#pre-ordered paperback copies of Sleep No More and The Innocent Sleep today

[owlbear33]

the end of One Salt Sea has always brought tears, and this time was no different

Absolutely amazing book

[unidentified-flying-sparrow]

I still love Harry Potter - but not JKR

Warning: This gets wordy. I really just rambled and let my thoughts take me where they will. And these are only my personal rambles - they aren’t meant to be a deep political statement or super eloquent or anything. They’ll be messy and meandering and mainly for my own benefit.  I just...needed to think. And remember. And feel.  You have been warned.

JKR has been in the news a lot lately. And not in a good way. To put it bluntly, she’s basically revealed herself as a TERF and is rightly being called out.  It hurts, because Harry Potter made a large impact on my life. But the author has shown herself to be flawed and I had put her on a pedestal for years of my life. I admired her “rags-to-riches” (sorta) story. Her success. Her talent with writing. I wanted to be her in some ways. She was living my life’s dream!

And now she is making hurtful remarks about a marginalized group of people who have done nothing except demand equality and recognition.

I first heard about the books through my mom. She was a substitute teacher at the time, and in the class she was covering, the teacher had just started reading The Sorceror’s Stone. Mom went out and got a copy, read it, and loaned it to me. She also griped about how no one knew how to pronounce the name “Hermione” - the kids she was reading to kept ‘correcting’ her with ‘Hermy-own-knee” as the pronunciation. It drove her nuts. I remember bragging to my friends when I figured out what the Mirror of Erised actually said. I was in junior high - eighth grade. I was reading a kids’ book that wasn’t hugely popular yet, and trying to lure people in.  I remember seeing more and more people I knew picking up the books. In high school, when we had free days in band (aka the teacher was sick and the sub didn’t know music), my friends and I would talk Harry Potter.  I was giddy when I got my own copies - hardback copies - of the first three books by saving my money and shopping the second-hand bookstores. It’s not that my parents wouldn’t have gotten them for me, but I wanted to buy them for myself. My original, paperback copy of Sorceror’s Stone was battered and tattered and well-loved.  Mom kept loaning out our copies to people. Sometimes, they didn’t come back. In that, it was like when she would loan out copies of The Lord of The Rings when I was a kid (which is why there are probably 4 or 5 copies of that in my parents’ house today). She knew the books were special. I put up Harry Potter posters. I glommed onto Hermione as a favorite character - a bookish girl who could still stand up for herself and have great friends? It was everything I had wanted for myself when I was eleven and struggled hard to have. So I adored her. And I shipped Harry/Hermione. Still do, but now days, I prefer just having an OT3 of the Golden Trio and an OT3 of the Silver Trio (or Sub Trio or whatever name the fandom uses now).  I sometimes had trouble sleeping and would pop the audiobook of Sorceror’s Stone into my cassette player on those nights. It helped me relax. When the first film came out, my parents and I were there to see it. I was amazed. I remember griping about minor tweaks, like Harry’s eyes (until I read about the contacts issues). Oh, what little I knew of how the books and films would splinter more. But still be fun. Goblet of Fire the book was released 4 days before my 15th birthday. I made the mistake of telling my parents I could hold off on reading my copy until then. After I saw my mom sobbing -for reasons she couldn’t tell me - at the end of the book...I never made that particular error again. When Order of the Phoenix came out, we went to the Barnes and Noble midnight release to get our pre-ordered copies. During the long wait, a guy wandered up and down selling Little Caesar's pizzas. Another guy had visited Wal-Mart, purchased every copy of the book they had, and was selling them for only a couple of bucks over what he’d paid to anyone in line who was desperate for an extra copy. My parents bought one and I spent the rest of the waiting period crouched under a parking lot light, reading, until my parents got the copies we’d actually come for.  I lost sleep reading all of the books as they came out. I was always done within a few days, at most. I just couldn’t put them down. I got T-shirts. Bought dolls/pillows/bedding. Got myself a T-shirt, a poster, and Quidditch Through The Ages and Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them when I visited the UK in high school. I saw the latter films at midnight releases with my friends. Half-Blood Prince the book came out during my first summer as a camp counselor. Almost all of us - camper and staff alike - were reading it or talking about it. Spoilers were forbidden but there would still be hushed conversations during bedtime hours or “me-time” after lunch (rest period).  Deathly Hallows - both book and film - came out after my mother passed. I got my copy of the book, quietly, at a Kroger at midnight. 

Harry Potter got me heavily into fandom. I was there for The Draco Trilogy and Pawn to Queen. My Immortal and The Shoebox Project. Squickfics that made it onto GodAwfulFanfiction and its successor, Why God Why. LiveJournal communities. Fandom wank. And so much more. Reading updates on MuggleNet and The Leaky Cauldron and watching fanvids. Listening to music uploaded from Draco and the Malfoy and other fanbands. Roleplaying communities that were being hosted on Proboards message boards. Countless Sorting quizzes.  I made sure to visit Universal Studios on my honeymoon with @lechevaliermalfet​ and want to go back one day, as only Hogsmeade existed when we went. I also remember how grumpy I was that @lechevaliermalfet​ had resisted my urging to read the books - he read them after they were recommended by an unlikely source. In hindsight, it makes sense. I was a solid fan. The person who recommended the books was not. I celebrated the release of Cursed Child with my family at a day-long celebration in Naperville, IL. I have a T-shirt to commemorate it, and a wand that I made with the help of my niece.  Just this year, @lechevaliermalfet​ and I did a date night - dinner and the first Potter movie on the big screen.

I’m rambling, I know, but the point is, Harry Potter got me involved. I made online friends and honed writing skills by writing fanfiction. I learned to have a thicker skin because of some of the feedback I got. I made at least one fanvid (I’m reasonably certain it’s been lost to the ether and good riddance). Sure, I participated in other fandoms (especially Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew and Witch Hunter Robin). But this was a fandom I shared with more of my family and friends than any other. And I could even - and did - read it to kids I babysat. Now, I know Harry Potter isn’t perfect. Lord knows, Cursed Child reads like a bad fanfiction, and I have seen those ideas executed in ways that fired up my imagination and emotions more effectively. Repeatedly. Then there’s the issue of worldbuilding. The not-so-great aspects/implications of much of what has come out of Pottermore aside, Harry Potter’s wizarding world has always been a shaky society. Others have touched on this far more eloquently, so I’ll just say that it was interesting that we only had a few token “good” Slytherins - who were still shown to have ambition that overruled their better judgement at times.

I always saw the films as a different interpretation of the same story, so I wouldn’t go nuts over the stuff that was altered, so that stays. They have flaws of their own. Sometimes they exacerbate what is in the books - sometimes not.

I can’t speak to the more recent Fantastic Beasts stuff as I haven’t gotten involved. Maybe eventually. But I never realized that the poor representation in JKR’s world might reflect her worldview more wholly. I honestly figured it was a more innocent ignorance or reluctance to risk upsetting the market at the time. But the more she tweets and posts...the more obvious it is that no, she just really is that biased.  I guess, at this point, I’m going to have to follow the Death of the Author route. I used to live for the engagement Rowling had with fans, and the tidbits she’d dole out. Now, I cringe every time I see one.   For the books themselves, I think I’m going to have to take the Death of the Author approach from now on. Because JKR cannot take away the positive things Harry Potter gave me and other fans. I won’t let her. And I am grateful that there are Potter cast members stepping up to denounce her. I love Harry Potter. JKR can go jump in a lake.