Monday News: Apple behaves badly (again), Avon tries out a new type of story, Rowling regrets Hermione coupling, and movie-talk as marriage counseling
Publishing NewsApple / Avon / divorce / Erotic-Romance / Google / Harry-Potter / J.K. Rowling / marriage / tech19 Comments
The Techtopus: How Silicon Valley’s most celebrated CEOs conspired to drive down 100,000 tech engineers’ wages – This story provides some of the detail around a class action lawsuit filed against more than 100,000 Silicon Valley tech workers, whose salaries were artificially suppressed to the tune of $9 billion. Apple, Google, Adobe, Intel, Intuit, and Pixar all conspired to ensure that none of them would recruit the others’ employees, basically ensuring that employees would not be able to find a position at a commensurate company for a higher salary:
“The secret wage-theft agreements between Apple, Google, Intel, Adobe, Intuit, and Pixar now owned by Disney are described in court papers obtained by PandoDaily as “an overarching conspiracy” in violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act and the Clayton Antitrust Act, and at times it reads like something lifted straight out of the robber baron era that produced those laws. Today’s inequality crisis is America’s worst on record since statistics were first recorded a hundred years ago — the only comparison would be to the era of the railroad tycoons in the late 19th century.” PandoDaily
Only four more sleeps till something steamy comes out. by Paige Nick – So tomorrow Avon launches “A Girl Walks into a Bar,” a series of “choose-your-own-adventure erotic novels.” Romance mad libs extraordinaire or legitimate new industry trend? Discuss. Avon Romance
J.K. Rowling questions Ron and Hermione’s relationship – Can a decision that an author makes — a decision that does not violate world-building or characterization/plot rules — be perceived as a “mistake”? Does it matter that Rowling believes that she should have paired Hermione and Harry together instead? Or does it interfere with the reader’s consumption of the series as it stands? (and is the accompanying picture a commentary on the story itself?):
“‘I wrote the Hermione/Ron relationship as a form of wish fulfillment,’ she says. ‘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 ended up with Ron.'” Hypable
Divorce rate cut in half for newlyweds who discussed 5 relationship movies – Although I have not read the full study, the summary provided here is pretty interesting. Ronald Rogge, associate professor of psychology at the University of Rochester, Thomas Bradbury, a professor of psychology at UCLA, and others conducted this study comparing different early marriage intervention programs. The couples who were given movies to watch, followed by some limited guided discussion, had the same positive outcome as those couples who underwent more structured, extensive, and traditional counseling, namely a 50% decrease in the three-year divorce rate.
“Study participants were sent home with a list of 47 movies with intimate relationships as a major plot focus and asked to watch one a week for the next month, followed by the same guided discussion for about 45 minutes.
Which approach proved most effective? To the surprise of the researchers, all worked equally well. All three methods halved the divorce-and-separation rate to 11 percent compared to the 24 percent rate among the couples in the control group. Partners in the control group received no training or instructions but were otherwise similar in age, education, ethnicity, relationship satisfaction, and other dimensions.
Discussing relationship movies, it turns outs, was just as effective as more intensive skills-building programs. The results suggest that many couples already possess relationship skills, they just need reminders to put these into practice, the authors conclude. “And that’s an amazingly fertile idea. It’s more sensible and it’s cheaper,” said Bradbury.” EurekAlert
New Dear Author Design and Layout – Not a news item, but I did want to add a thank you to Jane for all of her hard work and commitment to keeping Dear Author relevant and reader responsive. If you don’t dig the magazine format, or you need some time getting used to it, follow the link to the site’s old layout, but still with the new design.
Yes, too bad Hermione was her own awesome fully-fledged character, instead of Harry’s token love interest. /sarcasm
Re: Hermione and Ron, I never saw that they had anything in common, other than both being friends of Harry, so I agree it would have made more sense not to pair them up. That doesn’t mean, though, that Hermione and Harry should have end up together instead.
Harry Potter fandom must be having a field day right about now.
@azteclady:
I guess this shows how different readers interpret text so differently! :) I have always been a huge fan of the Ron/Hermione relationship ever since the first book and have thought that they were each the type of person that the other needed. To this day, my favorite moment in Deathly Hallows is when Ron says that the house elves should not die for the cause against Voldemort (which shows what a good influence Hermione has been on him!).
As for Rowling…*shrug* It’s her right to feel whatever she wants even after years after publication. It’s also my right to disagree with her assessment as I believe she developed the relationship perfectly on page. Maybe Hermione and Harry would’ve been more “logical”, but who ever said that love was logical?
I actually think Rowling’s mistake wasn’t who she paired up, but showing us them all still together twenty years later. I get why she wanted to write that scene, and in many ways it worked well to give the ending the series needed. But I don’t think the relationships as described in the main books bear the weight of a romance-style HEA, and I don’t think they needed to.
@Jia: Most of us shouting, “I knew it!’, that is. ;)
@Ros – exactly. I thought the pairings worked well in the books, but I didn’t completely believe the epilogue.
Ros–I think that’s exactly it. Not so much that any pairing would have been impossible (fanfic has proved that), but the idea that the relationships would remain static over so many years.
Love the new look!
I’m excited to try out the choose your own adventure romance. Will it stick? Who knows, but it has me mighty curious.
Josh Lanyon released a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure version of the first Adrien English book at the end of last year. It’s print only and I haven’t picked it up, but it’s an interesting idea.
On Hermione/Ron, I read an article that made an interesting point about how the filmed versions of the books gave a different take on Ron than the original. Aside from the chemistry between Watson & Radcliffe and the relative lack of same between Watson and Grint, Ron lost a bunch of his important lines and key actions to Hermione or another character. I know Rowling tried to keep a tight rein on the adaptations, but you can’t predict what a particular actor is going to bring to a role, and for a lot of people the characters and the actors are merged (or the book characters are replaced by the movie versions). I don’t have a dog in this (HP) fight, but I’ve been thinking about storytelling through different media lately and this seems like an example of how you can’t port one to the other without changing it.
@Sunita: I definitely agree with this. I remember watching the third Harry Potter movie with some friends and afterwards being like, “…is there some sort of weird thing going on between Harry & Hermione or is just me?” The movie versions brought something to the relationship that’s not present in the books.
I never felt Hermione should have been with Harry at all. Back in the first book the whole frenimies vibe made me root for Hermione and Ron. So now she’s saying Ron was too dumb to make Hermione happy? That he couldn’t grow and change. Give me a break. In the books Ron and Hermione were very good together.
If anything the Harry/Hermione pairing is wish fulfilment for fans of the movies. I thought Rupert Grint had more chemistry with Emma Watson than Dan Radcliffe, but I know others feel the opposite. But JK Rowling isn’t naive. She knew what a ruckus this would cause in the fandom. Since they are her characters and she was a grown-up not a child/teen when she wrote the books, it seems to me her new “perspective” is just a way to keep the series in the news.
I read the first two books a while back but didn’t finish the series. We watched all the movies over a period of about 7 weeks (every Saturday) and I always thought that Ron and Hermoine had chemistry. I guess I imported my romance genre expectations into it because the way they sniped at each other all the time at the start meant (for me) that they had to be secretly crushing on one another! Harry and Hermoine were just friends to me and I liked the pairing of he and Ginny.
@Sunita: @Jia: The movies definitely changed the relationships, as well as Hermione’s character arc. IIRC it was book 4 where Ron (and Harry to a lesser degree) noticed that Hermione had suddenly, unexpectedly, become cute (magic was involved, but I think it’s a pretty good metaphor for puberty), and that was the beginning of their romance arc. But the impact was muted in the movies, because Hermione was always cute in the movies.
None of this matters much, because in Cleo-land, both Weasley twins are still alive and running their joke shop, and Ron and Hermione grew apart at University and went their separate ways with no hard feelings (so there JKR).
@Ros: Huge Harry Potter fan here, was totally fine with Ron/Hermione, but yeah I kind of agree. But as much as I was fine with who was with whom, I really did not care if they all would just be friends at the end. I wanted them all, especially Harry to survive and I got my wish. As much as I was happy that epilogue showed them all happy – they were kids (yes, they mature faster in WW, but many were muggle borns :)) and meeting your forever love happens sometimes that early, but sooo rarely. So yeah, would not mind the absence of the epilogue.
@library addict:
I’m not quite that cynical, but I think that with Pottermore, the new movie, and now this, J K Rowling is in danger of making a career out of writing her own fanfiction.
A CASUAL VACANCY and CUCKOO’S CALLING (the pseudonymous mystery novel ) have demonstrated that Rowling is quite a talented writer beyond the Potter books, even if they didn’t make her gajillions she doesn’t need. I hope for her sake she keeps stretching her craft, not returning back to the same well.
Do you think it’s possible that study on ‘watching relationship movies’ was somewhat biased by the fact that to agree to the study, you’d have to have couples who were willing to talk things through to start with? So whether they talked about issues based on movies or on therapy, they were already predisposed to talking things through?
Well, it may just be the bit of the fandom I’m still vaguely in touch with, but the overwhelming response I’ve seen is ‘Meh.’