On owing

[jlh]

Okay, fine, I'm just going to say this once, and then I'm going to try to not only shut up about it but also not pay attention to much conversation about it and try not to let other people's snide comments get under my skin as maybe they are not talking about ME. That said, I did post my reaction to the whole Dumbledore outing thing earlier.

I took a quick inventory of the media (books, movies, music) that is in my house and on my computer right now and I am pretty sure that JKR is the largest single beneficiary of my media dollars. (The Beatles are next probably, but there are four of them, or Prince, but books cost a lot more than CDs.) The only author with more space on my bookshelf is my friend Julia Quinn, but those are all mass market paperbacks at $5-6 a pop, not hardcover books I bought when they came out for $35-40. I have:

• US Paperbacks of books 1-3
  
• UK paperbacks of books 1-4
  
• US hardcovers of books 4-7
  
• UK hardcovers of books 5-7
  
• DVDs of movies 1-3
  
• I've seen all five movies in the theater, PoA twice. Two of those were at special screenings free to me, so that's four movie tickets.

I figure I've paid to JKR what I owe her: the retail costs of the works she has created, or others have created after she gave them the rights to do so. That's at least $200 worth of media, fairly bought and paid for, sitting in my apartment.

What I don't think I owe JKR:

• Unadulterated praise for everything she has done or ever will do
  
• Acceptance of post-publication interviews as canon. She has every right to say whatever she likes, but if it's not in the books, it isn't canon. And if she didn't prove it to me in the books, then her telling me now doesn't mean it was in the books.
  
• Allowing JKR to control how I read and understand and feel about the books that she wrote. I paid for the book—and even if I'd taken it out of the library, it would be the same—and I get to have my own opinions on it, like any other reader.
  
• Changing my mind because JKR insulted me. Look, I've never written the woman any hate mail, and I don't spend a lot of time shrieking about this, but I am tired of feeling so damned defensive about this that I was worried that my friends in other fandoms would see that I had posted Harry/Hermione stories and think I was a lunatic.

I was talking to a friend a little bit ago and she said that I might be reacting more to the cluck-clucking of those elements in fandom who not only think that being closer to JKR is like being closer to, I don't know, God maybe? but also think that now that the canon is "done" that it is disrespectful to JKR to write fanfic that doesn't ship the same ships as canon. I admit that I don't even understand this, but there are a lot of claims floating around of what kind of behavior is or isn't disrespectful to JKR, most of which I've already violated at some point, so that horse may have left the barn where I am concerned. If JKR is deciding who gets into fandom heaven, looks like I won't be there, blasphemer that I am.

But I admit that all this "wow, people are really mean to JKR" comments has feeling a little taken aback. I don't want to fall on that old canard of "I can say what I want" because that always comes with consequences. Now, maybe those comments aren't meant to include me and my opinions, and maybe the people making them don't have the same "JKR's way or the highway" attitude of some others.

But I am willing to say that I have paid fair and square for JKR's books and movies and I'm not sure that I "owe" her more than that.

Comments

[zephre.livejournal.com]

vermilionsun sent me, and I say, "hear, hear!"

much better said than my ramblings, in fact.

[honestys-easy.livejournal.com]

Wow, I had no idea such issues were being raised post-DH in the fandom. A bit of that is...well, insane, to be honest. The staunch canon-eers what think that only canon-compliant fanfic should be written? I'd like to know where in the hell they thought back in 2004 that their Draco/Neville/Buckbeak epic was ever going to become canon. The whole point of fanfiction is taking the world JKR has created and putting your own spin on it, branching out with your creativity to create something that possibly no one else has done before. My feeling is...I write for me, not to appease JKR.

I almost just spilled a whole bottle of Snapple Apple onto my computer and that would have been bad.

I think I'm big on the "Dumbledore is gay" interview just because it makes me all warm and fuzzy inside, and a bit triumphant as well (you want to get a kick out of something, read the reaction threads over at grindeldore). I don't really consider them as canon, however, because it wasn't part of the books at all - she can keep making things up about the Potterverse until she's old and gray, it doesn't mean that everything that comes out of her mouth about the series is canon.

Your third bullet point, however, is exactly why I didn't like the DH epilogue - i felt too much like JKR was steering our thoughts as to how the whole series ends, how the world develops after the war, and I thought that was severely limiting the imaginations of all of her readers. And this isn't just from a writer's standpoint: keeping the ending sans-epilogue would have allowed others reading it the possibility to almost create their own ending, to think about what could have happened and let their creativity flow. It would have caused a whole lot less of an issue concerning what is and isn't canon, because then the term "canon" would be so much broader, would allow for so many other possibilities than the one we were given.

But even so, the epilogue opens up dialogue among readers, gets people talking about what they liked or didn't like. It gets people off of the topic of Satanism. Whether you liked the ending or not, you're still talking about it and it's memorable - and isn't that what writing a lasting ending is all about?

What I do owe JKR is a sincere thank you for writing these books, for making a world that so many people have fallen in love with, for getting millions of children to enjoy reading again and getting their parents to enjoy it as well. She still gets a gold star for that.

And I sympathize with the amount of money spent on all of this merchandise: I recently saw a box set of all 7 books and had to remind myself that I already own all seven books in hardcover and that I don't need to buy another set just because it's in the pretty box. :-P

[millefiori.livejournal.com]

Since I've drifted away from HP fandom I haven't seen too much of this discussion, which is probably a good thing. FWIW, My $0.02 is that JKR has been immersed in this world for so long, and 'knows' so much about it that she wasn't able to fit into the books, that she's just relieved and giddy to be able to openly talk about it/answer questions about it. And it is my impression that all this talking she's doing is to the fans who are all about her version of what she's created, you know? It's just that the whole HP thing is so huge that it's getting reported back to and talked about by fans who aren't all about her version of things.

Obviously I don't know the woman, but I'm giving her the benefit of the doubt in thinking that she didn't intentionally write the epilogue or give unpublished information in order to control/stifle fannish creativity--it's more that she's having fun with her creation and not realizing that maybe it's bad form for an author to have that sort of fun publicly in these 'the author is dead' days. But even if she did, for me fanfic has always been a 'what if' kind of thing anyway. I mean, wondering what would happen if Harry's chest monster had roared for Hermione instead of Ginny is a perfectly legitimate thing to speculate on, irrespective of what JKR and her more militant fans may think about it.

I just don't understand where this idea of 'disrespect' comes from. To me, the fact that she's written something that's got people thinking and speculating is an honor and a compliment not an insult.

[longtimegone]

I must be missing all the good wank, because I haven't seen anyone talk about "owing" her anything.

Like you, I paid for my books and movies and some other spinoff merchandise. I'm not sure why we should owe her anything else, nor how this relates to the the lawsuit (which is what I assume this wank is coming from?).

Are people really going into this over the lawsuit stuff? If so, that's just...weird.

[annearchy.livejournal.com]

Bingo. Thanks for saying this so well.

[darth-kittius.livejournal.com]

I 100% agree... I love the books, I love the world she created for me. I'm even not going to bitch about the things I hated in book 7. That was her choice and her prerogative as a writer.

What I can/am going to bitch about is her insisting that her reading of these characters is the only reading of those characters one is permitted to have. Fine -- say that YOU, JKR, always saw Snape as evil. But don't say that I have to. That in order to be a true fan, I have to interpret everything the same as you do. You may have had different intentions when you wrote things but as long as there was leniency in how you wrote it, I can be lenient in how I read it. That's why there are books and books of critical readings of other books -- and often they argue with each other. There's not only one way to read a book. Stop telling me what to think (something that Hermione would be QUITE upset with!).

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

I've read some really odd comments about this fandom. I just have to admit that I really am a spoiled brat according to some ideas of what I owe the author and how I'm supposed to think of her. Everything comes out of her imagination, so I must rely on her imagination at all turns. I remember reading one comment now, I can't even remember everything it said, but I remember wondering why I should even read the book at all instead of just letting the author tell me what I thought of it...and then wipe my arse for me.:-)

[sisterpandora.livejournal.com]

Well said!

AMEN!

[meezergal.livejournal.com]

I paid for her books, I read them (repeatedly, except for HBP and DH, and thoughtfully), and so far as I'm concerned, that's all I owe her. I don't even owe her the reading, really, except if I were going to protest/challenge the books--as a librarian, I LOATHE and HATE the people who challenge the books (any book really), and when I ask them, "Have you read it, say, "No--I don't need to; I've heard enough about it." That is gross stupidity and negligence in my not-so-humble-opinion.

Once those books left her hands and entered the mental and spiritual realm of the universe, to go sorta New-Agey on you, they become the mental (understand what I mean?) property of everyone who reads them. It's like religion--no two people have absolutely the same beliefs even if they belong to exactly the same church and recite the same exact creed. We all interpret our own way.

She's SUCH a controlling author--we touched on this a long time ago, when DH came out, and I never got to talk to you about it. This is how I feel. She's also a sloppy writer, in my mind--needing to explain stuff after the fact, and why the hell give Umbridge the same middle name as Hermione and change Hermione's at the last minute when she has to know how minutely her books are dissected, fer pete's sake?? Sloppy, controlling--I'm with you. If it's not in the book, it's not canon. And Harry and Hermione ran off together sometime in the future because they realized they were the Real OTP and Ron and Luna got married, and Neville and Ginny went to Belize so he could study the plant life there. THAT'S my canon. Oh, and Dean and Seamus run a nice little B&B in Hogsmeade. Quite popular it is, too. ;)