She Must Have Been Reading The Promptfest This Year

[teddy_radiator]

But it looks like JK Rowling has come to her senses and admits that she regrets Ron and Hermione as a couple.

“I know, I’m sorry,” she continued, “I can hear the rage and fury it might cause some fans, but if I’m absolutely honest, distance has given me perspective on that. It was a choice I made for very personal reasons, not for reasons of credibility. Am I breaking people’s hearts by saying this? I hope not.”

Well, I coulda told you that. Unfortunately she seems to think Hermione and Harry should have ended up together. She really needs to start paying attention to her own characters...

Comments

[akatnamedeaster.livejournal.com]

That sound you hear is hundreds of Harmonians coming in their pants all at once.

[lemonade8.livejournal.com]

LOL!!!!!

[susanmarier.livejournal.com]

Lol. Yeah well I was for Hermione and one of the older Weasley's first. I doubt JKR would have ever gone for Snape or Malfoy though. But definitely not Harry. Harry and Hermione seem to much like siblings. Although I have read a few that made it work. I still think Harry and Ginny work. Hermione and Ron seem okay together, but I don't really think they have much in common besides Harry. My OTP will bounce between Hermione/Draco and Hermione/Snape.

[m-mcgonagall-65.livejournal.com]

Omigosh! Next thing you'll know she'll tell us that Severus deserved a better send-off than the one she gave him.

It's good to know that time provides objectivity--even to bestselling authors. LOL!

[drinkingcocoa.livejournal.com]

I'm LMAO about this. There will be fandom wank. Me, I'm just delighted to see her growing as an author and a person. I can understand how a young woman who plotted this series during her divorce from an abusive husband would be unable to have the same perspective on romance as a middle-aged woman who has had a happy romantic life for years.

I'm looking forward to the time, some years hence, when she'll realize that Harry wouldn't have been the best match for Hermione, either. I don't think she'll ever pair up Hermione with Snape because I think she put too much of herself into Snape so she'll have the hardest time feeling he deserves happiness, but I wouldn't mind her eventually coming to the realization that someone majestic like Kingsley could be a good partner for her brilliant female character.

[gelsey.livejournal.com]

Well, I've always been able to see her more easily with Harry than with Ron, honestly!

[sbrande.livejournal.com]

Amen Babe!

[beffeysue.livejournal.com]

I am still amazed that she doesn't see the appeal of a match between Hermione and Snape, particularly if it were to occur after Hermione had been out of Hogwarts for a few years. From the very beginning I pictured the two of them as an item. And that will never change. (Of course, she would have had to NOT KILL SNAPE. 8^)

[susanmarier.livejournal.com]

Lol. That'd help.

[hbart.livejournal.com]

I know I'm surely in the minority here on all counts. First, it drives me nuts that JKR continues to give insight into the HP series. The books are law, and no matter that she wished she done this, or she actually imagined a character like that, you can't go back.

I am a fervent SS/HG shipper in fanfic, but I actually like Ron and Hermione together. I always imagined that Hermione spends her days knee deep in academia at her job, and though she loves it, she doesn't have any need to spend the rest of her waking hours at home in outrageously intelligent conversation. We've made Ron out to be this complete loser in fanfic in order to facilitate Hermione's relationship with every other male in the series, but truly in canon, he's just your average teenage boy. There is no way we can assume he will grow up to be a lying, cheating, neglectful, abusing bastard with a tiny prick. I'd much rather authors kill him off, than warp his character.

As for Harry and Hermione, I wonder what her reasons are? I don't really see it, but not for any real reason. Bottom line ... Quit wibbling, JKR, and go read some fanfic!

Wait, what? You didn't ask for a lengthy rant? *steps away from soapbox, whistling innocently*

[stgulik.livejournal.com]

I'm with you, hbart. It drives me nuts that she keeps making verbal fixes to the series. It's done, Jo. It's canon. You want the hero to marry the brainiac? WRITE ANOTHER BOOK.

Also, FYI, journalists =\= therapy. Stop letting journalists coax you into reminiscing.

[teddyradiator.livejournal.com]

I have to agree as well. As much as I love my SSHG, and as much as I've always said Ron and Hermione as a couple was a recipe for divorce court, that's how JKR wrote them and that's how she should leave it. It's too late for all this waffling; next she'll be telling us she shouldn't have killed Severus and that Harry and Draco were meant to be together. I mean, I'd believe all that, but still...

[ex-logospil.livejournal.com]

Let us hope she doesn't go all George Lucas on us ;-)

[bonsaibetz.livejournal.com]

Matt & Trey from South Park captured accurately in their series what Lucas and Spielberg have done to Star Wars with the re-editing (HAN SHOT FIRST) and with a fourth Indiana Jones.

[stgulik.livejournal.com]

Dammit, Teddy, Harry and Draco are not gay!

[teddyradiator.livejournal.com]

But they're so cute together! And Harry did become obsessed with Draco during HBP....

[lemonade8.livejournal.com]

I didn't mind it, either. They are the Weasley Borg, and Hermione and Harry have been assimilated.

Besides, I get my other pairings with her through fanfiction. I don't mind the canon ending.

[tophoenix.livejournal.com]

Thanks for say this and for the link!

I totally agree with you about her need to pay more attention to her characters, really!
Of course I'm partial, given the SSHG ship that I favorite, but I don't know - between Harry and Ron - who would have be the worst, really. If it's satisfying to know that she is probably regretting *that* epilogue, on the other hand it's beginning to be annoying her continuous need to rectify canon.
Fanficcers are already doing the best in order to do that ;)

[melusin-79.livejournal.com]

she, for one, should realise that people don't always end up with the first people they go out with. Or that marriages last for more than a couple of years on average. But Harry? He barely gives her the time of day in the books, so how would she swing that one around? Still, we should be grateful that she acknowledges how hopeless a coupling ron and hermione are.

[mimimanderly.livejournal.com]

As Melusin said, we seldom end up with our first loves. Thank goodness for that! Also, people who marry that young are more apt to grow apart and divorce later on. Ron and Hermione are too very different. I can see them as friends... but I think that they would drive each other crazy as lovers. And not in a good way. Since wizards seem to be longer lived than Muggles, the prospect of spending such a long time with someone you have grown apart from would be a bleak one. There are some who would say that "opposites attract". Well, they may attract in the short-term, but over the long haul, I think that a person does best with someone more like oneself. In other words, opposites are for screwing, not for "I do-ing".

Personally, I think she would not have ended up with either of her friends, simply because they were her friends. She just didn't think of them in that way. Nor would they have thought of her that way, except possibly in passing. It would be like kissing your sister. These kids are not Lannisters, after all!

I doubt very much, even if Snape had lived, that JKR would have paired him with Hermione. There is such an age difference and there is still stigma around that. It seems to be different with minor characters, like Lupin and Tonks. But a MAIN character... nah....

[lemonade8.livejournal.com]

She sure knows how to cause a shitstorm, doesn't she.

There was a fic called "Of all the Gin joints" by Melisande88 and it was probably the first time I actually liked a Ron, or preferred him over a Snape. I think it actually let me be okay with canon, to see him developed like that. So, yeah, Jo needs to just let sleeping Harry's lie. The wank will be PHENOMENAL!!! Epic butthurt everywhere.

Here is the story if you are interested.
http://www.digital-quill.org/viewstory.php?sid=692

[teddyradiator.livejournal.com]

I think JKR made a rod for her own back for sure. first book, Ron was a strategist, a great chess player, and had an eye for how to figure things out. She reduced him to a buffoon in the later books (and poor Rupert Grint didn't help things pulling stupid, gormless faces all the time). Then she tried to restore his creidibility near the end of book 7 but by then it was too little too late.

Everyone had their opinions on the subject but I think the person who should be sticking to their guns is JKR. She's not doing herself any favours by trickle feeding her fans these little 'tidbits'. The books are done. Just live with it and move on, Jo. Let the fanfiction writers give it their own spin, dont start writing your own, JKR.

[lemonade8.livejournal.com]

True. Leave it! The only trivia I want is the mother lode of details she had purportedly written but didn't fit into the story. Gimme that encyclopedia, Jo!!! No more 'woulda, shoulda, coulda'.

Also, I put "Harry's" instead of "Harrys". I'm not completely illiterate, I promise- only partially.

[hbart.livejournal.com]

I still wonder what makes people take a teenage Ron (which is all we get in the books) and know what kind of adult he'll be. Or Hermione for that matter. I'm not saying they are perfect together or that there is any guarantee that they'd grow old and grey together, happily ever after. But I'm interested to know, from those who say with absolute certainty that they don't belong together, what specifically makes you say that? I can't help but think that we have our judgement clouded by fanfic. Not that that is s bad thing ... :)

[bonsaibetz.livejournal.com]

When I wrote "And They Didn't Live Happily Ever After" I foresaw what a TERRIBLE relationship Hermione and Ron would have together.

"“I think there are fans out there who know that too and who wonder whether Ron would have really been able to make her happy.”

Rowling also says that Ron and Hermione would have needed “relationship counseling.”

In my fic, which was begun before HBP came out, I already wrote Hermione and Ron going into marriage counseling. There is something satisfying that my instincts about their dysfunctional relationship was spot on. I think her perception that Harry and Hermione together would have been better is true. I think it would have had fewer problems, but still would be troubled and Hermione would not be entirely happy either. Harry had a shitty childhood and a lot of trauma that would certainly fuck with his head interfering with a healthy relationship.

[delphipsmith]

She really needs to start paying attention to her own characters...

I know -- it's a shame to admit to one mistake only to plunge headlong into another equally disastrous!