Toerning

Hey thanks for the ask- I can tell Harry Potter or at least JK Rowling means a lot to you and I totally sympathize- I get pretty worked up too!  But I’ve had a half a bottle of wine tonight so here goes.

I think some unintentional feminism got projected onto my writings about Hermione and JK Rowling’s plot habits because feminism is such a hot topic on Tumblr- not that I’m not a feminist, but it’s not a conversation into which I feel the need to inject myself. 

My complaints about Hermione and the ending of the Harry Potter books are almost entirely about plot, with a little added awareness that maybe JK Rowling could stand to beef up some of her side female characters.  Mostly though, I just have a problem when the stories I read/watch/whatever discredit the emotional journey I’ve just been through, which is what I felt happened with the epilogue.

You’re right that my personal feelings weigh heavily into…my feelings?  I mean yeah, of course, what else is there?  But they’re just my feelings.  They’re not gospel, and also they’re bologna.  It’s just a reaction of my emotional life thus far against a work of fiction that happens to mean a lot to me.  I’m fine with that.  I’m sorry if it’s like hard for you or something but dude…it’s just my feelings.

p.s. I’m sure I’m not the first to say this but I feel like accusations of immaturity and anonymous asks might be mutually exclusive, so please don’t mind if I forget about your apparent outrage in approximately 23 seconds.

Hey, thanks for being so nice about a difference of opinion.  I’m rather shocked by some of the stuff that’s floating around right now haha.  You’re right that my comment is bigger than this snippet of interview, and would be unjustified if it were only based on her recent comment, but there’s actually a lot more to it and it’s a frustration that I’ve had for a really long time. 

A lot of it has to do with the ending of the series, and my own personal feelings about her portrayal of “happy couples”: met at school, got married immediately afterwards, and started popping out kids ASAP.  Lily and James, Molly and Arthur, and basically the whole next generation.  It seemed to me that her focus on this conventional pattern was wish-fulfilling to a distracting point.  She was so focused on having everyone do the same family act that she forgot to ask: what would these characters actually DO now?  She wrote a lot of exceptional characters, and then sort of threw all their complexities out the window by squeezing them all into the same version of her personal favorite scenario, and that made me feel really betrayed and sad. 

I thought it was interesting that in the snippet of interview, JK mentioned that the Ron/Hermione relationship she wrote at the time was a form of wish-fulfillment.  Well, I think any of us could have told you that, but I also think that what she feels NOW, with this Harry/Hermione thing, is also wish-fulfillment.  She was a very different person when she started the series— she has a different life and a different partner and a different marriage.  I respect that her feelings have changed, and probably she’s done a lot of healing from whatever experience she felt she needed to wish-fulfill using Ron and Hermione.  But I do also think that this is a persistent concern of hers that strains the believability of the characters she writes.

That’s…a lot.  These are just my feelings, and they are many, haha.  I will always have immense love and respect for JK Rowling and her Harry Potter world.  These are beliefs I’ve held for a long time leading up to this interview.