alternatively, the trouble is that she just didn't *commit.* she needed to take the books in an adult direction as both the readers and the characters aged. but that would have meant actually getting in to the *real* dark underside of the story, not the obvious "Voldemort Bad!"
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Replying to @perdricof
Unfortunately she was also already committed to having written a setting that established all this stuff like Ton-Tongue Toffees and Bertie Botts Every Flavor Beans and Platform 9 3/4 It's not that the transition was impossible but I think it would've taken a defter hand
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Replying to @arthur_affect @perdricof
Like, dark and gritty HP fanfic that I think succeeds more than the canon books does so because it's willing to *openly* be fanfic, like it has this self-aware tone of making fun of the cutesy children's stuff from before or openly distancing itself from it
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Replying to @arthur_affect
you don't have to distance yourself from any of that. it's all still there. bertie bott's every flavor beans still do have every flavor. but they're fucking jelly beans. at some point the characters need to realize that the beans were distracting them from literal slavery
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Replying to @perdricof @arthur_affect
that all this cotton-candy happiness is gilt on rotten wood
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Replying to @perdricof
Yes If she had actually had the courage to do that -- to make the euphoric joy of Book 1 turn retroactively into a vicious lie -- that would've been the correct ending to the series The series would've legit been great literature, revolutionary for its impact on culture
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Replying to @arthur_affect @perdricof
But alas, she did not That was the book she had the *potential* to write and the person she had the *potential* to become But the depressing JK Rowling story is that she simply fell short, she didn't have the gas in the tank
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Replying to @arthur_affect @perdricof
Harry Potter was a paradoxical victim of its success here I think Who knows what would've happened in the alternate reality where HP was only a middlingly successful series But in our world, it was a billion-dollar franchise that had a brand to maintain
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Replying to @arthur_affect @perdricof
It couldn't end on "What if Hogwarts is bad, actually? What if the wizarding world is bad, actually? What if the Every Flavor Beans were a fucking stupid distraction from a rotten society, actually?" Because then you couldn't have a theme park selling the fantasy of those things
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Replying to @arthur_affect @perdricof
Much like when shitty Star Wars fans revolted over The Last Jedi and its explicit message of "Look a mature understanding of good and evil shouldn't revolve around icons and branding" Icons and branding are the business
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We will always run into disappointments because it's the people who obviously could afford to alienate all their fans and stop making money because they're already so famous who *won't do that*
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Replying to @arthur_affect @perdricof
Because nothing makes you feel like you need another billion dollars than making your first billion, and -- I think even more powerfully and corrosively -- nothing makes you feel like you need another million adoring gushing fan emails like getting your first million
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Replying to @arthur_affect @perdricof
(And, moreover, if you get a creator who *does* deliberately make choices to alienate the fans, the fans have the power to directly resist and push back Petitions and harassment and calling to speak to your manager And we should be worried about that)
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