JKR on the H/R Ship

[rhetoretician]

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...

Comments

[sherylyn]

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!

Another LJ friend summed up a lot of my thoughts well, too. I'm summarizing, but she basically said that, if JKR were writing the books now, for the first time, she might do things differently, b/c she's learned things about writing, etc., over the years. 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. In a way, it's not as if she's saying that canon!-Harry, -Ron and -Hermione should be changing partners, etc., but *a different version* of them *could* be paired differently. And IMO, she'd have had to change a lot more than the "main" 3-4 characters, b/c there are so many other interconnections that would change as the main characters were changed.

I've always enjoyed Jo's interviews, etc., b/c she's so honest about what she thinks of the books, etc., etc. But this one time, I wish she'd either kept her mouth shut and/or *written down* her thoughts in a way that would explain things more coherently, b/c this just seems (to a lot of people who I've read) like it's a (1) slam against Ron in a lot of ways (he's not "good enough" for Hermione), (2) that Hermione is somehow the "prize" between Ron and Harry, (3) that Hermione has to have someone "make" her happy, and (4) that therapy is a bad thing. Personally, IMO, if you start bringing in the "reality" of therapy, you'd have to assume that the majority of Hogwarts students and probably a lot of other people in the wizarding world would need serious therapy after the events of the War. :-P

Granted, I'm sure the complete interview explains a lot of things that these snippets can't do justice, but really it's just... ARGH!!

[madderbrad]

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.

I think what we got in the HP canon was a 'hybrid' of sorts ... it started out with Rowling's original plan, then the characters got away from her. She shoehorned them back into her original storyline, romantically speaking, with book 6, but the poor fit can be seen. By Rowling herself, it appears; it took her this long for her original mental vision to fade and let her see the words she wrote in a new light, the way a lot of readers did, but she got there in the end. :-)

Fascinating to think what a 'new edition' of HP would be like. We sort of got that with the films, they were making heaps of canon corrections by the end. A television series or cartoon must surely be proposed one day, it'll be interesting to see what they do with that.