JKR is my soulmate, or why Jo is so very busted.

[rj_anderson]

I love JKR madly. I really do. Especially for this (which is not a book spoiler, so I feel no guilt about not lj-cutting it):

I have no spare time at all. [Laughter]. When I’m not writing or looking after the children, I read and sleep. To be totally honest with you, at the moment sleeping is probably my very favourite thing in the world to do.

Comments

[rj_anderson]

Heh, you know, I can just about see that -- Jill/Tirian, I mean. He does flatter her rather, doesn't he?

And thank you!

[neotoma]

I think that JKR frustrates some of her adult readers by not admitting nuance -- that Snape (and other 'bad' characters, like Lucius Malfoy, who somehow seems to be the only parent taking an active interest in his son's education) does have good qualities and that Dumbledore (and Lupin -- excellent at teaching, bad at responsibility) have bad qualities

[chresimos]

I think that JKR frustrates some of her adult readers by not admitting nuance -- that Snape does have good qualities and that Dumbledore have bad qualities.

You know, a lot of people say this, but I really don't think that's how she thinks about her characters. Dumbledore was definitely showing cracks in OotP, she's said that Lupin's problem is his lack of courage in standing up to his friends...we are clearly supposed to regard Snape as a good guy, and she has her characters *say* that Hagrid is a bad teacher. Maybe with...Draco, and some other characters, she intended them to be completely flat, but the books should speak for themselves on the subject of character nuance? I can't believe her not 'admitting' it in interviews means all that other stuff was just a blunder.

[bookaholicgirl]

I never really thought about it when younger, but I suppose I subconsciously shipped Jill/Eustace. :)

[sannalim]

ICON!!!

Blueberries for Sal is one of my favouritest picture books ever.

Jill/Eustace

[cepage]

I've always been a firm believer in the Jill/Eustace ship...but it's hard to think romantically about Narnia, isn't it? I reread the series this summer for the first time since 3rd grade, and I was amazed at how deep and theological the books really are. It seems almost blasphemous to take something like Narnia and trying to twist the characters into regular fairy-tale romance (regular? well, probably not). Somehow I think Aslan would not approve...afterall, it's not my story to tell.

But I do love the Snape portrayed in fanfic. *sigh* Too bad he's a snarky beast in the books still.

Re: Jill/Eustace

[rj_anderson]

Well, part of it may be that C.S. Lewis admitted to having a "horror" of "anything resembling a quasi love affair between two children", so he didn't exactly slather on the UST where these things were concerned.

On the other hand, he freely admitted that such "romances" do happen sometimes in real life, and that his dislike of the idea was more based on an emotional trauma from his own youth (though he didn't go into specifics about that) than anything more concrete.

So I think that if we could quiz CSL about the idea of Jill/Eustace fic, he would probably say that it wouldn't exactly be wrong to write such a story provided it was a chaste sort of romance appropriate for their age (something like Meg/Calvin in A Wrinkle in Time, for instance), but for his part he'd rather not read the result. :)

[meril]

I don't blame her, really, when she thinks about her child fans. But there are times where I want to send her a copy of Use of Weapons, point her at alt.books.iain-banks and the Google Groups archives (specifically Rich Puchalsky's analysis posts) and then see what she thinks about fans of morally ambiguous characters.

Then again, Iain Banks's novels aren't usually read by 12-year-olds. (And heh, he had a reading at Edinburgh this year too. As he does almost every year, but that's besides the point.)

It seems like Rowling is bothered by adult fans of her works. I don't know why I get that impression, but it keeps coming up every time I see her interacting with the public.