What If she got run over by a...God and Goddess Forbid!!!

[A. Vulgarweed]

No: HPFGUIDX 38519

>*What if JKR got run over by a truck?*

(Goat):
>To begin with - and we're starting with the obvious stuff! - if
>she goes and finishes the thing, she's bound to disappoint us.
>There's no way she's going to finish this without selling a few
>shippers down the river. Or if it turns out that Gryffindors
>really can go bad and Slytherins can repent, she'll have ruined
>the whole point of the sorting hat.

Nah, I don't see it that way. I see the different houses as indicated the
_ways in which_ someone is likely to be good or go bad. I just don't buy
the Slytherin - destined to be bad; Gryffindor - destined to be good. I
mean _some_ politicans and CEOs and powers-behind-the-throne must be good,
right? Right?

<chirp, chirp>

Oh, what do I know - I'm just a Ravenclaw who, if inclined to go bad, would
sell my soul for knowledge like Faust...or Eve. My Hufflepuff friend over
there would fall by being very loyal and faithful and thorough and diligent
for a Bad Crowd or a Wrong Cause. The Gryffindors I know would jump to
conclusions and lapse into self-righteous vigilantism.

(more Goat)
>Further: by finishing the series, Jo will loose much of her power
>over our imaginations. I mean, it's all fine and well for her to
>satisfy our narrative lust - but once she has done so, we'll all
>chase off for our next fix and our excitement will gradually
>dwindle away into patronizing, if not contemptuous, familiarity.
>But suppose she never brought us to that climax we're all waiting
>for - suppose we readers should spend the rest of history in the
>throes of lectio interrupta? Irritating, yes - but it would place
>her in a position of permanent - and unforgettable - dominance.


I see. You like to prolong the anticipation into infinity, don't you? I can
understand this perspective! I can admire it! I too have to admit I am
enjoying this squirming a bit, waiting for the next whim of the Mistress.
But how much longer can I take it? I forgot my safeword! Well, the only way
to _really_ know what your limits are is to exceed them, at least once.

(yet more Goat):
But what I'm wondering about just now is
>whether that anxiety - which we all feel, I think - isn't
>something we ought to savor, rather than hope it'll be gone as
>soon as possible. It's a bit like a suspended chord, where you
>know that the fourth is supposed to be resolved up into a fifth
>or down into a third - but feel that the dissonance creates a
>sort of anxiety which has a beauty of it own.

Yes! Yes! Yes!
Having always been drawn to music that does NOT always neatly resolve, it
is the open-endedness and compelling tension that makes all those
easy-cheese major chords worth sitting through (you better space 'em out
real good, though). The Rilke quote was beautiful and apt. I must say, I
_do_ hope the series, when/if it does end, has some open threads and does
_not_ tie everything up too neatly. I want questions left unanswered, I
want interesting and problematic characters still alive, I want the sense
of an open future and not-entirely-resolved past. Killing off
everybody/spirit-nuking the WW, etc., is a cheat every bit as flat-out rude
to one's readers as the "it was all a dream" trope. And with that, I'll be
fine if JKR does end at the 7th book--a writer does have to stop somewhere,
after all. But real stories don't actually have *endings*, only reasonable
stopping points. I just want to see JKR get to what she considers a
reasonable stopping point--doesn't mean _I_ have to stop there,
imaginatively speaking.

I mean, the entire now multimillion-dollar, incredibly diverse and creative
role-playing-game industry more or less began as a thinly-disguised
Create-Your-Own-Tolkien-Fanfiction Kit. (So has a lot of the high-fantasy
publishing industry, for that matter).  Once a writer has opened a door, he
or she does NOT necessarily get to decide for the whole world when and how
it closes.

(spaketh the wise Goat):

>Doesn't it *always* boil down to that? We think of a story as a
>circle that needs to be completed, as suspended chord that needs
>to be resolved. But perhaps for the circle never really closes.
>For every answer, a new question crops up - for every
>explanation, a new and more truculent Flint - for every sense of
>closure a deeper sense of mystery - for every moment in which you
>grasp the meaning, the realization that it has already escaped
>you.
>Is a book ever really "finished" - or do we just stop reading it?

Is a book ever really "finished" -- or does the author just stop writing it?

>And if so, could it be that an unfinished book allows a more
>complete aesthetic experience than a finished one?

Couldn't we say that _all_ books are in some sense unfinished?
>

Neil:
>We as readers all visualize characters and things that take place in a book
>differently.  When that book is made into a movie, that personal
>visualization is taken from us.  As an example lets take Hermione.  Up until
>the movie we all had our own version of what she looked like.  Now Hermione
>looks like Emma Watson whether we like it or not.

How uniform is that really, though? In my mind, she doesn't. She has a much
rounder face and curlier hair and kind of messed-up teeth. Lots of the
major characters in my mind don't really look like the actors who played
them (although I think almost all the actors did a great job and I'm happy
to accept their portrayals as different versions, as equally valid
_representations_ of said characters) If you see a lot of the fanart out
there, a lot of people have their own mental versions that still diverge
widely from each other and from the actors. I think the power of the mental
image is stronger than that--besides, in fandom you get used to a lot of
different visual representations of the same characters: anybody remember
the old Star Wars comics, done by a wide range of different artists with
dramatically divergent styles? I saw the Ralph Bakshi animated LOTR as a
kid, but I certainly never saw my Frodo and Sam like *that* (the actors in
their current Celluloid Thing come a good deal closer, but still
not....exactly). They kind of average out, influence your mental version
but yours is still *yours.*  I mean, quick: what does Hamlet look like?
King Arthur? Does Moses really look like Charlton Heston?

>
>We have all read books 1-4 and we know book 5 is coming out.  We know the
>characters better than our neighbors.  Until book seven is written we can
>imagine anything happening that we want and it could be true.  Checkout the
>creative minds that write fanfic.  Some have gone places where I would never
>go, but until the series is finished anything is possible.  Any relationship
>is possible.  Any character can live or die.  Any situation is possible.
>Once book seven is published the door is shut on speculation.

Oh, but is it? Like I said above, I do fervently hope that not _everything_
is resolved. I think speculation will still go on, as it does about (like
Irene said) Sherlock Holmes, about Dracula, about Middle-Earth, about Han
and Luke and Leia's lives post-Rebellion, about the continuing voyages of
the Starship Enterprise (every edition of it), etc. There are eight million
stories in the naked Wizard World....JKR's only telling part of a few of
them, after all.

I do
>
>Therefore, as anxious as I am for books 5, 6 and 7 to be published, I dread
>the day the series comes to a close.
>
>Neil

I am too, but I think for me a good part of it is that the Goat is
right--the anticipation *is* glorious, and I do fear anticlimax.

Neil again:
>It not just sensitivities, but publishers and Warner Brothers that we must
>worry about.  How much will they try to influence Rowlings?  What if
>Rowlings' plans for the books were felt to be too intense for the younger
>audience?  Will she be presured to keep everything at a PG level?  Bottom
>line now is unfortunately the mighty dollar.
>
This I do worry about. I do think she was serious about writing what evil
really means, and that means bloody grimness, no way around it. I think she
will be able to write it in such a way that she doesn't have to go up to an
R rating (not that it would bother me if she did, but I know it would
bother many), but if she's really going to follow through on what she's set
up...well, war and terrorism and murder and grief and mortal fear are _not_
PG-rated experiences. I would hope that parents would use these things in
the books as a bridge to talk to their children about it (whether or not
they're the lucky ones who don't have to deal with these things in reality
all the time, as countless children do). I seem to remember a letter to
Time or Newsweek or something like that when a parent wrote in that two
different kids, who hadn't spoken to one another, each said that Sept 11
made them feel "like Lord Voldemort had returned", and having that literary
experience to relate to was immensely helpful for them to get a handle on
it. Both that writing and that conversation takes guts, though. Major guts.
They never were just innocuous children's books, and I'm really hoping she
doesn't get smacked down or seduced into perpetuating a charade that they
are. Left to her own devices, I don't think for a second she would...but
who's ever got the luxury of being left to their own devices in that
micro-managed industry?

The more I think about it, the more awful I feel for her.

on that note....
AV