Name: Fabulous Percy Weasley reviewed Chapter 5 on May 27, 2007 04:57 am

I wonder what Ginny's appearance in the OotP promotional material means.

Author's Response: We've been discussing this exact point extensively over on ARGH for quite a while now, actually. Not everyone there likes Ginny as a character, but I do. A lot. :) I think and hope that she will gain importance as a character in her own right in DH, not as Harry's disposable snogdoll. However, every single opportunity to show H/G interaction has been 100% cut from OotP, and the way in which she has been portrayed in the promo material follows that completely. (I hope, actually, that the "look" so many have been referring to ISN'T what I'm afraid it is-- Ginny showing her hopeless crush on Harry as he shows no response whatsoever. That's not interaction.) There is nothing-- absolutely nothing-- that shows Harry and Ginny interacting with each other onscreen in even the way they did in print in OotP. There is certainly nothing, nothing whatsoever, not even the slightest thing, that shows Harry and Ginny interacting in promo material. THAT is the type of "appearance in the OotP promotional material" that would have supported H/G, and it simply does not exist-- I don't know how else to say it. What Ginny's actual appearances DO accomplish is to leave the door open for her as an important *independent* character. I don't know how to make this more clear than to simply say it, but this is about Ginny as a character in and of herself. It has nothing to do with H/G. After the release of DH, I predict that a lot of H/G supporters will turn pretty savagely on Ginny, because Ginny was never who they really liked-- only H/G. Just wait and see.

Name: Katy reviewed Chapter 5 on Apr 20, 2007 11:02 am

The nit-picky grammatical stuff first: Get thee to a proofreader. There are sentences in here that are so badly worded that it´s difficult to make sense of them. (Excuse the fact that I´m using accent marks as apostrophes, I´m currently working on a Portuguese keyboard.) Get rid of the superfluous material. If you say, "If they had known how successful the series would turn out to be, they would have fought harder for all the rights," you don´t need to add, "but at the time, they didn´t." That´s already understood. You do things like this frequently. You stated that the first Goldberg interview was a hoax twice, using the same exact sentence both times. Don´t do that. You also need to work on your parantheses and punctuation. If there is a paranthetical pause within a sentence, the punctuation ending the sentence goes outside the closed parantheses. In-text citations are contained within the sentence: Blah blah blah paraphrase blah (citation). OR Blah blah, "quote quote" (citation). You butchered those nearly every time.

Secondly, you´re going on about how mind-boggling it is that J.K. Rowling has such unprecendented artistic control and then comparing the Harry Potter series to a myriad of other books adapted into movies to make your point. But NONE of the other books you have cited have had anywhere NEAR the cultural impact that Harry Potter has. Not "The Colour Purple," not "The DaVinci Code," and Philip Pullman´s series? Not even close. (The only one that I´d accede would be the "Lord of the Rings" series, but those movies were created far after the books were originally released, which is- obviously- not the case with HP.) Considering that there really hasn´t been a book-to-movie adaptation of the same calibre EVER in history, is it that surprising that J.K. Rowling fought so hard to gain the creative control that she did? You make it seem like she was hording her books, waiting to make a leap at the film industry; I see this as an author also being a smart businesswoman and sticking to her vision.

Artists, whether authors or musicians or whatever else, fight for this sort of control over their works all the time. J.K. Rowling was lucky enough to get the amount of control she wanted. Many artists are not. But I don´t think that´s any reason to go about claiming that absolutely everything in these movies is what she desired, or to say that, as you ultimately plan on telling us, it means that the films are indicators of what is in store in book seven. What you´re forgetting here is that, as much as JKR may have all this creative control, we´re still dealing with a book-to-movie adaptation. When you discuss Harry Potter as a series, you discuss Harry Potter as a literary series. When you discuss the movie adaptations, you discuss the adaptations. They´re two different entities, and Rowling herself has acknowledged that. Point is, the movies are not literary canon. Period.

Now I´m going to go do something amazing to make up for the time I just wasted reading this.

Author's Response: Ah, the first flame! (warms hands) Differing opinions are always welcome. However, I have a great idea for something "amazing" you could do to make up for the time you apparently feel so strongly that you lost in reading this essay. Why don't you get to a university library, your local library, or even the net in order to do 1/10th, 1/20th, or even 1/100th of the research that I did *before* you begin attempting a rebuttal? If you understand in-text citations, then you surely must know how to do this. Clearly, none of these actions were taken. Instead, you failed to back up the only material point on which you actually expressed coherent disagreement with this essay in any way: that Rowling's control meant there would be no differences between book and film that were not approved by her. Misquoting Rowling is not research. Creating a straw man argument is not research, nor is it logical argumentation. The film adaptations do not and will not differ from the books in any way that Rowling does not approve, which is the proven hypothesis of Part I. This point was simply ignored; the pretense that "a series is a series and an adaptation is an adaptation" is not an argument. It is a tautology. The "two different entities" quote was explained within the essay itself, and that fact was ignored. rnrnTo tell you the truth, I think I respect this sort of pseudo-intellectual "criticism" even less than a simple "your essay sux H/G foreva!"

Name: search4inspiration reviewed Chapter 5 on Apr 19, 2007 07:56 pm

I am absolutely astonished at the level of research, analyzing, and compiling that has been put into this fabulous essay. I started reading it this morning and was riveted, and read bits of it as I got chances throughout the day. The arguments presented are very informed and convincing... I'm not sure I'll ever truly be able to believe the LP theory, but I've come a long way from having scoffed at it before. I will admit that it is most definitely a possibility... one that is much more likely than I ever imagined. Kudos to both of you for your time and effort on this project... I wish I could like, pay you or something... haha... I feel like you deserve more that just internet recognition for such work. I was thinking more about the article that accused Hermione of love-potioning Harry... that in itself will exhibit remarkable irony and foreshadowing if the LP theory does prove to be correct. Did you find anything interesting in her reaction to that article? Was she particularly flustered or anything? I might have to dig back through the books and check it out myself. If nothing else, this essay has brought to my attention just how intricate JK's masterpieces are... simple things like the Peter Pettigrew allusion in the first book absolutely astound me. Such brilliance. Anyway... I will be looking forward to your next installment very much! Like really a lot. Haha.

Name: Mynuet reviewed Chapter 5 on Apr 19, 2007 03:16 am

I'm sold so far, although I CRINGE to think that the PoA movie had JKR's blessing.