*sigh* Just my luck.

I've been wallowing in Harry Potter nostalgia during this lockdown, indulging myself with some long-overdue essay writing, re-reading the books, discovering new fan fiction, etc., and then finding myself really enjoying Rowling's new children's book "The Ickabog." So naturally J.K. Rowling has to choose this time to remind everyone that it's really important to her that people be defined by whichever sex they were assigned at birth. She got upset enough about a headline saying Creating a More Equal Post-COVID-19 World for People who Menstruate that she made a sarcastic tweet saying:

‘People who menstruate.’ I’m sure there used to be a word for those people. Someone help me out. Wumben? Wimpund? Woomud?

This reads to me like a deliberate reference to a sort of feud that has been happening, mostly in the UK, between certain feminists and trans people/trans activists. I don't understand why these feminists think that accepting trans women as women is somehow harmful to cis women or feminism. I read a thing last fall that affected to explain it in a snarky manner, but I still don't get it, except that it seems to be a contingent thing based on personal conflicts and arguments that happened in the past, and built-up resentments from people who consider themselves to be loving and tolerant being yelled at and accused of being hurtful and intolerant.

( oops, I almost forgot about the existence of lj-cuts!Collapse )

[See UPDATE below]

I am getting way too into The Ickabog. It's very upsetting!

How do Rowling and her collaborators Jack Thorne and John Tiffany use geometric patterns in the play Harry Potter and the Cursed Child?

( Geometry Is the Science of Correct Reasoning on Incorrect Figures–George PolyaCollapse )

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Part One: Introduction
Part Two: Pairs
Part Three: Quartets and More
Part Four: Trios
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Triangles are magical. In structural engineering they are the only sided shape that can't be distorted or collapse at the joints. In drama they are always dynamic. Unlike quartets, which tend to settle into static pairs, triangles present the constant possibility of any two people uniting against the third. It is no wonder they are so often chosen by storytellers of all kinds.

( Triangles Are the Strongest Shape Because Any Added Force Is Evenly Spread Through All Three SidesCollapse )

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Part One: Introduction
Part Two: Pairs
Part Three: Quartets and More
––
Part Five: Conclusion

Long, long ago, writers started realizing that if one pair of lovers is fun, two or more pairs can be even more fun. The most common geometric result of this realization is the quartet. It has long been a convention of plays, movies, and musicals to have the lead pair and the supporting pair, the serious pair and the comic pair, the mature pair and the juvenile pair, Harlequin/Columbine and Pierrot/Pierrette.

( The Animals Went In Two By Two, Hurrah! Hurrah!Collapse )

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Part One: Introduction
Part Two: Pairs
––
Part Four: Trios
Part Five: Conclusion

The simplest romance geometry of all is the pair. It is a perennial classic, used in works from Abelard and Heloise to a large percentage of fan fiction. You will never, ever spark a shipping debate if you limit your romantic potential to one guy and one gal––or two guys or two gals if your audience is accepting. If you want to really dig in and concentrate on the growth of love between two people you can strip away all extraneous distractions and just show the two of them interacting. This geometry is a favorite of serious romances with a deep exploration of character, but it also comes in handy in fiction with a bunch of other plot (war, adventure, mystery, survival, espionage, etc.) that only has room for the bare essentials when it comes to romance. You often see it in traditional male-oriented fiction where "the girl" or "the love interest" is only brought in to fall in love with the hero and she never considers anyone else.

( In the Arithmetic of Love, One Plus One Equals Everything, and Two Minus One Equals NothingCollapse )

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Part One: Introduction
–
Part Three: Quartets and More
Part Four: Trios
Part Five: Conclusion

This is sort of a continuation of this post I wrote a couple of years ago, using the new information from Jo Rowling's post-Potter works to reflect back on her writing of romance in the Harry Potter series. I want to return to Rowling's comments in her 2014 interview with Emma Watson:

What I will say is that I wrote the Hermione/Ron relationship as a form of wish fulfillment. 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 with Ron.

...

I know, I’m sorry, 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.

I have already taken my best shot at explaining what I think she meant by "I wrote [it] as a form of wish fulfillment." What I want to talk about now is the bolded part and I want to incorporate the new information that has become available since I wrote those two posts, namely the play Harry Potter and the Cursed Child and the movie Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (plus whatever hints we have about the sequel The Crimes of Grindelwald).

( If the basic shapes of a painting are not well designed and exciting, there is little purpose in continuing–Jane R. HofstetterCollapse )

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Part Two: Pairs
Part Three: Quartets and More
Part Four: Trios
Part Five: Conclusion

In my recent post about reconsidering JK Rowling's writing of romance in the Harry Potter series in light of the additional information from her later works, I declared myself puzzled by the following words of Rowling's:

What I will say is that I wrote the Hermione/Ron relationship as a form of wish fulfillment.

I wrote:

And it is not quite clear why Ron/Hermione was "wish fulfillment." Did she unrealistically wish that two such different people could grow to be happy together? Or was she unrealistic in thinking that she could satisfy readers with a platonic relationship between the hero and the most important female character? Or was it something else? I really wish Watson had asked her what she meant instead of jumping into a discussion of the characters as people.

A conversation I was having with torrent56 in the comments of that post prompted me to mull further on this somewhat mysterious comment and now I believe I know what Rowling meant. At least, it's convincing to me though it may not be to anyone else.

( Click here for my theory!Collapse )

I remember back when I first heard about the "Cursed Child" play, I was hardly excited at all. I saw it as kind of a local thing for people who live in London or are visiting there, kind of like the Harry Potter musical (there was something like that, wasn't there?). One of the reasons I wasn't too interested was because it was supposed to be about something that happened to Harry when he was living under the stairs before he got his Hogwarts letter. Interesting, sure, but it couldn't have been too important if we never heard about it in seven books.

( sorry I forgot to cut this at firstCollapse )

This is the fourth part of my attempt to cast light on the writing of J.K. Rowling in the Harry Potter series using the new information of her subsequent works. Part 1 (feminism) is here. Part 2 (weight prejudice and plot holes) is here. Part 3 (morality and messages) is here.

As a dog returneth to his vomit, so a fool returneth to her folly.

Between ten and fifteen years ago, I burned many, many pixels discussing the writing of romance in the Harry Potter series (I was for it). After Book 6 and the "Interview of Doom" came out I made a vow to myself to never again "debate ships" in the Harry Potter fandom. I wish to point out, though, that I explicitly meant "which pairing(s) will happen in canon?" and NOT "is the romance as written in canon any good?" So anything I might write now cannot possibly be taken as a violation of that vow. :)

Is J.K. Rowling bad at writing romance?

( When you have seen as much of life as I have, you will not underestimate the power of obsessive loveCollapse )


And that's the end, yayyyyy!!! I'll shut up now. (I'm sure none of you believe that.)