Can an author jump the shark? When JKR said she had married Harry, that did it for me. How ridiculous!

I appreciate that you like the epilogue, but for me that whole thing was jumping the shark - we had marriages, new careers, children, changing appearances, etc. all in one "episode."

If Rowling takes her characters to Hawaii, we'll know she's jumped the shark. ;-) But hey, that's why we have fanfic.

Though really, Rowling hasn't deteriorated as much as other popular authors, such as Laurell K. Hamilton, who has gone from compelling to unreadable thanks to her insistence of keeping the camera rolling at all times.

Yeah... I think filing a lawsuit against Vander Ark was pretty much the moment I lost all respect for the post-Deathly Hallows wizarding world and its creator (up till then I was ignoring the ridiculous statements about my favorite character). How sad to see it come to this...

I don't think it's Harry Potter that's "jumped the shark," but JK Rowling. I loved Deathly Hallows after finishing it and, fortunately, nothing Rowling says can change that. However, my respect for her has been taking a hit...

I am shocked about this whole suit she has against Vander Ark. I mean if she is gonna go after him why not go after others as well? Like mugglenet.

catherinecookmn: If Rowling takes her characters to Hawaii, we'll know she's jumped the shark. ;-)

I just snorted coffee up my nose thanks to that remark, lolololol. :) It's so true!

I agree that it isn't the books that have deteriorated, but fandom and the idea that whatever JKR says is some sort of gospel. I can't stand it anymore, and I think she needs to deflate her head a little.

And she shouldn't sue her biggest fans, because that just frightens people and causes division. She could have worked that out with Steve herself instead of having her attornies send some small publisher threatening letters - geesh!

pdmcmurry: Yes, you are not alone in thinking that the Epilogue was the shark moment. I don't know if you were "spoiled" but that Epilogue was all over the Internet a week before the book came out, and people didn't think it was real. Some still don't, lol.

Orthoclase: Yes, the deal about JKR being Ginny-Sue and her hubby being Harry makes me cringe and writhe. lemonashwinder mentioned to me today that JKR may understand arrested development because that's what she has. She identifies with naive Lily falling in love with James because she married her own James once. Her first husband looked just like James, and very un-Snape. So she can't imagine falling in love with any other "type" except Ron, whom she says she "dated three times in her life." Gah . . .

Holly: And that's why she might favor Emerson and Melissa, who are kids, over Steve Vander Ark who is more grown up and probably knows the canon better than she does. But that's not a good reason to avoid him and then sue him - I agree that it is shocking and really bad for fandom.

Claire: I guess by saying "Harry Potter" I just mean the whole phenomenon. I started to call this "Is Fandom Jumping the Shark," but JKR is such a big part of it, that I stopped myself. I also didn't want to say that JKR was jumping the shark because, like Sander, some other non-native English speakers might think I was saying something weird or sexual, lol.

Sander: What I'm saying is that things haven't been much fun lately in the HP world, and every time JKR says something, it gets more uncomfortable and almost embarrassing. So fandom seems to be changing alot right now, and it's hard to see what's going to happen, just like a TV show that has been successful, and then starts to fade away.

Fandom isn't going anywhere, but it will never be the same again.

I should go back and add one more thing about the whole "change of appearance" idea:

I've seen alot of people talking about JKR's glamour-look. She almost looks younger now than when she first started out, and that doesn't usually happen without some help from certain, ah, beauty treatments. I won't say she had plastic surgery (I said that once and someone got mad at me) but her neck and face surely do look "tight." :rolleyes:

See - this is why I no longer read her interviews. She's just coming out with crazy stuff and I don't want to hear it (she said she married Harry? *mind boggles* I'm sooo glad I didn't read that). I'll just keep to the books, thanks.

Oh - and I'd never heard that expression before . . . I'll have to try and stump my hubby. ;)

A lot of the elements mentioned in the Wiki (birth death, marriage, puberty) could be fitted into a story without dooming it, but that's the point - it *has* to fit the plot (the marriages, births and deaths in Wuthering heights for example; the deaths of harry's parents at the beginning of the series, Sirius's personal demonstration of why sensible people should never tease nutcase groupie-ish witches). Bill & Fleur were fine imo, there was a spark between them that she was pretty discreet about & it all fitted in nicely with everything else. (I would have also loved to have seen Hagrid get back together with Madam Maxime, but anyway...). It would be pretty normal for most of the child characters to pair off & have their own families once they'd grown up, that part of the epilogue didn't bother me.

Remus & Tonks however, were absolutely forced to me, it was like they were picked up and crammed together in order to make them breed, so that they could then be killed off so that JKR could have her example. In a way, I now wonder how things could have gone if she'd gone ahead & killed Arthur anyway, let Ron go through his grief, have Lupin live and be forced to face himself & that.

Dumbledore being gay - though it wasn't integral to the plot, I still think she could have introduced it earlier to set DD up as a positive example & role model. It wouldn't have been hard - have Rita throw in a few extra hints, Harry asks questions & DD sets him right, Harry gets over any unease he might have & voila! A nice anti-homophobic statement could have been made as early as GoF.

I think the real 'Jumping The Shark' factor in DH was her sloppy backing out of a lot of big things she'd been leading towards and/or promising would happen in the books, like the Muggle using magic, witnessing the creation of a Ghost (though now I wonder if she'd planned that with Snape), the 'personal' meeting between Snape & Harry that didn't happen, Snape with his "Dead-looking eyes" suddenly making an almost comic exit, the many gaping holes in the Plot, the characters slipping OoC/experiencing sudden memory loss (Our freinds & family members have just been killed? No worries, We Won so Let's Party! Snape was on our side all along? Let's forget that after the war because Slytherin Is Evol!..). She also made those adjustments to her own predictions without warning, when she could done so & been cryptic about it (& don't get me started on the sudden overabundance of extrapolation...)

& then there are the post-DH interviews, where she grudgingly lets Snape have a portrait, but says that Harry would avoid talking to him? To me, that smacks a fair bit of spinelessness, especially now that he'd known the truth. After seeing the Pensieve memories, you'd think that harry would want to do something to clear the air between them.R

I just kept thinking of all the fanfics I've read that were plotted tighter & resolved a lot better than this.

I believe it is very hard to wrap up a book without cramming things together. She (JKR) should not have set up that exactly seven books be made. She also had deadlines galore. Some of the parts were, as you said, absent or crammed, but until any of us becomes an author, I don't think we'll realize the pressure your under when your trying to tie up every loose end in less than fifty chapters