Post-Wonderland Interview: Both sides of the shipping debates are winners

An open letter to the Harry Potter fandom:

The full Wonderland interview conducted by actress Emma Watson with J.K. Rowling has been published and its contents can be read on various websites including Hypable.  This was published a week after a teaser article in The Sunday Times had the eye grabbing headline of:

JK admits Harry should have wed Hermione

This set off a firestorm in the Harry Potter fandom as more and more news outlets worldwide reprinted the conclusions of that Sunday Times article.

Did J.K. Rowling actually use the term "regret" anywhere in that interview? No, she did not.

Is it a fair conclusion that her comments in that interview indicate that she now regrets pairing her characters Ron and Hermione together? Yes, it is.

During the interview, Emma asked Jo Rowling if she had a new perspective on Hermione. It was an open-ended question, one where Rowling could have gone in a myriad of directions, and she chose to bring up the romantic pairing of Hermione with Ron. She said their relationship was written as "wish fulfillment," she was "clinging to the plot as I first imagined it" and the choice was made for "very personal reasons, not for reasons of credibility."

Ouch.

That implies that the Ron/Hermione relationship is not credible.

Rowling went on further to say that there was too much "fundamental incompatibility" and that "in some ways Harry and Hermione are a better fit".

Those phrases are what I think led to Claudia Croft's conclusions in the Sunday Times article that Jo Rowling admitted she should have paired Hermione with Harry.

Rowling and Watson had seemed a bit nervous once the discussion dealt with incompatibility of Hermione and Ron. 

Jo then said,

"I know, I'm sorry, I can hear the rage and fury it might cause some fans, but if I'm absolutely honest, distance has given me perspective on that. It was a choice I made for very personal reasons, not for reasons of credibility. Am I breaking people's hearts by saying this? I hope not."

and

"I can't believe we are saying all of this – this is Potter heresy!"

Jo and Emma went on to discuss the tent scene in Deathly Hallows:

JKR: ...I'll tell you something very strange. When I wrote Hallows, I felt this quite strongly when I had Hermione and Harry together in the tent! I hadn't told [Steve] Kloves that and when he wrote the script he felt exactly the same thing at exactly the same point.Emma: That is just so interesting because when I was doing the scene I said to David [Heyman]: "This isn't in the book, she didn't write this". I'm not sure I am comfortable insinuating something however subtle it is!JKR: Yes, but David and Steve – they felt what I felt when writing it.
Emma: That is so strange.
JKR: And actually I liked that scene in the film, because it was articulating something I hadn't said but I had felt. I really liked it and I thought that it was right. I think you do feel the ghost of what could have been in that scene.

At the end of Watson's interview, Rowling attempted backtracking by saying that perhaps Ron and Hermione would "be alright with a bit of counseling."

Wow. Now that's a ringing endorsement.

They also discussed Ron's self esteem issues and Hermione's "weakness for a funny man."

This allows a shadow of a fig leaf for the Ron/Hermione shippers to cover themselves and feel confident after having the author and the actress who portrayed Hermione in the films discuss the romantic pairing in unflattering terms. Jo did not come out and say "I should have written things differently" nor did she say "I am thinking of re-writing the last book with an alternate ending." Therefore, we can assume she was just being honest in an interview, but does not currently plan on changing anything.

The websites for Mugglenet and The Leaky Cauldron were quick to provide their own interpretation of the full interview in an attempt to reassure nervous Ron/Hermione shippers that there was nothing to worry about. 

Mugglenet gave the headline "The TRUTH behind the J.K. Rowling 'Wonderland' interview."

With this as their end analysis:

"WHAT DOES IT ALL MEAN? Well, in our view, all J.K. Rowling has admitted was to feeling that the scene in the tent was a shared vulnerable moment between two characters that revealed an intriguing degree of compatibility between each of them, emotionally. In saying that Ron needed to get over his self-doubt, Rowling is mentioning a key component that readers would agree could certainly cause some trouble in an adult relationship. However, by the article's end, Rowling and Watson have both found a value in Ron that Harry doesn't possess: Ron's humor and his ability to level Hermione's character. Thus, for all of this talk, the result is that the characters end up safely nestled where they were before, inside the canon of the Potter books."

Similarly The Leaky Cauldron's article was titled: "Full 'Wonderland' Interview Reveals Ron/Hermione Shippers Can Relax."

"The full text of the Wonderland issue that caused a Ron/Hermione vs. Harry/Hermione shipping riot this week is now out, and rumors of the death of the canon pairing have been greatly exaggerated. J.K. Rowling repeats previously made comments that there are certain characteristics between Harry and Hermione that may have them better suited, but does not indicate a wish to pair them off or any regret over how she wrote the books. Emma Watson and J.K. Rowling simply discuss the hypothetical post-Hogwarts world and what Ron and Hermione's relationship might have looked like."Rowling said that regardless of their issues, Ron and Hermione "would probably be fine."

 and 

An excerpt of the interview published in The Sunday Times on Feb. 1 caused a controversy when Rowling said she "wrote the Hermione/Ron relationship as a form of wish fulfillment.""For reasons that have very little to do with literature and far more to do with me clinging to the plot as I first imagined it, Hermione ended up with Ron," Rowling said.Many fans took this to mean that Rowling had changed her mind and would have preferred Harry and Hermione as a pairing. It resulted in shipping wars intense enough to give some of us flashbacks to 2005."

I have a little quibble with that analysis, and will cite in part a subsequent interview Melissa Anelli had with Jo Rowling that was published in her book Harry, a History. 

"I tried very hard to soften it, I suppose," Jo said. "Just because someone had a view on Harry/Hermione didn't mean they weren't genuine, or that they were necessarily misguided...Steve Kloves...after he read book seven he said to me, 'You know, I thought something was going to happen between Harry and Hermione, and I didn't know whether I wanted it to or not.'...There are two moments when [Harry and Hermione] touch, which are charged moments. One, when she touches his hair as he sits on the hilltop after reading about Dumbledore and Grindlewald, and [two] the moment when they walk out of the graveyard with their arms around each other...

"Now, the fact is that Hermione shares moments with Harry that Ron will never be able to participate in. He walked out. She shared something very intense with Harry.

"So, I think it could have gone that way."(snipped for length)

The difference is that Jo Rowling pointed out two different scenes to Melissa that she felt were charged H/Hr moments and neither were the tent scene that she discussed with Emma Watson. Jo Rowling has now admitted three separate charged moments in book 7 where Harry and Hermione were pulled to one another. That means that the Wonderland interview wasn't just repeating previous comments, but instead it represents an extension and revision to her previous remarks on the subject where she concluded "it could have gone that way."

I now want to analyze the major differences between the 2014 interview and the one in 2005 performed by those two websites Mugglenet and The Leaky Cauldron. Emma Watson's interview was civil and polite. Jo Rowling was candid and was not in an atmosphere colored by partisan fandom politics. Watson is without vested interest in making herself seem "right" and others be "wrong." Back in 2005, Emerson Spartz and Melissa Anelli were hand selected by Jo Rowling to be representatives of the Harry Potter fandom and to ask her questions after the publication of her sixth novel Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.

That interview caused a lot of heartache for fans of the series. Here is a link to my analysis of that online interview and why I felt insulted by it.

While I did not appreciate being called delusional, the biggest insult for me was being told by Jo Rowling to go back and re-read the books because I must have missed clues. I hadn't missed clues, I had studied the text so well I was seeing sub-text and evaluating clues that weren't intended by the author to be clues.

That off-hand remark made me step away from the fandom that I had enjoyed for several years, and I have only read the sixth and seventh book once whereas the first five books I know forward and backward.

After reading that 2005 interview where Jo Rowling categorically stated she was going to write Harry/Ginny and Ron/Hermione as the love pairings in Book 7, I wrote my concession messages on a few boards. I also abandoned the writing project I had been working on which was detailing the arguments used in the Harry Potter Shipping Wars. I was partnered with a R/Hr and H/G friend, who had served as a beta reader for my novel length fifth year fanfic. We were putting the common arguments into a manner that was easy to navigate for newbies while trying to make it as free of invective as possible. The project was rendered moot not by the content of the sixth or seventh book, but by an interview.

The aspect that bothered me the most was the tone of that interview and how it made the author look bad. I feel J.K. Rowling was done a disservice by the fandom representatives she chose. They knew that shipping was the most controversial and divisive issue in the fandom. They could have tried to make peace in the fandom by trying to metaphorically put baking soda on a stove-top fire, instead they threw gasoline on it and watched the flames scorch the ceiling.

Four years after that interview I was a speaker at the Azkatraz convention held in San Francisco. I live in Northern California so getting to San Francisco is a day trip. I decided to dip my feet once again in fandom waters, if for no other reason than to meet up with some friends I hadn't seen in a few years. 
A few days before the symposium, I sent a message to Melissa Anelli and asked to meet with her. I wanted to give her my thoughts in person about that controversial interview.

I wasn't just a random run of the mill Harry/Hermione shipper asking the webmaster of a major Harry Potter fansite for a few minutes of her time. No, she knew who I was and we had met, albeit briefly, at the first HP symposium in Orlando in 2003. I had participated in a live ship debate and was the second chair of the Harry/Hermione side. She even mentioned me in her book.

Here I am giving a speech at the 2003 Nimbus Symposium supporting the Harry/Hermione ship.

I honestly thought I would have only about ten minutes (at most!) to tell her my thoughts on the matter, that she would nod, listen and then make me feel as if I had been heard. I was surprised when she engaged with me on the topic. We talked for about an hour and I felt at the end that nothing I said could make her recognize how her actions as a R/Hr partisan in the interview did not serve the needs of the fandom as a whole, and especially how hurtful it was reading her editorial comments inserted into the text such as: [All laugh; Melissa doubles over, hysterical, and may have died.] 

I felt that they were laughing at the expense of others. It was akin to gloating or spiking the football and doing a dance in the end zone.

She was a professional journalist and I had expected more from her. I had expected her to be an ambassador from the whole fandom and not as a partisan shipper. I compared it to reporters covering political candidates and trying to keep their personal political opinions out of their news coverage, unless they are writing editorials.

She did not like that analogy because she thought the difference was reporters inserting their opinions in electoral politics might have an impact on elections and that her interview covered fiction and what had been written. So it wasn't going to influence anything. Therefore, yes she had her opinions and to not mention them in the transcript would have been dishonest.

She considered the transcript she compiled as an accurate chronicle of the interview, and Jo Rowling approved the transcript before it went online. Therefore it was fine. She also felt that it wouldn't have mattered what was said because Harry/Hermione shippers were going to be mad because their side lost. I disagree with that opinion. I was mentally prepared prior to the 2005 interview to be told by JKR that she was planning on the R/Hr and H/G pairings, but I was not prepared to have my shipmates ridiculed in the manner that we were. 

My conversation with Melissa was cordial, and we left on good terms, but I continue to feel that Jo Rowling would have been better served if she had chosen different fandom ambassadors for such an important interview. 

Here is proof that we spoke at that conference.

Me and Melissa Anelli after we spoke at Azkatraz in San Francisco, July 2009.

Now, nine years later after the interview by The Leaky Cauldron and Mugglenet, we have the same fandom members who interviewed JKR in 2005 having found themselves in the uncomfortable and unexpected position as to worrying for a few days about what Jo Rowling said in an interview regarding shipping and whether or not she has changed her mind. After the full interview was made public, they have chosen to only focus on certain aspects of it and try to minimize or ignore others. 
It now appears JKR recognizes and acknowledges that the Harry/Hermione pairing had canon support and possibly, quite possibly, could have been a better fit for her heroine.

Yes, in the full Wonderland interview, Jo refers to Hermione as her heroine.

"I know that Hermione is incredibly recognisable to a lot of readers and yet you don't see a lot of Hermiones in film or on TV except to be laughed at. I mean that the intense, clever, in some ways not terribly self-aware, girl is rarely the heroine and I really wanted her to be the heroine."

Hermione was not referred to as a side-kick or as a best friend, but the heroine of the series. Pairing the hero and the heroine of a series is not an unusual or delusional pairing by any means.

I would like to see, nine years after the interview that caused so many hard feelings in the fandom, a joint statement of recognition written by someone on the staff of The Leaky Cauldron and/or Mugglenet. I would like it to read something like this:

"We recognize that Harry/Hermione shippers are loyal fans in the Harry Potter fandom who have provided spirited support for their ship before and after the publication of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.  Now, seven years after the publication of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Jo Rowling admits she might have followed another direction if she followed her muse, but she stuck with her original plot line. So recognizing that we were all right in some aspects of this series, we should put aside our differences and embrace our common interests, namely our love of the Potterverse. Those who prefer H/Hr might be inspired by this latest interview to write more fanfic with their favorite ship, and we shall hopefully put this divisive topic behind us. We want to take this opportunity to apologize if our celebratory actions in 2005 made you feel alienated from the larger fandom."

Instead it seems both websites' analysis of the full Wonderland interview was designed more to maintain the position that the only thing that matters is the Ron/Hermione ship sailed and the Harry/Hermione ship sank. I do not think it would hurt their credibility in the full fandom to show a little respect for those with an alternate point of view and say, "as it turns out, your opinion had some merit."

 In the grand scheme of world and life events, betting on the wrong couple in the Hogwarts Love Sweepstakes isn't a catastrophe. It is good however, when people can be civil with one another. We should not be casting aspersions about people's intellect or morality because they came up with a different interpretation while reading literature. Especially when those romantic pairings are validated by the author. Ron/Hermione and Harry/Ginny were what J.K. Rowling planned and wrote. Now that J.K. Rowling has had time to reflect on her series, it appears that Harry/Hermione might be what she wishes she had written. That means both sides of the most divisive topic in the fandom can claim to have merit to their position.

My last point, in 2012, J.K. Rowling was quoted as saying that she would like to go back and re-write two of her books.  Imagine if she were to really regret pairing Ron and Hermione, she might decide to change more than just syntax and sentence structure to please her inner critic. I'm sure Bloomsbury and Scholastic would be willing to have new releases in the HP franchise and bookstores would love to have the Harry Potter money pipeline turned back on as well. Should she choose to change her romantic pairings then the H/Hr shippers wouldn't just have to settle for alternate universe fanfics, it could actually be "new canon."
I asked my teenaged son if he would be interested in reading a new Harry Potter book if it was re-written by J.K. Rowling. Without hesitation he replied, "Hells yeah!" I imagine that there would be many fans of the series who would also be interested in buying any new canon if it were written and published.

So please R/Hr shippers, take this opportunity to make peace with us, since we all profess to love the series and we can all claim to have support by the author. In other words: both sides won.

After the Nimbus live ship debate, the two ships were smiling for the camera. 
Proof that we can all get along.

Sincerely,

Linda C. McCabe AKA Pallas Athena (or just Athena)

Second chair for the Harry/Hermione ship debate in Nimbus 2003.

Yeah, eleven years ago I debated this subject in person in front of a ballroom full of people!
Author of the First Readers' Choice Award on Portkey.org for the novel length fifth year fic, Secrets, Lies and the Daily Prophet as well as a few H/Hr themed short stories.
Author of an epic historic fantasy set in the time of Charlemagne, Quest of the Warrior Maiden, including flying hippogriffs. Yes, it was inspired during my ship debating research days.

http://lcmccabe.blogspot.com/2014/02/post-wonderland-interview-both-sides-of.html

J.K. Rowling, belated Harry/Hermione shipper

My friend John Granger clued me into a story about an interview with J.K. Rowling and how these revelations are burning up the internet and being posted and re-posted as news.

Now, I readily admit that this story isn't hard news.   It does not impact the world economy, ameliorate climate change or make any movement toward establishing world peace.

Nope. It is simply a human interest story, and there is a lot of interest in it. I believe this story is more important than detailing the legal troubles of Justin Bieber (My thoughts: deport Bieber) or anything having to do with anyone with the last name of Kardashian.

I feel this story about an author's change of heart in regard to the romantic pairings of her fictional characters *is* newsworthy, if for no other reason than due to the sheer popularity of the series.

The Harry Potter series is one of the most popular series in literature with millions of copies sold worldwide in many different languages. (I don't even want to take the time to verify what the current numbers are, but I know it is mind boggling how many copies sold which made her a billionaire.)

The series served as a refuge and escape for me back in the early 2000s. I began reading the Harry Potter novels in November of 2001 at the time that the first movie was released. I was impressed by the intricate world and bizarre cast of characters in the Potterverse.

I read the first four novels in a short span of time, then began re-reading them and then searching the internet to find out more information. That is when I discovered the online fandom.

The attacks on September 11, 2001 were recent and I found news from the real world to be painful and hard to bear. It was a nice diversion from news about world terrorism to instead attempt to decipher clues with other adults in the Harry Potter series.

I became a member of the Harry Potter for Grown Ups (HPfGUs) list serv and engaged in discussions looking at the smallest turn of phrase that might be helpful in predicting where the series was going and which characters were EverSoEvil! or ESE! Literary criticism with other nerdz was fun. I enjoyed reading wild and inventive theories and spinning my own with others who loved the series as much as I did.

I started reading Harry Potter fan fiction and became inspired to try my own hand at writing in order to flesh out my own wacky theories. It was in the process of writing my fifth year fic that I started really questioning the characters' motivations and I came to believe that Hermione was in love with Harry. That she was devoted to him, but knew he didn't feel the same way about her. So she kept her feelings to herself lest he begin to feel uncomfortable about her hanging around him all the time. "Eww, I don't like you in that way. I want to just be friends, but..."

She might get frozen out of being a part of the Trio and then it would just be Harry and Ron on the grand adventures.

So Hermione loved Harry, but kept her feelings close to her vest. That's what I thought. That's what I wrote and had a fic where at the end of the fifth year the two characters became a couple.

After finishing my fic, I began posting on the HPfGUs list serv again. This time I posted my thoughts on shipping. I made what I thought was a simple post about Hermione and Krum showing how it was pro Harry/Hermione or H/Hr. That post wound up being noticed by other shippers and after a request to reprint portions of my post on a debate thread on FictionAlley.org, I found myself being lured into the great H/Hr vs. Ron/Hermione (R/Hr) shipping debate.

Later, I wound up participating in the only live H/Hr and R/Hr shipping debate which was held at the first Harry Potter Symposium in Orlando, Florida in 2003.

The Shipping Debates were a big deal. JKR didn't know it at the time, she learned about it later. She was shaken by the intensity of the arguments when she stumbled upon the online debate threads.

Then she toyed with the fandom by making posts on her website that mentioned shipping and teased her fans about it. Then after the publication of the sixth book she invited two well known people from the fandom to interview her. That was when she unequivocally stated that the romantic pairings were Harry/Ginny and Ron/Hermione. The tone of that interview was not what I had hoped. There was laughter and mirth about the shipping choices and the word "delusional" was used to describe Harry/Hermione shippers. My full thoughts on that interview as well as quotes from JKR on her website about shipping can be found here. 

 (JKR's website has been revamped and those shipping quotes from 2006 and 2007 are no longer online, but they are in my blog post.)


The last volume was published in 2007 and many of her new fans have no idea of the debates that raged when the series was incomplete.

Therefore, as a recovering Harry Potter fandom addict, I welcomed learning that J.K. Rowling now feels that Hermione should have been paired with Harry Potter over Ron Weasley. Check out these quotes:

"I wrote the Hermione/Ron relationship as a form of wish fulfillment. That's how it was conceived, really," Rowling says in the interview. "For reasons that have very little to do with literature and far more to do with me clinging to the plot as I first imagined it, Hermione ended up with Ron."

"I know, I'm sorry," she adds. "I can hear the rage and fury it might cause some fans, but if I'm absolutely honest, distance has given me perspective on that. It was a choice I made for very personal reasons, not for reasons of credibility. Am I breaking people's hearts by saying this? I hope not."

Those quotes make me feel that I and my shipmates did not deserve being called "delusional."

Rowling also says that Ron and Hermione would have needed “relationship counseling.” 

Counseling. Ron and Hermione would have needed counseling.

Sigh.

Yeah. I didn't think the manner in which Ron taunted Hermione showed a depth of compassion, but instead a manner of trying to control her.

I wrote a post which detailed my dislike of this relationship and described how unhealthy I thought it would be due to Ron's underlying disrespect for Hermione. It reminded me of emotionally abusive relationships.

It was my reaction to the text and explaining why I did not need to see quotes from the books repeated on the bulletin boards again. I knew them, I had read them, and having someone reiterate the same points wouldn't make me stop and go "You're right. There is something's going on there." I could tell that Ron was possessive toward Hermione, but I didn't see that she had a similar interest in him. Instead the possessiveness and cutting insults (including Hermione's insults toward Ron) made me feel uncomfortable if a romantic relationship came from that dynamic.

My post became known as the Abusive!Ron theory, but it wasn't a theory at all. It was a lengthy discussion about my response to the interactions between Ron and Hermione in the text and why I thought it would be unhealthy basis of a romantic relationship if Ron didn't change his behavior toward her.

I felt that the politics of house-elves best demonstrated the problem of the Ron/Hermione relationship. I had also written an extensive post on the politics of house-elves and why Ron needed to change his underlying attitude toward the oppressed magical species or there would never be a chance for Ron and Hermione to be a successful couple.

As it turned out, Ron and Hermione finally became a couple when Ron made a mention in the thick of defending Hogwarts Castle by mentioning the welfare of the elves at the end of Book 7.

That plot point helped me feel somewhat vindicated, but these articles showing teaser quotes from the full interview (and I will want to read the full interview!), makes me feel even better.

Yes, I will admit there were anvil-sized clues pointing to R/Hr in the series, but I was a careful reader and saw subtle hints to Hermione caring for Harry. Maybe it was JKR's subconscious inclusion of the Harry/Hermione loyalty dynamic that led me to think H/Hr was a better romantic fit.

The problem was H/Hr went against JKR's the planned symbolic following of literary alchemical formulas.  Here is where we go deep into symbolism, and I credit John Granger's numerous writings on literary alchemy:

Ron represented elemental sulfur and Hermione represented mercury. Both are necessary in creating gold through alchemy. 


Yeah, I know how weird that sounds, but that was what JKR was doing. Harry's girlfriends had the following hair colors: black (Cho), white (one date with Luna), then red (Ginny) which correspond with three stages of alchemy: nigredo, albedo, rubedo. There was no room for a brown haired girl for Harry. Yet JKR subconsciously wrote Harry/Hermione as a relationship based on trust, loyalty and devotion. I was hoping that Jo while using alchemy as her underlying plot structure would not feel totally constrained to have follow it completely. I was hoping she might alter it to fit her own dramatic needs and have Harry/Hermione as the final romantic pairing and not Harry/Ginny with Ron/Hermione.

Now in retrospect, she is looking back at her story and the characters as they evolved during her story telling and she admits that Harry/Hermione would have been a better way to go!

It would have been emotionally satisfying to have her hero become romantically involved with his best friend who had been by his side from the beginning of his magical adventure, but it would have made Ron and Ginny jealous. There would have been a big love triangle within the Trio, and many, many Ron/Hermione shippers simply couldn't bear to think of Harry hurting Ron in that manner.

Yeah, and Jo thought of killing Ron. 

Had she done that, I think Ginny as a romantic partner for Harry would have disappeared altogether.

Anyway, I feel vindicated by this admission by Jo Rowling. Perhaps the Ron/Hermione shippers who gloated when they did their victory lap might remember some of the arguments that I and my shipmates posted years ago and consider we weren't  as wrong, wrong, WRONG as they thought we were at the time.

Feel free to let me know your thoughts on this human interest story.

Thanks,

Linda AKA Pallas Athena

http://lcmccabe.blogspot.com/2014/02/jk-rowling-belated-harryhermione-shipper.html

The Harry Potter Lexicon Decision

The U.S. District Court Judge Robert P. Patterson issued his ruling in the case Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. et al vs. RDR Books et al. He ruled in favor of J.K. Rowling and against Steve Vander Ark in the matter of book The Harry Potter Lexicon going beyond fair use of copyrighted material and found that it infringed on Rowling's intellectual property rights.

The full 68 page decision can be read here.

I blogged about this case last year when the lawsuit was filed. In that post I was upfront saying that I had met Steve Vander Ark on two occasions and had corresponded with him a few times via email. I classified our relationship as acquaintances, but not as friends.

(I honestly do not think that I rank high enough on his radar screen to be considered as anything more than an acquaintance.)

In that post I had not taken any definitive side on the lawsuit because I felt that there was not enough public information on the case, I knew there was enough legal ambiguity on the issue of fair use and copyright law, and I did not want to take sides based on emotion or out of a sense of loyalty.

Now that the decision has been rendered, I still wish that RDR Books had responded in a more forthcoming manner when they were first contacted by the lawyers from Warner Brothers. For starters, I think they should have provided a copy of the manuscript for review.

If there could have been modifications made to the manuscript at that stage ameliorating objections from Rowling, then the book might have been published without the lawsuit being filed. However, that is a big, "What if?" and it is impossible to go back in time to reverse the events as they happened.

Here is the statement by Jo Rowling on the ruling that appears on Publisher's Weekly online:

“I took no pleasure at all in bringing legal action and am delighted that this issue has been resolved favourably,” said Rowling in a statement. “I went to court to uphold the right of authors everywhere to protect their own original work. The court has upheld that right. The proposed book took an enormous amount of my work and added virtually no original commentary of its own. Now the court has ordered that it must not be published. Many books have been published which offer original insights into the world of Harry Potter. The Lexicon just is not one of them.”

I take that to mean that as long as writers include sufficient original commentary and provide new insights on her series, she will probably not interfere with the publication of companion books.

That is good to know, because I have friends who have published books in the past analyzing the Harry Potter series and are working on future books as well.

I am referring to John Granger's work whose most recent books include How Harry Cast His Spell: The Meaning Behind the Mania for J. K. Rowling's Bestselling Books and The Deathly Hallows Lectures: The Hogwarts Professor Explains the Final Harry Potter Adventure.

I am confident that Rowling will not have a problem with any of Granger's companion titles for he definitely provides analysis and original insight to her work and -- while I may not always agree with his arguments -- his writings are always thought provoking.

The ruling against Vander Ark will stop the Harry Potter Lexicon from being published in book form, but he has another book about the Harry Potter series in the works. His other project is a travel guide for Potter fans. It will be titled: In Search of Harry Potter and has not yet been released.

The Guardian mentions the forthcoming book as:

The independent publisher describes the resulting book as an "extraordinary travel book" which "evokes the myths and magic of Harry Potter". Methuen managing director Peter Tummons said that at present, each chapter includes a "few words" taken from the Harry Potter books themselves. "We've asked for approval but I guess in the end we will probably delete them because it may not come, or be denied." The book is illustrated with Vander Ark's own photos.

I saw Vander Ark's presentation at Sonorus in 2007 and was impressed. He included photos he had taken in Scotland of where he surmised that Hogwarts was located. It even had a sign near a rural train station saying "Keep Out" which since we are only mere Muggles, we would see as opposed to a glorious castle.

I wish Steve well with this publishing venture and that the legal wrangling on these issues will be over for all the parties. I also hope that the fandom does not respond with venom toward anyone. I could not stomach reading many of the comments posted on various fansites that spewed vitriol mostly in the direction of Steve, but some was also directed toward Rowling.

They deserve better.


ETA: After I finished this post I heard a segment on National Public Radio's Talk of the Nation interviewing an intellectual property rights attorney discussing this case. The audio will be available later here.

The Vander Ark/Rowling Brouhaha

I feel as if I need to comment regarding the lawsuit filed by J.K. Rowling against Steve Vander Ark and RDR Books.

I feel obligated if for no other reason than I publicly lauded Mr. Vander Ark previously on this blog when I castigated the interview of Jo Rowling conducted in 2005 by Melissa Anelli and Emerson Spartz and suggested that Vander Ark would have been a better choice.

I think at this point I need to make a disclosure about my previous interactions with Steve.

I consider him to be an acquaintance, not a fandom friend. I doubt that he would disagree with that assessment.

I have fandom friends. Some I have met in person, others only via the warmth of email correspondence.

A few fandom friends I have met in person. I also have fandom acquaintances that I have met, but have not developed any sustained correspondences.

In all likelihood, Steve probably does not really know or care who I am.

My fandom credentials were based primarily in the shipping realm and that is a topic he did not care much about.

I've corresponded with him a few times over the past six years. It would have been intermittant and also not at any real length. I have also met him twice.

Once was at Nimbus when he gave a presentation with my friend Penny Linsenmayer on the Geography of Harry Potter and I introduced myself to him after the talk. The second was at Sonorus this past June when I introduced myself to him before the talk.

Our talks were brief and well, perfunctory. I did not reference our intermittant email exchanges, nor try to engage him in speculations.

He may or may not have even recognized my name since I am sure he has corresponded with thousands of fandomers, whilst I could probably claim a tenth or less of that number.

Okay? I know him, but not well.

He came across as being the consummate fan. He was devoted to the Potterverse and spent countless hours obsessing over the minutest detail.

In fact it is due to his wildly popular website that I first realized some of the discrepancies in the books. Small, seemingly insignificant details such as dates of events not meshing with calendars. Or even the whole Marcus Flint being a burly 6th Year Slytherin in the first book, and that Flint should not still have been at Hogwarts during the third book.

Hence the term "Flint" to describe canon mistakes or "inconsistencies."

Steve is a powerful public speaker and his slide show presentation at Sonorus was fabulous.

I was not surprised to learn that he wanted to write a book chronicling all the work he did analyzing the series. I think there is a market for his book.

I was surprised to learn that Jo Rowling sought to stop the publication of his book.

First of all, I do not believe that it will compete at all with any future definitive encyclopedic book on the Harry Potter series that she will write.

It cannot.

She said that she would provide backstory for characters that due to space and other plot considerations did not appear in the books.

I for one would love to know more, much more about Sirius Black. Forget Dumbledore's sexuality, I want to know about Sirius's sex life. I want to know if he was straight, gay, bi-, tri- or a monk. If she does that, I will certainly buy one more of her books.

I expect that she will include things in her tome that have been cut from the books due to editorial decisions. She had an "Easter Egg" on her website of a song she wrote for Nearly-Headless Nick that was cut from the book. She also included sketches she made of characters. Those are cool extras. Things that Steve Vander Ark in a million years could not create, because he is not the author of the Harry Potter series.

He is merely someone who has spent an inordinate amount of time analyzing the series and categorizing it.

The two are not the same.

Anyone who is a fan of the series that is willing to plunk down $30 for Steve's book will certainly be willing to purchase Jo's book once it is available.

That said, I have read the lawsuit that was filed and am a bit dismayed at the response by RDR books.

It appears by the various press coverage that they have not provided Rowling or her legal representatives with a manuscript of the forthcoming book.

I do not understand why they were unwilling to do so.

If they were as careful to not infringe on her intellectual property rights as they claim, then they should have nothing to hide.

I do not know if they consulted with intellectual property attornies during the pre-production of the book or not, but they should have.

Just because J.K. Rowling's publishers have not sued the publishers of other Harry Potter companion books in the past is no guarantee that they would not in the future. If you were to have great chunks of text in the book, I would expect that she would want to be compensated.

They should have had an eye towards that possibility.

If they did not, then they were ill advised on the project.

According to The Leaky Cauldron's coverage, the initial correspondence by the lawyers representing Warner Brothers issuing cease and desist letters to RDR Books constituted:
"an attempt to open a dialogue. "

There is also this summation of the position from RDR:

RDR claims not to have given JKR’s people a copy of the book because “we don’t have a copy to give them…because the book hasn’t been published yet.” Asked why they didn’t hand over a manuscript, Mr. Harris said, “how would it benefit us in any way? This is the result of a barrage of letters from their lawyers in the last two months. Late i the game they came forward and wanted to see the manuscript, after they’ve been threatening to sue us and everything. How is it going to help us in any way to show them the manuscript except to provide them with more information. At this stage are they going to say, ‘Oh, we’re sorry?’ and go away? I don’t think so.”

Excuse me, but if you have garnered the interest of WB's lawyers they will want to make sure that their legal rights have not been infringed. Prior or post publication if they do not like your book, they will probably sue.

Warner Brothers is a huge company, RDR Books is a small publisher. I would bet that WB is can afford to incure massive legal bills more than RDR Books.

Even if the judgment goes RDR's way and they are allowed to publish the book as is and without giving any monetary compensation to WB, there is no guarantee that any judge will obligate WB to pay RDR's legal bills.

I think RDR should have shown their manuscript to Warner Brothers' legal counsel and then made any modifications if that would have resolved the issue.

None of the approximately 30 companion books on the market received any permission from Jo Rowling, Scholastic, Bloomsbury, Raincoast, or Warner Brothers as far as I am aware. This is the first time that I believe she has sued to stop a companion book.

One other interesting thing to note is that there is another Harry Potter themed book that might be released on the same date of November 28th, 2007 that Steve Vander Ark's book is due out. This book actually has the word "encyclopedic" in its title:

Mugglenet.com's Unofficial Harry Potter Companion: The Encyclopedic Guide to the Books, Movies and More by Emerson Spartz and Ben Schoen.

However, then again that book might have been killed.

It is listed on Amazon.com, Amazon.ca, Amazon.co.uk. There are no cover images, but that is not an unusual thing for Amazon.com . I have seen forthcoming books that are due out in paperback that would have the same cover as the hardcover version not having an image shown on Amazon.

The Canadian site has a different availability date than the American or British websites. It says:
Availability: Currently unavailable. We don't know when or if this item will be back in stock.

More ominous is that the book is not mentioned anywhere on the publisher's website. One would think that since their best selling title was the previous Mugglenet.com's book that they would proudly be mentioning a follow up book by the same authors.

They aren't.

The only mention of an upcoming title for their teen category is Secret Book of Dragons due out in January 2008.

So it may be that Ulysses Press was contacted by JKR's lawyers and the project was scuttled.

If so, I'd like that to be part of the press coverage.

If on the other hand, the Mugglenet.com book comes out later this month and Ulysses Press worked with her lawyers to alleviate any concerns regarding her intellectual rights, then I think that should be discussed in the press coverage as well.

Moving on to a related topic:

The disputed timeline.

I remember after the DVD of Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets came out that there was a bit of elation in the fandom. Because we thought it settled the question of Hermione's age.

People were wondering (and debating) whether or not she was born in 1980 or 1981. Was she eleven years old when she started at Hogwarts on September 1st, 1991 or only ten?

There were a few canon clues, but none definitively answered that question.

Steve Vander Ark took the position that canon suggested 1981, but that 1980 could not be ruled out.

He put 1981 on his timeline on the Harry Potter Lexicon.

On the DVD extras, they had a timeline of the Wizarding world. It also said 1981.

Then again, according to Steve it was his timeline verbatim.

Supposedly, JKR signed off on the timeline and the fandom started to think that the question of Hermione's age was resolved.

Of course we now know that she was born in 1980. Otherwise Hermione would still have been an "underage witch" at the beginning of Deathly Hallows and that would have seriously impacted the plot.

Steve Vander Ark has sued Warner Brothers for taking his timeline for their DVDs without his permission. He is seeking compensation.

I do not know the dollar amount he is seeking.

Warner Brothers disputes his claim.

Frankly, without having access to all the primary documents, I believe that the likely scenario is someone at Warner Brothers was assigned to come up with some elements for CD-Rom for the DVD extras. These are things that would insure that fans actually purchase the official studio DVDs and not just buy pirated copies of the feature length films.

I can envision a twenty-something assigned the task who found Steve's website and decided it was cool and snagged it. Without even sending him a notice or asking for permission or even offering some money to him.

They could have offered him a few hundred bucks for the privilege, which would have probably been less than Warner Brothers' snack budget for a single day of filming. More importantly, I think Vander Ark would have been elated to have his name and website URL appear on a Warner Brothers DVD.

Instead, I believe this proverbial twenty-something just put that timeline in the in-box of their boss and the executives at Warner Brothers never knew its origins.

I do not believe that Warner Brothers knowingly violated his copyright. However, if one of their employees did the deed, I believe they are still legally responsible.

(Note: I am not a lawyer. This is simply my personal opinion and how I would come down if I were a juror and if the facts of the case were as I hypothesized.)

I look at the cover of Steve's book and I concur with the lawyers from Warner Brothers. There is not a prominent disclaimer on the front cover stating that this book is not endorsed by J.K. Rowling like the one by George Beahm. It could be considered as misleading by consumers. Then again, other companion books have not included such disclaimers on their front covers and she has not sued them.

Oooooh, I discovered another ominous sign. Steve's book is no longer listed on Amazon.com. I was going to reference his cover from there and could not find it. Not under his name, nor under the title.

It is still listed on Amazon.ca and Amazon.co.uk - both have the publication date as November 5th. I wonder if it will actually ship or if the lawsuit will halt its distribution in other countries.

If anyone in Canada or in the U.K. has ordered the book and gets it, please let me know. I am curious as to whether or not it will be blocked.

Overall, I find this whole affair to be dismaying.

I think the marketplace is large enough to accomodate a hard copy version of the online Harry Potter Lexicon that J.K. Rowling praised and an encyclopedic book by the author herself.

I also wish that the publisher for Steve Vander Ark had shown more professionalism in this matter.

Time will tell what happens in court, but it is not a happy day for the Harry Potter fandom-at-large or the publishing world.

Linda

J.K. Rowling talks, people listen...

I am going to pause from posting about my trip to France and weigh in ony my thoughts to recent remarks by J.K. Rowling.

So if you have come here to read about France you can find those posts here, posts about the business and craft of writing can be found here. If you are a fan of the Harry Potter series and have read all seven books - keep reading. Otherwise, back away now lest ye be spoiled.

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That should be enough blank space to prevent people from reading things they do not want to learn about prematurely.

J.K. Rowling is on a publicity tour of the U.S. and has revealed things about her completed series that she had been coy about before.

First revelation:

She spoke about her series having Christian themes.

"To me [the religious parallels have] always been obvious," she said. "But I never wanted to talk too openly about it because I thought it might show people who just wanted the story where we were going."

Yup, I knew that. I knew that shortly after joining the fandom and reading a post on HPfGU's regarding an article in The American Prospect which in turn had quoted from an article published in the Vancouver Sun. Here's that quote:

Is she a Christian?

''Yes, I am,'' she says. ''Which seems to offend the religious right far worse than if I said I thought there was no God. Every time I've been asked if I believe in God, I've said yes, because I do, but no one ever really has gone any more deeply into it than that, and I have to say that does suit me, because if I talk too freely about that I think the intelligent reader, whether 10 or 60, will be able to guess what's coming in the books.''

Seeing that quote led to my longfelt belief that Harry Potter would have to be willing to sacrifice himself for the good of the Wizarding world.

I knew he was going to die.

It was only after Book 5 and the mention of the permanently locked door (containing the Power of Love) that I started thinking that he might be Resurrected to Life.

My friend John Granger author of Looking for God in Harry Potter can run a victory lap around Harry-haters such as Richard Abanes who wrote books claiming that the books were a bad influence on children. The Harry Potter series is in fact a great influence for children because it is great storytelling and has had an incredible impact on literacy. So take that Mr. Abanes - you were wrong!

Second Revelation:

Dumbledore was gay.

Did Dumbledore, who believed in the prevailing power of love, ever fall in love himself?
JKR: My truthful answer to you... I always thought of Dumbledore as gay. [ovation.] ... Dumbledore fell in love with Grindelwald, and that that added to his horror when Grindelwald showed himself to be what he was. To an extent, do we say it excused Dumbledore a little more because falling in love can blind us to an extent? But, he met someone as brilliant as he was, and rather like Bellatrix he was very drawn to this brilliant person, and horribly, terribly let down by him. Yeah, that's how i always saw Dumbledore. In fact, recently I was in a script read through for the sixth film, and they had Dumbledore saying a line to Harry early in the script saying I knew a girl once, whose hair... [laughter]. I had to write a little note in the margin and slide it along to the scriptwriter, "Dumbledore's gay!" [laughter] "If I'd known it would make you so happy, I would have announced it years ago!"

Jo also said after revelation: "You needed something to keep you going for the next 10 years! ...Oh, my god, the fan fiction now, eh?"


My reaction: Hmmm, I missed the boat on that one. Of course, I had not spent much time contemplating Dumbledore's love life or lack thereof. The most was an inchoate idea that perhaps he and Minerva McGonagall had a covert relationship. I considered that they might be secretly married and for appearances sake, they kept it under wraps. Or they could have just been a couple but without marital ties. Guess I was wrong on that score.

Dumbledore was gay and had been in love with Gellert Grindelwald. That will stir up a lot of plot bunnies and I am sure that within a month Fiction Alley will be filled with fanfic dedicated to Dumbledore/Grindlewald scenes from their younger years as well as their infamous duel. Whether or not they were lovers at one time was not specifically stated by Rowling.

I am sure that relationship will be explored in a myriad of ways. It also adds another layer of meaning to the lines in book 7 in the Daily Prophet interview with Rita Skeeter (p. 26, Scholastic hardcover edition):

"Very dirty business indeed. All I'll say is don't be so sure that there really was the spectacular duel of legend. After they've read my book, people may be foreced to conclude that Grindelwald simply conjured a white handkerchief from the end of his wand and came quietly!"



I predict that there will also be Dumbledore/Doge fanfic soon flooding the internet.

Honestly, there were only three characters that I really considered as showing outwardly gay characteristics in the series.

First was Gilderoy Lockhart with his shocking pink robes, penchant for using peacock quills, and a stated fondness for the color lilac. Then again, possibly Lockhart only had eyes for himself. Ye old Lockhart/Lockhart ship.

Second was Professor Grubbly-Plank. With her pipe smoking ways and her brush cut, it seemed to be waving a rainbow colored flag to say, "she's a lesbian."

Third was Rita Skeeter. Although I cannot say exactly what her sexuality was - because the idea of Skeeter engaged in any sexual activity is not something I wish to consider at all. However, with her "thick fingers" "heavy-jawed face," "surprisingly strong grip"(all from page 303 Scholastic paperback edition) and "large mannish hands" (p. 307) I was led to believe "That's a man, baby!"

Now onto the last revelation which is actually more of J.K. Rowling's authorial intent which many articles seem to focus on the idea that Rowling announced that she married a man like Harry Potter.

Questions about love were also directed at Rowling herself. When asked by an 18-year-old 12th grader, "Which of the Potter characters would you marry?," Rowling giggled. "The truth is, in my younger days, I dated Ron more than once," she admitted, giving an inside look at why Hermione (the closest character to Rowling's younger self) might be attracted to Harry's best friend. "He's fun to write, but not so much fun to date." And once she had learned her lesson, Rowling said, "I married Harry Potter," referring to her second husband, Neil Murray. "He's up there [in the wings]. I just mortified him," she laughed. "But he looks like Harry would look like, at a certain age. I married a very good person and a gutsy person. And that's who Harry is."

Fans might think that's even more reason why Hermione should end up with Harry — but Rowling said she always knew that Ron and Hermione were meant to be together, just as she thought Harry and Ginny were meant to be together. "I thought it was obvious, but apparently there are Internet wars about this," she said. "And they get very vicious." Rowling said she was unaware of the shipping wars for years, until someone suggested she take a look at the fan sites. "It was scary!" So many readers wanted Hermione and Harry to be a couple, Rowling said, that "I got hate mail ... from adults! Not people your age. You at least understood."

And for those who didn't, she explained. "Harry and Ginny are real soul mates," she said. "They're both very strong and very passionate. That's their connection, and they're remarkable together. Ron and Hermione, however, are drawn to each other because they balance each other out. Hermione's got the sensitivity and maturity that's been left out of Ron, and Ron loosens up Hermione a bit, gets her to have some fun. They love each other and they bicker a bit, but they enjoy bickering, so we shouldn't worry about it."

Yup, the shipping wars got vicious.

I am sorry that she received hate mail from adults. I am. I wrote to her and tried to be as diplomatic and forthright as possible in explaining the phenomenon of shipping.

I do not know if she ever saw my letter.

However, she has her own part in fanning the flames of the situation and turning what she knew was a heated situation into an inferno. I am referring to the Interview From Hell that I wrote about previously. I will just reiterate that it is not advisable for authors to tease your fans and then insult them. I did not appreciate her telling fans like myself to go back and re-read her books because we must have missed things. I lost my enthusiasm for the series in one quick quip. I am now a recovering Harry Potter addict. I have not eschewed the series altogether, but I do not have the same interest or passion on the subject.

However, the larger issue for discussion here was that the shipping wars demonstrated the passion that she created between the fans of her books with those characters she created. However, it still does not appear that she truly understands the phenomenon. Even after all the letters she will have received.

:wipes brow:

It seems she still does not understand why many fans wanted to see her hero become romantically linked with his best friend. Hermione was the most fleshed out female character in the series and one that readers grew to love - bushy hair, bucked teeth, and all. Those readers who were bookish females (like myself) found themselves identifying with Hermione.

A large part of the debate centered on which boy - Harry or Ron - would be better suited for her. Or which one it appeared that she preferred.

I thought Harry was better for her. I also thought she was demonstrated a devotion to him bordering on obsession. I did not see that same level of commitment from Hermione towards Ron.

We also knew that Jo Rowling on many occasions said that she patterned Hermione's character after herself. So the idea that Jo dated a Ron-like person, but chose as her husbnad a Harry-like character is not unlike some of the shipping debate rounds.

Many of the shipping debate rounds.

I also wish to state for the record that one of the reasons I did not like the Ron/Hermione interactions in the books (at least the first five when I was ship debating) was due to the bickering.

It annoyed me.

I did not find it to be anything that I would consider to be bantering. Not at all. Sniping, barking, and snarling, yes. Playful banter? No.

The statement that "they enjoy bickering" is something I dislike intensely.

There are times that my husband and I bicker, but it is never something that I enjoy.

I dislike watching people bicker. My in-laws remind me at times of two chihuahuas barking at one another.

It is not the same as playful banter. Not at all.

Bantering is fun. It is pleasant to engage in and enjoyable to watch.

So Jo thinks they like to bicker. :shudders: If you say so Jo, you are the author afterall.

I must say however, that there was something in which I can say "I Was Right!"

I knew deep in my bones that in order for Hermione and Ron to be a couple that he would have to respect her political thoughts regarding house-elves. It was, in fact, my first post on the infamous H/Hr vs. R/Hr Debate Thread on Fiction Alley: The Politics of House-elves.

Feel free to read it. I had summed up my argument with:

(U)ntil Ron recognizes that he is propping up an unjust system he cannot be someone that I think would be romantically suited for Hermione.

and


Ron needs to See The Light. Until he does, I can’t see any future with him and Hermione.

I felt really good when Ron and Hermione's first full on kiss on the mouth was after Ron said that they should make sure that the house-elves were safe from the final battle. At that point Hermione gave him a bone-crushing hug and smooch.

Huzzah!

I was right about that. He evolved as a character to the point where his political opinions matched hers.

I may have been wrong on other accounts in where the books were going, but I knew some things.

I knew they were based on Christian and Alchemical themes.

I knew Harry had to be willing to sacrifice himself.

I also knew that in order for Ron and Hermione to be a romantic couple they would have to see eye-to-eye on The Politics of House-Elves.

I pounded on that subject time and time again. That it all came down to politics.

And I was right. :-)

Linda

The Interview From Hell

I promised that I would discuss my reaction to the transcript of an interview Jo Rowling
gave back in 2005 to two members of the online Harry Potter fandom. I will do that, but first I’d like to put it into a broader discussion of reader expectations and authors disappointing their fans.

J.A. Konrath has a marvelous blog for writers which informs and inspires. Last December he wrote a post Reader Expectations regarding the one author who had influenced and inspired him the most. He wrote about Thomas Harris and how utterly disappointed he was with the novel Hannibal.

Konrath wrote that post as a fan and as a fellow writer. The discussion in the comment trail was fascinating for it brought out many writers, published and unpublished, who have different thoughts on the issue of what authors owe to their readership.

I also contributed to the conversation and brought up examples from the HP fandom, and specifically referenced the Interview from Hell. Interestingly enough, I had two New York Times Bestselling authors reply to my post and they gave their own perspectives as to authors interacting with their fans. (I replied to both of them via their own blogs and email because it soon became OT for Konrath’s blog. I am also now fans of their work and follow their blogs.)

One was Tess Gerritsen and she wrote a post on her blog expanding on her thoughts of fans being huge critics of whatever she wrote. It was entitled, “You Can’t Please All Readers All the Time” and I agree with her basic premise. Authors have to be true to themselves and their artistry, but they need to realize that they may not live up to the expectations of their readership.

That leads me back to discussing the interview that Jo Rowling granted to Melissa Anelli of The Leaky Cauldron and Emerson Spartz ofMugglenet at the launch of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (HBP).

Recent fans to the online Harry Potter fandom may not understand why that interview is treated with such disdain in some quarters. In fact, a few weeks ago, I pointed a friend of mine to the Leaky Cauldron so that she could view the covers of the forthcoming seventh volume. She later told me that after going to the website to see the covers she read the online interview. She sounded as if she had just discovered something new and exciting. I shook my head and interjected my opinion as it being "The Interview from Hell." She became utterly confused because she was unfamiliar with the online fandom, and had no idea how that interview needlessly insulted the intelligence of many dedicated fans.

So for those readers of my blog who are like my friend and are scratching your head in wonder, I shall go over it in painstaking detail.

Jo Rowling hand picked two people to interview her, and according to her own words on her website, she wanted people who would care about the whole online fandom:

Why Melissa and Emerson? Because I knew, from having trawled their sites, that they know their Harry Potter back to front, that they care, not only about the books, but about the community of fans on the net, and that they were clever and funny and that I was going to enjoy meeting them at least as much as they would enjoy meeting me.

…(snip)…

I must say that I was impressed and moved by how many fellow fans posted congratulations to them when they announced on their sites that they would be interviewing me. The thrust of most comments was that they deserved the interview as a reward for all their hard work; it was uplifting to see so many people express generous and fair-minded good wishes!

They were both, as I had known they would be, wonderful. Funny, bright, completely committed to getting some proper answers out of me. We were supposed to be together an hour: two had passed before any of us noticed and if I hadn't had a baby to feed, I think we could have gone on most of the night.

The transcript of the interview, plus their own individual reports on their time in Edinburgh, can be read on the-leaky-cauldron.org and on mugglenet.com. I will only say that I hope you enjoy reading the interview as much as I enjoyed giving it.

---

Unfortunately I did not enjoy reading the interview as much as she enjoyed giving it.

Hardly.

The two people Jo picked were partisans in the shipping wars and were gleeful in being proven right. Now, for those wondering what the term “shipping wars” means, I shall explain. It is a slang term short for relation-ship. Those who advocate for specific romantic pairings are referred to as “shippers.” There are different kinds of shippers, such as preferential shippers who simply prefer playing matchmaker to different characters independent of whether or not they are likely to occur in the story, and then there are shippers who argue over those pairings they believe are going to happen in the storyline.

Prior to HBP, and the TLC/Mugglnet interview, there were strong arguments for either Harry/Hermione (H/Hr) or Ron/Hermione (R/Hr) as happening in the story (or canon – another fandom term.) The H/Hr shippers basically subscribed to the literary convention of The Hero Gets the Girl where the main male character becomes romantically linked with the main female character. A similar convention is also known as Best Friends Turned Lovers where two friends come to realize that their relationship has evolved from friendship into love.

The Ron/Hermione (R/Hr) shippers argued on behalf of the literary convention of Unresolved Sexual Tension or UST romantic pairings and compared them to Elizabeth Bennett/Mr. Darcy in Pride and Prejudice.

H/Hr shippers didn’t care for the idea of the literary convention of The Sidekick Getting the Girl and The Hero Getting the Sidekick’s Little Sister.

Okay, for those who were blissfully unaware of the shipping wars, you should know that prior to the publication of HBP that countless hours were spent analyzing and arguing about the text of the series in regards to shipping. Passages were posted time and time again and trumpeted as being proof of whatever position the ship debater was trying to make. There was copious evidence cited which supported both sides as being possibilities. I recognized and admitted that JKR could have been writing R/Hr and H/G all along, but I thought it was H/Hr. That is because I thought of Ron/Hermione and Harry/Ginny as literary red hair-ings.

I was arguing in favor of more subtle clues.

I also wasn’t squeamish about the idea of love triangles. They work well in literature and Jo used them extensively in Goblet of Fire (GoF) and Order of the Phoenix (OotP), and I had no doubt that she would finally use the members of the trio in a love triangle.

Ron/Hermione shippers for the most part couldn’t tolerate that idea. They didn’t want Harry and Ron competing over Hermione. I welcomed the idea because I thought it would make for good drama.

The shipping wars were divisive and the most emotionally charged of all the debates, and both Melissa and Emerson knew that full well. However, rather than attempting to be ambassadors from the whole fandom, they allowed their partisan nature of being Ron/Hermione and Harry/Ginny shippers to come to the fore.

They not only insulted the intelligence and sanity of H/Hr shippers in the interview, but their insults extended to editorial comments in the transcript that wounded the feelings of their debate opponents. This editorializing reflected poorly upon their professionalism and caused unnecessary divisiveness in the fandom as a whole.

See page 2

MA: How much fun did you have with the romance in this book?

JKR: Oh, loads. Doesn't it show?

MA: Yes.

JKR: There's a theory - this applies to detective novels, and then Harry, which is not really a detective novel, but it feels like one sometimes – that you should not have romantic intrigue in a detective book. Dorothy L. Sayers, who is queen of the genre said — and then broke her own rule, but said — that there is no place for romance in a detective story except that it can be useful to camouflage other people’s motives. That's true; it is a very useful trick. I've used that on Percy and I’ve used that to a degree on Tonks in this book, as a red herring. But having said that, I disagree inasmuch as mine are very character-driven books, and it’s so important, therefore, that we see these characters fall in love, which is a necessary part of life. How did you feel about the romance?

[Melissa puts her thumbs up and grins widely while…]
ES: We were hi-fiving the whole time.
JKR: [laughs] Yes! Good. I'm so glad.
MA: We were running back and forth between rooms yelling at each other.
ES: We thought it was clearer than ever that Harry and Ginny are an item and Ron and Hermione — although we think you made it painfully obvious in the first five books —
JKR: [points to herself and whispers] So do I!
ES: What was that?
JKR: [More loudly] Well so do I! So do I!
[All laugh; Melissa doubles over, hysterical, and may have died.] (emphasis mine)

--

Honestly was there a need to include Melissa doubling over with laughter to the point of hysteria and the “may have died” comment – other than to insult those who disagreed with them?

I recognize that both Melissa and Emerson were sleep deprived due to jet lag/time change as well as reading a massive book in the span of a single night. However, they chose to write up their transcript and inserted the hurtful editorial asides, what did they expect in return?

The interview continues showing evidence of deliberate insults to those whom Melissa and Emerson disagreed.

ES: Harry/Hermione shippers - they're delusional!
JKR: Well no, I'm not going to - Emerson, I am not going to say they're delusional! They are still valued members of my readership! I am not going to use the word delusional. I am however, going to say — now I am trusting both of you to do the spoiler thing when you write this up —
[More laughter.]
JKR: I will say, that yes, I personally feel - well it's going to be clear once people have read book six. I mean, that's it. It's done, isn't it? We know. Yes, we do now know that it's Ron and Hermione. I do feel that I have dropped heavy -
[All crack up]
JKR: - hints. ANVIL-sized, actually, hints, prior to this point. I certainly think even if subtle clues hadn't been picked up by the end of "Azkaban," that by the time we hit Krum in Goblet...
But Ron — I had a lot of fun with that in this book. I really enjoyed writing the Ron/Lavender business, and the reason that was enjoyable was Ron up to this point has been quite immature compared to the other two and he kind of needed to make himself worthy of Hermione. Now, that didn't mean necessarily physical experience but he had to grow up emotionally and now he's taken a big step up. Because he's had the meaningless physical experience - let’s face it, his emotions were never deeply engaged with Lavender -

[Much laughter in which Melissa emits a "Won-Won"]

JKR: - and he's realized that that is ultimately not what he wants, which takes him a huge emotional step forward.

ES: So he's got a little bit more than a teaspoon, now there’s a tablespoon?

JKR: Yeah, I think. [Laughter]

MA: Watching all this, were you surprised when you first logged on and found this intense devotion to this thing that you knew was not going to happen?
JKR: Yes. Well, you see, I'm a relative newcomer to the world of shipping, because for a long time, I didn't go on the net and look up Harry Potter. A long time. Occasionally I had to, because there were weird news stories or something that I would have to go and check, because I was supposed to have said something I hadn't said. I had never gone and looked at fan sites, and then one day I did and oh - my - god. Five hours later or something, I get up from the computer shaking slightly [all laugh]. 'What is going on?' And it was during that first mammoth session that I met the shippers, and it was a most extraordinary thing. I had no idea there was this huge underworld seething beneath me.
ES: She's putting it into a positive light!
JKR: Well I am, I am, but you know. I want to make it clear that delusional is your word and not mine! [Much laughter.]
MA: You're making our lives a lot easier by laying it on the table -
JKR: Well I think anyone who is still shipping Harry/Hermione after this book -
ES: [whispered] Delusional!
JKR: Uh - no! But they need to go back and reread, I think. (emphasis mine)

--

Okay, now that was the part where I felt insulted by Jo Rowling.

I realize that she has more to do everyday than trawl internet sites and understand the myriad discussions of the fandom, but she let us know that she was aware of the shipping wars. She referred to that in an interview in 2003 with Jeremy Paxman at the launch of OotP.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/cbbcnews/hi/uk/newsid_3004000/3004878.stm

JEREMY PAXMAN: So there will be some pairing up will there in this book?
JK ROWLING: Well in the fullness of time.

JEREMY PAXMAN: Unlikely pairings? Not Hermione and Draco Malfoy or anything like that?
JK ROWLING: I don't really want to say as it will ruin all the fan sites. They have such fun with their theories ... and it is fun, it is fun.

--

I interpreted that as meaning that the romantic pairings wouldn’t become evident until the end of book 7. Once she revamped her website she mentioned the topic of shipping several times. The first and most important was in her first set of questions she chose to answer on her FAQ page:

Does Hermione love Ron or Harry?

I can't believe that some of you haven't worked this one out yet, but I'm not going to answer because that would spoil the arguments, which I enjoy.

--

She enjoyed the arguments. Or so she said. Then she decided to disregard what she had previously said to Jeremy Paxman and went out of her way to sink some ships. She sunk the Draco/Hermione ship with this quote in an online chat:

http://www.accio-quote.org/articles/2004/0304-wbd.htm

Chibimono: Do you have any future plans in particular for Draco Malfoy?
JK Rowling replies -> I've got plans for all my characters. Actually, this is a really good place to answer a question about Draco and Hermione, which a certain Ms. Radcliffe is desperate to have answered. Will they end up together in book six/seven? NO! The trouble is, of course, that girls fancy Tom Felton, but Draco is NOT Tom Felton! (My daughter likes TF very much too, because he taught her how to use a diablo)

She also used her website to sink the Neville/Luna ship

Section: Rumours

Luna and Neville will hook up in HP&THBP

The Luna/Neville shippers are much less vehement and scary than the Harry/Hermione, Ron/Hermione tribes, so I hope I won’t receive too much hate mail for quashing this rumour. I see Neville and Luna as very different kinds of people and while they share a certain isolation within Hogwarts, I don’t think that’s enough to foster true love - friendship, perhaps, although I think that Neville would always find Luna’s wilder flights of fancy alarming. (emphasis mine.)

--

Vehement and scary. So she was aware of the passion. You would think that she’d spend some time figuring out exactly how best to defuse the situation knowing that her fans really cared about these debates.

She further teased Ron/Hermione and Harry/Hermione shippers with this next post:

Section: Rumours

Dumbledore is really Ron/Harry ‘from the future’

Your inventiveness knows no bounds, and I do not mean that sarcastically; these theories open up exhilarating new vistas of possibility… but they’re wrong. Could it be that by speculating that Harry/Ron becomes Dumbledore, you are seeking reassurance that neither dies young?

I’ve also heard a whisper about Ron and Hermione’s son time-travelling, so I shall go further and tell you that NONE of the characters in the books has returned from the future. As for the idea of Ron and Hermione having a son… (chuckles as the distant roars of a million shippers reach my ears, all cursing me to an eternity of unsatisfied curiosity).

--

So when in the Interview from Hell, JKR suggested that Harry/Hermione shippers go back and re-read her books, I felt personally insulted.

I expected more from her.

I know the first five books in the HP series frontward and backward. I can generally find a passage I am looking for within about fifteen seconds. That means I not only know which book it comes from, but which chapter and what comes before and after it.

I don’t have that ability with HBP, because I have not re-read that book. That interview left a bad taste in my mouth for the series as a whole and I now consider myself as a recovering fandom addict.

I believe that I know her books in closer detail than she does. I’m not trying to boast, but that is something else she confessed to earlier in that same interview:

http://www.the-leaky-cauldron.org/#static:tlcinterviews/jkrhbp1

ES: This is kind of a strange question but how many times have you read your own story?

JKR: That is not a strange question, it's a very valid question because once the book is published I rarely reread. A funny thing is when I do pick up a book to check a fact which I obviously do a lot, if I start reading then I do get kind of sucked in myself and I may read several pages and then I put it away and go back to what I’m doing, but I would never, if for example I was heading to the bath, and I wanted to pick up something to read, I’d never pick up one of my own books. Therefore there are thousands of fans who know the books much better than I do. My one advantage is I know what’s going to happen, and I’ve got a lot of backstory.

--

To confirm my supposition that Emerson did not attempt to be an ambassador for the fandom-at-large is this quote from his own summary of the events of traveling to Scotland and meeting Jo Rowling:

Emerson's write up: http://www.mugglenet.com/emscotland2.shtml

Harry/Hermione shippers can expect me to be even more arrogant and cocky
thanks to my recent vindication (see interview or just the last four books). "...Anvil-sized hints..."

--

He was as good as his promise and created a special board to collate comments by H/Hr shippers and include his own running commentary.

:Sigh:

I wish things had been handled differently.

For starters, I wish that Jo Rowling had picked people who were more mature and responsible. It would have made a tremendous difference if someone like Steve Vander Ark had been asked instead of Emerson Spartz. I cannot imagine Steve openly ridiculing members of the fandom whose theories were proven wrong.

The interview would still have had questions about shipping, because every administrator of a HP fansite would be well aware that it was a “hot topic.” However, the tone of the interview would have been vastly different.

Furthermore, I wish that the discussion regarding the romantic element had veered into another direction entirely. It might have defused things in a way people wouldn’t have expected.

This idea comes from a discussion I saw on the Harry Potter for Grown Ups List Serv – Off Topic Chatter from January 2003 and a discussion about the four kinds of love:

Eros, Philos, Storge and Agape.

One of the most memorable aspects of that discussion was the pet peeve that audiences (movies, television series, or books) are trained to see friendship between males and females as only being a prelude to them hitting the sheets together. The idea that men could not be friends with women “because the sex part always gets in the way” was the underlying philosophy of Harry Burns in the movie When Harry Met Sally…

I wish that Jo had spent time waxing philosophical and saying one of the things she wanted to show in her series was the idea that boys/girls and men/women could establish and maintain friendships without eros complicating things. I would have appreciated that more than her emphasizing that she didn’t want Ginny to be the first girl that Harry ever kissed.

I also wished that Jo Rowling had said something different on her website to acknowledge the passion and dedication that many of her fans had shown to her hero and her main female character. I had hoped that she might show appreciation for all the shippers who were devoted to both sides of the shipping divide by giving a joint fansite award.

I envisioned an award given to Sugarquill and Portkey because of the prominence they earned by championing their respective ships.

Alternatively, I thought it would have been good to have given a fansite award to Fiction Alley since they are open to ships of all shapes and sizes. I wanted her to make a statement acknowledging that she appreciates having fans who are as are creative and passionate in their love of her characters and the Potterverse. That would have gone a long way to make peace in the fandom.

She didn’t do anything like that.

The Leaky Cauldron was the only fansite given an award in 2005. Then in 2006 she gave an award to a Portuguese language website from Brazil.

In other words, she chose to do nothing and hoped it would all just blow over. Another thing that JKR did to insult her fans was in her remarks about Emerson and Melissa on her website. She mentioned how she contacted Emerson by phone to invite him to interview her.

“I was worried that Emerson, who was not expecting anything at all, might simply hang up on me; as I heard his Dad walking away from the telephone to fetch him I was trying to think of way to prove it was really me and not some angry Harry/Hermione shipper trying to lure him down a dark alleyway. However, I didn't need to offer an impromptu quiz on the sub-plots of books one to five; he believed me, he could make it: we were set!” (emphasis mine)

In that same post she referred readers to her website to read the transcript. So it is likely that she had read the transcript and felt that it was safe to poke fun at H/Hr shippers. Because she probably believed Emerson and Melissa’s assertions that we were a small, but vocal minority in the fandom. As if it is socially acceptable for an author to insult the intelligence and integrity of their fans. She could have at any time simply made a statement on her website like she did with Neville/Luna.

We deserved better at the hands of Jo Rowling.

Honestly, we were creative in our theories, but that is because the series itself is extraordinarily inventive. To show how weird interpretations can get I will mention the example of a metaphorical reading of a movie that baffled the screenwriter. William Goldman was interviewed in 1994 about the phenomenon that is the legacy of the movie “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” which he won the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay in 1969. He mentioned that the movie was such a strange hit and that it impacted people so strongly in the late 60’s and early 70’s that there was a theory floating around that the movie was about the Vietnam War. That “the Super Posse was the government and Lyndon Johnson coming to get you, and Richard Nixon.” He was “staggered” when he heard that theory, but he had heard it from many people at the time and no one seemed to know where that idea had started. Goldman however, was willing to speak out publicly against that theory. (From the DVD interview with William Goldman.)

If you would like to see one of the influential essays showing a literate and persuasive argument that there was sound textual evidence for a Harry/Hermione romantic relationship in the series, I recommend you read Penny Linsenmayer’s Partners and Friends Essay. I challenge anyone to read it and come up with the conclusion that it is “delusional.”

I wish Jo Rowling had chosen to respond with her fans in a manner different than she had.

I wrote to her, included my suggestions on how to help heal the fandom, and I included on a CD many of the detailed essays I had written in support of H/Hr so she could get an idea of some of the rationale used to defend that reading of her series. I did not hear back from her, but then again who am I except for just another fan and an unpublished author? I do not know if she ever received my correspondence.

I did not write to Emerson for I felt it would be a waste of my time and he might instead take any criticism from me as a badge of honor. I didn’t want to swell his head any further than it already was. Afterall, he prefaced his special Wall of Shame with this description of himself:

"A note from the unprofessional, arrogant, unprofessional, insensitive, unprofessional, immature, inconsiderate, unprofessional, irresponsible, unprofessional, juvenile, unprofessional, tactless and unprofessional Wall of Shame founder and caretaker, Emerson:"

Any message I would have written would have used the term unprofessional in it, and therefore it is doubtful that I would have elicited a twang of remorse or pang of conscience in him.

I did not write to Melissa for I felt that as a journalist, she should have known better. I felt that my condemnation of her unprofessional behavior probably would have been considered as merely sour grapes.

In case anyone is interested, this is a link to my acknowledgment of defeat in the shipping wars.

Overall, I do not regret having spent time in the fandom and having spun many creative theories. I do wish that Ms. Rowling acted differently in regards to what she knew was a topic of intense and passionate interest among her fans.

Elaine Cunningham had suggested in her response to my post on J.A. Konrath's blog that authors avoid internet fandoms and not insert themselves into debates. J.K. Rowling's actions show what can happen when you not only learn about fandom debates, but insert yourself in them by actively teasing fans and then insulting them.

I shall now try to follow Tess Gerritsen’s advice:

“And to all those nitpicky readers, the ones who think they’re so much smarter than the writer they’re complaining about, here’s a revolutionary idea: go write your own damn book.”

I am doing just that and I vow that once my trilogy is published, that I shall not treat my fans in the fashion that I am criticizing with this post.

Linda