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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