Three Notes for Valentines Day (beyond ‘Will You Be Mine?’):

(1) We have a new header on the Rowling Twitter page. She has written that the headers reflect her current thinking. We cannot speculate with even the pretense of knowing what we’re talking about, though, if we don’t know anything about the picture. This architecture-and-art-history know-nothing asks for your help; do you recognize the ceiling pictured above?

Update: We have a winner! Oxford’s Beatrice Groves has recognized it as “the ceiling of St Mary Undercroft in the Houses of Parliament.“

Read all about that sacred space in the locus of UK government here and here.

So, why would Rowling be thinking about St. Mary’s as she finishes up (we pray) the last pages of Lethal White? My fantastical, hope-laden guess is that it is where Cormoran and Big Daddy Rokeby have their third meeting and a confrontation echoing the Black Mass baptism in Goblet’s ‘Little Hanngleton Graveyard. Your thoughts on that stretch?

(2)  Please note that the several controversies celebrated in the Potter blogosphere as Rowling’s liberal children turning against her for supposed failings in principle with respect to LGBTQ+ representation and violence against women have resulted in a net gain of 200,000 twitter followers for The Presence since the crisis began. That mute button she’s pushing seems to be helping her cause.

(3) I never did post anything about the previous header (below) because, well, what was there to be said? Stack of books still-life. Maybe she was writing novels for a change? Let’s hope.  Your best guesses on the old and new Twitter headers are welcome in the comment boxes below!

Update 2: And, hold on, she changed her insert photo on the header in less than a day. We went from sultry goddess to friend-next-door selfie in the blink of an eye. My guess is that the Rowling, Inc., image management team decided now was not the time for evening wear and the 1% look. Good move. Your thoughts?

Cait on Twitter: “JK Rowling reveals Dobby was actually Clinically Depressed all along !!!”

See also, ‘J. K. Rowling Created an Army of Liberals — And Now They’re Turning Against Her.’

My guess is that those unhappy with the ‘No Homo’ Cursed Child, the Depp Embrace, and the reported “straight-washing” of Dumbledore in Beasts, not to mention Rowling’s “muting” the outcry, are a very small minority in the 14 million followers she has on Twitter — but the disappointed fans there can be very funny.

Take the above MadLibs variation mocking Rowling’s ‘Retroactive Representations’ in her fiction, a not so subtle suggestion that this fan thinks The Presence is only virtue-signalling by such post publication reveals.

Or the Twitter follower whom Rowling re-tweeted about scientists’ announcement that they believe the first Britons were “dark skinned.”

Why would Rowling in the midst of the firestorm in a tea kettle retweet someone with the moniker ‘Make Dumbledore Explicity Gay’? She didn’t. The ‘somegreybloke’ tweeter whose anti-Brexit joke she enjoyed changed the name to shame her:

So… 14 million followers of Rowling’s Twitter feed get the message from this sly guy’s new name that even those “on her side” vis a vis Brexit don’t think she is speaking truth to power sufficiently with the not-explicit Dumbledore. Because doing the “hard thing” is the right thing to do even if it means losing at least a hundred million dollars.

Right or wrong, Rowling’s detractors share her acerbic wit. I wonder how she is feeling about being the target of same and the social media shaming it comes with.

Is turn-about fair play or are we obliged to be as sympathetic with her plight as we are for those she has dismissed previously as deplorables? I think the latter, albeit charity and empathy tinged inevitably with Schadenfruede.

In the last month three significant interactive technology ‘opportunities’ have been rolled out for the legions of Harry Potter fans.

• ‘Harry Potter: Hogwarts Mystery’ is the Pokemon Go “role playing experience” that promises to be the next great thing. The big to-do in Orlando last month provided the first chance for uber fans to give it a spin. You can read reports here and here.
• ‘Fantastic Beasts: Virtual Reality’ is the head-set “breathtaking cinematic virtual reality experience.” An enthusiastic all-on-board review of walking around inside Newt’s point of view can be found here.
• And then there was the HBO ‘Team Building’ promotion run in four US cities in conjunction with their eight films immersive stream last month. It’s callerd “experiential marketing.” HBO Promoting ‘Harry Potter’ Stream With Team-Building Games

I’m not going to do more than mention Globus Mundi the rumored travel agency for both Wizards with Gringotts accounts and Muggles with cash.

I think it’s safe to say that this new wave of virtual technologies and “immersive experiences,” especially the Hogwarts Mystery and Beasts Virtual Reality games, represents the fourth step away from authentic, actually imagined story experience via text. Here is my quick list of the experiences currently available for purchase and their relationship with the Hogwarts Saga in descending order of quality, which is to say, the greater and greater separation from the reader-author imaginative experience and that story immersion’s capacity for transforming us into people of greater understanding and love.

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