Second part of Molly Ringwraith's Harry Potter Parody is up!

[neadods]

mollyringwraith has finished her hilarious Half Blood Prince parody.



CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

HERMIONE: Neato! So you'll be out to destroy Voldemort!
HARRY: Well, I have been trying to do that for years, but yes. So, what's new around here?
RON: Lavender and I broke up. No biggie. Ginny and Dean too. ...Harry? You still with us?
HARRY: I wasn't thinking about your sister! Don't hit me!
RON: What?
HARRY: ...nothing...
HARRY obsesses about his romantic dilemma for a while. The book says, and I quote, "The battle still raged inside his head: Ginny or Ron?" As a consequence, several dirty-minded READERS snicker. Then he swings into the 7th-floor boys' bathroom and finds DRACO sobbing at one of the sinks while MOANING MYRTLE tries to console him.
HARRY/DRACO SHIPPERS: (nearly fainting) Oh my God, it's the best hurt/comfort setup ever!!! Hug him!! Hug him!!!

and

DUMBLEDORE: Don't disturb the water.
HARRY: Big thing with tentacles going to reach out and grab me?
DUMBLEDORE: We'll find out when we take this boat into the water to get the Horcrux.
They start gliding out into the lake in the world's dinkiest lifeboat.
HARRY: Professor! There are dead things, dead faces, in the water!
DUMBLEDORE: I swear to Godric Gryffindor, Harry, if you don't stop quoting 'Lord of the Rings', I'm going to throw you in.

Comments

[bentleywg.livejournal.com]

Psst! Some people haven't finished the book, yet. Cut-tag?

[neadods.livejournal.com]

Done, but considering that the book has been out long enough to start several fan wars, a protest movement, and a complete ripoff "parody" which "fixes" the problems...

[bentleywg.livejournal.com]

I mentioned it because at least one person on my flist posted this weekend that she hadn't yet had a chance to finish the book.

[maryannegruen.livejournal.com]

Ooooh....I've been off on the side struggling with a sick puppy most of the last four months. He's got pancreatic insufficiency which most vets don't understand, so you end up becoming your own vet. He snatched a load of cat food last night which has him majorly sick today.

Anyway....what kinds of fan wars has the new book caused? What protest movement? I've just started the book, but as usual I cut to the end of it so I know what happens.

[neadods.livejournal.com]

Apparently there are people who are having outright protests - complete with organized acts like sending in book covers - because Harry starts dating Ginny instead of Hermione. With a side order of the same nonsense because Remus isn't portrayed as gay after all.

[maryannegruen.livejournal.com]

What did they expect? The hints were loud and clear that Harry was being set up for Ginny. And that Hermione is supposed to be romantically meant for Ron. I'm surprised they're getting that excited about it.

Unfortunately, my husband says, since Harry's the lead and Hermione is around him all the time (which Ginny isn't) Hermione is the one who comes off more as the potential love interest for Harry (to those who aren't into slash, that is). Because of the way the story's written, all the characters are shown in relationship to Harry, except for the parts that show us the bad guys doing nefarious things. There aren't any Ron and Hermione scenes where we get seriously into their relationship. Harry comes off as the one who's the most important to both of them. So the Ron and Hermione thing almost comes across as a thrown in afterthought, especially in the last movie when Hermione goes off with Harry to save Buckbeak and the day while Ron remains alone in his sickroom.

Also, Rowling has spent so much time carrying on about Harry's parents and their time growing up with their friends, the reader is almost looking for a parallel. And since Harry is the lead and we're always hearing about Harry and his father, we naturally start thinking of Hermione as Lily's counterpart because she's basically the leading lady at the center of her group, just as Lily was. Ginny just kind of fades in and out.

But I get Rowling's thinking. A romance between Ginny and Harry would allow Ron and Harry to become brothers of a sort. And if Ron were to marry Hermione, the main three friends would all become family, sort of like they are already. And Harry, the unloved Cinderella type orphan would finally find himself part of a big loving family, a family that Rowling has worked a lot on selling us, especially the mother and father. (Of course, this is all assuming Harry doesn't die in the end.)

Rowling certainly has been open about where the romance side of this story is going. It's just that romance isn't a big part of the plot so she's mostly had hints and the readers wait so long between books that they have lots of time to decide the direction of the story on their own....and then they get attached to their version and start disagreeing with Rowling's. Maybe if she'd given more "screen time" to Ron and Hermione.

Anyway....I woulda thought the fans would have been more upset by the ending. Though, I don't believe we've gotten the whole truth of it.

[neadods.livejournal.com]

It gets better, y'know. Not only are people wailing that she "set them up" for Harry/Hermione, but in an interview on muggle.net, she said she'd been dropping "anvil-sized" hints and snickered when someone called the H/H set delusional. So now she's the most eeeeeeeville person in the world, spitting on the very fans who made her famous.

Oy.

Sometimes fandom can't see the story for the characters, y'know?

[maryannegruen.livejournal.com]

Sometimes fandom can't see the story for the characters, but sometimes the creators can't either. The fans are missing her hints. And Rowling's not paying attention to the way her characters are being seen by the audience.

I have this vague memory about that Biography episode done on her that she said Hermione was sort of based on her. And that she sort of based Ron on some friend of hers that she really really likes. So I think she's got some backstory in her mind that the audience isn't privy to. And what's ridiculously obvious to her isn't coming across to a lot of readers and viewers. You're bound to have a few people who missed the hints. But when you start to have a lot of people see a different story than you think you're telling, you're doing something wrong. Or you're trying to fight against the organic tide of the story. No matter what, it doesn't have a happy ending. In fact, it's more likely to turn into a pissing contest, which it evidently is.

Rowling shouldn't be snickering at her fans publicly. She can do it as much as she wants to her in front of her publisher and inner circle, but she shouldn't do it publicly, even if she feels they really really deserve it. They'll feel she's showing contempt for them personally and turn against her.

Ultimately, there's a price to having popular characters. You lose control of them and they begin to rule your life. They start having relationships with other people that you have no input in. And those other people get to think they know your characters better than you do. It's one of the reasons we have fanfic. Happily, most readers/viewers don't act like the mad fan that Kathy Bates once played in Misery. But they'll stop buying your books and watching your movies, which works against you if that's what you want them to do.

Writers and creators can fume and fuss about how they're the creators and they know the characters better than the audience, and that they're the ones who have the final say. (Like they do when they argue against fanfiction.) But at the end of the day, they may find themselves at the losing end of the power struggle, where the character's destruction is the only way to win, like Conan Doyle trying to kill off Sherlock Holmes.

I get the drift that Rowling doesn't want to do this anymore and will be glad when it's over. I wonder if she's baiting some of these fans, trying to get them to go away, so that Harry can go away. I'll bet he's the one she really wants to kill off. I think that well touted prophecy means that the only way the big V can die permanently is if Harry also dies. At least if the publisher allows it. When I saw Rowling on that Biography episode, I got the feeling that she was going to implode. I've been trying to keep a step back from her work ever since.

[neadods.livejournal.com]

But when you start to have a lot of people see a different story than you think you're telling, you're doing something wrong

Considering the size of her audience, "a lot of people" insisting that they know better than she does still is only a fraction of the whole. And I see it from her side - she's been living with this story for a very long time and people are pressing her harder and harder and harder to do it "their" way.

But I don't think that Rowling's evil for laughing, particularly considering how badly she was pre-emptively treated by those people for the crime of telling her story her way.

I also think that while she is doubtless tired, there was a cutoff built in from the moment she started the series. Personally, I think that's probably WHY she's under so much pressure now - fans think that there's only one more book to "fix" it their way. No matter what other fans want, much less her.

[maryannegruen.livejournal.com]

Everyone in any position of leadership will of course have naysayers. It's a given. Some of them will be loud. It goes with the territory, whether you're a teacher, or an office supervisor, or a director, or any kind of creative person, or a mommy (to either human or fur-kids). There's going to be guaranteed grumbling.

Smart leaders deal with it by standing calmly by and letting the kids have their tantrum. The kids run out of energy and stop kicking he floor. Then the leader (or mommy) calmly resumes the direction they were always going in. Smart parents and leaders don't get down on the floor and start kicking and screaming with the kids. Things will just get louder and nothing will get accomplished. Rowling is acting as childishly as her temper tantrum throwing fans.

A lot of creative folks who've made the really big time have this complaint. They want fame, but then resent being owned by the audience. Unfortunately, you usually can't have one without the other. Some come to hate the audience. But the fact remains, Rowling is in the position of power here. They can't force her to change her story. And the hubbub will mostly only get her books additional press and up her sales.

No matter how many possible endings or storylines there are, Rowling, like other creative folks, can only choose one. And it's a given that it won't please everyone. Get a large group of people together for lunch and there's sure to be someone who won't like the seafood restaurant that most of you want to go to. If you want to keep that person as a friend, you try to make sure there's something there they can eat or you give them first choice next time out. If you don't want them as a friend, you ignore them till they go away.

Rowling shouldn't be letting these people get to her. But she should be facing the fact that if there are a lot of them, she's made some story telling mistakes. Complaining fans can be a good way of letting you know when you've gone off track.

I think Rowling made her hints way too weak. And that the story she was telling came across in a way she didn't mean it to, probably because of the story telling style. She probably should have had Harry notice the attraction between his two friends a while ago so it was more obvious and the audience was actually looking forward to it. Like I said, I think she's got a backstory in her head that the audience isn't privy to. If the audience doesn't see it, it's not there as far as they're concerned. That's not their fault, it's hers. Artists step back from their paintings and look at them from a distance as they work for a reason. They're trying to look at things from the perspective of the viewer, instead of the artist, to see if their vision is coming across. They know if it isn't, it's not the audience's fault, it's theirs.

If Rowling specifically chose not to put anymore in because romance wasn't what the story was about, then she should just let the fans fume on and avoid them if she has to. She shouldn't be feeding the trolls.

No creative person can control the way the audience sees things. Once your creation leaves you and goes out into the world, it's no longer yours. It's like a child you've given birth to, that goes out and creates new friends and a life apart from you. The only way to have total control over any work, is to never let it leave your hands.