Harry Potter and the Cursed Child

[RandomPasserby]

Okay so as you may or may not know, JKR is involved in writing a play called The Cursed Child which she has repeatedly denied being a prequel.

Well, it's not.

It's about Albus Severus Potter. Also it's in two parts, which means you have to pay twice.

Normally I'm loathe to cite the Daily Mail but it's the first link I could find and I've got a hell of a sinus infection so here.

I just, I feel like I need to articulate part of why the epilogue and this play bothers me. 

The trio were espousing revolution, they were fighting a corrupt government as well as a Dark Lord before they turned twenty. And with the 19 year timeskip we don't get any indication that the Trio actually tried to change the world for the better. They've just grown up, married and had kids. It feels anti-climactic to think of Harry Potter as this boring middle aged guy who's relegated himself to being financially solvent, raising his kids and working too much.

That's why I wish the books had ended with Voldemort's defeat. Because then it would be so much easier to imagine the Trio in their early twenties with no fucking clue what they're doing or how to adult. Dealing with PTSD, dealing with getting actual jobs and keeping them (because 'defeated a Dark Lord' is impressive but isn't exactly a good thing to have on your CV), dealing with the fallout of the war with Voldemort.

So, despite being a giant HP nerd, I am not interested and will not be going to see it.

Frankly, I'm more interested in this (and I think Kitty will be as well)

www.theguardian.com/books/2015/oct/23/jrr-tolkien-middle-earth-annotated-map-blackwells-lord-of-the-rings

Who wants to give me £60,000?

[Kitty279]

Consider me shocked! I know they are making more films from 'Fantastic beasts', but I never heard of anything else. Can't say I am excited about that play; it really feels more like milking the franchise to me than anything else.

What I had wanted was the direct aftermath after the battle. Dealing with the surviving Death Eaters (and not like JKR did with the Malfoys), repealing all the biased laws pushed through by the Death Eaters and their sympathisers, and dealing with the effects of what everyone had been through would have made sense. But skipping getting some real closure on the series, and then adding something like that? No, thanks. But I guess for JKR the moment Voldemort was dead all way well; she wouldn't even understand PTSD, if you ask me, not considering how she portrays Harry. Even his mood swings and bad temper in OotP are just blamed on him not keeping his head down and on Voldemort, instead of a logical consequence of the graveyard and everything else. So the author wouldn't really understand how her own main character should act.

Needless to say, I completely agree - that Middle-earth map is much more interesting *drools* And I am sorry, but if I had so much money to spend on one item, I'd buy it myself. But I'd invite you to come visit and look at it

Get better soon!

[RandomPasserby]

And in more news of 'things which happened 19 years later which I give 0 fucks about'

The play is being released as a book

mashable.com/2016/02/10/harry-potter-cursed-child-script/

Normally I'm absolutely a-ok with extra canon. God knows Tolkien did enough of it and I loved it. But I really want to take JKR aside and ask her to please stop. Leave the wizarding world to the fans. And the difference, I think, is that Tolkien's whole boatload of extra canon was largely published posthumously by his son and it was revised and revised (which makes it more confusing but did mean that Tolkien could backtrack and re-write without contradicting himself hugely.) Of course it also might have something to do with the fact I ship none of the canon Epilogue ships and hate pretty much all the Next Gen names and I'm petty as fuck

[Kitty279]

Couldn't agree more; I am not sure if I even want to read it, even though I could get it easily at work. First, I bet she's going to open even more plotholes, and second, I hate the epilogue. And yes, I can't stand the pairings, either. And if I had to read that, I'd get worked up about the name all the time. Albus Severus ... argh! Still wonder what JKR was on when she invented that.

Tolkien is entirely another matter. He certainly re-wrote and re-wrote his works many times over; the HoME is testament to that, and it caused confusion in some cases, but mostly, what Christopher Tolkien published later were just early versions of LotR and the Silmarillion - which was published posthumously by Christopher, too. As far as I remember, the Professor did *not* try to re-write stuff that was already published, as JKR seems to do, and what is published later is often allowing a deeper insight into what he still planned, or on what LotR was built. After all, the first attempts at the legendarium in the Sil were written during World War I, the Hobbit was published about 20 years later and LotR another 20. So the earlier published LotR was actually based on the later published Sil/HoME stuff, and you can basically follow how that came to be.

There's a reason why I have about 16 HP books (all seven of them in English, first four in German, Quidditch through the ages, Fantastic beasts, Tales of Beedle the Bard, an early German lexicon to the series and one book about the hype), while my Tolkien collection has already passed the 60. And is still growing.