Comments | rhetoretician: JKR on the H/R Ship

rhetoretician

JKR on the H/R Ship

Feb 01, 2014 21:45

Uh oh.

http://www.hypable.com/2014/02/01/jk-rowling-ron-hermione-relationship-regret-interview/

How about it, aberforths_rug, amamama, BandCandy, chreechree, gioiamia, girlspell, hhbarmaid, ladywhizbee, stmargarets, moonette1, mickawber, sherylyn, ?

I am sure that madderbrad is laughing his head off right about now...

h/r, shipping, jkr

Comments 20

gabrielladusult February 2 2014, 04:24:57 UTC

Well... That's just... I mean...
I think she may have gone completely off her rocker.
And if she's saying stuff like that, should I continue to feel bad and allow myself to be burdened with crippling writers block for wanting to write a fanfic that puts George with someone other than Angelina? Is anything she says in an interview even valid?

madderbrad February 2 2014, 07:44:01 UTC

Is anything she says in an interview even valid?

A lot of HP fans never thought so; Rowling's post-publication propaganda never satisfied the proper definition of the word 'canon'. Even Rowling herself admitted that her interviews weren't canon (in one of her interviews!). So stories could be canon-compliant but not interview-compliant, no problems.

Of course her contradicting herself in the interviews also helped to make such a decision. I admit thought, this latest one's a doozy!

mickawber_fics February 3 2014, 07:32:17 UTC

It seems to me that there is a fundamental difference between the author talking about she was thinking while she was writing a work, and her reaction to the writing years later. One adds to the reader's understanding of the work (whether or not one happens to find that understanding to be congenial). The other is an individual observation about the work -- like yours or mine -- but doesn't change the work.

JKR's changing feelings about her writing are perfectly understandable; there are things I wrote ten years ago that make me cringe now; for the love of God, I wrote a fic where Harry and Hermione were married! (This, by the way, was a joke, Brad. I mean, I did write that story, but no, I wouldn't wince at the pairing; it was a flawed marriage and I enjoyed exploring that. I do however wince at some of the prose.) There are things that I see differently than I did twenty years ago ( ... )

madderbrad February 3 2014, 23:11:19 UTC

Nice try, Antosha, but you can't rain on my parade ( ... )

Thread 8

sherylyn February 2 2014, 04:26:08 UTC

Eh.... I can see what she means by wish fulfillment** in a lot of ways, but I still think that the way she wrote it works best for everyone, ultimately. Yeah, Ron and Hermione would have some issues, but so would Harry and Hermione, and probably Ron (and Ginny, too, no matter who they ended up with) would need some relationship/personal therapy, too, to be perfectly honest, b/c of all they'd been through (heck, most of Hogwarts and/or the rest of the wizarding world could be included w/that ( ... )

mickawber_fics February 3 2014, 07:49:52 UTC

I wrote Harry/Hermione. It wasn't a bad marriage. But I couldn't see it being a very good one. Harry, for all his merits, was never a hugely verbal person. Hermione, for all her multifold virtues, needed to talk everything to death. She'd keep talking; he'd keep retreating, and eventually he'd become incredibly resentful and passive aggressive. Not good.

At least, that's my take.

I've always liked Harry and Ginny together. I've always liked Ron and Hermione together. Not because they were ideal couples, but because they made for good stories.

(Of course, I'll take any or all of them with Luna, for very much the same reason.)

More to the point, the books were clearly pointing to those pairings from the end of CoS on (if you read the Sleeping Beauty ending as presaging things to come); to change who Hermione ended up with, you'd have to do a f$@load of rewriting.

sherylyn February 3 2014, 22:44:09 UTC

I totally agree w/you on the characters, etc., etc., too. AND the fact that JKR may see writing (her own or others') differently now than she did years ago -- makes complete sense ( ... )

madderbrad February 4 2014, 00:38:53 UTC

BUT it would mean that the characters would be different *from the beginning* in ways that would make the (changed) pairings make sense -- but they *would NOT* be the same characters that are in the books now. They would have to be changed in multiple ways in order to make the changes make sense.But that's sort of what did happen - consistent with your friend's theory. Rowling admitted that Hermione 'ran away from her' - something like that - after book 5. Characters grow and evolve, sometimes without the conscious knowledge of the author. I'm not a writer but I've seen a number of people make that observation ( ... )

madderbrad February 2 2014, 07:37:37 UTC

Why, hello there, how's it going Ken? I just happened to be wandering by ( ... )

amamama February 2 2014, 10:48:20 UTC

Hmmmm.... I agree with your icon, Ken!

What's done is done, canon says H/G and Hr/R. Not only in literature, but in real life a lot of people end up together who in hindsight would've been better off initially with someone else. But they keep going because they do love each other after all and they have a lot of companionship and support each other and decide to work things through. It's a learning process. And how would we know if H/Hr would have worked out? Thinking about it now, to me this actually makes the whole story more real, because we rarely get the fairy tale, any of us. Besides, fairy tales have trolls...

I wish she wouldn't comment on the series, as much as I wish people would stop asking, but it is what it is. I guess that's why I rarely read these interviews, unless someone gives me a link. :-)

stmargarets February 2 2014, 15:32:56 UTC

Berte! How are you? I hope you had a nice birthday. I was having all kinds of computer problems last week can couldn't log into lj.

amamama February 3 2014, 08:14:46 UTC

I had a lovely birthday, thank you! And I have a few lovely entries I need to reply to. It's been busy, and then I spent some days with a migraine and were unable to look at a screen for some time, so I've only now begun to catch up on emails and stuff. *hugs*

stmargarets February 2 2014, 15:31:25 UTC

Hi Ken! Nice to see some familiar faces again! It's been a long time.

That being said. Oh, dear. What a can of worms. What I got out of the snippet is that whatever visions of romance she had as a writer in her twenties is now different from she sees as a viable relationship now that she is older. Fair enough. But that doesn't change canon or the fact that those who shipped H/G and R/Hr had the reading comprehension to see where she was going from GoF onward with those ships.

mickawber_fics February 3 2014, 08:10:43 UTC

What she said.

:-)

madderbrad February 3 2014, 23:38:50 UTC

Heh, nice evasion. But there's more to get out of the snippet. Rowling has grown up, matured, and stated for the record - apparently - that her R/Hr pairing is untenable. She's seen in her canon what many of us perceived a long time ago.

Do you see it now too? :-)

But that doesn't change canon or the fact that those who shipped H/G and R/Hr had the reading comprehension to see where she was going from GoF onward with those ships.A small and sorry consolation, I think. A lot of us saw the canon ships, Mary. It wasn't that difficult; Rowling was writing for children, after all. Kids don't dig very deep. In this case there was a section of rail track with trains on each end - let's label one 'Ron' and the other 'Hermione' - hurtling towards each other. Destined for a future of acrimony and ... what did their author say of them again? ... 'relationship counselling ( ... )