HBP and ships

[mamadeb]

Okay, fine, it's a post about Ship Wars. How silly is that from a slash fan?

First, I have to say that I was one of the people who not only never saw Harry/Hermione, but who did see Hermione/Ron telegraphed loud and clear. JK Rowling is clearly of the "bickering = love" school of romance (agree or disagree with the strength of those romances, such a school exists. As my first thoughts upon meeting my own husband were, "I could have a fight with this man and we'd come out the other side," and we've proven that time and time again - as recently as last night - I don't see bickering as necessarily a negative.).

But subtext is subtext, and if people saw enough to make Harry/Hermione viable, they're not stupid, or necessarily engaging in wishful thinking. That is, they don't need to hate Ron or think that Harry would be a better match for Hermione. All they need is to see that these two have a lovely, strong friendship with a great deal of respect for each other, which is *there* and *true*, and if they don't see bickering as romance, or otherwise don't see a Hermione/Ron thing, or think it was too heavily foreshadowed to actually happen (something Rowling has done - Snape=active Death Eater, anyone?) - well, it's just the sort of friendship that could grow into a romance with very little effort.

I'm avoiding the Harry/Ginny thing because I was really happy Ginny had gotten over her crush - I probably would have liked it better if she had, and then fell for Harry all over again in a more mature way, but I don't know. I'm a slasher. I want Harry unattached.

Just because they saw something others did not, or didn't see something others did doesn't mean they're wrong or stupid or whatever.

And why am I saying all this? Because of Remus/Tonks. For some people on my flist, Remus/Tonks came as a pleasant surprise - a bit of happiness in the middle of the funeral. For others, it was more unpleasant for what it did to Tonks - few of us saw her as the moping type. And to mope so far as to not be able to use her inborn talents - ouch. I'm a big Tonks fan, and I truly disliked that whole thing. And, of course, I'm a Remus/Sirius slasher, and seeing one of my favorite pairings made more difficult almost gratuitously was harder than seeing Harry date Ginny. And there were those who saw Tonks as queer and liked her that way, and to see her not only as straight, but crying over Remus was not pleasant for them. (I personally had no opinion one way or the other. I just thought OoTP Tonks was way cool. HBP - not so much.)

But, some of you are saying, "Big deal. Sirius is dead and it's been a year. Why shouldn't he move on, and why shouldn't he move on to Tonks? Why can't he be bisexual?" And if that were the only problem, I'd nod. I'd deal with the out of left-fieldness and the characterization of Tonks, and be happy that Remus found someone else.

But there are others on my friendslist who saw the pairing before HBP came out. They clearly saw something between the two of them that I can't. That I missed entirely. Just like the Harry/Hermione shippers saw something between those two that I missed, and didn't see what was going on between Hermione and Ron. And I don't like it because, while a current R/T doesn't do anything to R/S, hints in OotP destroys it. Because it would mean that while Remus was living with Sirius he was also giving signals to Tonks.

And, yes, I can see non-romantic explanations for all the Remus/Sirius stuff in OotP, but I found the romantic ones easier to make. And judging from all the R/S stories, I'm not the only one. This doesn't mean we can't be wrong. I don't mind being wrong - okay, I do, but it's happened before. I mind feeling stupid and betrayed. And I'm guessing the H/Hr people are feeling that way, too.

Comments

[kassrachel.livejournal.com]

See, here's what I have trouble understanding: don't we, as fans, know that what we're playing with is subtext? What shifted, when I wasn't paying attention, which gave so many of us the sense that we have the right to grouse when canon contradicts the subtextual readings of it that we like best?

I'm a huge Remus/Sirius fan, for instance. I love Remus/Sirius as a pairing, and I even think it's very nearly canon. But it's not canon, not technically; and if Rowling wants to show us Remus interested now in Tonks, she gets to do that, because she's writing the books. And if it means we have to work a little harder to show Remus and Sirius together (which I don't personally think that it does; I'm of the "Remus could be bi, and besides, Tonks is pretty queer herself" school of thought), that's the risk we take in writing active fandoms.

Or to take another pairing example, I've always had a fondness for Harry/Snape. (That's arguably Alan Rickman's fault, I imagine, but that's neither here nor there.) After this book, Harry/Snape is a lot harder to write than it used to be! But I wouldn't dream of griping about how Rowling chose to write Snape's actions in this book; it's her sandbox, after all, and I've always known that this pairing (which I enjoy so very much) is a bit of a stretch, not actually supported by canon, yadda yadda.

It's not that I don't sympathize with those whose WIPs have been Jossed (Rowling'd?). And I understand how one could feel frustrated when the creator's sense of the characters diverges from one's own sense of them -- there's that interesting question of whether a character can behave in an OOC way in canon, not just in fanfiction. But on the whole, I don't see why a character doing one thing now (Remus holding Tonks' hand, for instance) betrays our sense of who the character was in previous books (Remus living with Sirius, e.g.)...and I don't like the notion that because we're fans, we're entitled to have the characters follow the arc we want to see.

[ataniell93.livejournal.com]

I don't think fans are entitled to have characters follow the arc they want to see, but I think fans are entitled to express their opinions when they don't like what they DO see, which is why all this outrage over the H/Hr shippers' reactions seems so weird to me.

Also, I think fans are entitled not to be mocked by creators when they see things the creators don't see. The ship wars have become as ugly as they have in part due to Rowling's continual feeding of them. She will say very ambiguous things, write what to many people is a very ambiguous text (and keep in mind her writing style is primarily a mystery writing style even though she is writing in the fantasy genre--mystery and not romance, but mystery and not straightforward, either) and then, when she has built up both sides of the debate with these little comments here and there, and finally reveals the truth, she will allow herself to participate in one side's mockery of the other and allow it to go on the internet for the world to see?

So. Not. Cool.

[kassrachel.livejournal.com]

I'm absolutely with you that fans are entitled to express their (our) opinions about the direction canon takes. I'm just a little bit baffled by the ire I'm catching glimpses of; some of it smacks of a sense of ownership, e.g. "we love the characters more than you do, so our interpretation of who they are is more right than yours," which is just...weird, to me.

And what you say about Rowling feeing the ship wars makes me glad I've largely been avoiding reading interviews with her and/or other extratextual whatnot. I like her books a great deal, and I might like them less if I perceived her as mean to her fans.

[chrysantza.livejournal.com]

That's the thing, though - I don't feel that Rowling is "mean" to her fans, nor do I really think she feeds into any ship wars. In the interview, it was the interviewers who could be said to be stirring any ship wars, not Rowling herself. I think the problem is a lot of fans really do have an entitlement complex. We have to remember a couple of things: one, J.K. Rowling is not our "pet" writer and we are not her patrons.

Two, the shippers are really a minority in the fandom. I think because all of us here are shippers, and shippers tend to be very active, there is an illusion that there are more of us than there really are. MOST of Rowling's fans just want to read the books, perhaps go to a costume party or two, or discuss the books a bit, and don't have much invested in who gets with who aside from just wanting a good story.

My best friend just finished HBP. She is not a shipper, and not really a "fan" even, she just likes the books because she's into fantasy in general. She loved HBP and loved that Harry and Ginny got together, and didn't really care much about the other romances. I think this is probably a more common perspective than ours. That, and the innumerable young boys who read HP and think kissing is ICKY EWWWWWWWWW MAKE IT STOP!

[(Anonymous)]

What shifted, when I wasn't paying attention, which gave so many of us the sense that we have the right to grouse when canon contradicts the subtextual readings of it that we like best?

Hah! I do not write fic. But you put this rather well. The thing that bothers me about fanfic/slashfic writers often is when they get their panties in a bunch when JKR doesn't do what they want her to do. I find that irritating and insulting, to be honest. It seems to me that sometimes people (I'm sure present company is excluded, mind you, so don't take this as anything against you as I haven't read your writing) lose perspective; they forget that it is JKR's imagination they are toying with, not the other way around.

[mamadeb.livejournal.com]

We have a right to complain when characters differently than we have been led to believe.

She will never do what I want her to do. I know that.

[estherchaya.livejournal.com]

What shifted, when I wasn't paying attention, which gave so many of us the sense that we have the right to grouse when canon contradicts the subtextual readings of it that we like best?

Hah! I do not write fic. But you put this rather well. The thing that bothers me about fanfic/slashfic writers often is when they get their panties in a bunch when JKR doesn't do what they want her to do. I find that irritating and insulting, to be honest. It seems to me that sometimes people (I'm sure present company is excluded, mind you, so don't take this as anything against you as I haven't read your writing) lose perspective; they forget that it is JKR's imagination they are toying with, not the other way around.

[pocketnaomi.livejournal.com]

Well said. Though I do sometimes gripe when Rowling doesn't do what I think she led us, in all fairness, to expect -- I'm not happy with the concept that most of next book is unlikely to take place at Hogwarts at all, with at least two of the major characters dropping out of school, for example. She's said pretty clearly right along that there was one book for each of the heroes' years in school; I think I had a right to expect the school to feature, and there to be closure to the school-years thread as well as the other plot threads, instead of it just being dropped like an inconvenient side-issue.

I do wonder, regarding the slashers, though, why so many of them seem to feel that homosexual pairings are (regardless of the characters or the medium; I'mnot just talking about Rowling here) somehow *more* likely or plausible from the text than heterosexual ones. Unless a particular character's been mentioned in the text as gay, I tend to assume that, well, he's got the same 90% chance of being straight that people in real life do. And that percentage goes a lot higher if there's any indication of an attraction to the opposite sex, since bisexuals certainly exist but aren't terribly common. So the theory that somehow there's more "likelihood" to a Harry-Draco pairing than a Harry-Ginny one perplexes me. I don't see anything wring with Harry/Draco, but I'm hardly surprised that it wasn't done, especially after Harry showed himself clearly susceptible to the charms of Cho Chang.

[mamadeb.livejournal.com]

I can only speak for myself in this regard.

It's hard to explain, and really depends on the source material. Sometimes, I just see the same-sex pair as more compatible than a het pairing for whatever reasons, or just so emotionally close that it's hard to put anyone in between (the buddy series such as Starsky and Hutch and The Sentinel come to mind.)

And sometimes it's all about the pretty.

[chrysantza.livejournal.com]

Pretty is good.

I'm not really a slasher, but post-HBP I've had this incredible urge to write Blaise/Zacharias. My problem is that I don't quite trust myself not to write pr0n that isn't laughable. I've read enough bad sex scenes in my time to know just what effect bad porn has on readers - they wet themselves, but it's with laughter.

[mamadeb.livejournal.com]

There's this impression that slash is all about the pr0n. It isn't. I can point to long and lovely (or short and cute, or medium length and angsty) slash stories that are not pr0n by anyone's definition - any sex that happens beyond a kiss happens off-screen or after a fade-to-black.

What makes a story slash is the focus on a same-sex romantic pairing. (I used to say non-canonical, but along came QAF and Oz and Willow/Tara in Buffy, and that went away.) Or that the primary relationship in the story is same-sex, even if it focuses on something else.

This is not to say that explicit sex is bad :), just that it's not always necessary.

[kid-lit-fan.livejournal.com]

I tend to notice slashy possibilities a bit more than the average fan, but not as much as fanfic writers, and Remus/Sirius struck me as English schoolfellows,rather than lovers.

I know that my favorite slashes, Draco/Harry and Draco/Lucius/Mary Sue won't happen in canon, so it doesn't much worry me. I'm afraid Tom Felton and Jason Issacs (as a blonde) are more responsible for that than JKR, just as Alan Rickman is probably responsible for a LOT more of the Snape/Anybody slash than JKR! And the way Draco/Harry said "Scared, Potter!" "You WISH!" in the third probably would have rolled off my if I hadn't been just WALLOWING in them-based slash that week.

For me, the most offensive part of the witherwings.net letter was "Early on, we learned that you studied classical literature and mythology, and loved Jane Austen and other great authors. Not the average children's author, then, are you? "

Excuse me? Oh, sorry, I forgot, children's authors are just hacks who aren't good enough to write "real" books. This is just detestable; a good children's book will make a lifetime reader. A good children's writer can't resort to pop culture memories or sexual references when the plot bogs down. A good children's book is many times harder to write than an adult novel.

Does this idiot think "the average children's author" never progressed beyond Dick and Jane?

[ellen-fremedon.livejournal.com]

Well, there's being plausible, and there's being predictive, and they're not quite the same thing. Many fanfic writers-- and not just slashers-- tend to not be interested in the pairings they feel are the most likely to actually occur in canon. I mean, I've never been that interested in reading or writing Ron/Hermione fic largely because I assumed that if I waited a few years, canon would provide.

But the most likely outcome in the *story* isn't necessarily the only likely outcome in characters' *lives*. I mean, we make guesses about where the story's going based on things the characters don't know-- whose story it is, who the hero is, structural elements and narrative choices that we can see from outside, but that the characters don't know about.

So there's that.

As far as characters' statistical likelihood of being queer-- well, if you make everyone in a certain story gay, yeah, it's going to be hard to believe and people will call you on it. As far as *Harry's* likelihood of being queer-- I don't think that fancying Ginny at this point in his life cancels out all or even most of the Gay Points he racked up in OotP. He's only sixteen-- a lot of gay men don't come out to themselves until they're quite a bit older than that. And Ginny's the apex of *two* triangles of desire-- she's a substitute or a conduit not just for Ron (whom I don't see Harry fancying, actually, but a lot of people do) but also for Tom Riddle (whom Harry continues to have a really disturbing fascination with in this book.)

[pocketnaomi.livejournal.com]

I didn't particularly see any gay points in OotP, personally, though I agree that a 16-year-old can certainly experience a few false starts before finding his romantic direction. (I actually don't see Harry being especially fascinated with Tom Riddle in book 6, I see him being dragged by a fascinated Dumbledore into the matter of Tom Riddle, when he isn't at all sure all this detail isn't a waste of time.)

Your point about going with IC rather than OOC likelihood is well taken -- a lot of the reason I just don't see Harry/Draco happening is that I don't think Rowling is likely to throw in a major new element in her central character's personality in book 7 of a 7-book series. The statistical thing was my nod to the same principle, actually -- I find it hard from a RL perspective rather than a canonical perspective to believe that there are quite so many closeted queers (who just happen periodically to date women but of course it doesn't mean anything) in the same smallish social circle as a lot of fanfic authors seem to want me to suppose. :)

[ellen-fremedon.livejournal.com]

*nods* Right-- very, very few fans have ever thought that Harry/Draco (or Harry/Snape, or most romances besides the ones JKR has been telegraphing) are likely to happen in the books, for just that kind of structural reason. And Harry's never been seen as likely to seriously question his sexuality in the books, either, again for structural reasons-- the books aren't about Harry Potter and the Search For a Sexual Identity, and covering a storyline like that would take more space than she could afford to devote to it without seriously skewing the books' focus. But to a lot of fans, the main point of fanfic is to be able to explore the characters without being bound by those structural constraints-- to deal with the possibilities we know canon is never going to explore, because they lead into some other story than the one JKR is telling.

[pocketnaomi.livejournal.com]

I admit I find the Harry/Snape, or any other version of schoolkid-with-professor, pretty personally squickful. Even the versions which write it as several years later. I'm sure (again, looking at the world as a world and not as a set of books) there are cases, in a small community in which virtually everyone passes through the same school, in which professors at that school end up romantically involved with people whom they, once upon a time, taught. Otherwise the longer-tenure professors would pretty much be celibate by definition. But I have a pretty strong emotional reaction against anyone starting a romance with somebody over whom they have once been in a position of actual authority, and the fact that it is most commonly done involving a professor who has been shown consistently through the books as flagrantly abusing his authority for personal motives only makes it worse... as does the fact that most of the pairings in question are done across at least a full generation's worth of age, and when the younger party is still pretty young and not all that many years out of school (still in their 20's or so) so the dynamic between them still seems skewed to me.

[ellen-fremedon.livejournal.com]

Oh, of course the dynamic between Snape and Harry is skewed-- for the people who read and write it, that's usually part of the appeal, and it certainly doesn't appeal to everyone.

[pocketnaomi.livejournal.com]

*nod* Makes sense. Like I said, it's a personal squick. I actually like Snape stories, even pretty warped Snape stories, but very much prefer them with somebody in his own age range.

[mamadeb.livejournal.com]

Gay points (for those of us playing that game): the fact that Harry was so very fascinated with Draco, to the point that he ignored all else (yes, there were plot reasons, but everyone else thought he was nuts.) And every single mention of Tom Riddle contained an observation about how handsome he was or wasn't. (Does he ever say how pretty Ginny is? Or does he only talk about her long red hair?) While that's also a measure of how evil he is - the more evil he becomess and the more of his soul he deposits in Horcruxes, the less handsome he becomes - it's odd for a heterosexual boy to notice that.

Most of us writing slash fic are aware of how unlikely it is to have so many gay characters (Everyone is Gay is usually played for fun). We're also aware that wizards probably won't have gay marriage or pregnant men.

We write slash because it's fun.

[enju.livejournal.com]

He also refers to Sirius as handsome fairly frequently.

[mamadeb.livejournal.com]

I'm not upset at Rowling in terms of the story (okay, I do think that R/T is gratuitous, and I'm not happy with Tonks's characterization, but those are Rowling's choices, and they have little or no effect on the major arc.)

I was just - well, trying to understand something, so I wrote it out. And just slightly bitter that a pairing of mine could never happen, even though it's been subtexty since PoA, and someone else's completely off-the-wall pairing is now canon. Even though I knew that, *and* half the pairing is dead anyway. It's not a rational response.

My OTP is Harry/Draco, and this book is...um. There it is, more texty than even Remus/Sirius, but also much, much harder. And I have no problems with that - it's a living canon and these things happen. OotP was even harder on that pairing, and fandom managed.

[ellen-fremedon.livejournal.com]

What Rachel said *g*.

But also-- I totally get what you mean about the effect of R/T having been telegraphed in OotP, but really? I think the telegraphing boils down to two things: (1) The possibility of reading their interaction when he introduces her to Harry by her first name as flirtatious, which, while a possible reading, is certainly not the only one, and (2) the facts that they know each other, they're cool and sexy characters, and there aren't a lot of women in canon to pair Remus with.

The people who were shipping them beforehand may have seen some signals that it was a viable pairing, but I *don't* think the signals they were seeing were as strong as the subtext that the R/S shippers were picking up on-- or, for that matter, as the H/Hr subtext, which would have been very strong if the books were a romance and following the rules of the romance. R/T prior to HBP was basically founded on "They're pretty, they seem to like each other-- why not?" That's a fine basis for a ship as far as I'm concerned, but it's a very different sort of ship-fodder than what the R/S folks were building on.

[ataniell93.livejournal.com]

Well, I didn't see R/Hr, but I didn't see R/Hr because I was comparing them to people I know and I thought any relationship between them would be a disaster. I know couples who bicker, but their bickering is not as mean as R/Hr's!

I personally hate being teased, especially by men. My father teases and I just loathe it--he's learnt not to do it to me, that I don't think it's funny, but.

I don't see R/T either, I never did. It seems to me that it was very forced, almost a reaction to S/R shipping and an attempt to quash the rumours. She doesn't strike me as straight either!

[zsero.livejournal.com]

You'd think some people have never heard of poly...

[estherchaya.livejournal.com]

For what it's worth, despite the fact that I'm not a writer of fic myself, I totally NEVER saw Harry and Hermione together and it was crystal clear to me that Hermione and Ron would get together. That was obvious (to me) starting (if I remember correctly) in PoA.

[pocketnaomi.livejournal.com]

I've just finished rereading OotP, and while I could plausibly see Remus as being quietly, in the privacy of his own mind, more than platonically affectionate toward his friend, I can't see Sirius as anything but straight. He just comes across to me with a large, glaring Extreme Lack Of Gaydar Resonance or something. Always has.

[mamadeb.livejournal.com]

Nod. I'm that way with Ron - he reads as totally straight to me. (Hermione might be a bit more open to experimentation.) A lot of this is perception.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

It's funny that people sometimes forget that we all think ahead in stories like this. I've read some comments that yes, indicate that the person is looking to the author more as the provider of correct backstory to their fanfic rather than as someone writing her own story. But that's not what's mostly going on, especially not with regard to complaints about the ships, that I can see.

As a writer and editor (that sounds so pretentious, but really I just mean to say this is what I do at work), a lot of the stuff I do is about looking at stories for how they read. Part of that means if you set up an expectation or send the reader off on a tangent, it's going to weaken the effect of the story. Now, as it happens I did see H/G telegraphed and R/Hr telegraphed way in advance, but even I thought it was more done in the way of telling me what the author was thinking--I never felt with these characters that they would make a great couple personally. So I can see how, if someone has come to the conclusion in reading the H/Hr scenes in the books, that these two *would* make a great couple, that it might be ultimately disappointing to have that shoved aside for something else. And I think it's fine for them to suggest that their storyline might have been more meaningful--why not?

It's possible that JKR's voice is better being satirical about things other than romance, and people are disagreeing with the views on romance she puts forth. I don't think that's a case of them not getting what she's written, or denying her right to tell her story, or expecting them to write what they want. It can just as easily be a reasonable negative reaction to what they read.

[chrysantza.livejournal.com]

When you think about it, the fandom is so vast that there's no way Rowling could please everyone, all the time. There are just too many people, with too many viewpoints. Rowling could be as smooth and sweet as ice cream in her interviews and I'm sure someone would STILL claim she was "mean" to her fans or something.

As you probably know, I'm one of those R/T shippers. And honestly, I wasn't expecting it to be canon. I shipped them post-OOtP because I thought they were a cute couple.

With Tonks' characterization - sigh. I know how wet she comes across, in contrast to the spunky Tonks of OOtP. I think there are reasons for this, and we are not seeing them because we are only seeing Tonks through Harry's eyes. Bob knows Tonks has reasons to be depressed besides Remus - she saw her aunt kill her cousin, she has family on opposing sides in this war, she probably misses Sirius, and we don't know how her parents feel about the Black Family Follies.

The thing with Tonks is, in a way, she just can't win with some readers. If she's upbeat and outgoing, she's an obnoxious Mary Sue. If she's depressed, she's weak and wimpy.

I think too, with romance, we are conditioned to expect lots of UST and groundwork and buildup because so many fanfics - het and slash alike - have romance as their centerpiece. Romance ficcers have the leisure to build things up slowly. Rowling, meanwhile, is trying to cram a lot of romance into a story that is, at bottom, about other things.

In a way, HP is like a blank slate. I'm not a literary critic or even a lit major, so my reach is definitely exceeding my grasp here, but perhaps we could call the HP series and its fans a study in postmodern criticism? A lot of us see different things, because we are different people and looking for different things. I really didn't see R/S (though that is neither here nor there as far as fanfic is concerned, ficcers write what is not canon all the time) in the canon, nor did I get the "gay" vibe off of either Remus or Tonks. For all we know, Mundungus Fletcher could be gay, or Charlie Weasley. For a lot of the subtext, it boils down to "You say tomato, I say tomahto."

Finally - Rowling, in her last interview, made it pretty clear that this "shipping" was new to her, and furthermore, it appears she is only really familiar with the Trio end of shipping. I don't know that it crossed her mind that Remus and Sirius were thought to be a couple. And, in the end, it's really her story to tell.

[mamadeb.livejournal.com]

Wait. You mean Mundungus *isn't* gay?

(Mundungus is a canonical cross dresser - yes, as a disguise, which tells me that the everpresent fanfic "glamors" don't exist, but maybe he likes it, too. Which doesn't mean he's gay. I have a lifestyle crossdresser on my flist who prefers members of the opposite sex. He was recently bashed, too, in the neighborhood in which he's lived, in his skirts, for years. :( )

Interpretate, interpretate, interpretate, there'll always be something left

[etrangere.livejournal.com]

The beauty of fanfic is :
you can write one fanfic and make it Remus/Sirius together during the OotP and then Remus hooking up with Tonks after Sirius' death as a way to deal with his grief

and

you can write a fanfic where Remus has always been straight and was with Tonks during OotP, and they're a very serious item during HBP

and

you can even write a fanfic where the Remus/Tonks pairing is purely a cover story because Remus is the liaison of Snape (whom he's shagging) (huh, doesn't sound like a good rational but i'm sure soon enough there'll bve well written fics like that)

You can do all of those at the same time, and you can enjou them.

That's the beauty of subtext, we can ignore or aknowledge it at will. I mean, most of the time subtext contradicts itself anyway... metaphores in one body of art are rarely all consistent with oneselves (oh, I remember all the wank we went into in the Buffy fandom about the evolution of the vampire metaphore during various seasons)

There's nothing that should stop any H/Hr shipper right now to write H/Hr fics. There's never been.

So what is it about ? Finding out if you're "right" canon ? Racing ships running for the lines of arrival and the pairing that exists at the last page is the one that "won" ?

JKR is not the ultimate arbitrer of what ships are interesting and fun. There's not reason she should be. We're the audience, we're the ones with the liberty and the power to interprete at will and build on what she writes. It's a wonderful position.

We don't need to feel concerned by authorial intent in any way.

You probably know this much better than I, but I was told there's one midrach about rabbi discussing a point of the Torah and one of them was appealing to G*d to agree with him, various miraculous manifestations occur but the other rabbis refuse to accept it as an argument because now that the Law has been given to humans, it is their role to interprete it.

I find it to be extremely applicable to literature in general.

[rosehiptea.livejournal.com]

I don't know if there were Remus/Tonks hints before HBP though, at least any that I saw. (Of course I never see anything, I'm subtext-blind. Though I did see Ron/Hermione, and it didn't keep me from slashing either one of them and still won't.)

I mean, in an interview with J.K. Rowling she did seem surprised that people on the net were shipping them before HBP came out.

As for Tonks' characterization, I don't know. If she was really supposed to only be upset because of Remus, that is a bit odd to me, but, I don't know.

And I don't know how to feel about people who are upset over the book. I'm not, even though my (very non-canon) ships were scuttled. But I admit I'll be disappointed myself if developments with Snape turn out the way they have in the last book.

I don't know what to say. I doubt I'll rant about the last book either, even if that does happen. But when I think of what Kohta Hirano did to Walter I put my fingers in my ears and say "La la la..." so I'm not on higher ground.

[ellen-fremedon.livejournal.com]

If she was really supposed to only be upset because of Remus, that is a bit odd to me, but, I don't know.

I find that assuming R/S makes that aspect of the R/T make more sense-- if Tonks was attracted to Remus before, and was a little jealous of Sirius, and then failed to save him, that could easily exacerbate her survivor guilt to the levels we saw.

[dj-clawson.livejournal.com]

I refuse to believe that JK Rowling never reads fanfic and has not at all been influenced by it, and that her books are reading more and more like fanfic.

[mamadeb.livejournal.com]

Honestly, if I were a published author and I knew that there was fanfic written about my universe, I would A. jump for joy and B. Not read a word of it. That can get dangerous.

[dj-clawson.livejournal.com]

I would read every word and then, for legal purposes, deny up and down that I did so.

Our ship is sinking

[kid-lit-fan.livejournal.com]

http://www.livejournal.com/users/wizzart/7560.html#cutid1
And, have you seen potterpuffs. It makes me squee all stupid, and one of the icons is, in fact, a pick at the witherwings.net letter "Hermione/Ron. Because I read the books."