The Harry Potter Series

[kostgard]

Some images for "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone" for Pottermore have been leaked.

They look gorgeous.

[MrsCatHead]

ok so what is the deal with Pottermore? What are we supposed to *do* there?

[memememe76]

I think JKR cleverly toned down some of my own issues with the "CHOSEN ONE" trope in the 4th book by having Ron so clearly annoyed with Harry (okay, if Ron is annoyed, then it's okay for me to be annoyed too!). It also helped that I felt the character of Harry slowly and realistically grew into that role over the course of the books. Too bad JKR could never sell me on the two main romances in the book.

[GoldenFleece]

Aug 10, 2011 3:08:17 GMT -4 memememe76 said:

Too bad JKR could never sell me on the two main romances in the book.

But Ron and Hermione and Harry get to be in each other's lives even after Hogwarts is over! How else could that possibly happen without Harry and Hermione marrying into the Weasley family?

[Coffeecakes]

Hermione and Ron I was sold on, but Ginny and Harry not a chance in hell. Even worse is the movie version of their relationship, Jesus.

[Mutagen]

I apologize for being that person, but... I had inklings of Ron/Hermione from the first book. I absolutely bought that one.

Harry/Ginny sort of came out of nowhere for me, but actually, my biggest obstacle to that is Harry himself. I'm sort of a fandom weirdo, I guess, because I have never been able to see him in a romantic or sexual light. I might have been able to go for Harry/Luna. But even that is mainly because of their movie versions. Book!Harry is like a celibate little brother.

[incognito]

I think JKR cleverly toned down some of my own issues with the "CHOSEN ONE" trope in the 4th book by having Ron so clearly annoyed with Harry (okay, if Ron is annoyed, then it's okay for me to be annoyed too!).

I don't know, though, Ron got annoyed at a lot of stuff and was portrayed as being a bit of an ass at times, so I don't think we were supposed to side with him. Especially since he had to go as far as accusing Harry of putting his name in the goblet, instead of simply being jealous. I totally understood where he was coming from, but the fandom consensus seems to be that he was acting like a jerk.

What lessened my annoyance with the CHOSEN ONE trope - although it didn't get rid of it entirely - was the deconstruction in the fifth book, where we discovered that Neville could just as easily have been the Chosen One and yet wasn't, simply because Voldemort didn't pick him. So at least there was the idea that Harry wasn't chosen because he was inherently super speshul, but because of chance, or because Voldemort essentially rolled the dice and the results came up Harry. Still not particularly fond of the trope in general, and it didn't erase how annoying it was in the previous books, but she did handle it better than a lot of other YA writers, I think.

Harry/Ginny sort of came out of nowhere for me, but actually, my biggest obstacle to that is Harry himself. I'm sort of a fandom weirdo, I guess, because I have never been able to see him in a romantic or sexual light.

What, you mean the 'raging chest monster' in Book 6 didn't convince you of Harry's sexual nature?

[kostgard]

Aug 15, 2011 17:19:05 GMT -4 Mutagen said:

I apologize for being that person, but... I had inklings of Ron/Hermione from the first book. I absolutely bought that one.

Harry/Ginny sort of came out of nowhere for me, but actually, my biggest obstacle to that is Harry himself. I'm sort of a fandom weirdo, I guess, because I have never been able to see him in a romantic or sexual light. I might have been able to go for Harry/Luna. But even that is mainly because of their movie versions. Book!Harry is like a celibate little brother.

I completely agree on both counts. I always thought Ron and Hermione started out with that hair-pulling on the playground type crush behavior and it developed pretty realistically from there.


I always thought that Ginny's main purpose was so that Harry could official join his surrogate family, The Weasleys, and wasn't really developed beyond that. Just make her a Weasley, make her a bit like his mom (so we get Lily and James again, this time with a happy ending), and just tell us that she's awesome or whatever so she'll be Harry's equal and the job's done.

[Deleted]

JK Rowling admits she was considering killing Ron.

"Funnily enough, I planned from the start that none of them would die. Then midway through, which I think is a reflection of the fact that I wasn't in a very happy place, I started thinking I might polish one of them off. Out of sheer spite. 'There, now you definitely can't have him any more.' But I think in my absolute heart of heart of hearts, although I did seriously consider killing Ron, ," she told the actor Daniel Radcliffe, who plays Harry Potter in the films and who was "convinced one of the main three had to buy it".

This has disillusioned me a bit. Killing a character out of spite? Do authors really think like that? Oh well, at least she didn't actually do it.

[roseland]

I don't see why it's disillusioning. I think that when you've lived with characters as long as she did, there has to be a point where you're just sick of them and would love to kill them all off. And given the fan base she had to deal with, it was probably twice as hard not to do something overly-dramatic just to show the crazies whose in charge. Ultimately, her instincts as a storyteller won the day and she knew it wouldn't be fair story-wise to kill off one of the main three. Which is why I was never one who thought Harry would die at the end. Having said all that, if she was going to kill off one of the main three, Ron would make sense as the one to go. To me, he was the most annoying, and frankly, he hardly added anything to the mix magic-wise.