JKR gave an interview in La Gazatte that has been translated into English...
This interview actually took place awhile ago, but this is my first time seeing the translation. Zenny, if you can find a thread on this, please let me know. In the meantime, enjoy!
TEXT IN ENGLISH
Nota : We did our best, nevertheless, considering the size of the text and the bad quality of the sound, we decided to fill the blanks with stars.
If you find any kind of mistake or an incoherence, please email us so we can correct it.
On the screen at the beginning of the session
ORDER OF EVENTS
Mrs Rowling will read from « The Deathly Hallows » Questions and Answers session. Mrs Rowling will answer ten questions from the audience (these are the ten best questions submitted by tickets holders) Presentation of the James Joyce Award.
A fan : I love you !
Jo : I love you too... Wow !You’re a pretty crowd and that’s really nice. I didn’t know...
This is almost exactly as I imagine the Ministry of Magic *** I’ll be doing a brief reading, as you probably know.
Frankly, I haven’t practised, I haven’t read since 2 months ago I think, so please forgive me if it’s a bit rough. So I’m reading the part of Deathly Hallows in which... Has anyone here not read this book ? Well, You never know... Someone right there ! That’s not possible. *** So I’m reading the part when Ron comes back [...]
[While she was reading, Jo stopped twice to provide comments]
« [Harry] knelt down besides Ron a placed a hand cautiously on his shoulder. » I did originally put « gingerly on Ron’s shoulder » I’ve just remembered doing that as I read that and immediately « gingerly »... strike that out.
[...]
« Simultaneously they walked forwards and hugged, Harry gripping the still sopping back of Ron’s jacket. » I don’t know why I’m doing this, I’ve never done this before but I will pause here to say that my American editor wanted them to hug at the end of virtually every book I wrote. He kept saying to me : "don’t you feel they’d hug here ?" I kept saying no ! They are British ! [applause] British boys don’t do that ! But I had always known and I did have to tell him that they will hug eventually on, but you know it has to be life or death ** there’s no point having *** Anyway, sorry, I don’t know why I am doing this… Where am I ? Oh yes, they just hugged ! »
[...]
For years I’ve been reading and I’ve always had to read from the front of the book, so I never normally get to read Ron and Hermione
So now Mrs Rowling will answer some questions from the audience. Hundreds of you entered into a draw to have your question answered and we kept only the tenish best. And so to pick it off is Colin Quin.
1. [...]
No I knew what the plot was before Philosopher’s Stone was published. I think in the case of Snape... They’re very different, with Dumbledore quite deliberately, you find out little about Dumbledore’s own private life because his interactions with Harry are always about Harry, which sets up the fact that in the seventh book Harry thinks "but why did I never ask ?" He’s gone now and he’s never even thought of saying : "so how about you ?" you know, at the end of one of those conversations which I think is something that happens after the grief, the regret that he didn’t ask. And I think also that Dumbledore had always been such an almost god-like figure to Harry in some ways, that he felt he couldn’t ask him personal questions. Snape, on the other hand, I had to drop clues all the way through because as you know in the seventh book when you have the revelation scene where everything shifts and you realize why Snape was… what Snape’s motivation was. I had to plot that through the books because at the point where you see what was really going on, it would have been an absolute cheat on the reader at that point just to show a bunch of stuff you’ve never seen before, you know… "Oh by the way, in the background this was happening." So I did know. It was a complicated plotting process but by the time Philosopher’s Stone was finished, I definitely knew all the big things about Snape and Dumbledore because in many ways they’re the two most important characters in the seventh book… Well, other than the trio, Harry, Ron and Hermione.
2. Question about an essay on HP ?…
Did you get credits for coming here ? I didn’t know about that until I saw your question, yesterday or the day before yesterday, I was a bit stunned by that, to be absolutely honnest. … So provoking ! Well, that’s incredible to me but that is the case, to be honnest with you, it really is. It’s very strange to think that you must have been pretty much the target audience, ten years ago, so you’ve really… you have been reading this book all through these ten years so you are… You are my people ! No, I don’t mean in any political way, I’m not trying to lead you to an uprise or something… Yes, it is odd to sit in this room and to think that Harry Potter would be examined in that particular way and in a room with people who are exactly the age that Harry was, really.
3. Do you think about the film when you write ?
Truthfully no, although I do... Not at all. But I do remember at one point... Well, the final battle scene here, in Deathly Hallows, you do become conscious of how much money you’ve just spent. In two pages ! And I do remember looking up once I reached the end of the book and thinking "*** will that be ?" Nine hundred thousand just to do the giants you know – well, more than that I’m sure — so, I do think the producer occasionnaly wonders whether I’m not just writing things to just — you know, *** themselves, but I’m not at all, it was really *** ?… and people often ask me do I see Dan, Rupert and Emma ? And to be honest no, the only actor or actress who has ever, ever intruded while writing was Evanna Lynch, who is absolutely perfect as Luna. And I must admit I have heard her voice in my head when I wrote the book. [Oooh…] I know ! I love Evanna Lynch she’s fantastic. She was a perfect piece of casting, she is… she won’t mind me saying this, she is completely cool with this, she is Luna ! She is very Luna-esque, in personnality, and looks really spot on for me she ***… she is very beautiful but in an unusual way. So I have occasionnally heard her very lovely voice when writing the books. But other than that, no, I don’t see Alan Rickman when I write Snape. You don’t like that answer ! *** It’s not that I don’t love Alan. But no, I very much see the characters that I’ve imagined, you know. It’s been seventeen years for me, so the actors for me are a very recent incarnation. I’ve lived with my imagination for so long.
4. If you could meet one of the characters you’ve written, who would you choose and why ?
I have been asked this a lot and I’ve always answered "oops" [Jo look elsewhere] I’ve always answered quite *** but now it’s over I can say : Dumbledore. Definitely. Obviously, to apologize for outing him. [laughter, applause] D’you know what, I think he’d been fine with it. [more applause] Seriously he is for me… erm, I love Dumbledore, as a character, and in a sense I was writing what many of us need : someone who does seem to have all the answers. But I always knew that he didn’t and he’d made at least one terrible mistake in his life. It was when he was young and there were excuses for him. But yes I would love to meet Dumbledore, of any of them. I used to say I’d like to meet Hagrid, just, you know, this huge heavy Hagrid… but Dumbledore, definitely.
5. [...]
About Pope Benedict complaining ? (laughter) Well. (more laughter) If it is the case, I’ll tell you what — see, you may know more than I do on this, I read that he had, when a cardinal I think, responded favourably to a woman who had written to him about the Harry Potter books being dangerous, but that’s as much as I know. If he has since said more than that I don’t know about it. Has he said more than that that I don’t know about ? I don’t know, you know, I was invited to a kind of symposium at the Vatican. It took a very circuitous route to get to me and I’m afraid to say it was to short a notice by the time I got the letter. So someone there is pretty open-minded about Harry Potter. I’ve always felt and I continue to feel that… Firstly, I’m vehemently anti-censorship. I think that it’s foolish and misguided to ban books. Secondly, I feel that… Now that the seventh book has been published I can say very openly, I think these are very moral books. They don’t promote a specifically Christian agenda, and I think that that, coupled with the fact that clearly they deal with folkloric mythical themes many people see as a cult, which I do not, but many do… but that has always antagonized a certain brand of Christians. And I’m fine with that (laughing). I am fine with that. I detest fundamentalism in any religion and that includes my own religion. As far as the Pope goes, I truthfully don’t know what his current opinion on Harry Potter is. So I can’t really ****.
6. Isabelle Connor : Did you ever seriously consider killing Harry in book 7 ?
Oh yeah ! Yes, of course, but I considered it way back in the beginning, not as the series went on. I never deviated, once I decided what the end was going to be, I never thought, "oh I will, I’ll kill him". But right from the beginning, it took seven years between having the idea for Harry and publishing Philosopher’s Stone, I did consider having him die, and I have said before that in some ways it would have been a neater ending. But he was, he is my hero. And I wanted my hero to do what I consider to be the most noble thing. And the most noble thing to me is when a – I’m going to say a man specifically, because it tends to be men who fight at war and it was people who come back from war, I particularly had in mind the idea of men who have been through a terrible trauma, and killed, and seen their friends killed, and yet had to come home and rebuild and that’s always seemed to me to be a phenomenally noble thing to do. And easier, arguably, not to come home, and not to espouse normality again. So I think some people were disappointed in the epilogue. In some ways it would have been neater to kill him. But I always had that ending in mind that Harry would have gone back and tried to do what he had learn to be the case throughout the books, which is that love was ultimately the greatest power. But I did think about it. And I was proud of the fact that people thought I might, because that meant – not for any *** reasons or commercial reasons or playing with people’s mind reasons - there was a genuine sense of mortality in the books, there was a sense that no one was definitely going to get through. The only person everyone seemed to think would get through was Hermione. I don’t think anyone seriously ever thought I could kill Hermione. So I thought I might.
7. Where is it that Dumbledore being gay came out of ?
It’s just something I made up on the stage for a laugh. [laughter] I had always seen Dumbledore as gay. And, well he always had the best grooms [loud applause]. I had always, as you do when you’ve lived with a character for a very long time, you always know more than you tell the reader and that was a specific information… I have to say, it was not a very big deal to me. It is clearly a much bigger deal to other people than it was to me. Because after all, why would his sexuality be relevant ? Given the role he plays in the books, which was... there was always quite a big divide between him and Harry in terms of status. There was no point at which he was going to make camomile tea and say "let me tell you about my…" [loud laughter]. I will let the doubt ( ?) **a book full of sex ( ?). "I will be absent next week it’s gay pride". [laughter] But I think in the seventh book — he has, what I think a child would read as an intense friendship, a friendship through which he is lead astray, but which for me was always an infatuation. But Dumbledore meets this handsome, his dark twin in a sense, and he’s a very charismatic, brilliant young man. And whether or not that relationship was physically consummated or not I think is irrelevant, it’s actually about love. And I think that the sensitive, maybe sophisticated adult reader could see that Dumbledore, who had been a very, you know, a very moral student, a model student up to that point, who goes so wildly off the rail suddenly, to think "yeah, genocide, that’ll work !". You know — what did he feel for this person ? Well, as for me, it’s a step beyond friendship. And I think that a person of Grindelwald’s type would have exploited that being as it is. So for me the key was that it had nothing to do with sexuality, what it was, he was a man, a very brilliant man, being made a fool of by emotion. And I saw Dumbledore as someone who had once made that terrible error, would thereafter lead a life of unhappy celibacy not trusting his emotions, becoming one of those people who are strangely almost asexual. He’s such a cerebral person and an aesthetic person as well. Except for the boots, obviously. That little hint of bad boy... I told my editor years ago, and when I said it in Carnegie Hall – I should also say, I didn’t just decide to walk on stage at Carnegie Hall and say "Hey, Dumbledore’s gay !". It was an answer to a very wonderful question that I was asked. This young woman, possibly late teens, early twenties I should have thought at most, stood up and said "in reading HP books," — she listed various things the books had given her and one of the things she said was "it’s really given me the confidence to be who I feel I am". And then, she said : "Could you tell us anything about Dumbledore’s emotional life, because he seems to have a very empty emotional life". So it was in that context that I said what I said. And woke up next morning to find the ticker box news : « DUMBLEDORE IS GAY ! »
8. You said that you always had all the backstories and everything plotted, I was just wondering what was your favourite backstory or storyline that you couldn’t fit in ?
Well I haven’t always had all of them planned. You know, some of the less crucial ones did evolve. But the big ones, the Dumbledore storyline, the Snape storyline were always there because you — the series is built around those***… Things I didn’t have room for... it’s more characters actually. I cut a character in book 4 I really liked, which was... In the first book, when Ron and Harry are on the train together, Ron says that there is a second cousin, who is a squib, who is a stockbroker… or was it an accountant ? [Several audience members : an accountant] Oh, she doesn’t know her own books ! [laughter] ** Yes, he was an accountant, and I had planned up to book 4 that his daughter would unexpectedly be magical so the Weasleys were kind of obliged to take her in and show her around. And she was brilliant. And she was a kind of nasty boil to Hermione. And I had a lot of fun with that, Hermione being ** to the brain **, and loathing this girl who is actually gifted. But it didn’t work. It just didn’t work. She… The function I had for her in the plot… she couldn’t fulfil it properly, so I had with regret to cut her. And I filled up Rita to fulfil her function. So I did miss her. ** [Oooh] [laughter] She wasn’t that good !
9. James Graduin( ?) [audience laughs at the name]
Why is that funny ?
You hear a lot of theories about books, while they were being written, even after you’d finished the last book*** I was just wondering what was your favourite rumour, did you hear something were you went like "wow".
You would be surprised ! My father-in-law, who is a very... who is a gruff retired vet from Aberdeenshire, he was, when he read about Dumbledore being gay in the paper, while I was still in America, still on tour, he read the whole article and he turned to my mother-in-law and said « yeah I always thought he was gay » Did you ? Didn’t mention that over Christmas dinner, did you ? The most off-the-wall theory I ever heard was that Dumbledore was Harry from the future. [laughter] That doesn’t work on any level. At all ! So that was really… I tried not to pull that face obviously [waves her hand before her shocked expression], but yeah that was a bit weird. There was a… when Neville visits his parents in St Mungo’s and his mother presses sweets wrappers on him, which I always saw as a poignant moment... There was a theory that she’s passing secret messages on the sweet wrappers. There have been loads of them. But Dumbledore being Harry from the future is definitely my favourite of all the insane theories. But then you have people, I had people as early as Prisoner of Azkaban, the third book. I remember a woman saying to me : "I think Snape loves Lily". I was "Oh my God what the hell did I give away ?". But so people, people got stuff very unnervingly right. Often. Yeah.
10. Do you have any plans for any future books, either related to Harry Potter *** or completely different ?
Well, I definitely will continue to write, but I enjoy not having a deadline at the moment, because it’s been ten years I do feel that Harry’s story is now done. ["Ooooh"] Well, I always felt that I had a large plot for Harry, that ended when he was seventeen, and I think you could say that the world... I’ve always said that I would not say "never" to an eighth book but mentally - I didn’t say that before the seventh book coming out because you would be able to see about Harry, Harry survives, but, I don’t want to rule it out completely because I don’t know how I’ll feel in ten years time. But I would really be looking at ten years before I could honestly go back. For my own mental health. Because it’s been horrendous saying goodbye to him. For seventeen years, this was THE constant in my life, Harry. Through 17 quite turbulent years. And to actually finish it was… well it’s elating. Fifty percent pure elation, fifty percent devastation. I couldn’t, I kept thinking I’m not going to write in that world again. It hit me very hard. So I do need to... it’s like an old boyfriend, we can’t be friends at the moment, we need a break, and then, when time has gone, we can have a coffee, be formal, but I have said I might write an encyclopaedia. In fact I am intending to write an Encyclopaedia which would hopefully incorporate a lot of back story I couldn’t… or flesh out back story that wasn’t in the books. And that would be the for charity.
11. (Looking back to characters and events, is there anything you’d want to change ?
Hmm, loads. But not in characters and events no, not really, I think that the form should have been tightened up a bit. The book that annoys me most in retrospect is five. The people who like Order of the Phoenix best form a weird sub-sect of the Harry Potter fandom and I occasionally stumble across one and someone says « My favourite is Order of the Phoenix » and I always think « Hmm, dark ! ». But that book I must admit I was feeling the strength of the pressure a bit during that phase, and I think it shows in the book. So there are things there I would like to go back a tie back a bit. But overall, no. Not really. I did plot them very… I plotted them well in as much that I knew what I was doing and where was the story going. The one thing, the difficulty I did sometimes have was I made a rule so tight it was sometimes hard to navigate around it myself. So not being able to Apparate in and out of Hogwarts was a pain in the back. Because it was necessary, I had to put that limit to make it a safe place. But finding a way to get in and out of Hogwarts was always a bit of a challenge. I was quite proud of Aberforth again, the tunnel. I like Aberforth. And his goat. [laughing] Yeah, Dumbledore pales into insignificance.
The full article is here. _________________ ^made by Fiendfyre
I did consider having him die, and I have said before that in some ways it would have been a neater ending. But he was, he is my hero. And I wanted my hero to do what I consider to be the most noble thing. And the most noble thing to me is when a – I’m going to say a man specifically, because it tends to be men who fight at war and it was people who come back from war, I particularly had in mind the idea of men who have been through a terrible trauma, and killed, and seen their friends killed, and yet had to come home and rebuild and that’s always seemed to me to be a phenomenally noble thing to do. And easier, arguably, not to come home, and not to espouse normality again. So I think some people were disappointed in the epilogue. In some ways it would have been neater to kill him. But I always had that ending in mind that Harry would have gone back and tried to do what he had learn to be the case throughout the books, which is that love was ultimately the greatest power. But I did think about it.
aaww my herooo ^hugs harry^
after her reasoning in book 7, i dont know wether i would've wanted harry to die or not, maybe he would've been happier off dead, anything to save him any more suffering
i also thought evanna lynch was the best choice in the movies! go luna!!!! _________________
You are up there!
Zenny, if you can find a thread on this, please let me know.
I am positive that I haven't read this interview before today. There was only one bit in this entire interview that I have seen before, and it was when she was talking about the final scene and the cost of adapting that to film.
Comment on the interview:
Quote:
« [Harry] knelt down besides Ron a placed a hand cautiously on his shoulder. » I did originally put « gingerly on Ron’s shoulder » I’ve just remembered doing that as I read that and immediately « gingerly »... strike that out.
Just out of curiosity . . . Was this important? It's not that I'm complaining about getting a glimpse into her writing process, but I was just wondering what was the significance of changing it from gingerly to cautiously? Aren't they basically the same thing?
Quote:
I kept saying no ! They are British ! [applause] British boys don’t do that ! But I had always known and I did have to tell him that they will hug eventually on, but you know it has to be life or death ** there’s no point having *** Anyway, sorry, I don’t know why I am doing this… Where am I ? Oh yes, they just hugged ! »
They don't really hug for random things in America, either . . . just in case any of you non-Americans were wondering . . . Perhaps her American editors had watched on too many episodes of Full House.
Quote:
But other than that, no, I don’t see Alan Rickman when I write Snape. You don’t like that answer ! *** It’s not that I don’t love Alan. But no, I very much see the characters that I’ve imagined, you know. It’s been seventeen years for me, so the actors for me are a very recent incarnation. I’ve lived with my imagination for so long.
This is what makes me very glad to have been a fan long before the books. I want to see what Jo sees, and I feel that I do because of that fact.
Quote:
I was invited to a kind of symposium at the Vatican. It took a very circuitous route to get to me and I’m afraid to say it was to short a notice by the time I got the letter. So someone there is pretty open-minded about Harry Potter.
lol . . . Maybe they were trying to reel her in so that they could get her band together and try to turn her against her evil ways . . . Maybe they were even planning on practicing an exorcism . . .
Then God got the better of them . . . He intercepted the letter so that it would come late, because God loved Harry Potter!
Quote:
not to espouse normality again
There's that word again. I wonder if Jo despises the word normalcy as vehemently as Dan . . . Now I'm curious.
Quote:
The only person everyone seemed to think would get through was Hermione. I don’t think anyone seriously ever thought I could kill Hermione. So I thought I might.
That's interesting, because I actually thought it was quite possible that Hermione could die. I was already planning my nasty letter to Jo if Hermione died and Ron lived . . .
Quote:
The most off-the-wall theory I ever heard was that Dumbledore was Harry from the future. [laughter]
There actually used to be a really fun and in-depth theory that DD was Ron from the future. I didn't believe it, but it was fun to keep up with none-the-less. Then Jo de-bunked it in an interview, so the people who had that forum got rid of it. I was sad.
Quote:
"I think Snape loves Lily". I was "Oh my God what the hell did I give away ?". But so people, people got stuff very unnervingly right. Often. Yeah.
Yeah . . . That though never crossed my mind, and when I got to that bit the expression on my face was something quite akin to our smiley friend here:
Quote:
The book that annoys me most in retrospect is five.
Quote:
The people who like Order of the Phoenix best form a weird sub-sect of the Harry Potter fandom and I occasionally stumble across one and someone says « My favourite is Order of the Phoenix » and I always think « Hmm, dark ! ».
Hmm, dark? What that hell does she mean by that? I loooovvveee Order of the Phoenix. It's dark, but it also sort of fills me with a happy feeling.
Quote:
So not being able to Apparate in and out of Hogwarts was a pain in the back.
This strikes me as funny considering that Hermione's constant reminders that people cannot apparate in and out of Hogwarts come off as annoying in a way that nothing else that she says does.
Quote:
I was quite proud of Aberforth again, the tunnel.
She was proud of Aberforth? Jo invented both Aberforth and the tunnel! If people wonder why Potter fans get so lost in the books, they need look no farther than the author of the books for the answer.
"I think Snape loves Lily". I was "Oh my God what the hell did I give away ?". But so people, people got stuff very unnervingly right. Often. Yeah.
Yeah . . . That though never crossed my mind, and when I got to that bit the expression on my face was something quite akin to our smiley friend here:
the thought of snape being in love with lily actually did cross my mind, i noticed how he kept insulting his father but never his mother in all the books and with his loath for james, it sort of made me wonder, so i wasnt really surprised when i read the prince tale
i wish i hadnt thought about it though, it probably would have been more fun that way
Quote:
Hmm, dark? What that hell does she mean by that? I loooovvveee Order of the Phoenix. It's dark, but it also sort of fills me with a happy feeling.
yes, zenny im sorry to tell u but it is indeed a dark book, probably the darkest of all because of how bad it ends (meaning that harry is all depressed and everything)
which part in particular is it that makes u happy? _________________
You are up there!
« [Harry] knelt down besides Ron a placed a hand cautiously on his shoulder. » I did originally put « gingerly on Ron’s shoulder » I’ve just remembered doing that as I read that and immediately « gingerly »... strike that out.
Quote:
Just out of curiosity . . . Was this important? It's not that I'm complaining about getting a glimpse into her writing process, but I was just wondering what was the significance of changing it from gingerly to cautiously? Aren't they basically the same thing?
I think "gingerly" envokes a feeling of compassion and sweetness. Cautiously envokes a feelings of hesitation and carefullness.
Quote:
I kept saying no ! They are British ! [applause] British boys don’t do that ! But I had always known and I did have to tell him that they will hug eventually on, but you know it has to be life or death ** there’s no point having *** Anyway, sorry, I don’t know why I am doing this… Where am I ? Oh yes, they just hugged ! »
Quote:
They don't really hug for random things in America, either . . . just in case any of you non-Americans were wondering . . . Perhaps her American editors had watched on too many episodes of Full House.
We actually talked about that in chat... it eally make me wonder what JKR must think about us Americans, lol. Her US publisher is an idiot. Can you imagine the increase of slash fanfics that would cause, though?
Quote:
The only person everyone seemed to think would get through was Hermione. I don’t think anyone seriously ever thought I could kill Hermione. So I thought I might.
Quote:
That's interesting, because I actually thought it was quite possible that Hermione could die. I was already planning my nasty letter to Jo if Hermione died and Ron lived . . .
I remember that the odds were against her death, according to Entertainment Weekly and Vegas.
Quote:
The people who like Order of the Phoenix best form a weird sub-sect of the Harry Potter fandom and I occasionally stumble across one and someone says « My favourite is Order of the Phoenix » and I always think « Hmm, dark ! ».
Quote:
Hmm, dark? What that hell does she mean by that? I loooovvveee Order of the Phoenix. It's dark, but it also sort of fills me with a happy feeling.
Zenny.... we officially form a weird subsect of the Harry potter fandom. YES! _________________ ^made by Fiendfyre
"I think Snape loves Lily". I was "Oh my God what the hell did I give away ?". But so people, people got stuff very unnervingly right. Often. Yeah.
Yeah . . . That though never crossed my mind, and when I got to that bit the expression on my face was something quite akin to our smiley friend here:
the thought of snape being in love with lily actually did cross my mind, i noticed how he kept insulting his father but never his mother in all the books and with his loath for james, it sort of made me wonder, so i wasnt really surprised when i read the prince tale
i wish i hadnt thought about it though, it probably would have been more fun that way
Quote:
Hmm, dark? What that hell does she mean by that? I loooovvveee Order of the Phoenix. It's dark, but it also sort of fills me with a happy feeling.
yes, zenny im sorry to tell u but it is indeed a dark book, probably the darkest of all because of how bad it ends (meaning that harry is all depressed and everything)
which part in particular is it that makes u happy?
Well for one thing, Sirius was alive for the majority of the book, and Harry got to spend more time with him in that book than in any other. Harry forged great new friendships, and the students at Hogwarts got to take a stand against the system. Harry spent a lot of time alone in reflections in this book -- which I love. His support system was there for him even when he was giving up on himself. Ron finally got to shine. Let;s face it, that kid deserved to shine. Actually, probably the only thing that I didn't like about this book was the DD told Harry that he didn't give him the position as prefect because he already had so much to deal with. Why couldn't Ron be prefect because he deserved it? He and Harry had pretty much been equally balanced as far as the good and the bad go. Other that that, it was a great book. I don't understand why people don't see that.
Also, I love the introduction of the thestrals. I know that is supposed to be dark and depressing, but it's just not for me.
Besides, the darkness is one of the best things about the book. It moves people in a way that very few things can. _________________
Please support the Diabetes Walk
Ron finally got to shine. Let;s face it, that kid deserved to shine. Actually, probably the only thing that I didn't like about this book was the DD told Harry that he didn't give him the position as prefect because he already had so much to deal with. Why couldn't Ron be prefect because he deserved it? He and Harry had pretty much been equally balanced as far as the good and the bad go. Other that that, it was a great book. I don't understand why people don't see that.
The way you're talking keep remind me how Ron felt jealous of Harry's enter to the tournament.
« [Harry] knelt down besides Ron a placed a hand cautiously on his shoulder. » I did originally put « gingerly on Ron’s shoulder » I’ve just remembered doing that as I read that and immediately « gingerly »... strike that out.
Quote:
Just out of curiosity . . . Was this important? It's not that I'm complaining about getting a glimpse into her writing process, but I was just wondering what was the significance of changing it from gingerly to cautiously? Aren't they basically the same thing?
I think "gingerly" envokes a feeling of compassion and sweetness. Cautiously envokes a feelings of hesitation and carefullness.
Ok, I see. I still think that gingerly would have worked for that moment, but cautious works for me, too. I guess that she was saving the compassion and sweetness for the hug-walk directly after this bit.
Quote:
I kept saying no ! They are British ! [applause] British boys don’t do that ! But I had always known and I did have to tell him that they will hug eventually on, but you know it has to be life or death ** there’s no point having *** Anyway, sorry, I don’t know why I am doing this… Where am I ? Oh yes, they just hugged ! »
Quote:
Quote:
They don't really hug for random things in America, either . . . just in case any of you non-Americans were wondering . . . Perhaps her American editors had watched on too many episodes of Full House.
We actually talked about that in chat... it eally make me wonder what JKR must think about us Americans, lol. Her US publisher is an idiot. Can you imagine the increase of slash fanfics that would cause, though?
I already had a million reasons that I think Jo thinks Americans a wackos . . . Let's say that we just add this one to the list, why don't we. I just really wish that I could have a chat with Jo and sort out of the misconceptions. I worry that the rest of the world thinks that Hollywood is America. It's not, and I want to have a better image than that.
Quote:
Quote:
The only person everyone seemed to think would get through was Hermione. I don’t think anyone seriously ever thought I could kill Hermione. So I thought I might.
Quote:
That's interesting, because I actually thought it was quite possible that Hermione could die. I was already planning my nasty letter to Jo if Hermione died and Ron lived . . .
I remember that the odds were against her death, according to Entertainment Weekly and Vegas.
That's it. I've decided that Jo should have axed her.
Quote:
Quote:
The people who like Order of the Phoenix best form a weird sub-sect of the Harry Potter fandom and I occasionally stumble across one and someone says « My favourite is Order of the Phoenix » and I always think « Hmm, dark ! ».
Quote:
Hmm, dark? What that hell does she mean by that? I loooovvveee Order of the Phoenix. It's dark, but it also sort of fills me with a happy feeling.
Zenny.... we officially form a weird subsect of the Harry potter fandom. YES!
lol, I do sort of get a comfort out of seeing something that no one else does. At least it's mine . . . well, and yours, too . . . gotta share it with some one to really enjoy it. _________________
Please support the Diabetes Walk
Zenny.... we officially form a weird subsect of the Harry potter fandom. YES!
lol, I do sort of get a comfort out of seeing something that no one else does. At least it's mine . . . well, and yours, too . . . gotta share it with some one to really enjoy it.
I kinda love that we have our own little title, like a subculture or something. _________________ ^made by Fiendfyre
Well for one thing, Sirius was alive for the majority of the book, and Harry got to spend more time with him in that book than in any other. Harry forged great new friendships, and the students at Hogwarts got to take a stand against the system. Harry spent a lot of time alone in reflections in this book -- which I love. His support system was there for him even when he was giving up on himself. Ron finally got to shine. Let;s face it, that kid deserved to shine. Actually, probably the only thing that I didn't like about this book was the DD told Harry that he didn't give him the position as prefect because he already had so much to deal with. Why couldn't Ron be prefect because he deserved it? He and Harry had pretty much been equally balanced as far as the good and the bad go. Other that that, it was a great book. I don't understand why people don't see that.
Also, I love the introduction of the thestrals. I know that is supposed to be dark and depressing, but it's just not for me.
Besides, the darkness is one of the best things about the book. It moves people in a way that very few things can.
yeah i see your point and i really liked that book, but i guess it's never going to be my fave cause harry suffered so much in it _________________
You are up there!
Rules
FAQ
Search
Memberlist
Usergroups
Register
Profile
Log in
<-evan S cool
