need to be created.
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Feb 4, 2014 15:58
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Bad Wolf posted:I don't get why Griphook thought he could keep the sword anyway, even if it was given to him. He seemed to know all about the bloody thing, and I don't think it was a secret anyway that the sword could just up and teleport to any worthy Gryffindor in desperate need of it. Yeah, exactly. Rowling almost went out of her way to paint goblins and backstabbers and untrustworthy. I think Centaurs are the only non-humans Rowling treats with respect. I can't believe I'm posting about JK Rowling being a species-ist on the internet.
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Feb 4, 2014 16:10
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Paragon8 posted:The Goblin thing is almost more egregious because Charlie basically gives a roadmap of what'll happen and sets up a chance for the trio to genuinely surprise the goblins by honoring their word. Instead we get the trio falling in line with prejudiced reasoning that ends up being justified within the story because of course the goblins are bad just like all the biased history lessons they had. Paragon8 posted:Yeah, exactly. Rowling almost went out of her way to paint goblins and backstabbers and untrustworthy. I kind of agree. I think Rowling made it very clear the Goblins did not trust Wizards and Witches at all. Maybe she did have an idea on which to expand, but didn't want to further complicate the book when we were ~150 pages from the end. It's a shame we didn't get more about goblin culture outside of, running Gringotts, they're love for betting and running numbers and being ruthless collectors. So, what were Harry, Hermione and Ron to do? Hold up their end and hope for the best? That the goblin would thank Harry for keeping his word and then allow him to borrow the sword for the remainder of the quest? That's terrible writing. And it would have robbed Neville of a nice character moment. The sword was the only weapon the trio had to destroy a horcrux (or in Hermione's mind the only one which was worth using as others could have dastardly effects). They were desperate to hold on to it in that situation and not thinking rationally. Their whole plan was "get there before Voldemort and hope we can find the horcrux". Hell, Harry also resorted to possibly other bad decisions when he used more Unforgivables at Gringotts and later at Hogwarts. The irony of it all is that they were doing what they did For the Greater Good. I think in a kill or be killed situation, you're desperately trying to win a war with no experience on how that plays out can lead to terrible decisions. It's another theme that is repeated from GoF. Maybe not to the extreme that Crouch and others employed, but it's quietly presented that even the best of people can be tempted to resort to such measures.
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Feb 4, 2014 16:34
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geeves posted:I kind of agree. I think Rowling made it very clear the Goblins did not trust Wizards and Witches at all. Maybe she did have an idea on which to expand, but didn't want to further complicate the book when we were ~150 pages from the end. It's a shame we didn't get more about goblin culture outside of, running Gringotts, they're love for betting and running numbers and being ruthless collectors. I think the Goblin thing ends up tarnishing a lot of Dobby's sacrifice which was a major part of why Griphook "trusted" Harry and overall is symbolic of Harry and the trio making the wizarding world less lovely and racist by them giving a poo poo about non-humans. I think behind the scenes what happened is that Rowling always had an idea of her Gringott's set piece from the first book and didn't want to give it up and we end up with an awkward double cross that seems out of context thematically.
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Feb 4, 2014 20:53
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I thought the were planning on giving the sword to Griphook once they finished their quest. They were not planning on keeping it, they just did not tell them the specific time that they would give him the sword.
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Feb 4, 2014 21:00
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