I have at last––at very long last!––finished and posted the seventh part of the seven-part essay on Symbolism in Harry Potter that I first posted on April 1st, 2005:

https://angua9.livejournal.com/2005/04/01/

Some Forever, Not for Better . . .

The last post I made in this old haunt of mine was in 2020 when I was just about to dive into a nostalgic orgy of Harry Potter reading and posting, but Ms. Rowling short-circuited that by unveiling her commitment to, what shall I call it? . . .the backlash against trans rights activism? . . .sternly patrolling the boundaries of womanhood against incursions? . . .being "gender critical"? Whatever you call it, she seemed to me to have become even more "vehement and scary" than we "Harry/Hermione and Ron/Hermione tribes" ever were, and I found myself emotionally veering away from her and therefore away from any further indulgence in the HP books and fandom nostalgia.

Before that, I can see from the amazing Pensieve-equivalent that is my LiveJournal that I fell into a Potter nostalgia kick approximately once every two years––in 2010, 2012, 2014, 2016, 2018, and 2020. This is nothing unusual for me; for many, many years it was my practice to re-read The Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings every November and all six Jane Austen novels every April. I notice, though, that starting in 2016 these re-reads began to include some pretty serious essay-writing, as writing about Harry Potter was one of my biggest pleasures during my time in the fandom. In 2020, I see that I was inspired to finish the most annoyingly-incomplete of my old works, the 7-part Symbolism essay I posted on April 1st, 2005––"The Secret Key to the Hidden Truth of the Ultimate Mystery of Harry Potter." But just as I was starting in to write it, The Author kept dismaying me with new snarky words and actions and I lost my motivation and abandoned it.


Some Have Gone . . . and Some Remain

However, exactly two months ago, a chance remark from connielane tempted me into a re-read of The Msscribe Story, which led me to my own LiveJournal, which led me to re-read some of my friends' LiveJournals and communities, which led to . . . well, I have basically spent all my pleasure-reading time for the last two months re-reading Harry Potter books and posts and communities and fan fiction and companion books, and even scouring the Internet Archive for now-unavailable posts on the Sugar Quill and Fiction Alley and the Chamber of Secrets forum (and I'm SO dismayed that most of those seem to be lost forever).

( All these places have their momentsCollapse )

*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!

First, I must thank the kind anonymous person who recently gifted me with 6 months of paid LiveJournal time. My icons came back!!

I suspect the generous giver was responding to my role in l'affaire Msscribe, which recently received renewed attention thanks to this hour-long YouTube video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K_DZd78WLQY

But, contrary orc that I am, I find myself prompted to return to a different facet of my time in the Harry Potter fandom. After all, Msscribe and all her shenanigans were merely minor and unpleasant distractions from the "heart of it all," which was my deep love for the Harry Potter books and the super-wonderful, brilliant, and hilarious group of friends that I made, most unfairly, while indulging myself in wanky debating, lascivious shipping of fictional teenagers, and mean-spirited snickering at the foolishness of my fellow fans. Which just goes to show that the world is an unjust place and while no good deed goes unpunished, apparently every bad deed is richly rewarded.

So, if my LJ is going to come back to life for a while, what I'd most like to do is finish up some of the unfinished business that still nags at me––the multi-part essays and fanfics where I wrote and posted the first parts but not the planned and in some cases promised sequels. And first among those is the seven part symbolism essay I posted on April Fools Day of 2005, before the sixth and seventh books came out. Many people have asked me about the promised Part 7, the Epilogue, and I was repeatedly forced to admit to them that I never got around to writing it––and to admit to myself that I didn't really know what I wanted to say in it. But now it seems to me that the proper time to write an "Epilogue" is, of course, after the end. Now, surely, with the final two books released and long-digested, I can find more to say!

So ... don't be surprised if sometime during the next few days, this ceases to be an empty link and begins to contain one of my typically pompous and prolix symbolism essays (for, alas, my writing style has not changed one bit in the intervening fifteen years, and I continue to have the same ambivalent attitude toward symbolic analysis that leads me to make fun of it while simultaneously being fascinated by it and irresistibly attracted to performing it).

I just hope I can finish and post this one before April 1, 2021!

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
––

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