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Thankfully, I still have it open -- copy-paste time

melusine
2004-12-13 09:30 pm UTC (link)

Cloudsurfing says:
I love her universe more than she does.
Okay. Here's the thing, and I have a feeling it's going to make me kind of unpopular, especially since I'm never very good at having opinions and so this probably makes all the kind of sense that doesn't, so I'm going to say it and then go and find a rock to hide under.

I don't like J. K. Rowling. At all.

Now, don't get me wrong, I love Harry Potter. It's an utterly brilliant universe and I adore it. And I know people who don't like JKR because of the huge levels of angst and hardship she lays on consistently the same characters (i.e. Harry and, well, pretty much everyone else, but the day I start complaining about the angst the world stops rotating), or because she's said their ship will never, ever happen in canon or whatever. But hey, it's her universe, if she doesn't want Draco and Hermione to run off and have squalling, mentally scarring babies, more power to her. I don't like her, as a writer at least because as far as I'm concerned, she has very little respect for her own canon.

I'm not doubting that she loves HP, I mean christ, if she doesn't then I don't want to know how she ended up writing a great epic of a series about him but honestly, if I wrote fic like she writes her books, I would get thrashed. It's full of inconsistencies, contradictions, plot holes, you name it, openly blatant things often enough that they cause great debate amongst fandom at large. The confusion over the Weasley brothers' birthdays, if memory serves, is still going on after JKR Spoke on the subject (although I may have missed something there), because she screwed up her answer. Her answers to the same questions in interviews have been different more than once although I'm knackered and can't do the link thing right now, but you know what I mean, right?

I know that HP fans can get obsessed. Rabid, even, but from my admittedly limited writing experience, when I write in a universe I know everything about that universe, be it relevant to the story completely random. I never have to work out after the fact when something happened or how old someone is or why something could happen when it apparently shouldn't be able to because that was my universe and even if it never made it into the story I knew that and if anyone had wanted to know there would be a definitive answer.

I'm not saying there shouldn't be leeway, hell, the HP series as it is now is fucking huge and with two more books likely of OotP length coming it's only going to get huger and I'm more than willing to forgive inconsistencies. But it irks me, because it keeps happening. How Harry got the Map back after GoF (which has been explained by JKR but sounded to me much like an 'oh fuck, I never realised' kind of an answer to me), and the whole How Colin's Camera Works thing, a contradiction in itself, and her answer was a contradiction and - am I really being so unreasonable? Sigh. I am, aren't I.

All I'm asking for is a little consistency here. People make mistakes and I don't expect her to get the answer right every time, but considering all the funky cool minor and insignificant things that she's talked about at one time or another that fit in brilliantly, it gets to me that she can't get the bigger stuff right. Don't even start with me about the bloody TriWizard cup, but that's off topic. And it's not so much that, it's that she seems to have this annoying way about her of not caring, of going, 'oops, my bad' and sauntering vaguely off to the next fiasco, wanting to get the story told but not minding the casualties she leaves along the way that make you go 'hey, you what now?' and obsess for months on end, till enough people wonder that JKR tells you, and then contradicts herself in the next interview and starts the whole thing over.

And another reason I don't like her? Draco. But I think I have been bitchy enough for one evening, so I'm stopping there.
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Continued

melusine
2004-12-13 09:32 pm UTC (link)

Cloudsurfing also says:
ETA: And also? For god's sake, woman, keep an eye on the bloody movies. You can sacrifice a lot of things when you go book to movie and sometimes you've just got to cut the plot, but when you masscre the characters you're gone, because it's the characters that make your universe. And when you say in the interviews how good you thought the character massacre was? It makes me like you less. This is a difficult thing to accomplish.

In case you're wondering, yes that was just an exercise in bringing my obsessive-compulsive self out to play. We will now go away and alphabetise my DVDs.

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	Re: Continued coffee_mug 2004-12-13 09:37 pm UTC (link)
	I didn't even remember the Draco thing! Thanks for saving it. :] (Reply to this)(Parent)

	Re: Continued temari 2004-12-14 02:57 am UTC (link)
	Ooh, thanks! reads omgwtf? (Reply to this)(Parent)

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