Jo's Chrissie pressie WAS RE: [the_old_crowd] Re: bugger and All things Snape

[Eileen Rebstock]

Barry wrote:
"Fertile ground for speculation. Best make hay while the sun is still
shining. I note that Jo's Chrissie pressie to fans consisted of stifling
a few more of the extant speculative threads. Probably didn't want us to
worry our little heads about such stuff.
How kind."

No, no, she wants another fandom blow-up to watch and entertain her. You
know she's sitting there with a bowl of popcorn in front of her monitor
cackling as fans goes into hysterics.

Seriously, I wish she wouldn't do it. She used to be very reticent about
squashing theories. I have to admit I really do believe that she *meant*
to squash the H/Hr ship early on with the "very platonic" remark (but
obviously didn't), but after that she went into a phase of not answering
questions about ships straight out. Same with theories. I think we all
remember the time she refused to answer a shipping question because she
said she enjoyed the shippers' arguments too much. Lately, some people
have been rather vindictive about that remark, saying that she was
taking delight in pain and hurt, but I believe there was an element of
not wanting to spoil her fans' fun in the remarks. 

Then at some point, she seems to have concluded that fandom discussions
were DESTRUCTIVE and she bore some responsibility for steering us away
from contentious issues. I'm not particularly sure that this strategy on
her part has worked at all. Are the shipping wars any less destructive
because she's finally crushed D/Hr, Luna/Neville, H/Hr, and any other
random Harry, Ginny, Hermione, or Ron ships? I plead guilty to finding
them amusing - in fact I've become a persona non grata in certain areas
of fandom for mocking the shippers I consider nuts, but yeah, they're
still raging. I think Jo could take a cue from them as to the utter
uselessness of squashing theories in an attempt to gain fandom peace.
Frankly, she's setting herself up for combatants to turn on her for
taking away their toys. 

Note I'm not saying she's malicious, or mean, or out of bounds. I just
don't think it's a wise strategy. And it's not like we got too ferocious
over Petunia being a witch or a Muggle, did we?

Eileen