Should JKR shut up? (was Re: I am so happy...

[muscatel1988]

No: HPFGUIDX 178587

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "Catlady (Rita Prince Winston)"
<catlady at ...> wrote:
> 
> Someone else already said this, but:
> WHY should Rowling be the only person in the world who doesn't have
> the right to say things about Potterverse characters?

She shouldn't be.  Just as there is a difference between "Dumbledore
was gay" (which she didn't say) and "I've always thought of Dumbledore
as gay" (which she did), there's a difference between saying what she
*thinks* and "He is my character - he is what he is".  She's as
entitled as any of the rest of us to talk about what she thinks, but
that cuts both ways: we are as entitled as her to an opinion now.  The
game is over and all the cards are face-up on the table.

The only way in which Dumbledore "is what he is" is as he exists
between the pages of the books.  He has no existence outside of them,
and if he doesn't, he can't belong to her.  When she sent the
manuscript of DH off, she gave up sole title.  If Dumbledore's being
gay or being able to talk Swahili or liking Pulp was part of what was
made up of permutations of 26 marks on paper, then it should have been
there.  She chose not to tell us, and so it doesn't exist.

> (Does your << the relationship between the author, the reader and 
> the text >> allow sequels?)

Yes, of course.  That's another piece of fiction, another book.  
 
> I don't think anyone could make Voldemort INNOCENT after we saw
> inside his head that he never feels as good as when he's murdering
> people.

But the only access we have to Voldemort's mind is through Harry's -
what if those communications were planted there by
EvenEviller!Overlord, in a typically JKR piece of misdirection? 
Turtles, in other words, all the way down.  <vbeg>

My point in that risible scenario was that if she is going to persist
in giving us new information like this, then there's nothing to stop
her completely undermining what she's already given us in the books.
In a way, she's already done this - her interviews have been stuffed
with unreliable information (who does magic late in life, etc) all
along.  I was inclined to excuse this on the basis that she was only
telling us what we would eventually find out anyway, and because she
was still writing them.  But those excuses no longer hold true: it's
over.  It's finished.  And if she feels that she should have put more
in, then, frankly, tough.  She's given the world seven books - it's
time, as Red Hen says, to step away from the mirror.