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The HMS STFU - JKR can't write, but I can!
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| | Subject: | JKR can't write, but I can! | | Time: | 06:37 pm |
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| Who wants some good 'ol fashioned Portkey wank?
I've stayed away from there for a while because the crazy starts to get to you after a while. I wandered back in today and, like the Energizer bunny, they just keep going and going...
Recently however, they have been joined by "brad" of FAP fame (I am assuming it is the same "brad" because his posts are similar in tone to the stuff he posts on FAP and some of the phrasing he uses come right from FAP wank.) He has decided that he simply must add his 2 cents to the "semi-debate" surrounding JKR's quote in Melissa Anelli's book about how "it could have gone" H/Hr. (Her actual quote was not, in fact, an admission that she had been writing H/Hr all along and ignored it in favor of OBHWF - but, Harmonians, as per usual, see only their twisted interpretatin of what was actually said.)
So anyway, the wank in question involves responses made to a post by "hermy_35" - a non-Harmonian who is masochistic enough to post on Portkey occasionally. She (or he?) posted a defense of JKR's writing style, adding in some "Twlilight" digs for good measure", and has the utmost gall to say that she actually liked how the romance was written. As we all know, this is a crime in Harmony land so numerous posters pile on to tell her that she is an idiot including Gilian Halliwell, Sidewalk Doctor, Jade Eyes, and of course brad.
Most of the criticism amounts to "you don't know good writing, but I do (because I am a writer)!".
The usual "JKR lost control of her story", "JKR is an incompetent writer", "I've read better fanfiction", and "His Dark Materials was better because of all the OMG!alchemy" each make an appearance for old times sake. (God forbid they get some new material when they haven't tired of spinning the same old yarns to each other yet.)
P.S. Dear Portkey -
It's not a debate, "semi" or otherwise, if everyone agrees. You have not had dissent in that thread since January 29th.
Love, Ikabod
*Edit to fix HTML fail.
EDIT: Ok, there was a response from someone named "Marcella" in the referenced thread that is a real head scratcher. Apparently she knows how to write better than JKR because when she was writing a story about herself(?) her character wanted to have sex at 13 and she (marcella) couldn't allow that so she stopped writing the story! Ummm...what? Can anyone make sense of this? What planet does this make sense on? Is she suggesting that JKR should have stopped writing because Hermione wanted to bone Harry?
EDIT: Uh Oh. I've been spotted. Apparently the folks over at Portkey like to monitor the web to see if people are making fun of them because they have found this post. Since I do not believe in hiding my internet identity I use the same name here as I have there. I got a personal message this morning as well as two "warning" posts to the general community in my honor. I informed the mod who contacted me to remove me if she wants, so I expect that banning is imminent.
EDIT again: Yep. I've been banned. Gee, I've never been banned from anything before... | comments: Poke a delusional shipper     |
| I can't be the only one who wonders how many Harmonians ship the way they do because they genuinely like the couple and how many ship H/Hr because they think Hermione "deserves" Harry.
And I've lost control of stories myself before, but they never strayed too far off the beaten path--I still got where I wanted to go; I just took a different path to get there. I don't doubt it was the same for JKR.
Better writers than myself have commented on the fact that this is JKR's world--it's her sandbox, and all us fanfic writers are just playing around in it. And yet the Harmonians are claiming that the box deserves to be theirs.
Memo to Harmonians: She's the writer. You're the fans. She outranks you.
(Also, in terms of the literary Love Interest rules, Ginny still wins because she's the first girl Harry meets who's even close to his age.) | | (Reply to this) (Thread) |
| I can't be the only one who wonders how many Harmonians ship the way they do because they genuinely like the couple and how many ship H/Hr because they think Hermione "deserves" Harry.
And of course, when they say that Hermione "deserves" Harry, what they mean is that they deserve D. R. Although I suspect that for many of them, it's more about being "right" than anything else.
Few of them genuinely like the ship. The sane H/Hrs generally don't want to be associated with the name "Harmonians".
As for JKR losing control of Hermione, I can't find the quote right now, but I'm pretty sure she specified that she was talking about SPEW and not about romance. Delusional shippers don't seem to understand that no-one else gives romance the high priority/importance that they do.
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| | I think, after all this time, they no longer really like Harry and Hermione. They like the fandom creation of Harmony. | | (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread) |
| - a non-Harmonian who is masochistic enough to post on Portkey occasionally.
Masochist is right. I honestly don't understand why any sane person would try to reason with them. It's like trying to explain Quantum Mechanics to a goat. | | (Reply to this) (Thread) |
| | no, given my own past experience with HarMOANians from the old COS Debate Forums, I think Goats would react more reasonably than HarMOANians... | | (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread) |
| | The Philosopher's Stone, many HarMOANians believed it held the answers to all the questions in HP to begin with and of course, they were very wrong. But you can't tell a HarMOANian that. | | (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread) |
| | I wish they'd leave HDM out of this. And I don't recall there being any alchemy in that either. | | (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread) |
| | And talking about the woohoo-shiny Deep Alchemical Insight in HDM? That's some epic point-missing. Shouldn't surprise me coming from the Holy Harmonian Army though. | | (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread) |
| Additionally, WTF is it with these people and alchemy?
Ooh, I know, I know! Call on me! *Waves hand around like Hermione*
1. After book 6, any straightforward reading of the text pointed to an R/Hr, H/G ending for the series. It was "obvious".
2. The Harmonians still desperately wanted to be right, to be vindicated, to WIN!
3. Therefore, they needed an unstraightforward reading. They needed to believe in the non-obvious. They needed some kind of framework that would let them convince themselves that the things that were quite clearly happening in Harry Potter — like OBHWF — weren't going to happen at all, that there was a secret, hidden, complicated structure that would emerge instead, that would allow H/Hr to happen.
4. Alchemy, which had been introduced to HP by others, was tailor-made for their needs. It postulated that vast, mysterious things were happening under the surface, and nothing was as it seemed. It allowed them to think that JKR was going to follow special literary rules, rules that were different from mere "telling a good story" so she wouldn't be obligated to follow through on the romantic plot she'd already created. It allowed them to project their preconceived notions about what was right and good (Harmony, of course!) onto a framework so complicated and vague it could mean whatever they wanted it to mean. And it allowed them to feel really, really smart for being among the chosen ones who saw the hidden symbols, cracked the code and didn't fall for that awful, obvious OBHWF!
In short, alchemy was a fortune cookie they read, that let them go on believing they'd been right all along despite all evidence to the contrary. | | (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread) |
| (Anonymous) | | Link: | (Link) | | Time: | 2009-03-11 04:50 pm (UTC) |
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| | JKR did refer at one point to the four elements in connection with the Hogwarts Houses. Now, the four elements are in fact part of a physical system that was widely accepted in Europe for a couple of thousand years, and was around long before the development of alchemy, so reference to them doesn't by any means commit her to an interest in alchemy. But a lot of people don't know that. (Same applies to astrology; it makes use of the elements, but they don't belong to it.) | | (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread) |
| (Anonymous) | | Subject: | The Joys of Alchemy | | Link: | (Link) | | Time: | 2009-03-21 02:02 am (UTC) |
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| | Alchemy is more malleable than Play-Dough. Seriously a person can use it to predict who their 'one twue wuv' is based on favorite breakfast cereal or shampoo preference. | | (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread) |
| I'd be shocked if it wasn't Brad from FAP, also known as ![[info]](http://www.journalfen.net/img/userinfo.gif) madderbrad on LJ, a HarMOANian wanker that's been around for a bit. | | (Reply to this) (Thread) |
| | You know, I don't pay any attention to the Harmonians anymore except when someone points them out to me, but every time somebody does, there's Brad, still going, and going, and going. Do you think his plan is to "win" the "debate" just by being the last person still wanking? | | (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread) |
| (Anonymous) | | Link: | (Link) | | Time: | 2009-03-11 01:49 pm (UTC) |
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| I always liked that username. He really does get madder (crazier AND angrier) with every wanky "debate" he pops up in ...
~fullmoonjane @ LJ | | (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread) |
| Yeesh, I actually clicked away from a Naruto fanfic earlier today because the author was like "JKR ruined her series!" Oookay.
Mind, there are authors who are attacked by the Brain Eater (Anne McCaffery, I'm looking at YOU), but claiming the author sucks because she's taking the series in direction you don't like? Bitch, please. | | (Reply to this) (Thread) |
| (Anonymous) | | Link: | (Link) | | Time: | 2009-03-11 12:45 pm (UTC) |
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| | JKR isn't a perfect writer (who is? any book can be torn apart with a million fans looking for flaws, one writer can't be expected to pick up every thing that the massive fanbase will, and even if they could they'd still have to pick and choose which fans they decide to appeal to with the way they want their ships/story to go, which is completely unrelated to writing skill and entirely on vision and opinion). And I can understand people who legit don't like the way JKR writes, or thinks she's a poor writer. Because it comes down to opinion. But I just really hate when people say 'I'm a writer so my opinion trumps yours' or anything along those lines. First of all, I don't have to be a musician to identify good musicians. Style is opinion, but technical skill is something that can be identified even by people who don't write for pleasure. Secondly, as much as I don't want to be a ~hater~, Stephenie Meyer is a prime example of how a shitty writer can be published. So if it's getting published that makes a 'writer' to these people, they're really not making any defense at all. What separates them as a writer from JKR as a writer from Stephenie Meyer as a writer? If Stephenie Meyer called JKR a bad writer, would they believe her? She's a writer, too, gasp! How can they say that their skill is better or more discerning than any other writers, when clearly an editorial mind is not necessary for authors? | | (Reply to this) (Thread) |
| JKR didn't write the last two (or three) books the way that they wanted her to write them.
Therefore, JKR=bad writer.
QED | | (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread) |
| Well, as a professional editor, I guess I don't know good writing either. :snort:
Can I make a broad, sweeping generalization?
The Harmonians—including brad, who has, for reasons that I think escape us both, been on my LJ flist since before HBP—are total neo-Platonists. They believe utterly in human perfectibility, and were therefore disappointed that Harry's world grew more morally ambiguous as it went along rather than less. Don't get them started on Harry's use of Unforgivables in DH. There is Good and there is Bad, and if you do Bad Things (like, say, dating three different boys in the space of three years, or using a spell that has been pronounced Unforgivable), then you are Not Good. QED.
For them, Hermione represented a platonic ideal—pure intellect. She was Harry's anima, his companion in his quest for self-perfection. When she started acting like, you know, a teenaged girl (hexing McClaggen to help Ron, pouting and fretting through most of HBP and DH, etc.), and Harry fell in love with that Whore of Babylon Ginny, their whole view of the universe, which they'd thought JKR was confirming through her alchemically symbolic books, was challenged.
The way I put it to brad once was that Harmonians are Superman fans, who like their heroes heroic—perfect, utterly good and incorruptible—while the H/G crowd (and the H/L, H/NT and H/D crowds, for that matter) were Batman and Spiderman fans, who like their heroes human—imperfect and a bit neurotic, but striving to do the right thing. Dunno that I convinced him, but it still makes sense to me.
Just saying. ;-) | | (Reply to this) (Thread) |
lakme | | Link: | (Link) | | Time: | 2009-03-12 12:46 am (UTC) |
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| I was watching HP movie weekend on ABC Family and my mom, who hasn't read the books but was watching with me, was like "It's so clear [Ron and Hermione] are going to get together!"
This was after the second movie, when Ron and Hermione were going to hug but got all awkward about it. | | (Reply to this) (Thread) |
| Ok, there was a response from someone named "Marcella" in the referenced thread that is a real head scratcher. Apparently she knows how to write better than JKR because when she was writing a story about herself(?) her character wanted to have sex at 13 and she (marcella) couldn't allow that so she stopped writing the story!
Ah Marcella. She who "wrights profesionaly" (sic). | | (Reply to this) (Thread) |
| Banned? Ouch.
I find it amusing, BTW, that apparently Portkey people are so sensitive to perceived criticism that they troll the Interwebs specifically to make sure that the good ship Harmony sails undisturbed waters.
No surprise, considering that the description of the debate seems to be more along the lines of massive groupthink.
You know, for people convinced of the righteousness of their ship they seem unusually... thin-skinned. Perhaps they really do know, deep inside, that their rationalizations can come to nothing in the face of canon.
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The HMS STFU - JKR can't write, but I can!
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