On the infamous epilogue

[amanuensis1]

The epilogue to Deathly Hallows is the sort of thing I should like. Seriously, in a good long story I love hearing who married whom and how many children they had and what their names were and what their lives were like. I eat that up with a spoon. On that level, yes, I do like the epilogue. I do not think it reads like bad fanfic, as some have criticised--I did not expect revelations to 2001: A Space Odyssey depths, I did not expect The Sixth Sense-level twists, in terms of their post-Voldemort lives. Ordinary, day-to-day, kid-raising lives. How deserving that Harry should have obtained something so plain and wonderful for himself. And we have concrete evidence that Harry grew to understand and forgive and even &hearts Severus Snape. So, yes, in principle, I do like the epilogue.

The epilogue does jar me in two significant ways, and in one I have a reader's eyes, and in the other I have a fanfiction writer's.

1. Harry/Ginny is dreadful.

2. Bitch chewed up nineteen years of my fanon.

Does any of that need much explanation? The romance of Harry and Ginny sucks. Harry feels nothing whatsoever for Ginny for five books--any moments of interaction they have are devoid of any emotional engagement on Harry's part--and then we are, violation of all storytelling violations, told that Harry suddenly feels passionately for Ginny. I don't give a shit if that's how romance happens in real life. Storytelling doesn't have shit to do with "how it happens in real life." Storytelling is about engaging the reader as the narrative is spun. Storytelling is about making it happen and making the reader feel as the protagonist feels without trying to tell the reader how to feel. Harry/Ginny does none of these. Harry/Ginny is shitty romance, and the epilogue throws that in my face yet again. (Wow, that's three uncensored "shit"s in one paragraph. Don't hold back, Amy, tell us how you really feel.)

And it's the fanfiction theorist--I include fanartists in that, because their work creates fanfiction in graphic form--who gets upset over the shutting-off of nineteen years of open canon. The "whatever you want to imagine it to be from this point on," cut short. Nineteen years. That entire stretch of narrative boxed in by that epilogue. Restricted. Caged! How dare she! Attica! Attica! Azkaban! Azkaban!

I mean, I would like to whine that the epilogue is all so unabashedly heterosexual, isn't it, but that's just an extension of "Give me back those nineteen years so that I can correct that crappy romance and add all the other stuff I like to imagine instead." Can't fight that scene. Can write around it if you want--can get damn clever in writing around it--but it's canon. Epilogue What Epilogue has become its own dominant AU subspecies, and no wonder. Epilogue no fun. Epilogue go 'way.

So I think the fanfiction kind of fan is more likely to dislike the epilogue than the casual fan, for reason that it makes our sandbox tinier. Though I think both kinds can have the taste to hate the Harry/Ginny for just being blah.

Comments

[amanuensis1.livejournal.com]

I didn't mind Ginny in canon up until book six when she became a complete and total brat, and that's when Harry supposedly is enlightened to his all-encompassing love for her?

I didn't like her much at that point either, but if that's who we witnessed Harry falling for, I would have been okay with it. Except we didn't witness it, did we? It was nothing nothing nothing nothing nothing I MUST HAVE YOU NOW BECAUSE THE AUTHOR SAYS SO. Uh, no.

[boniblithe.livejournal.com]

Harry feels nothing whatsoever for Ginny for five books--any moments of interaction they have are devoid of any emotional engagement on Harry's part--and then we are, violation of all storytelling violations, told that Harry suddenly feels passionately for Ginny.

I agree with you. I mean, on a rational level, I remember what it was like being a teenaged girl and having to deal with clueless and uninterested teenaged boys, and watching my own teenaged sons behave a lot like Harry - I get that it's completely realistic for Harry as a kid to not be interested in Ginny (and of course, Rowling cuts out the late teens/early 20's which is when all the good sex stuff starts happening!) - still doesn't mean I want REALITY intruding in my FICTION :D Dang it.

[amanuensis1.livejournal.com]

An epic series where one-half a book's storyline is about the protagonist pursuing a girl he likes--you don't do that without showing him having come to like her in a way that the reader can feel. Teenaged boy or no, that's not how an epic series works.

[meredyth-13.livejournal.com]

IMHO I think the Harry/Ginny cheats Harry at the end from being a fully rounded, real character. It ties him to a shallow and transitory school boy crush like some kind of one dimensional prince charming - without much of the charm. This boy who's been through so much, learnt and unlearnt so much, suffered and triumphed, is cut off without hope of an interesting and colourful future. He's painted into his school boy uniform and told 'thou shalt go no further than here'.

We travelled so far riding behind those green eyes of his - I would have liked to be left with the scope to believe that this person we came to know and love continued to grow and live and experience all the opportunities life had to offer. The epilogue, to me, denies all those possibilities for the sake of a tidy wrap-up and the insurance that the author can't possibly be harangued into writing more in that universe because she's tied off all the knots and put everything to bed. *sigh*

[amanuensis1.livejournal.com]

It ties him to a shallow and transitory school boy crush like some kind of one dimensional prince charming

The books start very simply; remember how Roald Dahl-esque Harry's cupboard existence is? And then the books get darker and darker, but the ending seems to regress back to a simple children's tale where everyone marries their childhood sweetheart and has 2.4 children. Doesn't sit right with me either.

[a-white-rain.livejournal.com]

There is a reason I've mostly stopped writing Potter fic. I HATE Harry/Ginny and it's hard to get around.

[amanuensis1.livejournal.com]

It's hard to get around in fanfiction and just in confronting the series in its completion. I'm not joking, I think about the way Harry/Ginny is fixed in canon and I throw up in my mouth a little.

[fictualities.livejournal.com]

What I find troubling about H/G is that so many of the possible explanations for why they ended up together make Harry incredibly damaged. Ginny isn't just his biggest fangirl; she's the daughter in what has been the functional equivalent of his family since he was about twelve. Without some compelling insight into what makes Ginny tick, what makes her uniquely suited to Harry and vice versa, it's hard for me not to see this choice on Harry's part as an attempt to compensate for the loss of his parents and for a childhood spent with someone trying to kill him. The marriage doesn't read like progress to a mature adult relationship, but like marrying your sister -- not as a kink, but because you're so hurt that you just need your nuclear family *that* badly. And, well, I'd been hoping that Harry might have come through his sufferings without being that badly hurt.

People do of course get married for reasons like that all the time, and I could see psychologically canny version of HP in which Harry's emotional exhaustion was the point of the ending. But instead the ending is being held forth as an ideal, and aaaaaa . . . that just seems odd to me, as a vision of happiness.

[serriadh.livejournal.com]

There's also the worrying similarities between Lily and Ginny. Now, of course people marry people who are like their mothers a lot, but there's something so horribly damaged about Harry doing it - as you say. And Ginny's damaged too, stuck with a hero-worshipping complex on someone she had a crush on when she was 10. JRK doesn't show us enough signs that she's grown out of that into anything like a mature love (and the epilogue doesn't help, with the fact that all their children are named for Harry's dead)

[arcanetrivia]

told that Harry suddenly feels passionately for Ginny. I don't give a shit if that's how romance happens in real life.

I don't think it does. We have immediate attractions, lightning infatuations, and yes people do seem to suddenly decide they're in love with people (often to the bewilderment of friends), but IMO a genuine passion takes time to build up. Our subjective experience may be blind to the process and thus we may mistake suddenly realizing this feeling for its suddenly appearing, but the reader should be able to see it happening to a character even if the character doesn't see it themself.

Azkaban! Azkaban!

*snicker*

[amanuensis1.livejournal.com]

and thus we may mistake suddenly realizing this feeling for its suddenly appearing, but the reader should be able to see it happening to a character even if the character doesn't see it themself.

Oh, that's very well put! That takes into account those lightning infatuations that aren't. Thank you!

[sanj.livejournal.com]

I'm actually finding myself contemplating writing around the epilogue t depict the slow and inevitable breakup of their marriage. I LIKE Ginny, is the thing, on her own, and I think she should get in a souped-up flying sportscar and go have a wild affair with Viktor or something. But Harry/Ginny? It just doesn't work, for so many good and complicated reasons.

The only way I can really reconcile myself to the epilogue right now is to say "and then Harry woke up." Which is really way, way too Dallas for me. And I kind of like the kids, especially Al -- though where was Ginny in the naming process, you know?

Hrmph. It's a puzzlement.

[beckaandzac.livejournal.com]

I think she should get in a souped-up flying sportscar and go have a wild affair with Viktor or something.

YES. Just yes. I think Ginny is a fantastic character with a lot of potential to do interesting things, and that instead she chooses the safety of a marriage to a childhood crush, which ensures her never getting out of the heteronormative family life she grew up in. It makes me respect her less because she made that choice. She is a character we see acting in unladylike fashion, surprising her brothers, and exploring different romantic options at Hogwarts, and I don't buy that she was really just waiting for Harry all along (although I understand how hard it is to get past childhood crushes). I think she eventually did what was expected by her family: she married a man her parents liked, had babies, and her children became the center of her life.

[mizbean.livejournal.com]

The romance of Harry and Ginny sucks.

I'm a Harry slasher, but I enjoyed most of the Harry/Cho romance. They flirted, blushed, angsted over each other. His first kiss was 'wet.' It was cute for the most part. So for me it's not that I can't read a canon Harry longing after a girl. Harry/Ginny lacked heart, and even the few scenes with them together -- the sunlit days, the kiss on his birthday -- felt forced. And their first kiss after the Quidditch game in HBP was completely ruined for me coming so soon after the Sectumsempra scene. It's like the narrative decided to reward Harry right after he nearly killed someone.

Contrast that with R/Hr in DH where Ron nearly knocks Harry down to get to Hermione to comfort her when she's weeping over Moody, one of my favorite Ron moments in the entire series. Where were the Harry/Ginny moments like that?

[amanuensis1.livejournal.com]

I loved the Harry/Cho. Honestly, I did! It developed over three books, beginning in Prisoner of Azkaban, and I was as delighted as Harry to see it develop into Cho returning Harry's feelings. And when they parted at the end of OotP, I believed it.

coming so soon after the Sectumsempra scene. It's like the narrative decided to reward Harry right after he nearly killed someone.

I felt the same way, believe me. So many things not at all right with that book, ugh.

[purple-ladybug1.livejournal.com]

I am an H/G shipper; I have been since GoF. (And I ship R/Hr too, of course!) To be perfectly honest, when I started shipping H/G, it just made since to me, since R/Hr were obvious. But then I started looking for evidence, once I had formed my conclusion (which you're totally not supposed to do in science, but w/e; this is HP). I have never written a good defense of H/G, but I've read several. At the Sugarquill, they have several good essays. http://www.sugarquill.net/index.php?action=gringotts&st=hglovered describes very well the subtle foreshadowing of Harry and Ginny.

As far as the epilogue boxing fanfiction in, I have read the most innovative fics that are epilogue compliant, but completely not your standard OBHWF.

[amanuensis1.livejournal.com]

I'm going to read that essay from beginning to end, I will! I have only skimmed it for the moment--the problem I still see with it and with canon is that there are moments of interaction between Harry and Ginny all through the books but there is just no resonance of them having emotional significance with Harry. Even the sharing of the chocolate egg--while it is one of the few moments Harry really chokes up, he does not connect it as a moment of emotional resonance with Ginny. If he can't feel it, then I can't feel it.

[frayach-nicuill.livejournal.com]

Harry/Ginny really is unspeakably awful, isn't it? But never fear! We on Team Epilogue labor day and night to bring you epilogue compatible slashy goodness.

Paid for by Team Epilogue Kix Those Other Teams' Asses dot Org.

[amanuensis1.livejournal.com]

The difficulty for me is that unless you make that entire scene mean something hugely different from what it shows (and I know we CAN, believe me; I'm doing it in my head in four different ways as we speak) then to mess with it is to mess with nineteen ostensible years of Harry's happiness with Ginny. And that's difficult for me to do to Harry.

[femmequixotic]

I actually seriously enjoy writing around the epilogue. That might change at some point, but for right now it's a challenge to me to figure out ways to incorporate it into my fic while at the same time seriously subverting it.

It's kind of fun in a warped, weird way.

Plus, Scorpius? \o/ SO MUCH FTW THERE OMG.

*hearts on Draco-as-a-father*

[amanuensis1.livejournal.com]

I like writing around the epilogue if I seriously twist it. Not if I begin at the epilogue and take nineteen years of Harry's happiness and flush it down the drain in divorce or infidelity. That doesn't make me happy, though I've seen plenty of authors do it and please me with the results despite that!

[bonfoi.livejournal.com]

Couldn't have said it better...if I'd read the book. From all the spoilery early on, I knew what was coming and the lack of real emotional investment in HP/GW was just brain-numbing. I'd be more likely to take HP/HG any day, with the closeness they've had over the years, the tears they've shed together. It just smacks of a bad nightmare...which, if luck were on our side, it would be...*le sigh*

Good thing I'm now in my "dead guys' slash" phase, i.e., Severus Snape and Sirius Black...Resurrectionists UNITE!

[amanuensis1.livejournal.com]

In the books I could see the RW/HG and the HP/HG equally--which is why I like being a trio 'shipper. ^_^ By the end of book 5, when Sirius was dead and Harry's fighting by Hermione's side in the ministry and freaking when she of all his friends is incapacitated and Cho is no longer in Harry's picture--I said, "Okay, there is simply no time in all of this darkness for Harry to get emotionally interested in someone new and play out the storyline of the last two books. There's not. It has to be Hermione or it's going to be no one." And suddenly there was a light-hearted hormonal plotline all through book 6! Didn't buy it. Just didn't.

[thistlerose.livejournal.com]

Though I think both kinds can have the taste to hate the Harry/Ginny for just being blah.

I probably shouldn't say anything, but...do I even want to know what that makes those of us who do like Harry/Ginny?

We got a nice roomy sandbox here. Not that it's really ours. :)

[amanuensis1.livejournal.com]

They are people who do not have the same taste that I do. ^_^ Which naturally I prefer, but it just means our tastes are different.

Harmony All The Way

[filkertom.livejournal.com]

Word. I despise the epilogue. (Then again, I've come to despise most of Books Six and Seven.) There are a few very good fanfics on Portkey that have worked around it, but better still would be it not existing. I didn't sign on for the Adventures of Super Ginny Sue and Ronnie Sue, but that's what we have. Just in DH, Ron uses that stupid book to get Hermione, says a couple of completely out of character things to make her go all wuvy-dovey, betrays and abandons Harry and Hermione again, speaks frickin' Parseltongue -- mimicking hissing! -- saves the day a couple more times, I can't even remember how, and then in the Epilogue is proud of putting one over on Hermione.

Ron is a sidekick, and, as JKR writes him, a pretty useless one. Ginny... Ginny isn't even window dressing. And, on top of everything else, the unanswered questions left hanging by the Epilogue, e.g., who's running Hogwarts, are too big.

Gaaaah. If you really need more detail, I had it here (http://filkertom.livejournal.com/669014.html).

[amanuensis1.livejournal.com]

I like Harry and Hermione's emotional connection. It's the reason at the end of OotP, when Harry and Cho parted, I shrugged, "I guess the only way it can go now is Harry/Hermione. It's too late for the reader to make any sort of emotional connection between Harry and another girl, this late in the series--though the odd thing is I can see how JKR is trying to set up for Ron and Hermione to get together as well. So what on earth does that mean?"

I won't go into all the reasons Deathly Hallows seems silly to me here--though the Parseltongue is one!--but I can never argue with the Harmonian contingent because Book 5 made me into one as well, even if I do not hate Ron/Hermione as it stands alone nor do I think that that one came out of the blue (as Harry/Ginny did).

[midnitemaraud-r.livejournal.com]

I love the epilogue. I really do. But as you pointed out, there's a disconnect between fans-who-create-fanworks and fans who just enjoy the books, fans who are fervent shippers and fans who aren't, and fans who like/don't mind Harry/Ginny and those who don't like it for whatever reason. We're a selfish bunch, but it's also understandable. We're ridiculously invested.

I don't think it makes the sandbox tinier, more that it's like someone dropped a big ol' obstacle course (straight out of those wacky reality shows!) right in the middle of our formerly wide open playground - and each successive book made the damn thing bigger and harder to climb, and now there's a bloody moat we have to cross, and someone greased the rope. :-P

I don't (and can't) begrudge JKR for writing what she wanted any more than I'd begrudge any fan who wrote a fic that didn't turn out/end the way I wanted it to. I love the HP universe, so I'll climb that stupid rope and scale that wall, or I'll find a way to get around it, dig a tunnel underneath it, or find some way to fly over it. That's what I do with my stories. It's what we all do with our fanworks.

But it's definitely a perspective thing. So many of the complaints I saw initially about the epilogue (and even DH itself) - the reasons for despising it and the objections, I really thought had more to do with fanon/fannish disappointments than anything else.

[amanuensis1.livejournal.com]

more that it's like someone dropped a big ol' obstacle course (straight out of those wacky reality shows!) right in the middle of our formerly wide open playground

It is a big ol' obstacle course, isn't it. I really don't have a taste for taking Harry's nineteen years of happiness and three children and beginning with "But then it all went sour and they divorced..." It just isn't something I enjoy!

As you say, we can't object to the author having finshed her story the way she felt it should end. Though we can bitch about what it's done to our fun all we please!

[bicrim.livejournal.com]

Harry had to marry Ginny because he needed a family and it was the only way to become Molly Weasley's son. Period. He is a sick, sad little boy, our Harry.

If only he had thought that by marrying Draco, Narcissa could have been his mum.

[amanuensis1.livejournal.com]

Awww, that's almost sweet! Now I want to write something involving Harry interacting with his mother-in-law Narcissa. ^_^

[novembersnow.livejournal.com]

The sad thing is, I like the idea of Harry/Ginny, and have since very nearly the beginning of the series. Harry and his best friend's little sister: It was obvious, but it was cute, in its way. I looked forward to seeing them get their adorable little romance, like Ron/Hermione clearly was shaping up to be. Up through OotP, I still thought JKR could pull it off.

And then she gave us the chest monster. *eyeroll*

I don't disagree with you about the awful mess JKR made of the Harry/Ginny "romance"; it was a major disappointment to me. But I admit, I like the epilogue in spite of that. I appreciate JKR's intent (that Harry's happily-ever-after is his family), even if the execution leaves something (well, a lot) to be desired.

So I think the fanfiction kind of fan is more likely to dislike the epilogue than the casual fan, for reason that it makes our sandbox tinier.

I think this is absolutely true. In the days following DH's publication, my flist was full of rants about the godawful epilogue. But the many not-into-online-fandom fans I know in my offline life pretty much universally enjoyed the epilogue, or at least didn't have a laundry list of complaints about it.

For my part, I kind of enjoy the challenge of writing around the epilogue, given the loss of those nineteen years. Plus, I confess, I'm fascinated by the idea of Harry as a father, and I'm half in love with the next-gen kids, awful names and all. :)

[mosrael.livejournal.com]

Oh man. LOVE your icon. XD

[no-mad-skillz.livejournal.com]

Oh, sure. You had to regain your fandom cred with a serious post after all the bean/goldfish stuff. *pout*

Ginny is a complete cipher to me. I don't care about her one way or the other. BUT (or maybe SO) I don't hate her, and my fingers itch for the back button if I find myself reading a harridan!Ginny. I guess I just can't see getting that worked up over her.

[amanuensis1.livejournal.com]

Fandom cred shmandom cred! I just post what's fun. :D

I don't like harridan!Ginny either--why, I ask myself, would Harry have liked her if she were a harridan? It mocks my dislike of the canon even further rather than pleasing me.

[capri-chan.livejournal.com]

(Yay! I have internet! :D)

Ah, I remember way back when I was first getting into HP fanfiction. Years before I liked slash of any kind, and I could still be mentally scarred by the small things, like that Harry/Whomping Willow fic. Back before OotP...

I liked Harry/Ginny back then. Hell, I remember following AgiVega's fics religiously, much like I do to yours. (On the one hand, I feel bad for even trying to compare her to you. On the other hand, I used to think Full House was the best thing ever, so that's proof that Degrees of Awesomeness fluctuate wildly throughout life.)

And so, pushed on by fanfiction, I was thrilled when it became canon.

It took a while for me to get my head out of the clouds and realize that the people complaining were right: It did come out of nowhere. Those tiny hints that they were at least becoming friends should have been started in GoF or PoA.

So, no arguments there. Just a trip down memory lane.

As for the second one, I would like to argue that (assuming I read it correctly when I skimmed through it just now) it does not say Harry married her right away, and James only appears to be twelve. Estimate another year for pregnancy and a couple of other things, and that gives us six years immediately after the series for us to mess with. It's not much, but it's there.

I'd also like to point out that James, Albus, and Lily could possibly be bastards. I highly doubt it, because we all know how Harry acts, and if they weren't already engaged/married, he probably proposed on the spot the moment he found out she was pregnant. (But as the alternative may involve invoking the Wrath of Molly Weasley, I can't say I blame him.)

Moreover, once we start talking non-con (as if I weren't already), we have the added bonus of making it dub-con due to threats to the family! It's unfair, but we all know it works. ;D

So, you see, you just have to twist it in just the right way, and it becomes epilogue-compliant, while still giving us plenty of room to play with.

Funny, I thought I was a pessimist. I guess not. Or perhaps I've developed a talent for weaving through canon, due to my love for crack pairings.

[amanuensis1.livejournal.com]

Those tiny hints that they were at least becoming friends should have been started in GoF or PoA.

I would have liked that SO MUCH. I wanted to feel something for this pairing, not be slapped with a hormonal plunge from zero to sixty, so to speak.

[glockgal.livejournal.com]

Really, what spoils Ginny the most is Harry's love for her. I really adore Ginny, I really do. Her and Dean was extremely hot and I loved thinking of them together.

I have patiently accepted Harry/Ginny (somewhat because canon tells me to but mostly because of artists like Reallycorking and Mudblood428, hehe!) but it was hard to see them as truly Meant To Be. Having the epilogue made that even harder, for some reason. If JKR had left Harry's life a little more open-ended, it might have been easier for me to imagine it, but yeah; pidgeonholing us fandomer-fans into Nineteen Years Later can be really, really tough.

But we are brave. And we shall prevail!

[amanuensis1.livejournal.com]

If you presented the concept of Ginny to me abstractly, like this:

"Youngest sister of a family fulla boys, the youngest of which is Harry's BEST friend, likes him from early on, at that age when girls like boys but boys don't know girls exist, but doesn't spend her time mooning after him beyond an early crush..." I would have said, "Hey, that's got potential." But the execution just never lived up to the potential.

I have heard this tale often and the execution is always painful if we don't see the development of the romance. The tale's told like an afterthought: "Who'd so-and-so marry? Oh, turns out his best friend had a sister and he fell for her when she got tits older." Often with the excuse that it "would make sense in real life." It never has any resonance.

[slashpine.livejournal.com]

The epilogue does jar me in two significant ways, and in one I have a reader's eyes, and in the other I have a fanfiction writer's.

1. Harry/Ginny is dreadful.

2. Bitch chewed up nineteen years of my fanon.

OMG yes. To both. I think Harry/Ginny is actually just the most egregiously WTF relationship in a series that is increasingly filled with Whoa-WHAT-Huh? Like Remus/Tonks o_O

And Snape "let me pine for you for 30 years"/Lily. Whut. The. Fuck. I don't mind suddenly sprung big lifelong sekrits in a book's climax; I can bow down before the shiny beauty of a deus ex machina. But Snape's "no life thanks, I'm mourning" is too unexplained. Simultaneously, it fails to explain anything. A good revelation gives the reader a sense of AHA! Ideally, that is so huge, you say it out loud. I've done this. And everything *clicks*; everything suddenly makes sense. Everything *looks* different, and the people who heard the revelation *are* different afterward, too.

But Snape/Lily? Sorry, no "aha", nor does this profound revelation about his mother and grudgingly respected teacher change Harry at all. He names ASP after him, then tells him it's okay, A.S. won't have to be a nasty Slytherin.

19 years later and Ron is still acting like a jealous adolescent, Harry and Ginny are kids playing at being grownups, and oh look! Draco's hair is thinning! Let's run over there and mock him like we never grew up.

So I adopt your Nos. 1 and 2, and add my

3. One big trainload of blah. The Ep characters are so shallow, I'd beg to be sorted in any other House.

[desiqtie.livejournal.com]

OMG. I completely agree with both you and amanuensis. Especially regarding the Snape/Lily. As for the Harry/Ginny, once a upon a time when I was a fangirl - I liked H/G. And then I grew up and realized it made no sense. It came out of nowhere - especially on HP's part. Plus, JKR's forcing of the 'relationship' made it seem so...irritating. Books 5-7 completely ruined Ginny for me. I can barely even read about her now - in fanon or canon.

I actually really liked book 7, except for the epilogue and the Snape/Lily bit. The epilogue really upset me - in part because all of the characters were so shallow and unrealistic, as were their 'romances'. Someone else's comment here was talking about the different reactions from fandom fans and non fandom fans. Well, when the book came out - my sisters, cousins and I all had a book reading party and we read it together. I am the only one in my family who's in the fandom - but my non-fandom exposed siblings and cousins all reacted the same way I did. They didn't like the epilogue at all. I think their reasons were different from mine - the biggest reason (for me) was the Harry/Ginny pairing. For all (11) of them, the epilogue was unrealistic and unbelievable - rather than bringing closure it made them come away from the series disappointed and jaded. My cousin described it best when he said "If JKR had ended the book before the epilogue, that would have been great. I would have considered the HP series one of my favorites. But now, they're just good books...but not my favorites. I don't want to read them over and over any more."

I think it's really sad that just because of one epilogue, so many people came away feeling shut out of the fandom rather than feeling like 'wow, that was a satisfying end.'

As for the Snape/Lily. Well. I was very upset by it. JKR's biggest flaw I think is how one-dimensional her characters became (or were throughout). Snape for such a huge portion of the series is this awful, ugly cruel bastard. For 6.75 books, as far as the readers (and Harry) are concerned, Snape is right there next to Voldemort and the Death Eaters when it comes to evilness. But then suddenly...he's redeemed and oh, by the way, he's a good guy actually and he's just bitter because of James and Lily. Snape is suddenly this great, wonderful human being - it's unrealistic. The blame for his actions is dropped on JP & the Marauders bullying as well as the rejection by Lily. Yes, okay, I can see how he joined the DE's, etc. as a result of the rejection & bullying. But...his cruel behavior towards HP & the others for so many years after Lily & James were dead, and the other three Marauders were in such horrible situations? How is that justified?

I really loved books one through four in the series. I think until then JKR was truly writing from her heart. After that point...it seemed like everything became forced - she was writing to sell books not because she truly enjoyed it, which comes across, especially in that godawful epilogue.

[quidditchgrrl.livejournal.com]

Wandering over from aggregate community...

It's the simple lack of any meaningful interaction in the book - this all taking place from Harry's perspective, and their relationship just comes out of nowhere, with so little common ground - Harry pays her less attention than the twins get, overall. They do have shared connections, like their experiences with Voldemort, Quidditch, etc., but we never get to hear of it or whether they ever addressed it at all.

That is frustrating, and why I could never see them as a viable pair. At least with Ron and Hermione, they interacted and exchanged emotions throughout the books. Canon doesn't show us that for Harry and Ginny - even in the Epilogue, they don't kiss or have much interaction. The answer to the question of 'why' is simply, 'because', and that stretches my suspension of disbelief farther than it holds.

[tsuj.livejournal.com]

Sorry, I just have to interject:
YOUR ICON MADE MY WEEK!
Viva le` Stewart!

As for H/G, read mudblood428 (After The Die Is Cast) to get a real in-depth and believable H/G relationship.

[coell.livejournal.com]

The epilogue about sums up how JKR could transform a rabid, canon-loving fan such as myself into a cringing WTF reader who left the series with only a vague sense of disappointment. What an insult to fans by locking out their experiences. When I heard she wants to write an encyclopedia to further prevent people from imaging their own unwritten verse, I was absolutely disgusted and now consider her a selfish homophobic bitch. (The "bitch" part came when she outed Albus in such a terrible and non-canon way, which is a separate hate-post altogether.) I'll always look back on my time as a Harry potter fiend as something I was into, but instead of allowing the story to continue and grow in my heart, she went out of her way to shut it down. Poorly written, grossly heteronormative, and a fandom disservice, IMO.

[slashpine.livejournal.com]

Word. You have truly put into words some of my own deepest emotional responses to all of this crazy stuff put together. And how it's been kind of a WTF chain reaction -- one thing after another, all collectively amounting to a huge feeling of regret and disappointment in, not the books, but JKR, who keeps on popping up behind most of this idiocy and bad-faith "I own everythingz!" stuff.

Like, should have quit while she was ahead -- simply written brilliantly good books 4-7 and not been distracted by trying to Rule the World. If she had in fact focused on making books 4-7 even *better* than the first three, and done *nothing* else but be (or become) a great writer of books both deep in thought *and* fun and entertaining -- if she had, in short, "realized" the potential of the series's good beginning -- then NOW she'd be able to be kicking back and enjoying the greatest fandom lurve in the history of the world. Instead of being a bitter disappointment and a sporking sensation to a very hefty percentage of readers, both fandom and casual.

[eloiselovelace.livejournal.com]

Hahahah, you have summed up my feelings ENTIRELY in your bulleted points. Like you, I love hearing details about the happily ever after and the stupid things they named their children. In particular, I also really think that it provides nice circularity for Harry (rather than Generic Protagonist) to finally obtain a happier home dynamic of his own children. And as stupid names go, Albus Severus has lovely, meaningful reasons behind it, and it made me really truly happy to see that closure and a reference to the Slytherin != evil after all.

My only consolation is, that while it takes away from fanfic freedom, it adds a lot in terms of my ability to write a set of Genetics problems set in the HP universe for the midterm I subjected my students to. My favorite problem was baldness in the Malfoys, so I am probably the only person in all of fandom to be happy about the creative possibilities offered by "receding hairline".

I loved the Ron/Hermione of the epilogue... but Harry/Ginny I still can't wrap my head around, alas.

[amanuensis1.livejournal.com]

and a reference to the Slytherin != evil after all.

By that you're saying you're pleased that Slytherin is indeed considered "the evil house"? I think you are not in a majority of the fandom company around here in that aspect, but I think you're correct. JKR's interviews imply that fandom's reading a lot more into "oh, Slytherins aren't evil, they're just self-interested and sly" than she means us to. What was it she said--something about Slytherin being the place you have to put people most likely to go evil because you can't throw them out (or they'll go evil for sure) and you have to keep an eye on them.

[creascendo.livejournal.com]

Bitch chewed up nineteen years of my fanon.

Must get t-shirt with that quote before Terminus. I'll credit you if that's ok? *g*

I agree completely with your post. Especially the not feeling Harry/Ginny. According to one of my professors, it should've been obvious from the moment Harry saved her in CoS. Something about Saint George and Ginny's father having a king's name. 0_o

[amanuensis1.livejournal.com]

I will look for the t-shirt! :D (I don't care if it's credited, either!)

I think your professor must have had an interesting lecture, actually--but symbolism isn't something that substitutes for storytelling either, and s/he'd probably know that too. :D