[ SECRET POST #3210 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #3210 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 02 pages, 045 secrets from Secret Submission Post #459.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[fscom]

08. http://i.imgur.com/l2cxN27.jpg

[(Anonymous)]

I have no opinion on her, but I've noticed the entitled whiners, yes. Complaining that an author is engaged in her characters sounds really backwards to me.

[(Anonymous)]

I think people are just salty that she breaks their personal fanon when she continues to talk about her world and its character.

[badass_tiger]

That's sort of what I think too. I've seen people say it ruins the canon for them, and I actually kind of understand that, but it's pretty easy to just ignore it if that's the case.

[(Anonymous)]

entitled?

[(Anonymous)]

I understand the people that are complaining. (Though I disagree how rude some of them are.)

If you read a book you want to interpret it in your own way. Nothing is more annoying than an author who wants to force an interpretation.

For example, like back in the days when she expressed surprise that some people liked Draco as a character, insiting that he was meant to be a character one was supposed to dislike. I'm sorry, but if an author has to explain such things because the book didn't suceed in getting their point across, they failed to portrait said issue. (And I'm saying that as someone who doesn't even like Draco.)

[(Anonymous)]

To me, it's a basic failure to understand how audience works. You can write whatever you want, but you can't control how other people feel about what you've written. She's not the first author to be surprised that a character takes on a life of their own in readers' minds, but honestly, it's not that rare a phenomenon.

[(Anonymous)]

It's not a rare phenomena but an annoying one. The usual reader will only read the book and will not be interested in anything the author has to say. There will be no interest to read interviews or twitter or anything else. The book stands there on its own and if it doesn't get the intended message across the author has failed.

[(Anonymous)]

She's not surprised. She welcome fan interpretation. It's some of the fans (those who complain that she's still around) who are "surprised."

[(Anonymous)]

insiting that he was meant to be a character one was supposed to dislike. I'm sorry, but if an author has to explain such things because the book didn't suceed in getting their point across, they failed to portrait said issue.

Except she didn't fail. Draco was pretty clearly and unequivocally a cruel, weak person. Everything in the books makes that clear. Rowling, being older and wiser than most of the Draco fans, was giving them the "He's not misunderstood, he's just an arsehole, and good girls don't turn bad boys good" talk.

The desire to depart wisdom, parent-style, to people who A) aren't your children, and B) just don't want to hear it, is a bit of a foible in itself. But to claim that she failed to portray Draco as a weak, cruel person is, imo, patently untrue.

However, I don't entirely disagree with your point. I have seen writers portray something badly and then argue that everyone was interpreting it wrong.

[(Anonymous)]

Yeah, I think people confuse Draco with Spike, personally.

He isn't. He's more of an Andrew.

[ketita]

I think part of what happened with Draco was momentum. He started out as more of a potential "rival" type for Harry, or nemesis, and could definitely have been redeemed. I know that I kind of liked him in the earlier books, though I was never crazy about him, and by the later books he really was a git (though still, some part of me wishes he had ended up the Good Slytherin or something). But I can see how for people who started off liking him in the first few books, and had several years of steam behind them, might not have quite made the turnaround to recognizing what his character ended up being.

[(Anonymous)]

"If you read a book you want to interpret it in your own way. Nothing is more annoying than an author who wants to force an interpretation. "

*rolls eyes*

I don't think answering questions about one's own characters is automatically forcing anything. If they're just saying "this is what the character would grow up to do" if it's their character, that's they're right.

Unless they're saying people can't think or write anything else every time they say something, they're not. IIRC JK Rowling has even said that she thinks some alternate interpretations (black Hermione for example) are cool.

She expressed surprise that people are fawning over her rude racist bully character, and stated that he was a jerk and not 'a misunderstood loner'. There is interpreting a character a different way based on what's in the text. And then there's turning the character into something completely different than what's shown.

The fact that you describe an author stating things about their characters as 'forcing an interpretation says more about you than it does her tbh. An author is going to state things about their character and what happens to them post story. That's not forcing you to do anything.

[(Anonymous)]

I don't really mind her. I just cringe when she acts like her characters actually exist and are talking to her - but other authors do that too (and worse than her).

I also don't mind the flailing that's clogging my dash every time or the new meta about how everything in that universe is the perfectestest thing ever that pops up every time (as long as I can blacklist it)... the only thing I do mind sometimes are those self congratulatory posts about how you ~never move on to Harry Potter~ and ~Everyone is in it for life~.

[(Anonymous)]

"I just cringe when she acts like her characters actually exist and are talking to her - but other authors do that too (and worse than her)."

This. It's nothing personal against JKR, I just cringe when authors go on about reeeeeeeal their characters are.

[(Anonymous)]

Isn't she mostly answering twitter questions, at that? That's also what I don't get. For the most part, people have been asking her things.

It was the same with her interviews. Heaven forbid she answer questions during an interview.

[(Anonymous)]

I really hate this trend of bashing authors/creators and saying they don't understand their own work – like, they CREATED it? I see this in so many fandoms, not just with JK. What a mess.

[(Anonymous)]

To be fair, it's really not all that uncommon for creators to be utterly clueless about the implications of their work or how their work actually reads/how their audience is going to view it. SMeyer is a now-classic example of authors meaning to write one thing, and somehow managing to write the exact opposite, without ever realizing that they wrote the exact opposite of what they intended. The writing in HP is vastly superior to the writing in Twilight, but it still wasn't a perfect series, and JKR made her fair share of questionable decisions that ran counter to both fan desires/expectations and to her own world building.

[(Anonymous)]

Writers can say things that are factually wrong about their own work. An example I was recently reminded of was an interview with the writers of the anime Samurai Flamenco in which they said neither of the main characters underwent any development or change during the series. Anyone who's watched the show and paid the slightest bit of attention could tell that's just straight-out not true. If they think it wasn't especially good or well-written development, that's subjective. But saying "It didn't happen" isn't.

[(Anonymous)]

I kind of feel like this got bad in the late '90s, with the X-Files. The fandom entitlement in that scene was BIZARRE. People were so, so angry at Chris Carter. Like, dude, if you don't like it, STOP WATCHING IT. But this is Chris Carter's baby, not yours. You don't call the shots, he does. I don't care how much shit fanfic you write, these are still his characters and his situations.

[(Anonymous)]

I just think it's really odd for people still obsessed with Harry Potter to complain that JKR is still talking about Harry Potter. She created the entire world and characters. Why shouldn't the person who actually created the sandbox be allowed to still play in it?

People didn't let what was in the actual books interfere with their fanon. If they don't like JKR's answers to the questions she's being asked, they can just ignore that, too.

[(Anonymous)]

Word.

Seriously some of the stuff in this thread is giving me second hand embarrassment.

I'm reminded of the anon who thought that any kind of epilogue was a personal insult to them.

Answering fan questions is not forcing anything.

[(Anonymous)]

Thank you.

It's like. This certain type of fan seems to think that the author who took the time and effort to *create* the whole fictional universe, should be the one completely leaving it behind and not touching it anymore, because apparently fans somehow have more rights to the work than the creator does. What.

I mean, I haven't really kept close track of what's been going on in the potterverse after the books ended. I did read that short story that came out a while ago. Wouldn't mind if there'd be more of those now and then, I'd read them if they cross my path, and if I don't like them, I can just ignore. And sure, there are some fictional works where I feel like new installments probably shouldn't be added because the story feels very complete as it is (like I'm very cautious about Toy Story 4, because the ending of the third one was so... ending... so it might've been narratively better to leave it there).

But acting like authors should completely leave behind their own work just so the fans can keep obsessing with it is rather ridiculously entitled. Doesn't mean you have to like the new material as much as the old material. Doesn't even mean you have to read/watch the new material. Personal preferences, criticism, and all that. Sometimes the new material just plain IS worse (like with many unplanned sequels).
But being a fan doesn't give anyone more rights to the work than the actual freaking author has.

[rbhudson]

Agreed!!!

[(Anonymous)]

I love you.