Canon? If she said it... / creatures or what?

[sashibuya at hotmail.com]

No: HPFGUIDX 12447

--- In HPforGrownups at y..., "Steve Vander Ark" <vderark at b...> wrote:
> Hey :)
> 
> I consider things JKR says in interviews to be canon. Trouble is, 
> when she says things like "Good catch!" about someone noticing Mrs. 
> Figg mentioned or "Of course!" when she places someone in 
Gryffindor, 
> it just makes us speculate and wonder all the more! <snip>

Re:  your other message. You're right that little things like "what 
was Lily's maiden name" that JKR has said in interviews should be 
considered canon, as she does have all those notebooks. But I do 
agree that they should be marked as "non-textual canonical info" for 
the practical considerations, i.e. people getting confused. There has 
to be a name for this. 

Re:  Alex's suggestion:  "Apocrypha" does sort of work, but the 
actual meaning of the term, referring to religious texts not actually 
in the official bible (which varies depending on which church or 
religion you're talking about.), doesn't really seem to apply. The 
root meaning of the term is secret and non-canonical, which Steve 
seems to feel is not the impression that we ought to give. :)

OT (or perhaps not):
The story (not sure if its true or apocryphal itself) goes that 
waaaaay in the past, the Church elders decided to solve their 
difficult canon debate about which books ought to be in the bible by 
letting God sort it out, so they locked the room, and the next 
morning decided based on which scrolls remained on the table. 




> On another note, I've been working on the "creatures" section of 
the 
> Lexicon lately and I realize that it's not as easy as it seems to 
> classify all these various entities. How about some suggestions? We 
> have normal animals, normal animals that have some sort of powers, 
> intelligent species that aren't human, intelligent species that are 
> PART-human (eg Centaurs) and so on and on and on. Anyone care to 
> suggest a nice set of, say, four or five categories that I can use 
> that will sort them all out? One category would be "Dark 
Creatures," 
> certainly. But what else?
> 

Another would be to separate creatures from mythology/folklore that 
JKR has borrowed vs. those which she has made up herself, but that 
would be lots of work, depending on how obscure she gets later. 

Charmian