J.K. Rowling announced the names of some new wizarding schools recently. Actually, she’d announced most of them a few years ago, but people hadn’t noticed. Then they did, and some fans and readers took issue with her announcement. For what she said, or what she didn’t say, and also how she said it. While there were valid reasons for this particular upset, I couldn’t help thinking—this happens to J.K. Rowling a lot.
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what it means when a writer creates a fictional world. And what she’s entitled to in creating it. And how fandom handles their decisions to interact with it. And when it’s “time” to walk away, if such a time ever exists. I’ve been thinking about it because Rowling has done something unprecedented with her world—shifting mediums as she tells her story—and what she does will inform generations of creators. I’ve been thinking about it because I’m happy to have more Potter in my life… but not everyone feels that way.
When J.K. Rowling finished the Harry Potter series, the world buzzed about what her next step might be. Would she write more books about Harry? More in the Potter universe? Books in completely new worlds? Would her new stories be genre-based? Would she retire with her massive wealth and sit atop a mountain of galleons like a respectable dragon? Rowling claimed that a Potter encyclopedia would happen at some point, but that she had no plans for more books in her wizarding world.
But nowhere did she claim she had left the universe for good.
If we want to get specific, Rowling first said she that had no plans to write anymore Potter books following the release of Deathly Hallows… but that she knew she couldn’t be certain on that account: “Um, I think that Harry’s story comes to quite a clear end in Book Seven but I’ve always said that I wouldn’t say ‘never.’ I cant say I’ll never write another book about that world just because I think what do I know, in ten years time I might want to return to it, but I think its unlikely.” That was in an interview with Jonathan Ross in 2007. By 2010, she had told Oprah that another book was possible in an interview. And she was careful about holding onto the rights for Potter, refusing to let Warner Brothers develop it as a movie series unless they guaranteed that she would be able to dictate any sequels they ever created on film.
And yet, it seems that some fans did interpret these statements as an admission that Rowling was done with Potter—that the encyclopedia would fill in some gaps of knowledge, and then they would be left to their own fannish devices. Because when people think of their favorite book series, it rarely occurs to them that said series might be allowed to continue in a different medium. It’s one thing to write more books or to adapt Rowling’s story to film… but to expand that universe with more films that fit alongside the books she wrote? And also a two-part play following one of Harry’s kids? And those little “articles” written by Ginny Potter about 2014’s Quidditch World Cup? Who knows what could come after that—a webcomic? A virtual reality Hogwarts?
It is important to note that these are not reboots—they are continuations. More importantly, they are continuations that are not other books. And that has proved fascinating when it comes to how fans and audiences interact with different mediums, what they consider “official” in their favorite universes. Take the infamous “Pottermore” website, for example.
Now retooled in a shiny new blog-friendly format, when Rowling first launched Pottermore it was heavily maligned for its over-cluttered layout, impossible navigation, and other issues. The first problem was that you had to register for the site to read any of the interesting material, and registering was a trial in and of itself. (You couldn’t even pick your own username, one was assigned to you. Mine was “StoneStrike” with a bunch of random numbers tacked on.) The second problem was that the content was presented in a ridiculously complex format, forcing the user to pace virtually through rooms or environments designated by chapters in the books. Eventually, Rowling’s team got wise and started to inform Pottermore registrants of relevant new content, but it was always a pain to locate.
Despite these annoyances, the website contained a lot of new and descriptive backstory for the main series—details about wand lore, magical political history, and even Harry’s own parents were all included. Even though Pottermore appeared to contain information originally planned for the encyclopedia, Potter fandom seemed dismissive of it. Could it be that they respected the idea of a bound and printed book more than what was published on the internet? Did putting this information on Pottermore make it less valid to Rowling’s readers? It would hardly be surprising if that was the case—many people feel the same way about anything published online at all. We believe that books are more carefully researched, vetted, and edited than what we find on the internet. We believe that the printed word has more weight.
This is not the only time Rowling’s say-so has been deemed less-than adequate, though; her outing of Dumbledore at a Deathly Hallows reading after the book’s release has often been a sticking point with fans. Some believe she played it safe by never putting it in the books, some believe she wasn’t obligated to if it wasn’t relevant to Harry’s story. Still others insist that if it didn’t appear in the books, Dumbledore’s identity as a gay man didn’t “count.” Again, there was an issue of presentation, the idea that words spoken were somehow worth less than what was printed on the page. So how will Potter fans react to new content when it’s shaped into other forms of media? After all, most fans of the series would never call their film counterparts “canon.” But Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them will be an extension of canon in every sense, even if originates on screen. And that’s going to change some things.
There are plenty of fans who would prefer if Rowling left the Potter-verse alone. She got Harry’s story out, and now they want room to roll around in her sandbox without her continued input. The idea is that fandom has been filling in the information gaps with their own ideas for years now, their own creations. Every time Rowling puts her stamp on another piece of Potter media, or makes an announcement via Twitter, she’s drawing more lines for the fandom community to color inside. And some people wish she would just stop adding lines, stop making harder to color, stop ruining the beautiful pictures they had already put so much love and time and creative energy into.
This sentiment bugs the heck out of me, though I understand why some fans might feel that way. J.K. Rowling is the reason why Harry Potter exists. It is her creation, her intellectual property, her playground, her toy box, her fill-in-your-own-metaphor. We have no right to tell her when she should walk away, even if we’re not fond of what she offers next. Because—and this is the really important part—she never decided she was done with it in the first place.
This sets Rowling apart from some of her creative counterparts. There have been plenty of situations where creators have stepped away from their works (intentionally or not) and found subsequent material lacking or far from their original vision. This occurs often in the comics community; writers and artists creating characters who are then taken up by new writers and artists, those characters then changing beyond their recognition. It creates a different relationship with fandom in those instances—situations where the community has to make their own decisions about what they consider “valid” or canonical.
Television and film are incredibly fuzzy in this regard; for example, Gene Roddenberry lost his controlling interest of Star Trek when he sold it to Paramount in the early seventies in exchange for a third of the ongoing profits. From that point on, Paramount was never obligated to give Roddenberry control over any Trek project (though they did for the first couple seasons of The Next Generation, fearing that fans might turn away from the show if he wasn’t involved). It has created an interesting atmosphere for Trek fans—there is a camp who prefers that Star Trek always adhere in spirit to something they call “Gene’s vision” of the future. On the other side, there are plenty of fans who are perfectly happy for new writers and creators to experiment on the Trek landscape, citing how often it led to good content, like with Nicolas Meyers’ story for the sixth film The Undiscovered Country and the Deep Space Nine series as a whole (which Roddenberry was dubious about at its early conception prior to his death—many of his friends and coworkers have disputed whether or not the show would have pleased him at all).
Then we have situations like George Lucas’ involvement in Star Wars, something that polarizes fandom communities the world over. While there are a core group of fans who believe that Lucas should have leave to do whatever he likes with his behemoth creation, many were distressed and angered over his revisionism with the original films, and the lack of cohesion brought by the prequels. His sale of Star Wars to the Disney empire brought another wave of concern, parried by relief. Then Star Wars: The Force Awakens was released without any input whatsoever from Lucas, and his ire came out—he publicly aired his grievances with the film in a long interview with Charlie Rose, insisting that Disney had taken a “retro” approach to prey on nostalgia, and that he would have done something much different (though he has neglected to give specifics on what his plans were).
To be clear: George Lucas sold Star Wars for millions upon millions of dollars. He washed his hands of the thing, beloved to him or not. And then when he didn’t like what he saw, he had no problem telling the world that the creative team who put so much hard work into Episode VII had not lived up to his expectations. I point out these examples because I have no intention of suggesting that the creator is always right (and “right” is too vague of the word in the first place, but there isn’t another word that seems to work better) about their own work, or that they are entitled to stomp on the efforts of other creatives for extending a mythology that they’ve effectively let go.
And yet J.K. Rowling has done none of those things. She has not ceded control of her rights to the Potter characters, she has not maligned the filmmakers and producers and actors who have had access to her work. She has never made a big announcement to the world that she was done with Harry Potter for good, that she never wanted to hear his name in relation to hers again. Instead, she took a brief break from her universe (a very brief one, if we’re counting her substantial involvement with the first eight Potter films up until 2010), and then dove back in when she had more stories to tell.
So what is the problem then, exactly? Rowling has always been quite active on social media, constantly answering the questions of fans via Twitter, and making her positions on the Potter-verse clear. For some, it is a treat—such as when she recently dismissed fans who had any problems with the casting of black actor Noma Dumezweni as Hermione in the upcoming Harry Potter and the Cursed Child. For others, it is an opportunity for Rowling to make herself look good in places where they believe she’s fallen down on representation and other important issues.
For example, when one fan asked Rowling whether or not there were any Jewish students at Hogwarts, she gave the name of Anthony Goldstein, a Ravenclaw who appears in the books. Another fan asked whether or not LGBT+ students were welcome at Hogwarts, which Rowling answered in the affirmative. Then when Rowling announced the names and backgrounds of four new wizarding schools—three which had already been identified on Pottermore in previous years—there were fans who were displeased that Uagadou, a wizarding school in Uganda, was listed simply as an “African” school. After all, Africa is an entire continent, not a country, and two of the other schools—Castelobruxo and Mahoutokoro—were listed by their respective countries, Brazil and Japan. (Though Ilvermorny, in the United States, was listed as the North American school, interestingly.) When Rowling was confronted with the mistake, she apologized and quickly corrected the error, informing fans of Uagadou’s precise location and changing the listing on Pottermore.
Rowling seems to have little issue with being taken to task when she’s questioned over the world she has built and how she represents it. But some fans view her behavior to mean that she believes she’s allowed to make herself—and her books—look better by being revisionist about their content. (And this is a big issue between fandom and creators, as the constant drama of George Lucas’ revisionist attitude over the original Star Wars trilogy proves; very few fans accept the idea of a creator editing their original content for the sake of a glossy CGI sheen.) After all, we don’t ever see LGBT students at Hogwarts, so why would be assume that the school was a safe place for them? Hogwarts celebrates Christian holidays, but does Anthony Goldstein get dispensation to go home during Jewish holidays as a Jewish student? Is it meddlesome overall to write a series of books that are primarily concerned with the magical world of the United Kingdom, and then open up years later about that wizarding world as it exists around the globe? Or is it a reasonable expectation of Rowling’s gradual worldbuilding?
Even if Rowling is adding these aspects into her world as a way of making her series more inclusive after-the-fact… is that actually a bad practice? Of course it would be better if Hogwarts had been more diverse from the beginning, if these books had shown an even wider variety of students, if we learned more about the wizarding schools and cultures outside of the UK and Europe years ago. But that doesn’t mean that Rowling is adding these elements to make herself “look better” to her readers. Writers are human, just like everyone else. They improve at their craft over time, like every good artist does. Just because Rowling’s books are concerned with equality and activism and the rights of sentient beings doesn’t mean she has nothing to learn about those topics ever again as a result. You don’t “learn equality” and then pat yourself on the back for the rest of your life. And if an author looks back at their work and finds it lacking, and they have the ability to expand it, to make it more inclusive—why would it be wrong for them to do that? Because they weren’t perfect at it the first time? Because fans think they should be allowed to fix it on the author’s behalf? Because there’s a half-life that authors and creators have with any given world they create?
And when I say all of this, I’m not trying to suggest that what fandom creates has no value. It does. It has momentous value. Fandom investment is its own currency, a covenant that they make with artists that they love. If that’s the case, what makes new creator-sanctioned material such a threat? The change in mediums is clearly a shakeup in this case, but fandom’s reticence to accept different types of media for one story is a symptom of this problem, not its cause. Do fans resent the idea that Rowling might be covertly revising her world in an effort to keep creating with the times? Perhaps, but that doesn’t account for where hostilities over revisionism and retconning come from in the first place.
What seems to bother fandom at large is the creator’s eminent domain over their own work. And while that may sound unreasonable to some, it is important to keep in mind that fans often put their whole lives into stories they adore—their hard-earned pay, their brainspace and their words, and their precious, precious time. When fans pour so much into their communities, only to have their thoughts and creations discounted once the author (or filmmaker or artist) has their say, it can lead to a lot of hurt… and sometimes a fair share of anger as well.
It’s ironic because when a creator expands their own universe, they are essentially doing the exact same thing that fans are doing every day—scribbling in the coloring book. But the work of a creator gets a stamp of authenticity from the general public that the work of a fan does not, and that lack of legitimacy can sting. (How many times have you tried to make an argument about your favorite TV show/book series/movie only to have someone say, “But the writer said _____ in an interview! So you’re wrong!”) Emotional investment aside, it changes nothing—fans can still create to their heart’s content. They can have their own narratives, alternate universes, theories and thoughts. But it doesn’t give them leave to wrestle a story away from a creator who hasn’t completed their narrative, regardless of quality or intention going forward. Fandom gives fans an infinite amount of space to explore the worlds they love… and that’s all. Yes, the subtleties of this social contract are complicated, yes, it is true that creators don’t always create content that fans enjoy. But we can celebrate the importance of fandom and fan works while still respecting an author’s right to create. And we should.
Because without all of these things, we would be left with very little to love.
J.K. Rowling Twitter top pic found here.
Emmet Asher-Perrin has a lot of headcanon built around Albus Potter that she knows she’s going to have to tamp down when she sees The Cursed Child. You can bug her on Twitter and Tumblr, and read more of her work here and elsewhere.
I’ve come across this sort of thing before in Star Trek and other fandoms. There’s a basic difference between how fans perceive a work and how creators perceive a work. To the fans, the work emerges as a complete and singular thing, and they fall in love with it in that specific form and resist the idea of seeing it changed. But to the creator, that work is the end result of a lengthy process of trial, error, mistakes, corrections, false starts, blind alleys, reconsiderations, criticisms, rewrites, corrections, etc. So they see changing their minds and revising their work as an integral and necessary part of the creative process, and thus are generally happy to make changes to their work in retrospect as well, to improve it and correct mistakes and oversights as they go. (As the saying goes, “Art is never finished, only abandoned.”)
As a writer, I naturally tend to favor the creators’ viewpoint. I’ve already published an e-book collection of several Analog stories that gave me the chance to correct a couple of glaring mistakes in the original editions as well as fleshing out the world and character-building a bit more, and I’ve written a spec novel including a revised and expanded version of the events of my first published story. As a fan, on the other hand, I’ve always loved the idea of a consistent continuity — and yet when I’ve faced a situation where the continuity was changed by new canon, as when new Star Trek movies and TV series came along in the ’80s and ’90s and forced me to rework my assumptions about the universe, I’ve been annoyed at first, but I coped with it and adapted to the change. I never questioned the creators’ right to revise the work. If anything, I enjoyed the creative challenge of reworking my personal ST chronology and continuity assumptions to fit the new information. After all, it’s all just stories for entertainment. It’s not like we’re studying for a final exam and have to find the right answers. It’s just an exercise in imagination.
I am a bit puzzled about the Fantastic Beasts movies, though. Are they part of the Potter book canon or the film canon? Because there are some differences between the two. I’d assume that, since they’re films, they’d be part of the film continuity, but you’re suggesting they’re a continuation of the books’ universe. (Not that I think either one is more “right” than the other, but I do like to know what continuity things belong to as a matter of classification.) Granted, it’s not unprecedented for authors to engage in cross-pollination between media. Arthur C. Clarke’s novel 2010: Odyssey Two was a sequel to the movie version of 2001: A Space Odyssey (in which the Discovery encountered the Monolith at Jupiter) rather than Clarke’s own novel version (in which the encounter was at Saturn).
I’ve noticed that fans are a lot more protective of their own, fanfic, works than they are of a creators. I mean heaven help you if you write a fanfic or draw some fanart using another fan’s concept (even if you came up with it separately) or even as much as cameo a popular fanfic character. They will go mad with the doxxing and the online abuse, screeching plagiarism like a demented owl. Ask them if they got the original author’s permission to play in their playground and they are always “but that is different!”. It really isn’t different at all, just less personal to them. I must admit, since the mid 00’s there has been a noticeable upturn in the amount of entitlement coming out of fandom though. I have no idea what has precipitated that though. I suspect the final demise of email lists and personal websites and forums is probably behind it though.
As for:
I wish someone would tell Joss Whedon that, and maybe he can learn to move on from his dated 90s version of feminism.
Specific to Rowling, the Rowlettes ought to be grateful that she is still providing new material. Even if it is just in dribs and drabs. Remember what the big monster fandom of the early internet was, the one which dwarfed even Potter for a time? Ranma 1/2. Then Ms Takahashi closed the book on it and moved on to her other projects. Ranma fandom has now all but died, with only a few hardcore fans still remembering and being active in it. Same thing is already starting to happen to Discworld now that Pterry has passed on. Rowling has kept her fandom alive, hale, and healthy. Even if it some times contradicts what fans have imagined, that is still a good thing. New material is the lifeblood of fandom. Constant reinvention!
Sometimes the fans forget who the author is.
I recall during the days before Deathly Hallows, when JKR was clearly and unquestionably in the creative mode, fans would post in all sorts of places “Harry and Hermione; clearly JKR is writing this incorrectly because she would never wind up with Ron.” I mean, does anyone question whether Shakespeare wrote it wrong, because Macbeth really killed Macduff? Or Tolkien messed up and wrote it wrong because he didn’t mention Tauriel? And how she was dating Saruman?
Hasn’t Rowling admitted she wrote it wrongly by having Ron and Hermione hook up? I thought she said, fairly recently, that it ought to have been Hermione and Harry. Score one for the fans on that one. Full Disclosure: I never liked Ron in the books anyway. I loved movie Ron a lot, but that just probably makes it worse.
I admit that I’m one of those who, in a way, is done with the Potterverse – or so I thought, until I found your HP Reread, Emily! – and hasn’t been that thrilled with the new pieces of information that Rowling has released over Pottermore, leaving less and less to our imagination. However, I understand that this is the world Rowling created and she has the right to do whatever she wants with it. How am I to tell her what to do with that world? Where was I when she was stuck in, like it said in a previous comment, a lengthy process of trial, error, mistakes, corrections, false starts, blind alleys, reconsiderations, criticisms, rewrites, corrections, etc?
We all have the right to criticize a franchise like Harry Potter, but too many times we forget all the work that is put behind it – and, let’s face it, most of us couldn’t created a world like the Potterverse in a million years. We have the right to disagree, to criticize, but we must always respect the work and its creators.
The first time I encountered a major revision by an author was when Stasheff rewrote King Kobold about 15 years after the first release.
Great article, I’m glad someone’s finally tackling this. As an English major, I was trained to think that the text is above all and the writer’s intentions/ desires/ wants are irrelevant. If the text opens with, “It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.” and then proceeds to show that the statement is malarkey, Jane Austen herself could say, “No wait, I really meant it. I just didn’t get around to showing how that was all true.”, and still in analyzing the work, you’d have to stick with the text. I think a lot of people approach open ended works of fiction this way.
I think it makes sense if you just read the books and have them on your shelf. But once, you open yourself to the whole potterverse, the hard and fast rules of the printed page no longer apply.
“When fans pour so much into their communities, only to have their thoughts and creations discounted once the author (or filmmaker or artist) has their say, it can lead to a lot of hurt… and sometimes a fair share of anger as well.” There was a recent example on this site with a couple of posts of anger about the new Star Wars movie. This post is a good counterpoint to that.
I agree completely with this. I’m not a Potter fan, so I’m not invested in what Rowling does with her universe, but it belongs to her alone. Fans have every right to enjoy it, but none to control it.
There are plenty of writers whose later material doesn’t seem as high quality as earlier work, or there’s an optimal point to stop reading for your own enjoyment. That’s a decision you have to make based on your own self-knowledge. Sometimes, you just have to walk away if you’re not enjoying it as much as you once did.
My point was that it’s the author’s call to decide to revise or change their mind (and if you don’t think that happens with beloved books check out History of Middle Earth). And I have no objections to people saying “I wish she did this differently” that’s different from “she’s wrong, I know better what should happen.” Especially, as has unfortunately happened, when using a tone reserved for telling the fast-food clerk they did not get your order right.
I am more than happy to wish that JKR had done some things differently (for instance making Harry notice that Luna was throwing herself at him, if only so that we could use the ship name Larry) but for me to say that she was wrong to play it that way is hubris. And we know what happens to those who have hubris…
What I don’t get is the insistence of some fans that there can only be one “right” version of a franchise. There are many franchises that embrace multiple alternative continuities. There are countless different versions across multiple media of Sherlock Holmes, of Batman, of Spider-Man, of Flash Gordon, of Dracula, of Frankenstein, of Tarzan, etc. Some franchises embrace reinvention in their canonical form; Toho has produced Godzilla movies set in seven different realities so far and are apparently about to add an eighth (though all the Japanese continuities include the original film or some version thereof as part of their history, and one of the later continuities references a selected few other kaiju films from the ’60s like Mothra and War of the Gargantuas while ignoring all the Godzilla films besides the first one). There’s also the Digimon franchise, which reboots its universe every 1-2 seasons (the third season treated the first two seasons as a fictional TV series within its world). Japanese creators and/or audiences seem to take pretty readily to that kind of reinvention.
Variations on a theme can be fun. Continuity can be fun too, but it’s possible to get so obsessive about it that it gets in the way of the fun. I mean, I love keeping track of continuity, but having more than one continuity to keep track of can be even more entertaining than demanding that everything fit into a single immutable whole.
What bothers me (and most of the people I know who are bothered by it) about Rowling’s ex post facto declarations is that it does feel… disingenuous, in a lot of ways. Would it really have been that hard to have Anthony Goldstein referred to as wearing a kippah or talking in the background about his Hanukkah gifts as Harry walked down the tables after the winter break in one of the books? Would it have been so scandalous to have confirmed even with just one line in the text of Deathly Hallows that Dumbledore was gay?
There are lots of ways she could have included these things in the books as she wrote them, but she chose not to. That’s what hurts.
@11 By the time of DH, Dumbledore was dead. It’s pretty unlikely anyone was left to make that comment where Harry could hear it. Of all JKR’s pronouncements, I think the one about Dumbledore is the most justified for its absence in the text and its later revelation. I found the subtext in DH to be pretty clear; I just assumed it was unintentional since characters are almost always straight unless explicitly stated otherwise.
I don’t particularly trust JKR (or Lucas) not to muck up her universe with extra-textual additions to canon. The pressures of narrative and publication help keep extraneous worldbuilding down to a minimum. I think its a very valuable effect for authors with less-rigorous worldbuidling.
An author can add to their canon outside of their books; it doesn’t mean they should.
I wish certain fans would get in into their heads that changes to canon, expansions to canon, doesn’t really affect their fanworks because, by their very nature, *fanworks are not canon.* Some fanworks completely disregard canon, and some adhere to canon as close as possible while still doing what they’re meant to do, but even the latter *is not canon*, will never be canon, and if the canon shifts, well, so what?
I accept some of what Rowling has said in interviews and such, and other things I don’t. It depends on whether or not it makes sense. I accept that Dumbledore is gay, even if it were never “confirmed” in the books, because Dumbledore’s sexually has no bearing on Harry’s story, or the larger story going on around them, and just like any real LGBTQ+ person, Dumbledore was never under any obligation to share his orientation with anyone. I do not accept certain things she’s said about Pensieves, and about Slytherin House in regards to the Battle of Hogwarts; the first, because it makes no sense in regards to the nature of memory, and the second because it’s the sort of thing that really *does* need to be presented in the book.
I tend to use my judgement on deciding what extra-canon information I accept–always with the knowledge that in the end, it doesn’t really matter because I don’t know any of it! It’s not mine! It’s Rowling’s to do with as she likes.
I’m so torn on this issue — on one hand, a world built by an artist is theirs, and it is their prerogative to change or refine.
Tolkien is a famous example of a worldbuilder who tinkered with his creation his whole life. He even re-wrote pieces of The Hobbit to fit in with The Lord of the Rings.
I think it’s great than an author wants to continue to refine and build on the world they created, and write new stories set in that world. Part of building a world is tinkering to find out what works and what doesn’t, and to continue to expand characters and places they’ve built. The world is so much bigger (by necessity) than the particular story being told at the moment.
The Harry Potter books, to be good stories, needed to be narrowed down to Harry and what went on around him, while the wizarding world in general is so much larger.
However, the danger with tinkering is that works of art need to come to a stopping place somewhere, and too much tinkering can sometimes mar the beauty of an original piece of work. I’m thinking here specifically of Lucas’s special editions of Star Wars, the added-in CGI that arguably muddied the story he was telling the first time around.
The artist’s desire to refine is all very well, but there is also beauty and value in “good enough,” instead of “perfect.”
As a side note, While I enjoy Rowling’s additions to the Potterverse and respect her thoughts on her own creation, I wonder if/how that will affect her published works later on? I wonder how the next generation of readers will interact with all of this: will they only have access to her published works/ the current movies and not her later comments?
Since her method of interaction with her work is online, I wonder about its longevity for future fans. Perhaps it doesn’t matter, but I wonder about it all the same.
It is her world she can do what ever she wants with it. She created it, she is its God. You do not have to like what she does with it that is fine and you can think she destroyed it but saying she doesn’t have the right to make new stuff in it is ridiculous. Glad that the writer doesn’t disagree. The original stories will always be around, maybe not in current form but the stories are what matter not the “artistic form”.
@@@@@ 12 Considering half of Deathly Hallows is about discovering Dumbledore’s past and how Harry had no idea about it, if Rowling really wanted to be explicit about Dumbledore’s queerness she could have done more. I mean, Rita Skeeter supposedly discovered all of Dumbledore’s secrets and put it in her biography. No line at all about his love life? Not even in the newspaper article in which she’s trying to sell more of her books?
She also had seven books to introduce a sympathetic Slytherin student at Hogwarts, but she didn’t. Just make an ambitious Slytherin quidditch player who wants to win but isn’t a douchebag about it. Or make one of those douchebags who try foul play in their quidditch match to say at the battle of Hogwarts that they side explicitly with Hogwarts against Voldemort. But nothing of the sort happens. We only see bad examples of Slytherins at Hogwarts and later she says that some of them actually were good and joined later in the battle, without this appearing anywhere in the text.
@16 She didn’t get all of his secrets. The rest of the story makes that plain.
Though, yes, she could have decided to make it explicit but it would have been hard to prevent it from feeling out of place. If Skeeter had mentioned it, it would have seemed like an attempt at slander. Nor do we need to explain why Dumbledore did what he did. The aspects of Dumbledore’s behavior which would have been affected by his sexuality are sufficiently accounted for in the text. So well accounted for that the subtext is easily read by anyone willing to consider the possibility.
I think part of the “problem” here is that fans like to be able to actually unambiguously finish a (book) series. To finally hold that long-awaited final installment in their hands and to know that this is it (especially if they are also fans of, say, GRRM…). It´s a good, deliciously bittersweet, festive feeling, like “We all went to a long journey together, and now it’s over.”
At the same time, finishing a (book) series is also a bit like like finally finishing a long and consuming (albeit obviously enjoyable) task, especially when your interest are varied but free time is limited and you can now move on to doing/reading/liking other cool things. The Potterverse situation now is like when you thought you completed a task, but it magically and sneakily keeps getting undone.
I don’t see the objection from fandom. It’s not like anybody has to LISTEN to what JKR says. You can write a fanfic that only takes the first three books as canon and diverges from there if you want to. The only reason this is even sort of a thing is due to copyright laws: works like Sherlock Holmes that have entered into the public domain have a million contradictory versions and no one cares if they’re violating Doyle’s original vision for the series. Really the most noble thing Rowling could do at this point is find a way to renounce all copyright claims on Harry Potter and hand the whole thing over to the public.
A teacher’s love life is not the business of the students they teach. To me subtext was clear that he could be gay. But it did not matter to the teacher/student relationship.
And honestly, I thought it a little weird that a world with so many muggle born students had so much trouble understanding electricity. So them having a Christmas, therefor being Christian is actually stranger than them not saying anything about a possible Jewish kid.
The way the Wizard world was set up, generic winter holiday would be more appropriate. Then Harry & Hermione, who grew up with Christmas would be the ones having to make an adjustment to no Christmas.
But I’m the Native American kid who gave up reading about anyone with my background long ago. When I did find stories about Native Americans they were always about kids on reservations or having to deal with alcoholism in the family or most often both. Neither of which were part of my background. Talk about stereotypes.
A couple of thoughts. I haven’t been to Pottermore in probably four years. But I do remember how the Black Family tree that appears in the film came from Rowling and that she had it all prepared. My understanding of Pottermore is that much of it was the Encyclopedia, Rowling’s own head cannon of why, for example, McGonagall was say single or a particular way, even if it wasn’t spelled out in what were particularly dense books already.
I’m not particularly fussed if she wants to acknowledge that a particular school should have been more appropriately this or that. It’s another thing to say Hogwarts is an LGBT safe space; there was certainly a lot of bullying at the school, some of it happening by staff and people in positions of authority over the school age population. Part of the entire subtext of the book, the mudblood, blood traitor, purity issue is part and parcel part of this. The entire thing that happens AT any school, of cliques and popularity and insularity was certainly described IN THE BOOKS themselves. We didn’t see the kind of diversity that exists in certainly London, as far as race and religion, although it was there (Patel twins, for example) and I didn’t picture Dean or Angelina as being POC until the films came out, but for all I can recall, they may have easily been described that way in the books. There were certainly people (for example, I pictured Lavender Brown as a POC and no where near at all what she was like in the film) I used my own imagination as any reader is want to do, and I certainly did picture some of the kids as being (like myself) queer identified, just very quiet about it the way the are in most YA books on the shelves today. Sure, were I a gay pre-teen, I would have loved to have seen if not a overtly gay Dumbledore, a few lines of a simple Cormac/Blaise makeout session at Slughorn’s party or a few pages about Krum inviting and walking in with some male Slytherin to the Yule Ball.
I believe this a vastly different issue than Han Shot First. Lucas did more than simply clean up negatives and add better effects (as was mainly the case in Star Trek TOS). On the other hand, as a creator I do want to see authorial intent honored. I’m therefore a fan of the Richard Donner cut of Superman II, for example (while still being able to find flaws in it), and in general interested in Director’s Cuts. In essence, I agree with #14 that in a extended universe (as with Lucas and SW and Star Trek), if there is an authorial voice (in Lucas’ case, there certainly was), he’s entitled to do so as apparently Tolkein (I’m not familiar enough to intelligently comment, I’m just accept #14 here), and I think Rowling is as well.
Comic books are not a fair comparison. Robert Kirkman might get to have this kind of say so now, but Jack Kirby or Shuster and Siegel certainly didn’t get that and most simply get to build on the works of others and sometimes get recognized (as say Grant Morrison with some aspects of Batman and certainly a number of aspects of Kal-El) as an additional, significant contributor to the continuity.
Fandom is a different issue. I really don’t have the strong attachment that some folks have to SW, I probably have a greater affinity for Star Trek which is why I found the second Abrams movie an affront – particularly in how stupid it was. I can totally see Lucas’ main criticism of The Force Awakens. It’s a gentler, sweeter retelling of some of main touchstones of the first three films in a way that Star Trek Into Darkness was an insult to one’s intelligence and recollection of Wrath of Kahn. As someone who reads fan fics, I think some people get way overboard in their world building and they remind me of the kind of people who pirate digital comic books and add a tag to them before they release them. They are literally simply downloading something, adding their name to it and releasing it to the public and getting annoyed at you if you re-released their rip (which there are digital fingerprints to tell) sans their little credit page). I do realize that some fan fics use the characters in wholly different ways in unique stories, but the majority of people making rom com or sitcom/police procedural, etc. cross-over AUs and simply giving say Julia Robert’s character from Pretty Woman the name of (pick one: Buffy, Stiles Stilinski or Bucky Barnes) is all well and fine as your own little variation on a fan supported site like A03 but don’t get all bent out of shape because Josh Wedon, or Marvel say something else later on down the road.
The Word of God is a totally different issue that I can have some problems with on something like a TV show but this is also a fandom issue: while people might criticize say Jeff Davis and the writers of Teen Wolf for not even paying attention to their own continuity and effing things up all over the place, they give someone like Joss Whedon the right to say whatever he wants about anything he put his name on. Likewise, the HP fandom has, by and large, contrary to how say the SW fans treat Lucas accepted that if Rowling says Boo in a tweet, interview, etc., it’s canon.
@11, @16, While Dumbledore’s sexuality was not explicitly revealed in the book, I personally did see signs in Deathly Hallows, I remember reading Dumbledore’s letter to Grindelwald, that last line, “…if you had not been expelled, we would never have met”, and thinking it was a weird way of phrasing things. I didn’t guess that he was in love with Grindelwald, but when JKR revealed that he was, I was not at all surprised, the new info actually made sense of that line for me. That line felt just slightly too intimate when I first read it, not something one would casually say to a friend, it could have been just the way I was reading it in my head, but now when I try to go back to see if I read in it now what I did on first reading, I can’t tell how much influence the new information has had and I can’t tell how subtle that signal might have been or if it’s there at all.
A teacher’s love life is not the business of the students they teach.
An orientation isn’t a love life. I knew quite a lot about the orientations of many of my high school teachers, just from knowing who their spouses were.
@23/HelenS: Quite right. We knew that Snape was in love with Lily, and nobody’s ever said it was inappropriate for the students to know that.
While, I respect and greatly admire your moderation between factions, the fact remains: without Rowling there would be no Harry Potter fandom to get riled about. The exception being, as you pointed out, if the creator sells his rights to create to someone else, which Rowling did not do.
Bottom line: a fandom trying to rank the importance of its work over that of who birthed the concept? RIDDIKULOUS.
@@@@@ Random22 The issue of Ron and Hermione has been widely misinterpreted and misquoted by the fans. This all comes back to an interview she did with Emma Watson and in discussing the characters she said that “I think the attraction [between Ron and Hermione] itself is plausible but the combative side of it… I’m not sure you could have got over that in an adult relationship, there was too much fundamental incompatibility.” and “In some ways Hermione and Harry are a better fit…”. She never, however, said Harry and Hermione *should* have ended up together or that pairing Ron and Hermione was a mistake.
My very simple rule. “If it ain’t in the books, I don’t give a crap what she says about Harry Potter!”
World building and characterization should be done within a story, not after the fact.
Didn’t Tolkien do this kind of thing without any blow back all the time?
@@@@@ 30 Yeah, pre-Internet.
@29/Accursedblackmage: “World building and characterization should be done within a story, not after the fact.”
Ideally, sure. But writers are only human, and sometimes they don’t get things right on the first try. So if given a chance, they’ll try to fix it after the fact, because the expense and paperwork involved in getting a permit for a time machine are just awful.
Thank you for that terrific article Emily.
My only take on the topic of “revisionism” is that it seems to be a by product of our politically correct day and age so that “everyone gets a trophy” so to speak. Frankly I find it really annoying.
Leonardo Da Vinci didn’t have to explain whether the Mona Lisa was LGBTI, or if her parents were starving immigrants, or tell the story about how her uncle was caught in the public toilets with his pants down (boom-ching), or whether Han shot first… You get the idea.
The artist, to me, has full rights to their universe and can do as they please (unless they sell it George, then keep your yap shut), but I wish that society wasn’t always forcing these artists to have to justify something that they left out – like whether a fictional character is allowed to go home for the Jewish holidays, or of another fictional character is given a fictional prayer room to fictionally pray in.
It has all just gone a bit to far for me. Authors write about what they know. Miss Rowling is a white Briton, and whilst I have zero knowledge of her upbringing, I would surmise that it was in a primarily middle class British environment, and Harry was pretty much a middle class English boy (to begin with at least). If she didn’t write about fictional prayer rooms, it was probably because she didn’t encounter them growing up – I am about her age and I know I didn’t. It doesn’t make her bigoted or “non-inclusionist” to not write about theses things, so I feel that the fans should stop enforcing their views on authors in general and accept the works for what they are…FICTIONAL!
Just my two cents worth.
What about the old starwars cannon, sure it started as movies not books but you could say George L. Was the author. Anything he said was considered primary cannon.
Rowling didn’t exactly invent shifting mediums as you tell a story. Official Buffy the Vampire Slayer seasons have been coming out in comic book form since the TV show finished, for example.
Things like the old Star Wars extended universe probably count too, even if Lucas did eventually strike them from canon.
As computer games have become more story-oriented, they’ve become more inter-media too. There are novels that expand the Dragon Age setting and even an official web series and anime, for example.
@16: Horace Slughorn was a Slytherin teacher who was sympathetic/”good”. It’s not tough to extrapolate from that. Plus, you know, the Sorting Hat almost put Harry into Slytherin. ;-)
P.S. Many authors go back to beloved series and write prequel series, sequel series, and even concurrent books. Most don’t get grief for it – but then, most authors’ fans aren’t so heavily invested in the series, I guess.
@35/Irreverent: “Rowling didn’t exactly invent shifting mediums as you tell a story. Official Buffy the Vampire Slayer seasons have been coming out in comic book form since the TV show finished, for example.”
Arthur Conan Doyle authorized a stage play based on Sherlock Holmes, and I think he may have had some hand in the writing, though it was mostly William Gillette’s rather loose adaptation of Doyle’s stories. Still, the play wasn’t canon. Indeed, that’s pretty much where the use of the word “canon” in a literary context originated, as Holmes fans debated whether or not the play and other adaptations should count as part of the same reality as the Doyle stories.
No, that doesn’t count at all. Lucasfilm Licensing tended to claim the books and comics represented some level of “canon,” but that was misleading, and it never represented Lucas’s view. He was on record as saying that he considered the tie-ins to be their own separate thing. He drew on their ideas occasionally in the prequels, but contradicted them quite freely as well in the prequels and The Clone Wars, and when that happened, the tie-ins had to retcon and gloss over things in order to reconcile it and go on pretending it still fit together. So really, Star Wars tie-ins were never any more canonical than Star Trek or any other franchise’s tie-ins, despite the attempt to label them as such. The only thing that ever distinguished SW tie-ins from ST tie-ins was that they strove to remain mutually consistent with each other. Every tie-in book or comic or game in the “Expanded Universe” was acknolwedged and adhered to by other works in the EU, but none of them was ever, ever considered to be binding on the actual films and TV shows, certainly not as far as George Lucas was concerned.
And by the way, it wasn’t Lucas who “struck” the EU, since that didn’t happen until he sold Lucasfilm to Disney. So it was either Kathleen Kennedy (the current head of Lucasfilm) or someone at Disney who decided to start fresh with a new tie-in continuity. But that doesn’t mean striking the EU from canon, since it was never in canon. Its particulars were contradicted and overwritten by canon many times before, but it was piecemeal enough that later EU works were able to retcon around it and continue the pretense of a consistent whole. But this time, the new folks in charge decided it was better to make a clean break and start fresh.
Unprecedented?
In Hitchiker’s Guide to the Galaxy Douglas Adams shifted from radio series to books, even if you discount the film and TV versions. It’s very common in Japan for a story to be written in comic book form and then have a TV version start from the same base, then the two versions go in different directions, equally canonical.
I don’t think you’ve really done a fantastic job capturing the opposite side of the argument. It’s not that I entirely disagree with your points but this reads more as championing one side while aggressively attacking the other rather then a balanced discussion of an issue that, as you point out is not entirely unique to Harry Potter. I’m not entirely sure if that was your intention. It’s clear enough where you stand on the issue, but at times it does seem like you were trying to present solid arguments against that stance.
Of course creators have rights to their own creations, but readers are free to interpret how they wish, whether their interpretations be “right” or “wrong”. Often though its the grey spaces between what is right and wrong that make for the most interesting aspects of the narrative. A lot of people aren’t really looking to have every square inch of the world filled in such great detail.
The Star Wars Prequels are a good example, the rise of the Empire and fall of Anikin Skywalker had more narrative impact in the original trilogy where they were left to viewer interpretation. Attempting to fill these plots out didn’t really benefit them at all.
But at least with the prequels we actual got new movies. I think what annoys a lot of people about Rowling’s approach is not so much that she is building on the Potter universe but more that she is adding huge amounts of rather mundane material in very mundane ways. Knowing for example that Bill and Flur’s child was born on the anniversary of the battle of hogwarts as a fact in its own right just isn’t all that interesting to most. Having that as part of a greater narrative (perhaps revealed in the new stage play for example) is a far better way to convey all this extra content. The off handed reveal of Dumbledore’s sexuality doesn’t really add to much. Exploring Dumbledore’s specific relationship with Grindlewald in a prequel series however gives it more weight. I think that’s similar to how you said about things being “on paper” but its more then just being in a book format for a novel series. Its the fact that this information is delivered to us as part of a story, rather then just as a random fact standing on their own merit.
Don’t get me wrong, when it comes to my fiction, I love world building, but world building is a tool to serve the narrative. The stories I personally find most satisfying are the ones that have a neat set of plot and character arcs. Harry Potter had that, but every time JK Rowling adds mundane extra content about the life of Harry Potter after the series, in a format that is not a narrative in its own right, it detracts from my own enjoyment of the series. Of course that’s an incredibly personal perspective, but when you sit down and read a book, the whole purpose is your own personal enjoyment. I’m not necessarily saying she shouldn’t do these things because I, or anyone, may not like them, but that doesn’t invalidate my own views that I’d rather not take part in such expansions.
Rowling is of course free to do what she wants with her own intellectual property, but as an audience, we are all free to respond to that however we feel fit. To say what she does is “wrong” is a step to far, but there is nothing wrong with not liking it
@39/MadLogician: Don’t forget the LP records. And the video games.
However, the thing about all the different Hitchhiker’s Guide versions is that every one was its own separate continuity, putting the story together in a different way and including elements missing from the others. Even though they were all from the same creator, he reworked the reality for each new medium. So they were distinct adaptations rather than a consistent multimedia continuity. Ditto with Red Dwarf — the writers of the show also did novels that were loose adaptations of various episodes, but that retold them in a different and incompatible way and formed a distinct continuity from the show. (And then they split up the partnership and each one did his own solo novel that was incompatible with the other guy’s.)
So that doesn’t really correspond to what Rowling is doing with the play, namely extending the original continuity into a new medium. (And perhaps with the new movies too, though I’m still inclined to expect those to be a continuation of the movie continuity rather than the book continuity.)
Aren’t there, like, comic books that are the official sequels to TV shows? Like Buffy seasons 8 and 9 and so on?
@42/Ryamano: Yeah, that’s actually becoming relatively common, I think. There are official/canonical comics continuations to Buffy/Angel, Serenity, and Dollhouse from Whedon, to Avatar: The Last Airbender and (upcoming) The Legend of Korra, and probably others. There is/was a Smallville Season 11 comic that was theoretically canonical. The animated Young Justice had canonical comics published during its run and actually referenced in the show. One of the earliest instances were the Babylon 5 comics from DC, which are counted as canonical along with the Del Rey novels. Though only two of the earlier Dell novels count as canonical; they were all meant to originally, but it proved too difficult for J. Michael Straczynski to maintain sufficient oversight to keep them consistent. The later novels were canonical because the show was over by that point and JMS was able to outline and oversee them more directly. (Comics take less time to make than novels, which I figure is why the comics all managed to be canonical even though they came out during the series.)
The issue of Anthony Goldstein’s holidays: as a Jew who lived in a non Jewish society in America I imagine it goes much like it does in public highschool or university. The school gets off for the what the majority celebrate- Christmas and Easter- and minority of course are excused on their holidays, but are required to make up the work missed etc.
I loved this article. I’ve always had a bit of a pedantic personality, so I tend to be of the mindset that what the author says, goes, and takes precedence over any other fan speculation, etc. This doesn’t mean I think fans can’t speculate or write alternate versions of stories or have their own ideas (I’ve done it myself), but I personally like to seek out the creator’s views on things. Other fans might not want to and that’s fine. I think it also varies what types of things ‘count’ – for example, JK Rowling might casually say something in an interview about how maybe she would have written something differently (for example, when she said maybe Ron and Hermione shouldn’t have paired up after all) but at least to me, that’s different than something that comes out on Pottermore, which I more or less treat as canon. I didn’t realize people had negative opinions of that – if anything, my big complaint is that it’s difficult to navigate and I don’t have the time to poke around and unlock everything. I wish she would just put out an easy to read sourcebook/encyclopedia with all this stuff…but instead I just rely on your re-read ;) Likewise, I always took for granted what she said about Dumbledore’s sexuality. She’s the one who writes the character, so she would know, even if it doesn’t make it into the book (I believe Brandon Sanderson is another author who always has tons of background information about stuff that never make it into his books, but he does put on his website, etc). I suppose no fan is technically obligated to accept that if it’s not in the actual media, but for me, the more information, the better.
It’s funny you mentioned Star Wars because I was thinking about it myself halfway through this article. Maybe one of the reasons I don’t really have this problem with the different media Harry Potter is being expanded in is that I grew up with the Star Wars EU which had all sorts of things to choose from outside of the movies – comics, books, video games, TV series, guides, etc – and they did a reasonably good job of keeping the canon more or less consistent (although Lucas never felt tied to it when making new movies/TV series). There’s no real way a person could actually keep up with ALL of it, so for me, I made the decision to primarily focus on the adult novels (although I did cherry pick from graphic novels and some of the YA stuff occasionally). And then of course you have George Lucas himself, who remains a controversial figure. When it comes to the prequels, I’ll more or less defend him – not in the sense that I think the movies were perfectly executed or flawless, but just in the sense that it’s his story and I was glad to see it, and to me, it’s the ‘real-est’ version of events. I would have preferred, in a perfect world, that he had more input on the sequels (from a story perspective, not necessarily a directing/screenwriting perspective) just becuase I’d really love to know what his vision for the future was, but that’s not what we got. And I agree it was really very ungracious of him to complain about it after he willingly sold and walked away from the franchise. It just kind of came across as bitter that they did well. I’m still not sure if I’m totally sold on the idea of the sequels as being ‘the true canon’, but I think that’s just partially because so far I find them too depressing and would rather other things had happened instead (in other words, not just because it’s not George Lucas’s specific story. For all I know, Lucas would have imagined similar depressing fates for our heroes). But as CLB and others have pointed out, the beauty of fiction and imagination is that there doesn’t necessarily HAVE to be just one version. I can enjoy the sequel for what it is, and also maintain my own verson in my head if I want to (my own fanfic), and also the old-EU. And one thing I do enjoy about this site and other fandom communities is that it’s always interesting to see what has resonated about a work with other fans.
And then we get into the retcon idea, which for the most part I can’t stand (which is funny, as I owe my fandom to the Special Editions!). It’s one thing to want to re-do some effects, add in a few extra/deleted scenes, and that kind of thing. I could even accept correcting something perhaps if there had been a specific intent that just wasn’t carred out correctly or clearly enough (although that’s skirting the line…) But to actually change the meaning of a scene or character becuase you’ve actually changed your mind since then (Han Shot First, for example)…that’s kind of grating. As much as I generally grant ownership of a story to the creator and give preference to their interpretations, once the story is out there and has been embraced, it’s kind of a joint thing.
But then I think about Tolkien and how much I’ve enjoyed reading all the History of Middle Earth series and the constant work and revision he did on things trying to get it all JUST RIGHT, to the point where he even revised parts of the Hobbit after publication. Although at least he made the retcon PART of the story, which was kind of ingenuous (I was really hoping for some scene in the movies where Bilbo tells Gandalf the first version, heh).
My problem isn’t with her adding new canon, it’s that when she’s adding it to America, she’s clearly out of her realm. She doesn’t *get* America. Everything that’s been put out so far has been a cringe-worthy pastiche that shows no understanding of anything besides what the movies tell her about New York and Texas. Today’s release, for example, talks about “the Native American community” in North America as though it were homogeneous, all practicing magic the same way. She just doesn’t have an awareness of the diversity and complexity of this country and the different cultural influences that have both competed and collaborated to make it what it is today — and which would surely be present for the wizarding communities as much as for the Muggles.
(I also take issue with her math, but that was true in the original trilogy as well. 11 wizarding schools for the entire world? And three of them are in Europe? That seems improbable).
So to extrapolate this out to authors’ ownership of continued canon as a whole… I feel like, there’s less pushback against new canon when it feels “right”, when it fits in with the story originally told. Lucas’s changes to the OT and the biggest problem with the prequels were things that seemed incongruous with the established universe (and I’d argue that applied both to in-world things like the Force suddenly being a blood disease and to movie-making things like the fart jokes inserted to appeal to a younger audience). Indiana Jones 4 failed because it changed genre and didn’t “feel like” Indiana Jones (where as Jurassic World, I think, extrapolated technology and culture forward for a new generation but still “felt like” Jurassic Park). Comic book retcons tend to not “take” and get re-retconned if they don’t “fit” with what fans love about the characters to begin with. I’m not familiar enough with Star Trek to speak with conviction, but from what I’ve gathered from friends, additions to that series have succeeded when they were in line with the original vision, but lots of folks haven’t liked the reboot movies because they’ve diverged from that vision and feel more like generic sci-fi action movies with a Star Trek skin slapped on. Overall: New canon succeeds when it has cultural, historical, and emotional veracity with the original works and with fan conceptions of the fictional world.
None of that is to say a content creator like JK doesn’t have the right to do whatever she wants — of course she does. It’s hers and she hasn’t sold it. But, she shouldn’t be surprised if not everyone is thrilled. She has the right to add content. She doesn’t have the right to insist everyone likes it just because she added it.
@46/CR Morris: “I’m not familiar enough with Star Trek to speak with conviction, but from what I’ve gathered from friends, additions to that series have succeeded when they were in line with the original vision, but lots of folks haven’t liked the reboot movies because they’ve diverged from that vision and feel more like generic sci-fi action movies with a Star Trek skin slapped on.”
That’s what the critics like to believe about their criticisms, but the fact is, every new incarnation of Star Trek going back to the animated series and the first movies sparked its own fierce backlash from segments of fandom who considered it untrue to the vision of the universe. But fast-forward a decade or two and you’d find those incarnations largely accepted as true Trek while the purists have moved on to condemning the latest new take in exactly the same terms that were used to condemn the previous one. Even the most beloved incarnations of later Trek — The Wrath of Khan, TNG, DS9 — were initially disliked and dismissed as “fake Trek” by a vocal segment of the fanbase. (Heck, the TOS cast themselves were loudly skeptical and hostile toward TNG in its early seasons.)
So it’s not necessarily about the attributes of the specific works; often it’s just about the kneejerk human tendency to distrust the new and unfamiliar. And it’s about the illusory nature of human memory. Over time, we rewrite our past experiences into a narrative that makes sense to us, so we gloss over the contradictions and flaws in older Trek productions, while the new ones are still fresh in our minds and stand out more. So fans tend to complain about errors and flaws in new productions that are no worse than the errors and flaws they forgive in previous productions. They even fool themselves into believing that those errors and flaws never existed, that the newest Trek is the first one ever to have continuity errors or bad installments.
If you really want to know what additions to canon are viable, then, wait a decade or two and see what fandom thinks once they’ve had time to get used to it and reassess it. You often find fandom taking a fresh look at something and forming a more positive opinion than they once had (like the Adam West Batman). Or sometimes they reassess something they loved and realize it wasn’t all that great (like the Michael Keaton Batman).
My very simple rule. “If it ain’t in the books, I don’t give a crap what she says about Harry Potter!”
Amen.
“My very simple rule. “If it ain’t in the books, I don’t give a crap what she says about Harry Potter!”’
“Often though its the grey spaces between what is right and wrong that make for the most interesting aspects of the narrative. A lot of people aren’t really looking to have every square inch of the world filled in such great detail.”
“The stories I personally find most satisfying are the ones that have a neat set of plot and character arcs. Harry Potter had that, but every time JK Rowling adds mundane extra content about the life of Harry Potter after the series, in a format that is not a narrative in its own right, it detracts from my own enjoyment of the series.”
“My problem isn’t with her adding new canon, it’s that when she’s adding it to America, she’s clearly out of her realm. She doesn’t *get* America. Everything that’s been put out so far has been a cringe-worthy pastiche that shows no understanding of anything besides what the movies tell her about New York and Texas. Today’s release, for example, talks about “the Native American community” in North America as though it were homogeneous, all practicing magic the same way. She just doesn’t have an awareness of the diversity and complexity of this country and the different cultural influences that have both competed and collaborated to make it what it is today — and which would surely be present for the wizarding communities as much as for the Muggles.
(I also take issue with her math, but that was true in the original trilogy as well. 11 wizarding schools for the entire world? And three of them are in Europe? That seems improbable).
So to extrapolate this out to authors’ ownership of continued canon as a whole… I feel like, there’s less pushback against new canon when it feels “right”, when it fits in with the story originally told.”
“She has the right to add content. She doesn’t have the right to insist everyone likes it just because she added it.”
The social compact isn’t really all that complicated, IMO. Any creator who dives so thoroughly into the effort of bringing her work to the public, as JKR did, takes an enormous risk. If that work breaks through into acceptance, the just reward for taking that risk is the ability to expand and shape her work as she sees fit for as long as she wishes to do while still finding an audience. Fan-generated ideas don’t receive the same degree of legitimacy because their efforts don’t involve the same level of risk. Common courtesy also plays a role. Most people would consider it impolite (at best) to send your neighbors unsolicited criticisms and revision plans for, say, their landscaping; it would be downright obnoxious if you complained about their adding new flowers and replacing plantings that you installed without their assent. Doesn’t JKR deserve the same level of deference regarding her tending to Pottermore and other outlets for her commentary?
The underlying origins of fan dissention, and the resulting tone, found in a good deal of the more vocal complaints about creator overrides also can hurt the case for the legitimacy of fanfic. Some fans tend to selectively read the source material and creator commentary (e.g. the kerfuffle over the 2014 Emma Watson-JKR interview) and argue down paths that don’t hold up to readings of the material in broader contexts. Others fixate on a story’s failure to incorporate their favorite social issue in a way they find adequate. Still others take offense at the presumed intentions behind the creator’s inclusion or omission of something, or perceived attempts to simply ‘cash in’ via retcons consistent with current sensibilities. These types of fans would do well to remember that the creative process is hard, especially when commercial factors are in play; there are many reasons why the inconsistency/omission/whatever that you perceive might have ended up in the published product, and those reasons are nearly always innocent, legitmate, and mundane. Building an entire alternative narrative arc upon something that might turn out to be a simple oversight, or else to amend the story for its possible political incorrectness, isn’t an endeavor likely to find a lasting audience (regardless of whether the creator officially addresses the issue).
However, perhaps the strongest case for the primacy of the original author is simply the aesthetic power of a single, coherent vision for the story/world as a whole. Editing is one of the most vital elements of the creative process. Even the original creator must sometimes drop his or her own ideas: some can’t be adequately completed by deadline, others are clunky, still others are compelling but would distract from the main elements. Trying to incorporate unmanaged submissions from other people, many of whose ideas would end up conflicting with each other, would be even more daunting; it would quickly become chaos without a gatekeeper, and the original creator or an appointed delegate is in the best position to maintain some consistency. As an example, consider the illustrations available at The Harry Potter Companion vs. the new Bloomsbury illustrated editions. Individually, many of the pieces at the former site are amazing, but collectively their uneven coverage of the story and often conflicting takes on characters prevent them from coalescing into a unified storybook. In contrast, the more consistent (and JKR-approved) vision Jim Kay shows in the latter ensures that the text and imagery combine into a more unified whole, within and across books.