(no subject)

[ladyzenobia.livejournal.com]

http://www.hypable.com/2014/02/01/jk-rowling-ron-hermione-relationship-regret-interview/

“I wrote the Hermione/Ron relationship as a form of wish fulfillment,” she says. “That’s how it was conceived, really. For reasons that have very little to do with literature and far more to do with me clinging to the plot as I first imagined it, Hermione ended up with Ron.”

Have you seen this? I think it's interesting that she said that she was clinging to the plot as she first imagined it. That explains a lot about the epilogue!

Comments

[oneandthetruth.livejournal.com]

What I don't get is why she felt she had to end the series by having everybody married off and parents anyway. And why did those relationships have to be established in middle and high school? People change enormously during their teens and twenties. Few romances from one's teens last into adulthood, let alone into one's thirties. That's one big reason it made sense for SS/LE to fail. It's even more ridiculous when you consider that magical people are supposed to live about twice as long as non-magical people. Imagine marrying someone at 20 and living with that person for the next 130 years! Yikes!

It's particularly silly in Harry's case for him to marry immediately. He's filthy rich and has lived a pressure cooker existence his entire life. It would make perfect sense for him to take some of his money, travel the world, and relax while he decided what he wanted to do with the rest of his life.

I know Rowling likes Jane Austen, but Austen's books take place almost 200 years before HP does. It was reasonable back then for people, particularly women, to be obsessed with getting married ASAP. The life expectancy was only about 35, and women had no career options. Austen's books accurately reflect the culture of their time. HP does not. It's stuck in a time warp.

That's even more apparent when you compare HP with with its contemporary series that are aimed at the same age group and have similar plot arcs, such as Percy Jackson and Warriors. In the original Percy Jackson series, Percy goes on adventures and fights evil with his friends, Annabeth and Grover, but there's no romance between them. I kept expecting there to be, but it never came up.

In Warriors, Fireheart and Sandstorm are first rivals, then friends. At the end of the first series, they are edging towards romance, but they don't actually get together until the follow-up book, Firestar's Quest.

Rowling's unhealthy hangup about marrying everybody off can't be put down to her age because I'm several years older than she is, and I think it's ridiculous. Nor is it because she's female because Warriors is written by women. It's just some problem of her own.

[eviltracey.livejournal.com]

I'm guessing that Rowling's failed first marriage had something to do with her wanting to marry the characters off.

[snapes-witch.livejournal.com]

No doubt. And now that she's happily married to 'her' Harry, she wants Hermione married to Harry too.