oi guys! I found this artigo written por someone on a website and I thought I would let you read it through. So im posting it. This artigo sure does shows out what position jkr holds in the coração of the author.
Sincere fãs of jkr may get a bit annoyed por leitura this, but for those who always thought she was a bit of …..well read it! Interesting view points have been brought out here!
So before you go on, one simple note – the interviews are within {{...}} and the authors special comments are within [...] Once again, I didn’t write this but I found it somewhere.
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One area of continued controversy in the fandom is how much credence should one place on the chats and interviews with JK Rowling. After all, these are not a part of canon, but are merely the author’s comments, which may or may not be accurate or subject to change later on during the composição literária process. The pergunta boils down to: how much can you really rely on them? My answer: I suggest we that treat them with suspicion and a grain of salt.

There is an assumption made por many people that JKR’s respostas are always reliable. There is on easy way to show that this is not the case. All that requires is one counter-example.

I shall do mais than that though. I shall try and put these interviews into a framework that will show that not only are her respostas sometimes inaccurate, but that they can be deliberately vague and intentionally misleading. It is possible to be factually honest, but misleading at the same time. And that is exactly what I think that Jo Rowling is practicing when she responds to perguntas that are sensitive toward future plotlines.


I will break things down into different categories for the ease of discussion. Let’s start with:

discrepancy to canon.

1. The Susan bones Quote:
{{ Q. There is a girl named Susan bones who was sorted in the first book, and there was a family called the bones that Voldemort tried to destroy. Is this a coincidence, or will Harry meet her in future books?

A. Susan Bones's grandparents were killed por Voldemort! }}

In OotP in the “Beetle at Bay” chapter we find out that she had an aunt, uncle, and cousins who all died at the hands of one of the ten Death Eaters who had escaped from Azkaban. So not only were there different relatives that were killed, but they were done in por a mere minion of Voldemort and not the Big Bad Guy himself. So both parts of JKR’s answer were different from what eventually showed up in canon. I know that Susan Bones’s dead relatives do not appear to be all that important to the no geral, global plot, but this answer demonstrates that JKR is either willing to change her mind about things or that she is not always reliable in her answers. Some have suggested that this subject will be revisited in the series so that it will prove that JKR was telling the truth. I find it highly doubtful that the subject of the Susan Bones’s dead relatives will come up again which would allow JKR’s interview statement to be acquitted in canon for us to see that Susan’s grandparents were personally killed por the Wizard Formerly Known As Tom Riddle.

2. James as Chaser:

{{ Q. What position did James play on the Gryffindor Quidditch team? Was it seeker like Harry, or something different?

A. James was Chaser. }}


She gave a straightforward answer. No equivocation on her part. James was Chaser. Then came the first movie and on a plaque it said that James Potter was a Seeker. I wondered why they got that little detail wrong if Steve Kloves kept doing fact-checking with JKR as had been widely reported. Then we see in OotP in “Snape’s Worst Memory” chapter that James is doodling a Golden Snitch on the margins of a piece of paper and later we see him playing with that magical ball, similar to what Harry did after the Slytherin match. And he kept leaving the snitch out of his hands and catching it again – harry described that his reflexes were great. Does that sound like James played Chaser? It sure doesn’t to me. I would venture to say that the overwhelming majority of readers who were unaware of this chat session and this factoid of “James was Chaser” would conclude that James Potter played Seeker after leitura OotP.

There are some HP fãs that are so insistant that if JKR said something in a chat session that it is inviolate and that she will not change her mind on it. With this in mind, because she said James was Chaser, he must have been a Chaser and any evidence to the contrary should be summarily dismissed. This opinion can be witnessed on this thread at Fiction Alley Park where the majority of people that cast a vote picked "He was a Chaser, JKR said so."

So what happened? Did JKR change her mind about this detail, was the fact that James was playing with a Snitch and doodled it on the margins of a paper only indicate his amor for Lily and nothing more, or did JKR misspeak? If she misspoke, then no correction of the transcript was made later when she realized her error.

3. The Fawkes Mistake. (Here is another fonte of that quote to verify the transcription.)

{{ Q. Would you get a mythical pet from one of your books? If you could, which one?

A. If I could, I would choose a Phoenix, because they have such useful properties, as Harry finds out in Book III. }}

Maybe I’m just being picky here, but it wasn’t in Book III that we found out about Fawkes and the magical healing power of phoenix tears. That of course was in Book II. I offered the other webpage fonte to show that there wasn’t an error on The Leaky Cauldron’s part. Nope, they did a fine job of copying the transcript. The error is in the original. This example is to show that JKR is human and can make mistakes and that later, they may not be corrected for posterity either. But are the mistakes right for an author who keeps on saying she spent 10 years on it and harry potter was everything in her life?

4.Population of Hogwarts:

{{ Q. How many students attend Hogwarts, and how many students per ano per house?
A. There are about a thousand students at Hogwarts. }}


I mention this under the category of discrepancy to canon because this controversy has been the subject of discussion many times at HPfGU’s list and of course it has not been resolved. Logically it doesn’t make sense that there would be 1000 students at Hogwarts when Harry’s class with one other house consistently has twenty objects for use. Twenty earmuffs, twenty brooms, etc. If each house had approximately ten students of each year, that would mean forty students per year. Seven years times forty gives you 280 students. Far below the thousand mark. Had JKR thought about this before she answered? It makes many people wonder. Another great mistake por whom we considered a mastermind!

5. The Half-Loved Prince Mistake:

This came about as a transcription error por the BBC in their interview with JKR in October 2002. They didn’t realize that she said, “Half-Blood Prince” and transcribed instead “Half-Loved Prince.” This error was recognized only after it was announced that the título for Book 6 was going to be the discarded título for CoS, which was HP and the HBP. The BBC has since corrected their error and that link can be found here.. The significance of this error is that JKR hadn’t corrected them, so for almost two whole years, this error was just sitting there uncorrected. I am assuming that Jo is too busy with her day-to-day details of writing, being a mom, writing, having a life, writing, etc., to read all of her press and scan for errors.

This meant that anyone who was trying to win in HP trivia contests can no longer use the answer, “HP and the Half-Loved Prince” as the correct answer for the discarded título of CoS.

Which makes me wonder, how many mais errors are out there that haven’t been corrected that we in the fandom are perpetuating simply out of our need to sift through interviews for clues in the interminable interim until Books 6 & 7 are published.

6. The Icicle Promise:

This comes from JKR making an off-the-cuff promise during a chat that she never really meant, and promptly forgot about. The problem became when the fandom expected that she was good as her word and tried to hold her to it. This created theories as to who “Icicle” would be, and what kind of Eeeevil character she could become. JKR was so befuddled about the origin of this rumor that she even addressed it on her website.

Section: Rumours
The mysterious 'Icicle'
{{ I have been told that I once promised a character with this name during an interview. I can only think that somebody misheard what I said because at no stage have I ever planned a character called 'Icicle.'

Professor Bicycle, on the other hand, will be a key figure in books six and seven.* }}

*this is a joke


Well, Jo, here is where the mysterious Icicle came from:

I have two separate links from the Barnes and Noble chat, here and here.
The problem comes in that many of the websites that reprint that chat session have stripped the screen names of the people who asked the questions. That is the case with the Quick Quills frases on The Leaky Cauldron site. So if Jo had tried leitura old chats, she might not see that promise made, but here it is:

{{ Icicle: You have such a phenomenal imagination! Is it a result of a very imaginative childhood?
JR: First of all, I will be using your name in a future book. To answer your question, yes, I lived a lot in a fantasia world when I was younger and spent a lot of time sonhar acordado -- to my parents frustration. }}


Now, I don’t blame Jo for forgetting this. She was most likely just being polite and didn’t think too much of it at the time. The problem is that her fandom is obsessive, and there are some of her fãs that can’t accept the fact that she is human and is just as likely as any other human to make a slip of the tongue sometimes and not say *exactly* what she means, or change her mind, or say something off-the-cuff that isn’t always going to be followed through on. The only thing that we should say is going to definitely be canon is once it is in writing. Even then, if it is a Wand-Order mistake, that might just be set for correction in future editions. Because she and her editors are human!

7. The Age mistake:

This comes from the World dia Chat and it deals with the age difference between Charlie and Percy.

{{ Luisa: How old are Charlie and Bill Weasley in relation to their other siblings?

JK Rowling replies -> Oh dear, maths. Let me think. Bill is two years older than Charlie, who is two years older than Percy. }}


Groan. Why didn’t Jo just say she didn’t have her notes with her? Because well…that just doesn’t match with canon. It doesn’t. No matter how you slice it, it just doesn’t add up. If Charlie were only two years older than Percy, then he’d be in his seventh ano during Harry’s first year, or possibly just finished the ano before.
In canon, there are several passages that indicate that it has been a while since the great Charlie Weasley had been at school. In PS/SS, there is when Harry first makes the team fred figglehorn said,
[ The Midnight Duel, SS, Scholastic paperback, p. 153
"We haven't won since Charlie left, but this year's team is going to be brilliant." ]


Pair that with a passage por McGonagal in PoA when she gives Harry back his Firebolt after being tested for jinxes.

[ The Patronus, Scholastic pb, p. 248.

"Do try and win, won't you? Or we'll be out of the running for the eighth ano in a row, as Professor Snape was kind enough to remind me only last night..." ]


That seems to imply that Charlie left at least five years before Harry started school, which would make at least a seven ano gap between him and Percy and not two years.

And yet, I’ve seen HP fãs try to somehow make that Procrustean cama of logic fit. It doesn’t and I simply shake my head at that answer. I amor Jo and the incredible universe that she created, but I recognize that she has a problem with math and sometimes the fine details will trip her up.


Ambiguity in quotes
A good example of ambiguous meanings in JKR’s respostas can be found with the final…closing scene quote that has been discussed here at length.

{{ I think that my publishers were keen not to have the embargo broken, but they have my wholehearted support in that not from the marketing point of view, but because this was the book in which you saw the first death and also at the end of the Book Four something *huge* happens in terms of the over all plot, which I don't want to say on the radio obviously in case people haven't read the book or is half way through it. And I didn't want that to leak because for children ... that would... you know... I... I've... I've spent ten years... I mean, the final... the closing scene in Book Four... I've spent ten years composição literária my way towards that scene and people who have read that will know why it's so significant, why it's so important. I did not want that leaked. Because I knew that kids were waiting with bated breath and I really genuinely wanted that to be a magical experience. That they would get the book and read and get frightened and excited and overwrought as they approached that ending. (emphasis mine) }}


The portion that was debated on this fórum was the phrase “the final…closing scene” and whether or not the significance of that word choice indicated an importance to Hermione’s goodbye kiss to Harry.

The infamous National Press club leitura and Q&A session from which the famous “Platonic” quote originated was interpreted por a Newsweek denunciar as:
Rowling revealed to an eager audience that the fourth book in her blockbuster series will feature a Quidditch World Cup (ask a Harryhead), but no romance between the young Harry and his pal Hermione. Also, Potter will never become an animagus (whatever that is), as his father did.


Clearly that reporter was assigned to cover the event and had no real idea or interest in covering the subject before filing the denunciar before deadline. Given this superficial coverage of that JKR event, would it be beyond the realm of possibility that the author and the publishers might be worried about reporters skimming the large book, checking out the last few pages and think that Hermione beijar Harry is a big development and then use that as a tease to sell papers? We saw that the New York Daily News broke the embargo for OotP and mentioned Harry’s encontro, data with Cho which caused a lawsuit to be filed. So why is the fear that Hermione’s kiss might be blown out of proportion por the press dismissed out of hand? Truthfully, I could see that JKR’s remarks could be interpreted in a number of ways. The simplest explanation is that she simply misspoke and that she was clearly intending to mean Voldemort’s reanimation, but there is also the thought that she might have also been concerned with how a final clue was laid and that it wouldn’t be given too much prominence. Unless she clarifies things in the future and tells us exactly what it was that she meant here, I feel that it is indicative of an ambiguous statement.

So let’s get back to the idea of what exactly is the purpose of these chats and interviews. They are used por the author and her publishers to help stir up interest in the series and to increase the sales of the books (and audio versions, as well as toys, merchandise, etc.) It will sometimes provide insight to aspects of the books that might not be really clear from the text. For example, I was glad that someone asked her about the Thestrals in the Royal Albert Hall interview and she explained why she hadn’t had Harry be able to see them at the end of GoF. I’m not sure that I agree with the logic of her explanation, but at least we are told what her rationale was behind that dramatic choice.
James potter – mischief maker – not made prefect but becomes head boy?
I wish that someone had asked her about the discrepancy of James Potter not being a prefect but that (at least according to Hagrid in PS/SS) ending up to be Head Boy. Well either it should be false or it is true in an unrealistic way which we don’t expect of jo! I would argue that the purpose of JKR doing interviews is not necessarily to provide us with any information about future books.

The pergunta on this fórum is how do her interviews impact the Shipping Debates? Or how best to interpret her cagey respostas about what is to come in the romance subplot. To me, I don’t think she wants to give away anything and she has deliberately tried to mislead people. Because yes, I think she is TRIXY.

Secretive nature

In fact, she freely admits that she is very secretive about her story. This is shown in the BBC Paxman interview which aired the eve of the publication of OotP
{{ JEREMY PAXMAN: But do you find the whole secrecy issue, the need for secrecy, a bit ridiculous?
JK ROWLING: No.
JEREMY PAXMAN: Why not?
JK ROWLING: No not at all. Well, a lot of it comes from me.
JEREMY PAXMAN: Really?
JK ROWLING: Yeah definitely. I mean, of course one could be cynical, and I'm sure you would be disposed to be so and say it was a marketing ploy, but I don't want the kids to know what's coming. Because that's part of the excitement of the story, and having - you know – sweated blood to create all my red herrings and lay all my clues.... to me it's not a ...this is my ....this is my....I was going to say this is my life, it's not my life, but it is a very important part of my life. }}

Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! It is very important in her life, but she does not even remember small but important details from it!

Her commitment to secrecy has climbed to new heights and has alienated some members of the press in the process. The Londres Times had an exclusive interview with Rowling that appeared on the eve of the publication of the OotP. This was done after "a laboriously negotiated six-page contract".



Honest, but misleading respostas :

Deception does not always equate to lying. You can be honest, but deceptive at the same time. I have an example of another writer who was asked two perguntas and he answered them truthfully, but he knew that it could disguise his true feelings.

Martin Lee had worked very hard in securing an interview for his book The Beast Reawakens: Fascism’s Resurgence from Hitler’s Spymasters to Today’s Neo-Nazi Groups and Right-Wing Extremists. The interview was with Hitler’s former chauffer and bodyguard. This elderly man was considered to be an elder statesman for the Far Right. Lee had traveled all the way to Germany after the man agreed to be interviewed por him, but before the man would answer any questions, he had two of his own.

He wanted to know if Martin Lee read the National Alliance newsletter. Martin answered truthfully that he did.
He also wanted to know what Martin thought of Patrick Buchanan. Lee replied that he thought that Pat Buchanan was a good public speaker.
The interview went on as scheduled.
If Martin Lee had elaborated on his respostas and said that the only reason he read anything put out por the National Alliance was as opposition research and that he hated everything that Pat Buchanan stood for – then the interview would have been cancelled. That’s because it would have been revealed that he was not a kindred spirit of Hitler’s followers, but instead an enemy trying to denunciar on their current activities. (The fonte of this anecdote was my hearing Martin Lee being interviewed on a radio program as well as my personal communication with him.)

Deep breath, okay, now back to the Potterverse and Jo Rowling.

With that example in mind, and knowing how much she prizes secrecy regarding her plotline - why should anyone be willing to believe that just because she verbally responds to a pergunta that you can take her respostas at face value? Mystery writers want to surprise their readers and they do so por planting red herrings to drive the amateur sleuths off the track. Why should we not consider the possibility that she is doing the same with her interviews as she does in her text if she values secrecy as much as she does? A good example of her being deceptive, but not lying outright is in her reply to a pergunta is one about Gilderoy Lockhart.

{{ Q. People on the internet want to know if Gilderoy Lockhart is going to come back.

A. Gilderoy Lockhart, bless him, is currently residing in St. Mungo’s Hospital for Magical Maladies and Injuries and his memory is still gone. So at the moment, he’s in no fit state to go anywhere. Which I think serves him right. }}


If you took this answer at face value, it would seem like we would never see Lockhart’s bright shining face ever again. Yet, of course he had a big toothy cameo appearance in “Christmas on the Closed Ward” chapter in OotP. The difference in this quote is that the reporter actually recognized that JKR didn’t really answer the pergunta that was posed, because the interviewer asked this follow up question:

{{ Q. You didn’t quite answer the pergunta as to whether he will be back or not.
A. Yeah, well, you know, you’ve got to sometimes dodge these things. }}


Exactly. She admitted that she will dodge perguntas she doesn’t want to answer. What else should you expect from someone that has placed such a strong emphasis on secrecy?

Another example of the Lockhart deceptive dodge is:

{{ Q. Gilderoy Lockhart, one of my favourite characters...

A. Gilderoy's left in, he's still in Saint Mungo's Hospital for Magical Ailments and Injuries because his memory's just gone but I'm making no promises about Gilderoy. }}


This isn’t quite as overtly avoiding the pergunta with the added bit of hindsight being 20/20 as the first example, but she wasn’t straightforward with her respostas about Lockhart now was she?
And when it comes to the topic of shipping in the series she has given enigmatic respostas that may be perceived as straightforward, but I don’t interpret them that way as others do. This is because I do not believe that she would give away such an important aspect of her series simply because someone asked her.

She has also made repeated statements that she wants to surprise her readers. In the Paxman interview, she was asked an open-ended pergunta specifically about romantic pairings.

{{ 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 fã sites. They have such fun with their theories ... and it is fun, it is fun. And some of them even get quite close. No-one has ever - I have gone and looked at some of it and no-one's ever ... There is one thing that if anyone guessed I would be really annoyed as it is kind of the coração of it all. And it kind of explains everything and no-one's quite got there but a couple of people have skirted it. So you know, I would be pretty miffed after thirteen or fourteen years of composição literária the books if someone just came along and said I think this will happen in book seven. Because it is too late, I couldn't divert now, everything has been building up to it, and I've laid all my clues. (emphasis mine) }}


This is as straightforward as I have seen her discuss the desire of not being a predictable writer. She “sweated blood” to come up with some of her plot twists. And it is because I was surprised at her imaginative plot twists, buried clues and myriad layers of meanings to the books that I am utterly fascinated por this series. I know that I am not alone in my respect for JKR’s ability to take me on a wild ride with a far from typical formulaic ending. She loves a perceptive reader, but she still doesn’t want anyone to guess where she’s going. Because she doesn’t want to be predictable.

If she wanted to be straightforward and say where the romantic subplots were going, she could have done it there and then. She didn’t. She is also well aware of the fã sites and of some of the imaginative theories that we as a subculture have come up with.
She is concerned that one of us might come up with her Grand Surprise and she doesn’t want that. Some on the Good Ship say that her interview frases indicate that the series will go R/Hr and H/G. I have to ask why she would freely give that information away in interviews and then write Hermione’s romantic intentions so Sphinx-like? That doesn’t make any sense to me, if the romantic subplot(s) is/are not important to the no geral, global plot of the series.

That brings us to the NBC Dateline Interview with Katie Couric. This interview has been trumpeted loudly as proving that R/Hr is the way that the series will go. This is due to her words and her facial expressions.


{{ Couric: “Any snogging with Hermione?”
Rowling: “Hermione and Harry?! Do you think so?”
Couric: “No I’m kidding.
Rowling: “Ron and Hermione, I would say, have mais tension there
Couric: We should probably explain that snogging means kissing.”
Rowling: “Yeah.”
Couric: “Lest people think they were shagging!”
Rowling: “Lest people think you’re talking about something completely inappropriate.” }}

Before I give you my analysis of this interview, I’d like to quote something else. This comes from Time Magazine, “The Cool Passion of Dr. Dean,” por John Cloud, August 11, 2003, p. 28.

<

At a July 15 fórum sponsored por the Human Rights Campaign, a gay political group, moderator Sam Donaldson of ABC grilled Senator John Kerry, who is favored over Dean por many in the Democratic Party establishment, on why he supports allowing gay couples all the rights that married straight couples enjoy except the right to be called married. Kerry waded in, invoking history and religion to argue that marriage is viewed por “the body of America…as a contract between a man and a woman.” Boos and hisses. Dean, who shares the exact same position, avoided the pergunta por joking with Donaldson about the newsman’s pointed interrogation. The crowd giggled, a disarmed Donaldson apologized, and Dean moved on to his support for gays in the military. Cheers. Dean had done something preternaturally political – avoided a question, changed the subject—and got away with it. (emphasis mine.)


Notice a pattern here?

**Avoid a question. Disarm the host with humor. Bait and switch.**

Let’s go back to the Couric interview again with my analysis in […..]

Couric: “Any snogging with Hermione?”
Rowling: “Hermione and Harry?!
[ She avoids answering a direct question. ]
Do you think so?”
[ Disarms the host with humor. ]
Couric: “No I’m kidding.
[ Host is clearly disarmed. ]
Rowling: “Ron and Hermione, I would say, have mais tension there.
[ Bait and switch. ]
Couric: We should probably explain that snogging means kissing.”
[ Couric is so disarmed, she doesn’t realize that her pergunta wasn’t answered and she is now trying to show how hip she is that she knows British slang. ]
Rowling: “Yeah.”
Couric: “Lest people think they were shagging!”
Rowling: “Lest people think you’re talking about something completely inappropriate.”

Facial expressions can always be faked as any actor can tell you. Frankly, I refuse to abandon my gut instincts on this series because of a few minutos on a televised interview where JKR avoided answering a pergunta that was given to her. Especially to a reporter that didn’t at least think to ask follow-up perguntas in this situation. Instead, I shall be content to wait until the end of Book 7 to see if my intuition was correct of if I was wrong.

Okay here are some famous shipping quotes. I’m going to list them first and then analyze them.

Harry/Ginny quote:

Poor Ginny Quote
{{ Glynnis l - Will Harry ever notice the long-suffering Ginny Weasley?
You'll see... poor Ginny, eh? }}

Ron/Hermione quotes:

1. Something going on quote.
{{ Q. Is it just me, or was something going on between Ron and Hermione during the last half of Goblet of Fire? I amor your books, por the way, and two of them I've read straight through cover to cover in under 24 hours.
A. Well done on the leitura speed! Yes, something's "going on," but Ron doesn't realize it yet. Typical boy. }}

2. Ron getting a girlfriend quote
{{ Q. Will Ron ever get a girlfriend?
A. I'm laughing again.... Why wouldn't he?! Though he's not doing too well at the moment, is he? But then, Fleur Delacour was really aiming a bit high. }}

3.More than a friend? quote
{{ Zsenya - Does Hermione like Ron as mais than a friend?
The answer to that is in Goblet of Fire, Zsenya! }}

Harry/Hermione quotes:

1. Time to change his mind quote
{{ Q. Is Harry Potter ever going to fall in amor with Hermione or is he going to fall in amor with Ginny Weasley?
A. In Book IV Harry does decide he likes a girl, but it's not Hermione or Ginny. However, he's only 14, so there's plenty of time for him to change his mind. ;-) }}

2. D’you think they’re suited? quote
{{ Q. As Harry matures, does a amor interest develop between him and Hermione?
A. Harry and Hermione…d’you really think they’re suited? }}

3. The Platonic Quote
{{ JKR: *looking through questions* No, don’t like that one. Oh, I like this one… do Harry and Hermione have a date? [laughter] No. They are – they’re very platonic friends. But I won’t answer for anyone else, nudge, nudge, wink, wink. [laughter and sound of kids going “Aaah!”] }}

Okay, now that these famous and oft-debated frases have been listed, I shall give you my analysis. First off, what must be noted is that there are no direct respostas to any of these perguntas that were put before her. If any witness in a court of law responded with a rhetorical pergunta like, “do you think they’re suited?” they would be reprimanded por the judge and directed to answer the pergunta with either a “yes” or a “no.”

We have no such clear and unambiguous replies. Therefore, I shall give you my interpretation of how these very same respostas could be masking H/Hr without her actually resorting to lying. My analysis is in […]

Glynnis l - Will Harry ever notice the long-suffering Ginny Weasley?
You'll see... [ Stick around to find out how this ends. ]
poor Ginny, eh? [ Just wait until OotP! You’ll find out about her Quidditch skills as well as her ability to do the Bat Bogey Hex. She’s mais than “Ron’s little sister” she’s a powerful little witch who just hasn’t had a chance to shine on her own. ]

{{ Q. Is it just me, or was something going on between Ron and Hermione during the last half of Goblet of Fire? I amor your books, por the way, and two of them I've read straight through cover to cover in under 24 hours.
A. Well done on the leitura speed! Yes, something's "going on," but Ron doesn't realize it yet. Typical boy. }}
[The something going on is that Ron likes Hermione, but isn’t yet cognizant of it. Later on he’ll realize it, but Hermione doesn’t reciprocate those feelings.]

{{ Q. Will Ron ever get a girlfriend?
A. I'm laughing again.... Why wouldn't he?! Though he's not doing too well at the moment, is he? But then, Fleur Delacour was really aiming a bit high. }}

[Here’s a reason that he might not get a girlfriend, because the girl he wants, namely Hermione, doesn’t reciprocate his feelings. She is in amor with Harry and will try to keep Ron’s attentions toward her at baía through using Krum as a smokescreen.]

{{ Q. Zsenya - Does Hermione like Ron as mais than a friend?
A. The answer to that is in Goblet of Fire, Zsenya! }}

[Despite the repeated insistence por R/Hr shippers, JKR does not affirmatively answer this question. It is still left open for interpretation. As we’ve seen on this fórum before, widely divergent interpretations of Hermione’s actions and words have been reached por the two ships. But now we know that ron did end up with hermione.]

{{ Q. Is Harry Potter ever going to fall in amor with Hermione or is he going to fall in amor with Ginny Weasley?
A. In Book IV Harry does decide he likes a girl, but it's not Hermione or Ginny. However, he's only 14, so there's plenty of time for him to change his mind. ;-) }}

[She’s not going to tell us the answer of whom Harry winds up being romantically involved with at the end of Book 7. We’ll just have to stick around and see for ourselves.]

{{ Q. As Harry matures, does a amor interest develop between him and Hermione?
A. Harry and Hermione…d’you really think they’re suited? }}

[Would the witness please answer the pergunta for the court! Do you wish to have the court stenographer read it back to you? Or in other words, she didn’t want to answer that question, so she avoided it entirely por responding with a rhetorical question.]

And now back to the famous National Press Club question. One thing that is constantly brought up is the fact that JKR chose this question. She announced that she liked that question. At first blush it seems like a slam dunk that JKR wanted to dissuade anyone from thinking that H/Hr from happening. I wonder why she would try to remove the mystery from her series, unless…it was a deliberate act on her part. I would argue that she liked that pergunta because she had a carefully constructed prepared answer for this type of question.

I say this, because it reminds me of the preparation I went through for the Great Shipping debate at Nimbus. For several months beforehand I tried to anticipate what my opponents might say and ask. I had many different respostas crafted for those perguntas I thought likely. So when Angua asked me her age-old pergunta about Harry and Hermione being “just friends” I smiled because I was ready for that. I had rehearsed for several weeks beforehand a verse from Kenny Loggins’s song “Whenever I Call You ‘Friend.’” It was so much fun to sing that and to see the look of surprise on people’s faces.

So, if I was able to come up with some pithy replies for predictable questions, I will make the assumption that JKR who spent years meticulously plotting her series out, would take the time to prepare some respostas for perguntas that she knew would be asked at one time or another.

So let’s break down her answer into parts. My analysis is once again in italics.

Do Harry and Hermione have a date?
Part I. No. No they never share a date. They happen to be the ultimate romantic pairing of the series, but technically they never share a ‘date.’

Part II. They are – they’re very platonic friends.
[The word ‘platonic’ has many different meanings. One definition holds it “transcending physical desire and tending toward the purely spiritual or ideal: platonic love.” The word history includes: “Marsilio Ficino, a Renaissance follower of Plato, used the terms amor socraticus and amor platonicus interchangeably for a amor between two humans that was preparatory for the amor of God.”
This sounds a lot like the idealized Power of amor that Dumbledore spoke of as residing in the Department of Mysteries. ]

Part III. But I won’t answer for anyone else, nudge, nudge, wink, wink.
Harry and Cho share a encontro, data in Book 5. She knew of this ill-fated encontro, data when she spoke that dia and she knew that this answer could send many fãs in a different direction. If she wants people to think that she’s going R/Hr, but wants to surprise people in the fullness of time with H/Hr than this particular answer would aid in that misconception.

Further evidence that she was indicating H/C here and not R/Hr is the quote from the San Francisco Chronicle
{{ In the fourth book, due out in July, Harry will develop his first crush.

"Careful readers of book three will already know who the girl is,"
Rowling said, smiling mysteriously. }}


Then there is the quote from the CoS DVD interview where JKR said:
{{ And also Chris in the segundo film has kind of foreshadowed what I don't do until the fourth book, which is that you get hints of certain feelings between the three of them, that belong to a sort of slightly mais mature person. }}

Now if JKR wanted us to think that there was something “going on” between Ron and Hermione and that Hermione and Harry are totally “just friends” then why did she choose the words “certain feelings between the three of them”? She could have easily have said something vague like “Chris foreshadowed what I don’t do until the fourth book which is that you get hints of certain feelings of attraction, which belong to a slightly mais mature person.” This would have been vague enough to include all three of them, or just two of the three. Instead she used “between the three of them” which indicates that there is some form of a amor triângulo going on between the Trio members. Especially since Cho Chang is nowhere to be found in CoS, either in the movie or in the book. Unless someone is going to seriously say that there is hints of Harry/Ron going on in the movie, then it should be assumed that JKR’s choice of words showed that she was indicating some form of Harry/Hermione feelings as well as Ron/Hermione feelings being foreshadowed por Chris and por extension, GoF.

Yes, but whenever the dreaded Geometric Shape That Must Not Be Named is mentioned, there is the Can’t afford to alienate his friends quote that is brought up:

{{ Q. I see those hormones kick in in this book, are we going to see Harry becoming even mais like Kevin the teenager, are we going to see him going - Oh Sirius I hate you, I wish you were back in Azkaban?
A. I think Ron's mais like that isn't he - Ron's mais Kevinish. Harry's got so many worries, he needs his friends, he can't afford to alienate them. He's mais your sensitive hero isn't he. Yeah mais of that stuff happens. }}


As if Rowling were guaranteeing that Harry wouldn’t do anything to risk his friendship with Ron and Hermione again. So he couldn’t possibly allow his coração to fall for Hermione, because it would make things difficult with Ron. I don’t buy that. Instead, I think we should consider what if Harry starts to recognize “certain feelings” towards Hermione, how would he react if he believed that Ron felt the same way. And what if Harry wasn’t sure how Hermione felt towards either one of them in a romantic fashion? I would think that this would be a recipe for Conflict. And as Michael Shurtleff says, “Conflict is drama.”

Then of course there is the Humorous, well within the tone of the books quote:
I want Harry Potter and his friends to grow up as well as older, though I'll keep it all humorous, well within the tone of the books. I want them eventually to be truly 17 and discover girlfriends and boyfriends and have sexual feelings - nothing too gritty. Why not allow them to have those feelings?


As if this were a promise carved in stone to her readers that all the romantic subplots she will write will be humorous. The only promise that I think she has made to us is to write seven books in the Harry Potter series and that she will write the story that she wants to write.

Tone of the Series

The segundo part of that aforementioned quote that seems to be frequently overlooked or dismissed out of hand is the phrase “well within the tone of the books.” A recent quote deals with just that issue.

The surprised about the series getting darker quote.

“I’m surprised that people are surprised that the series is getting darker, because the first book started with a murder. And although you didn’t see the murder happen, that for me was an announcement that these things would continue within the series.” But she’s not blind to the fact that very young children will want to read these books, and that they will be disturbed: “I was always ambivalent when people told me that they’d read the first book to their 6-year-old, because I knew what was coming. And I have to say even with the first book, that is a scary ending.”

Perhaps the biggest surprise in “Phoenix” is that Harry, now 15, is finally atuação like a moody, misunderstood teenager. “I’ve said all along that I want Harry to grow up in a realistic way, which means hormonal impulses, and it means a whole bunch of adolescent angst and anger, actually. Harry’s a lot mais angry in Book 5, which I think is entirely right, given what he’s been through. It’s about time he got angry about how life has dealt him.”


I wrote something similar back in this post on June 7th where I said:
Hmmm, now remember this lady has a strange sense of humor. The scene where Dudley's tongue became purple and grossly enlarged was something that I did laugh at, but I daresay that Harry's relatives found nothing funny about it. We also have to take the tone of the books into account. Remember the very first chapter? It described a double homicide having just occurred not 24 hours earlier and Dumbledore asked why Professor McGonagall wasn't out celebrating. Of course, people weren't celebrating the murders, but in Voldemort's fall. Nevertheless, you don't shed a tear in her opening chapter. That's not the tone, nor the emotion that she is evoking from her readers, even if Hagrid and McGonagall do tear up.

JKR has dealt with such issues as serial murder, torture, parricide, and betrayal. Some parts of the books are light and humorous, others are tense and dark. Remember William Shakespeare used misunderstandings as a basis for his romantic comedies very often. However, that didn't mean that he wouldn't choose to use dark themes in a comedy when it fit his needs. It just wound up with a happy ending and not a body count like his tragedies did. Think of "Much Ado About Nothing" where Claudio is deceived and believes that his beloved Hero has betrayed and cuckolded him before their wedding. He publicly accused her of such grievous sins on the wedding altar. Later a fake burial of Hero was done to bury the slander. In the end, all was revealed and Claudio and Hero were happily married.

Hey, if Shakespeare can take such serious themes and do them in a classic comedy that is produced thousands of times each ano - well I have faith that JKR could do a little FITD and have it fit well within the tone of the books. (As for the not too gritty bit, I've mentioned this before but for the newbies benefits: I think that would refer to her reluctance to want to write about such things as nocturnal emissions, which are realities for male adolescents.)


To continue on that theme comes the Graphic or scary quote.

{{ Q. I noticed each book gets a little mais graphic than the last. Where do you draw the line on how graphic or scary to make each book?
A. When the plot demands scary, I make it scary! I am led por the story, not por artificial considerations about how graphic each book should or shouldn't be. }}


And the Tone it down quote.

{{ Have you ever thought "Maybe I should tone it down"?
No. I know that sounds kind of brutal but no, I haven't. The bottom line is, I have to write the story I want to write. I never wrote them with a focus group of 8-year-olds in mind. I have to continue telling the story the way I want to tell it. I don't at all relish the idea of children in tears, and I absolutely don't deny it's frightening. But it's supposed to be frightening! And if you don't show how scary that is, you cannot show how incredibly Valente Harry is. }}


To illustrate that JKR is willing on making Harry suffer in regards to romance is the recent
Relationship “of sorts” quote.
{{ Harry now “is very much in puberty, having as easy a time of it as I did.” And that was? “What I was, I wasn’t sure and I don’t think anyone else was either! I just think it is a very confusing time. Yes, he’s very confused in a boy way. He doesn’t understand how girls’ minds work.” I say that, at age 15, boys don’t normally say anything at all. She laughs and says Hermione is mais than happy to fill in all those silences with her advice.

“This time Harry really, for the first time, does have a relationship of sorts. The emphasis very much on the ‘of sorts’. That was really fun to write, actually. I think you will find it painful. You should find it painful, it is painful, but it was such fun to write. Poor Harry! What I put him through.” }}


And then comes one of my personal favorito frases which I think if anything proves that she would not hesitate to make Harry, Ron and Hermione suffer in a amor triângulo should she choose to go that route is the Torture quote.
Rowling, Jessica and Harry. It makes for an intimate family. And when she talks about Harry, how anxious she was that a Hollywood studio didn't come along and ruin him, how he's reaching puberty and about to discover girls, she does sound like a doting mother. She says she is possessive of him. What's the worst thing anyone could do to him? She mishears me. "I can do to him whatever I like. I'm allowed to torture him as much as I want. He's mine."


Jo Rowling will torture Harry as much as she likes. Even if that means that the romantic subplot might not be light and humorous. And even if it doesn’t please some of her readers.

The I cannot write to please other people quote.

{{ As your fã base is growing larger, and maybe even younger, do you feel any sense of social responsibility, any sense of responsibilities to their sensibilities?
I cannot write to please other people. I can't. When I finish book 7, I want to be able to look in the mirror and think, I did it the way I meant to do it. If I lose readers in the process, I'm not going to throw a party about it. But I would feel far worse if I knew that I had allowed myself to write something different. }}


Some people will still insist that she simply will not deviate from their predicted pairing(s) of R/Hr (with a subset of H/G) because of the Tricked not conned quote.
{{ "I amor a good whodunnit and my passion is plot construction. Readers loved to be tricked, but not conned," Rowling says, warming to her theme. "The best twist ever in literature is in Jane Austen's Emma. To me she is the target of perfection at which we shoot in vain." }}


They feel that JKR cannot possibly be trying to set up H/Hr because they don’t see the buildup for it and she would have to be lying to her readers in order to bring it about. That leaves me with the final quote for this essay. It comes from the Royal Albert Hall interview w/ Stephen Fry.

{{ Stephen Fry:
Now Order of the Phoenix. It’s 766 pages long. That is a big book por any standards and as I have to sit in front of a microphone and read it all for hours and hours I’m very cruz with you [He was joking kids!] but on the other hand it’s extraordinary good value as you planned seven books in the series and you could have written eight just with the words you’ve done in the first five. Did you know it was going to be this long?

JK Rowling:
No I didn’t. I will say this. I had to put in some things because of what’s to come in Books Six and Seven and I didn’t want anyone to say to me: “What a cheat. You never gave us clues!” Because if I didn’t mention certain things in Order of the Phoenix, you could have said: “Well you sprang that on us!” Whereas I want you to be able to guess if you’ve got your wits about you. There are a few surprises coming. }}


Oh! Just because we are going to ask questions, she wrote 776 page long book! but still there are a thousand questins to draw from it. isnt it? so after all this i really wonder - is she great as everyone thinks she is?
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So what do you guys think of this?