For those of us who are old enough to remember when dinosaurs walked the earth and the Hogwarts Saga was not yet finished, the ‘Red Hen,’ aka Joyce Odell, is a VIP of the first order. Her Red Hen Publications website was the online place to go for the most closely and cleverly argued speculations about the artistry and meaning of the books. My Ring Composition work, all of which was done post Deathly Hallows, owes a great deal to work that Ms Odell did as far back as 2003 (when she detailed all the Stone-Phoenix connections and parallels) and to her post Half Blood Prince work in which she predicted that Hallows would resonate in like fashion with Prisoner.
Did I mention that she predicted the Horcrux story line years before we knew there was such a thing? Check out ‘The Changeling Hypothesis’ for some amazing literary detective work — and browse through her fanfic publications while you’re there (the Red Hen is a graphic artist of the first order, as well). There’s enough fascinating Potter Punditry collected here and here to keep future academics (and serious readers of Potter canon) who really do their homework busy for weeks.
I was delighted, consequently, when I learned in our e-correspondence, that she updated her web site at long last to reflect Hallows realities and her disappointment with the finale. I asked her for a statement to publish here and she obliged me with this note:
“The Red Hen Publications Website has been online since Halloween 2002, and the Potterverse essay collections have been available as a resource to fanfic writers, theorists and Potterverse fans since April 30, 2003.
The owner was one of many Potterverse theorists during the period that the canon was still open, and enjoyed about a 33% accuracy rating up to the release of Deathly Hallows. (It should be noted that the owner of the site considers Deathly Hallows to be a train wreck and no remotely adequate conclusion to the series.)
The owner is probably best known for the Changeling Hypothesis which anticipated the Horcrux/Harrycrux complication with about 95% accuracy. She got a number of other things right as well. (And got a number of things just as wrong.)
Since the conclusion of the series the owner has finalized and tied off a number of the theory threads left dangling and concentrated on the Publications and Graphics areas of the site. Rowling may have finished her version of the series, but hers is only one version. There are many others. The Red Hen editions of selected fanfics are posted in graphically enriched .pdf for either online reading or download for offline reading and printing (although they’ll choke a printer, so printing any of them will be an extensive project). The Graphics Collection includes a number of pieces of Potter-related fan art by the owner.
The complete site has been rebuilt and redesigned in a new web building program and all the rollovers now work again. The Publications are more attractively showcased and the Graphics probably are as well. The links have been updated where possible and tested before the upload.
Please feel free to notify me via the contact button on my home page in case you find something that doesn’t work.”
Speak Your Mind