Gut Feelings vs. Textual Evidence (was Re: SHIP: Another R/H question for Ebony

Ebony <selah_1977@yahoo.com> selah_1977 at yahoo.com
Fri Jan 24 00:35:56 UTC 2003


No: HPFGUIDX 50436

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "Megalynn S." <megalynn44 at h...> 
wrote:
To me the situation is simple. Some people click, some don't. I have 
> never bought that you controll or choose who you fall in love with. 
All the > mentions of romance in the book go to> R/H and Harry openly 
accepts it. R/H relationship to me seems exactly like > Molly and 
Arthur's.  They simply have the spark and the fact that they are 
> young is why there is so much passion. To me it just seems a lot 
simpler > than it has been made out to be. If the last page of the 
Yule Ball chapter > doesn't epitamize (sp?) the trios feelings for 
one another, I don't know > what does.
>

That's just the thing, Megalynn.

We've all got our gut feelings.  However, one can't debate over a gut 
feeling.  That is like having a debate over whether or not God exists 
without empirical evidence... it's not a debate at all.

Those of us who like to engage in ship debates feel that the text 
does indeed back up our "gut feelings".  That is what we discuss, 
quibble over, and analyze.  There are R/H and H/H shippers who hate 
ship debates because after all, their gut is their gut, and no one 
can tell them how to feel.  The R/H and H/H shippers who debate ship 
differ... we want to show what specific places in the text lend 
credence to our "theory of shipping".

I emphatically do not believe that there is a such thing as 
overanalysis.  If anything, the tragedy of the postmodern West is 
that we rarely, if ever, analyze anything very much... especially the 
great masses of the Anglophone world.  

However, this brings me to a question I have.  The reason why ship 
debates in the past have been so constantly maligned on this list is 
because they tend to be emotional.  

Is it possible to have a Harry Potter ship debate based on logic and 
cold hard facts?  

Or are ship debates, because of the very nature of *what* the debate 
is about, fraught with this irreconcilable tension between the head 
and the heart?

--Ebony







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