rthstewart | Harry Potter and author's remorse

Crossposts: http://rthstewart.livejournal.com/107474.html

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harry potter

Harry Potter and author's remorse

In case you missed it, last night JK says that Hermione and Ron were a mistake she regrets, that Hermione should have married Harry, and that Hermione and Ron was a form of wish fulfillment. One of the stories is here.

I wasn't really part of those shipping wars, and wow, really do not want to relive those ever. But I do remember the hurt over the comments that cyndisuesue reminded me of people being called delusional and missing the anvil sized hints. People on Tumblr last night were saying that Ron and Hermione were their first ship. And I'm sure that the Harry/Hermione shippers still bear those scars.

Apart from that ugliness (and it was ugly and nasty and I'm not discounting it at all), I'm finding an author blurting out that she's changed her mind doesn't bother me. I never saw Harry/Hermione in the text. I loved Hermione and Ron together precisely because they both grew up so much and grew together and I always found it a very complimentary relationship, of alignment rather than overlap and enormous respect.

I'm not sure there's ever been a creator who didn't look back on a body of work and say, oh gosh, I wish I could change that now. But Han shot first in 1977 and all of Lucas' tinkering and regret in the world won't change that Han shot first. And doesn't all the queer-baiting we see among creators of popular works ring especially false -- oh no, we didn't mean it, you all just have dirty minds. No. It's RIGHT THERE. You PUT IT THERE FOR ME TO FIND.

Regardless, a creator cannot take from me how I chose to interact with the text. Whether they intended it or not (and in this case JKR definitely intended it, for years, over many works), it's still there for me and authorial regret changes nothing. it's the dead author rationale even when the author is still alive. To quote one of the wiki entries, "To give a text an Author" and assign a single, corresponding interpretation to it "is to impose a limit on that text."

As to JKR's dismissal of wish fulfillment, so what? I love wish fulfillment. I got a bit of wish fulfillment in both Harry and Ginny and Ron and Hermione, and in Elizabeth and Darcy and Harriet and Peter and Miles and Ekaterin and Ista and Ilvin. Wish fulfillment is one reason why I read.

And her point that they would have needed marital counseling? After all they've been through, I sure hope they did get some competent counseling because any healthy couple would benefit from it, am I right?

anyone else want to vent? emote? swear? Have at it.

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I'm mostly just sitting here shaking my head over the fact that she is once again proving that she's more interested in sensationalism than anything else. That's why I was disappointed with the last three books, because it was all about the shock value (GRRM, anyone?), and the Dumbledore is Gay interview. It's not that she regrets Ron/Hermione, it's that with all the books written and the movies made, she needs to find some way to shock her audience again.

That's my opinion, of course, and I was smart enough to keep my head down during the shipping wars. But even staying out of them, it still left an impact on me, still shaped how I experience fandom. So, y'know...

I just tweeted to Dunc on Club Jade (and

lady_songsmith
made a similar point on my LJ) that some of feels like authorial inexperience. Every creator has regrets, doesn't she? But maybe it wasn't adroit to support those who called those fans "delusional" and then turn around sand say, "oops, didn't mean it." Mistake number 1 was criticizing the fans for seeing something you didn't intend and mistake number 2 was to announce you've changed your mind and they were right all along. It's interesting to compare this, for instance, to Orlando Jones, who is so very much, every kinda ship? BRING IT ON.

I love the friends I made through the books and the costumes and the rich, rich world I got to play in, with my friends, and with the children in my life. I feel a little queasy criticizing JKR when it's all given me such joy but these were ugly times and it all could have been handled better, both then and now, I think.

I'm not sure I'd consider it criticism, precisely; there are a lot of people in this world who are sensationalists, and that doesn't mean they're bad people or bad at writing. In fact, if they're good at it, they end up rather like JKR--a really big sensation. This is something I've felt about her since OotP first came out, and it has certainly shaped my opinions of both the books and the fandom since then.

But at this point, Harry Potter has been a part of my life for more than half of it (I can't decide if that makes me sound young or old; considering I remember waiting for GoF to be released, I'll lea towards the latter), and yeah, Harry Potter fandom is directly responsible for introducing me to some amazing people who I am glad to be able to say that I am still friends with, ten years later. But there was also a definite sense of feeling like I'd outgrown the fandom, even ten years ago when I was the most active in it.

I think HP fandom in itself was just a mess. I was explaining to a friend the other day why I have a knee-jerk reaction to the Mortal Instruments series; I just can't think of them without thinking of all the wank surrounding Cassie Clare, and it ruins things for me, knowing how much hate came out of that mess. And it's such a shame that for some people, HP was their first fandom, and it may have been ruined for them because of things like the ship wars, or that they learned bad manners that they carried over into other fandoms.

And while JKR is so supportive of fandom in general, I still can't help but feel like she's more interested in creating a splash. As was said in another comment about Le Guin, for example, if JKR wanted to see the change badly enough, she'd write another book. It's not like JKR is lacking an audience.

I am currently

a) relieved that I'm no longer a moderator on the MuggleNet message board, which means that separating people who want to burn each other in effigy is not my problem. (This was considerably before HBP came out, so everyone's fury was directed at one another rather than at Rowling. The shippers listened to me more than they did the other moderators, possibly because being told to calm down by a 15-year-old girl is embarrassing, so I spent a lot of time calming them down. So glad that's over.)

b) shrugging, as I live in death-of-the-author land. I think Ron and Hermione's relationship would have ended badly or turned sour--I really don't like their dynamic for reasons that are somewhat influenced by trauma--but Harry and Hermione have zero chemistry as written, so whatever.

c) bemused at the Ron-hating vitriol coming out of the woodwork. Have I mentioned I'm really glad that I don't have to put out the shipping fires anymore?

Welcome and thanks so much for your perspective. I have wondered if the shipping issue is less intense once you are dealing with a "closed" universe. At this point, really, who cares? It's done. It's over.

In comparison, I guess there are some nasty ship wars going on in Reign right now which makes sense because 1) the audience skews young and 2) it's ongoing, live, so to speak, so a viewer has some hope for the outcome and a vested interest in seeing a particular result.

In a closed verse, I'm usually not troubled at all by an author having and discussing her second thoughts publicly. We all have them. In this case, there was such acrimony, well, I question the wisdom of it given that JKR essentially mocked part of her fan base at the time.

For someone like me who wasn't vested in the ship wars, it is fun to look back on it all. It's so cute how it's all been picked upon on Fandom Wank and ONTD. I just got involved in the old Dumbledore is Ron thing on Twitter and a whole new generation who only got into the books after they were all out is going, WHUT?

Thank you for your noble service in a thankless task. Looking back on it now, I at least wonder, gosh, was it really that important? In my case, it was Luke Skywalker and Mara Jade and gosh it did feel really important at the time.

*dusts off her Authorial Intentions soapbox, since you're so kind as to invite*

And the whole concept of the 'death of the author' was a backlash against decades of critics trying with desperate naivete to figure out the One True Intention of the author, as if that would tell them what the work Really Meant. Which is a load of bunk, because there are at least two people involved in any work of art, and only one of them is the one who gets credit as the artist. The other is, as Bujold so pithily put it, 'the unsung collaborator' who reads (or views or listens or whatever). In the case of published art, the artist puts ideas down in medium and that's their part done; they have no actual say in what happens when the other party in this act of creation views the medium and generates ideas from it. The medium is not and can never be a transparent channel to get the same ideas the author had to the reader; those are two separate sets of ideas, and always will be. The medium is a channel mediated by the different lives and experiences of both parties. (Which is why I may say 'omg, ew, no, bad' about some ships, but will never say anything resembling 'that isn't /in/ there'; I don't get to define another reader's idea generation either.)

It can be fascinating to read the perspective that authors sometimes gain on their work. Le Guin's essay looking back on _Left Hand of Darkness_ and all the things she would do differently if she were writing it in the world and her life ten years later is delightful. But she didn't try to pretend she didn't write the things she did, or didn't mean to write them, or that they are somehow not the Real Story. I am fairly confident that, if she felt that way, she'd have just gone and written a new novel.

It really sounds like Rowling is trying to define her own ideas as the only ones that matter, which is not unusual but is still what I can only call false consciousness of the creative process. Also? I can't help wondering if this is a publicity stunt. I mean, really.

Oh thanks so much for these awesome contributions. Truly, my own experience with the Narnian fen (ur doing it wrong! Lewis never intended that! etc etc) has really hardened my position that I don't care what authorial intent is. Leave it to you, Bujold, and Le Guin to really nail the argument -- YES! there are always at least two people engaged in any work, and now, of course, that one who experiences it is often doing it communally, which enriches, enlivens, expands, and challenges the original work.

And it occurs to me, I don't read a work the same way over time -- of course the creator's own views change over time. I've had a very complex relationship with Eowyn spanning over 30 years.

And having played in the sprawling Star Wars fandom where only George determined true canon and he changed his mind, and now we're looking at Disney blowing up (some of it? all of it?) well, even what's there on the page or screen isn't the dearly held canon that we hope it to be.

Though it does raise the question? What is canon? Can H/HR be called AU anymore? I remember when the old Sugar Quill got SO angsty after Sirius died (and then Remus and Tonks) because so many stories were joss'd that had been canon before.

anyway, I think most of my reaction is sort of nostalgia through the lens of the Narnian fen who feel they can divine the intent of St. Lewis and George Lucas who was going to give me midichlorians whether I wanted them or not.

My pleasure!

...didn't help that Lucas couldn't write a coherent story to save his soul. The only coherent story, even in the original trilogy, was by Leigh Brackett for pity's sake. I'm weirdly hopeful about Disney snapping this up, despite their evilness over copyright issues; they do, at least, usually manage to hire halfway decent screenwriters.

*wry* An anime/manga fan is the wrong one to question about the nature of canon. Canon proliferates so wildly and weirdly in Japanese popular media that even the die-hard canon definition fanatics usually give up after a few years and settle for specifying some particular version or other as their One True Version. The /second/ Utena manga, but not the first, for example. I think even they feel the basic silliness of that sometimes, though. Reminds me a whole lot of early Christian canonicity arguments, really. So we may yet wind up there with Star Wars, too! And, to his credit, which I do sometimes manage to give him, I think Lewis' insistence that he wasn't writing allegory may have been an attempt to head off the people trying to project their personal Biblical interpretations onto Narnia just because there actually are a few blindingly obvious allegorical moments in there.

...and I say 'blindingly obvious', but that doesn't stop 90% of my students from leaping to conclude that the White Witch stands for the serpent of Eden, not for the Accuser. *wanders off muttering in a curmudgeonly manner*

What canon comes down to, at base, is "the part of this story and related edifice that I accept as Real and True, at least for my purposes at the moment." And that's different for every person. I think most people would agree that a story itself takes precedence over anything else, such as cover illustrations, author interviews, tie-in computer games, or what-have-you... but then you get into things like DC or Marvel comics, which have "canon" that stretches back eighty years and contradicts and retcons itself left, right, and center. At which point people generally give up and say, "My canon is So-and-so's run on Title A, What's-his-face's run on Title B, and generic background from Decade Y on Titles C, D, and E, plus some ideas I nabbed from Cartoon Version R and Live-Action Movie H." If you tried to insist that ALL published issues were canon and must be reconciled with each other into a single functional timeline and comprehensible character arcs, you would go stark raving mad in short order.

(I would love to see a "canon is GOD" Lewis-ite try to do that, actually. I think it could be a useful learning experience.)

I am mostly enjoying my popcorn.

The original intent is all over the books. And after all, the books themselves have a huge dose of wish fulfillment in them. I don't mind JKR now saying that she would do something different if she were to start all over again, because is suspect most creators would say the same.

I haven't read the whole interview (is it even out yet?) so I'm wary of taking this without a grain of salt, tbh. Does "I regret Ron/Hermione" mean "I regret writing it" or "I regret the way I wrote it" or "If i were to redo the last two books I would change it" or "If I were to redo the whole series I would change it" or "I would put her with Harry" or "I would write in a marriage counselor for real" or what? I feel like there are a lot of options there before we get to "H/Hr was what she ~really meant~."

It's tough too because, idk, I feel like a lot of authors have really interesting things to say about the crafting of their works, or regrets about their earlier works (and for JKR too, I mean it had to be tough to be writing something serialized with so many people glued to the continuity. Other series I've enjoyed -- Young Wizards comes to mind -- muck around with continuity, and that wasn't something that would have worked for JKR, so it's interesting to me to hear about how things changed as she gained experience as a writer but was still glued to things she'd written earlier). And I want to hear these things! I want to hear about how writers decide to do A, or what they would have done if they knew now what they know. But JKR is in a really weird position because of her popularity, where if she says "You know if I were writing this now I would have done X" it becomes, like, literally front-page news. Sigh. I don't want to get into crazy fandom shipping wars again but I do want to hear these things from her. I mean clearly R/H and H/G was ALL OVER the books from the very start, so it's not like she means (I assume) (but would probably stake some money on it if pressed) that she got to book five and went "Hmmm, what to do? Oh, why not Hermione and Ron" and is now regretting that decision and wishing she had picked the viable Harry/Hermione option instead.

Also if she ever published a book of "things I didn't write but thought about, or never mentioned but did the backstory on" I would buy it in a heartbeat. So...keep talking, JRK?

HOWDY STRANGER. DID YOU KNOW THAT REMIX IS ON? YOU WANT TO PARTICIPATE DON'T YOU? OH MY GOSH I MISS YOU.

It's funny, I just saw a post speculating that this was all faked and trolling.

Oh yes, I am interested in what authors have to say about their works and how they created them and how they changed over time -- over on my LJ there's some good discussion of that. BUT in this case, there was a lot of trashing of people at the time that's not cool. (I feel so heretical, I do. It's not natural for me to criticize like this because I did so enjoy the books and still do).

HI!! IT'S BEEN SO LONG, oh is it? Going to have to check it out! Going to try to stop lurking and post for real this year.

I wonder about that! Or at least much more sensationalized than it is?

Was there? I'll be honest, I was pretty young at the time the shipping wars were at their height, I missed a lot. I think if that's true than that maybe makes things harder. :( I still want all her tidbits though! :/

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Harry Potter and author's remorse

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This is from Nancy

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