What Taure said, I agree with

 

When I read book seven, my "fanon" senses (you know the little bell that rings in your head when you read a fanfiction in which the author is just making it way to easy for themselves or is trying to press the characters into molds they weren't made for? Like gay Dumbledore... Ooops. That happens to be cannon now. Gay Harry then.) were going off all the time. I was muttering "bullshit" or "why the fuck is she allowed to do that" when Hermione randomly knew some totally convenient spell to ward a perimeter so that the most powerful wizard out there couldn't find them.

The way Hermione was pulling crap out of her magic bag like Mary Poppins just totally ruined it for me. Girl-Power is great but Rowling turned Hermy into one huge plot device for making her own life easier. I mean... omg how much work would it be to think up an actually feasible plot to explain how wimpy canon!Harry kills ridiculous but so much more powerful canon!Voldemort. Time is money after all.

 

I don't consider the movies to be canon. I think they are as close to AU as you can get, but still follow canon.

And I consider the Near-Seer!Uber-Smart!Resourceful!Hermione from DH to be AU. Reminds me of those shitty Independant!Harry stories where he pops up with knowledge on how to do "wards" and living in a trunk (as opposed to a tent) crap over the summer holidays.

I also do not approve of Half-Baked Plot's pairings.

Hell, JKR probably read most of the shit from SIYE whilst writing HBP!

How else does it explain Harry's "Alien-esque" love of Ginny?

 

JKR uses Hermione to push "Girl Power" over the edge into embarrassing. I used to like her - actually, in the first books, all the main characters were interesting. For a while there, the kids were learning and growing and maturing. At eleven, Harry and Ron had a lot of potential. By sixteen, they were tempermental whiney slackers.

Hermione was smart and self-disciplined. After I got over the obvious "She's smart, she should have been in Ravenclaw," knee-jerk reaction, I decided that "She's ambitious, she could have fit in Slytherin if not for her breeding." Let's face it: there are times that it seems the Gryff house would willingly follow any marching band right over a clff.

* sob *
WHY didn't JKR make Harry heroic? Why did she take all that "You could be great in Slytherin," and have him aim for mediocre?

Edited to add:
Canon!Harry is boring and all I feel is contempt for him. AU and OOC Harry is what I want in my fanfic. I look for a smart, savvy, cynical powerful hero.

Let me point out - I'm not a Superman fan. He who can, with one flex of his mighty thews, use bent iron pipe to handcuff bad guys and rescue the girl, (who he never notices is trying to drag him to bed) is dull. For me, it's always been Batman. He's smart. He's smart. He's smart. He's also disciplined, educated, strong. He's a polymath. And that's sexy and interesting and fun.

 

Why? Because you can't sell evil, ruthless, brillliant!Harry to the little kids out there that want the Disney World ending. Let's not even get started on their parents.

Canon!Harry has to be boring so that all her boring readers can identify with him. The fangirls want angst and romance and the boys want adventure and monsters. Rowling delivers without fail. Well... with epic fail towards the end... but then her target audience was just to large by the time she was really earning money.

 

I'm Probably drunk as shit right now, but what the hell, I'll post anyways...
Target audience? Couldn't she just eliminate everyone by trying to please every single fucking fangirl out there?? 99,9% want romantic stories about love and shit, and the rest want adventure (Which JK made a Capital Fail!! The Middle of the Deathly Hallows was just useless filler drivel, kinda remined me of Naruto filler episodes actually...) So by Summary:
Almost Anything from Half Baked Plot onwards is shit, and thus, by fanfiction standard's, should be ignored...

 

FollowTheReaper is really cool.

I consider anything Taure considers canon not to be. Therefore all his theory is wrong.

 

Some of us consider everything that happened after OotP fanon. I know I do. There were so many possibilities up to and from that point, but JKR started doing drugs or sniffing glue, or whatever.

 

Agreed. I too only consider the first 5 books to be canon. Actually I have only read the other three once, I would rather forget them.

The movies are full of crap.

And I have never really followed JK's web site or interviews unless they were discussed here.

 

I only think that the Seven books are canon. And to be honest the last two books I barely accept as canon.

Movies? Nope. As fun and entertaining as they are, they are shortened versions of the stories told by other people. Sure the screenwriters have to use JKR as a reference and all decisions go through her. But in the end it's still their writing.

The interviews? two words. Fuck. That.
I'm sorry but if you have this grand idea for a character, ACTUALLY PUT IT IN THE BOOK!! Don't talk about it months later and say "Fred and Angelina totally got married and named their first son George" As far as I'm concerned that's just shy of fanfiction.

I'd be much more comfortable with a rewritten books 6 and 7 with actual plot resolution and not this band-aid cookie cutter conclusion that we were presented with. I'm all for Happily Ever After, especially in a so called childrens book. But to make it go so far into the dark and come back with mostly luck and errant B.S. from the author just doesn't make for a good climax. I've seen better fan fictions and in some cases consider them more canon than books 6 or 7

 

Why Thank You Darius...

I cannot even picture anything after OotP as canon...

Well, only ONE of the movies was at all even barely entertaining, and that was PS...

YES!!

Agreed, but Do Not mistake Fanon for Canon, if you were to delete the

I could have accepted that

 

I just go with the seven books. I've never read the companion ones, so they're a mystery. Anything else she says is like Ray Bradbury saying Fahrenheit 451 was about television.

 

First five books, even if it gets a bit dicey at times in OOTP.

Everything beyond that I disregard.

Anything post-DH Rowling puts out (ie epilogue, Gay Dumbledore, interviews) I regard as "Anti-Canon".

 

I follow Justblaise on this issue, at least when it comes to the stories.

When going for just the facts. Half Baked Plot is ok. I stop the canon the train as soon as Padfoot goes through the veil. The fight scene, possession, and Harry pulling off the Cruciatus (even if he didn’t do it right) first try. At that point I call bullshit.

I no idea how any of you feel about the lexicon, but I love that site. I feel it gives you decent sense of canon.

 

Harry didn't really pull off the Cruciatus, though, he basically turned out a half-assed version of it.

HBP is not "okay". The "monster in Harry's chest" was the most lulzy moment for the Alien-esque potential. Besides that, it can burn in hell.

 

Only the seven books are canon to me, and as much as bad as the last two books were I feel that they have to be accepted into canon because they wrapped up the story that started in the first five. I don't care much for the way the series ended either, in fact, deispise the way she wrapped it up, but if you disregard the last two books you have to disregard the first five as well.

 

I agree with Xiph0. I only count books 1-5 as canon. I couldn't give a shit less about her retarded tv interviews. Fuck that. I read book 6, some parts were "okay", but it sucked over all. I refuse to read book 7.

 

Naruto fillers were important. If they hadn't existed then the Anime would have caught up with the Manga, gotten confused and then self-destructed. Yes, they were generally viewed as annoying but most prefer them over the other options...


I agree with Yak, If J.K. couldn't shove it in a book somewhere (HBP/DH/Epitaph) then obviously BS must be more important...

(When I started this post I had the idea to ask Taure to include me as Cannon but having thought about it for longer than half a second I now want to be Fannon, if I appear at all.)

 

Some of the fillers were kinda lulzy, like the Naruto-Shino interaction at the Bikochu and Shino Laughs arcs...