Harry Potter & the Cursed Child

[borg-princess.livejournal.com]

For anyone who's curious, the plot of the play has been discussed in spoilery comments at the following links:

Source 1

Source 2

Source 3 UPDATE: Snitchseeker took down their spoilers as JKR called out another website for doing the same and TPTB have been contacting people to request they don't post any details. *eyeroll*

But never fear, Andrew Sims of Hypable (whom JKR called 'Wormtaily' for betraying the secret, lmao) linked to a cohesive recap of the entire two-part play.

When I first read about this, I thought it was someone trolling, but there's multiple sources? Either there's a conspiracy afoot or it's legit, IDK what to believe!

What kind of crappy fanfic, lmao! A Time-Turner plot, seriously? To save CEDRIC DIGGORY, of all people, wtf?

How shitty that anti-Slytherin prejudice is still going strong to the point that Albus is ostracized for being sorted into Slytherin. :/

Cackling at Ron & Hermione never getting together as a result of the temporal shenanigans, hehe. But I'm pissed that her being single results in her becoming a bitter Hogwarts teacher as opposed to happily married Hermione being the Minister of Magic, the implications there are pretty gross.

I can't even process everything I just read. Wow. JKR should be fired from her own world, just what even.

Comments

RE: Re: The Epitome of Bad Fanfic

[traverse.livejournal.com]

Apologies for butting in, but people can be found guilty of the misuse of confidential information without signing any NDAs. Especially with someone so litigious as JKR and with her resources to do it - entirely possible.

The Mousetrap, Agatha Christie's play, continues to run in London for 60-odd years entirely on the promise asked of the audience not to reveal the final twist. (Of course, then Wikipedia came along and spoiled it.)

Re: The Epitome of Bad Fanfic

[borg-princess.livejournal.com]

I find that hard to believe! Audience-goers are surely at liberty to discuss what they just saw and heard, I can't imagine JKR would get anywhere with suing them...and I doubt she'd go hardcore after random tumblr peeps. It's the fansites and such that are probably more at risk.

Wow, that's neat trivia re: The Mousetrap, I wouldn't have though that was possible! But lol, certainly not in this day and age...

RE: Re: The Epitome of Bad Fanfic

[traverse.livejournal.com]

Well, it would be a bit of an argument considering that whatever is shown on stage can be reasonably interpreted as being publicised, i.e., not secret. But there are authoritative precedents in the English tort law which would support JKR should she decide to make an example of somebody (Douglas v Hello Magazine the foremost of them). Not the people who discussed the play privately with friends, but anyone who made a public blog post is fair game. She will win should she bother doing it.

Yes, The Mousetrap thing is based on a rather old-fashioned assumption of honour even in the absence of draconian penalties... :)

Re: The Epitome of Bad Fanfic

[t0ra-chan.livejournal.com]

The Mousetrap, Agatha Christie's play, continues to run in London for 60-odd years entirely on the promise asked of the audience not to reveal the final twist. (Of course, then Wikipedia came along and spoiled it.)

I don't think that's quite the same as what JKR is asking for Cursed Child. She's not asking that people don't spoil the ending or who the cursed child actually is, but rather people aren't supposed to even say what the actual plot of the play is.
The official website only mentions Harry and Albus struggling with stuff, the description on Amazon for the script is the same.
Nowhere is Scorpius, who seems to take over the play quite a bit, even mentioned. A real summary would be: "Albus Potter and Scorpius Malfoy, both outcasts and Slytherins, travel back in time to save Cedric Diggory. But by changing the past, they end up changing the present." This is not a spoiler, imho, but a simple basic summary of the plot. But JKR doesn't even want this much revealed.
I guess, if people had known beforehand that this was the plot, they would have never bought tickets or pre-ordered the script.

Re: The Epitome of Bad Fanfic

[traverse.livejournal.com]

This is as may be - but from the legal point of view, there was a general understanding that certain information is confidential, because she had asked to keep exactly this amount of information secret. And she was within her right, it is her property after all. There isn't a hard and fast rule to determine what is confidential - but people knew that's what she wanted and this is important. Mousetrap asks to keep secret less information, but in perpetuity, she asks for total secrecy, but temporarily - there are always nuances.

Having said that, I am not sure what she was hoping to achieve by this. I am not at all interested in this flogging of a barely alive horse, be it any of the post-canon one-shots, or the recent Pottermore drivel, or this play. But I know I would be more likely to be interested if there was a concise and to the point summary, like the one you gave, than 'Harry and Albus struggle with stuff' - and we should care why? (Well, the diehard fans probably are.) So, lack of information probably saved me precious hours of my life. I struggled just to read the spoilers! :)