JK ROWLING HABITUALLY hits headlines as she reveals information about her franchise Harry Potter on social media, eight years after she closed the series with the seventh and final installment.
Over the past fews days she’s revealed to fans that they’ve been saying Voldemort all wrong (it’s pronounced Voldemore) and today she tweeted that Hogwarts house Hufflepuff is the upcoming house to covet–having previously sold Gryffindor as the house to watch.
In short, she reveals new things about the beloved series almost every week
Things like…
The date Harry Potter’s son started Hogwarts, and that he was sorted into Gryffindor
In a Pottermore story, she revealed that Harry has a few grey hairs at 35, and Hermione is now the Deputy Head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement
Ron, on the other hand, works at his brother’s joke emporium
Plenty of her revelations also tie in with current events.
LGBT students were in Hogwarts, obviously
Hogwarts was free to attend
While Vernon Dursley was a fan of Top Gear and signed the petition to save it
Of course there are dozens of other tidbits, but they all make up footnotes of the books millions of people so fondly remember.
Harmless, sure, but the tinkering has started to grate with some fans
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But what’s the problem? Surely more information means keeping the magic of the series going for fans?
As this Atlantic piece points out, she risks falling into the same trap as George Lucas, who was constantly tweaking his Star Wars series to the point where the originals became unrecognisable and hard to distinguish–and as a result, he failed to be taken seriously by the die-hard fans.
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By jumping forward in the final book, Rowling seemingly tied up all loose ends. We know where everyone ends up and the rest was left up to us.
This kind of imaginative freedom is what made the books so magical, but now these extra tidbits read like fan fiction, or comments made off the cuff and not truly a reflection of the characters we experienced. If they mattered–they would have made it into the text. But she wrote it, doesn’t she have the right to ‘keep making stuff up’?
As this xoJane piece argues:
What is there to speculate on if the author fills in the blanks for us? Nobody wants to read an extensive biography of an imaginary character. That level of detail isn’t necessary or desirable. In fact, that lack of detail, those spaces between the lines, is what makes some stories so compelling.
JK is currently even making formal additions to the story. A play, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, and a trilogy of movies from the Harry Potter world, Fantastic Beats and Where to Find Them. If we keep getting new insights, will we ever be able to read the originals with the same eyes as we first did. Or, do people need to get over it and let the story develop?
So, should JK Rowling keep on feeding us new information, or leave the books alone?
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