You're next, Potter.Authors John Irving (The World According to Garp) and Stephen King (a ton o'novels) have joined forces in making a plea to Brit hack J. K. Rowling not to kill her annoying character Harry Potter in the last installment of the unoriginal wizard-y series.
WTF? I can't really criticize Irving, since Garp is the only book of his I've read, but King is out of his gourd. This is the guy who wrote The Shining, a story that features rivers of blood, axe-wielding whackos who chop up their families, and a scene where a terrified little kid is half-strangled by a naked, semi-decomposed, bloated, bluish ghost lady. And he has a problem with the possibility that Potter may meet a well-deserved death? Come on, man, get real. First, it's Rowling's story, and she will probably end it in whatever way she wants. Second, some of us who have despised this derivative, poorly written work and bemoaned the fact that there is a gigantic lowest common intellectual denominator that JKR and her greedy publishers can pander their crap to need something in return, and one of the things we would like the most is to see Potter die in a horrific way. Being that she's so good at lifting ideas penned by every writer that has ever lived, she might do us a further favor and create a Wesley Crusher character (call him Crusher Weasley, for example, so no one will notice) and also throw him into the death scene (and while you're at it, Kathleen, throw in the red-haired kid too. He's asking for it, and so am I).
Something I find hilarious is that King mentions people writing to him to complain about some of his own scenes. In the article, he makes mention of the scene in The Dead Zone in which one of his characters kicks a dog to death. (That's one nasty-ass scene, Stevie. Really gross and brutal, and I thought it was the most disgusting, psychotic, warped scene you've ever written, pal. ) Stevie says of this scene: "I made that dog up, it was a fake dog, it was a fictional dog." Exactly, dude. So is Potter. A totally fictional dog. So don't get all wimpy on us now and ask that he be spared. I want that waste-of-ink character shot out of a cannon into a mine field.
Potter's death wouldn't redeem the crap work, but it would be something to remember fondly. Plus, there are so many stories Rowling could plunder for ideas, that it'd be a shame for her to pass up the opportunity for one last, major borrowing spree. She could put the kid through a wood chipper. She could have him torn to pieces by savage beasts. She could have a psycho alcohlic guy chop him to bloody bits with an axe. She could have a few of the bad guys in the story whack him to death with a pool cue (because come on, The Sopranos should be fair game too, right? She shouldn't be limited to lifting ideas only from print sources and films). She could have Jason Isaacs tear him limb from limb (starting with the ears, in honor of Isaacs' new Showtime series Brotherhood). She could have him disemboweled by the psycho character from The Cell (the inimitable Vincent D'Onofrio could reprise the role), who had a very creative way of doing the deed. She could have him impaled on a lightning rod while strange flying creatures eat his internal organs and pluck out his eyes. And then there's Saw. Now there is a veritable horn o'plenty of ideas!
I envision something involving BDSM and lots of blood and guts, and maybe a lot of insects, worms, and bats. And rabid dogs. And the Undead, because they're always good for a flesh-eating scene. And scat. Lots of it. Go out with a bang, Kathleen. A gang bang.
