Names in goblet

[jdr0918]

No: HPFGUIDX 59946

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "Steve" <bboy_mn at y...> wrote:
<< Easy to see that if you were a programmer, you would be doing a 
lot of re-programming (no offense intended).... A good programer 
builds flexibility into his program...I'm not trying to tell you what 
IS, but trying to find a likely explanation for what we already know 
happened. It's pointless to say 'it can't be that way' because it is 
that way. What needs to be asked and answered is, 'how can it be that 
way?'...>>>

The Sergeant Majorette (stung, and weeping) sniffs:
Not too much flexibility -- that's a lot of spaghetti for a 'rough-
hewn wooden goblet'.
And then we come to the true genius of Joanne Kathleen Rowling: (cue 
the Beatles "We're Harry Potter's loony grown-up fans/We're into this 
stuff way too much/We really ought to do some other things/Get jobs 
and feed the kids and such...")
We don't 'already know what happened', because it didn't happen. She 
made it all up, ok? While we were obsessing and lurking and 
speculating, JKR went out and got a life, got married, got pregnant 
and had a baby.

--Sorry. had to get that buzzkill rant out of my system. I feel 
better now.

But I have to say I'm beginning to think that a lot of the 
speculation (some of the most interesting, in fact) that we do here 
is predicated on the theory that the Potterverse is some sort of 
alternate universe. JKR, however, has not so much created a universe 
as codified it. She takes a crystal clear snapshot of British life 
and shifts the light source the very tiniest bit so that it all 
*looks* weird, but never actually *becomes* weird. Her reference, I 
think, is not the Star Wars / mythological / Arthurian type of world, 
but  a Tom Brown's School Days / Charles Dickens / Brittania-rules-
the-waves sort of place. An author writing in The New York Times 
explains this eloquently: "...the most visible character going 
through Harry Potter's training even now is Harry Windsor". She isn't 
writing about wizarding and magic, she is writing coming-of-age 
adventure stories about some kids who go to wizard school.

I still think the lone-gunman, I mean fourth-school theory is a 
lapse; I think many things done by magic would be more quickly done 
in a more conventional way (for gosh sakes, Ron, just rip the stupid 
lace off!). But then I think, it's not the author's fault that I'm 
not 10 years old, and it's more fun her way.

I therefore do solemnly swear, and challenge others to so vow as 
well, to accept all parsimony, treachery, meanness and error; all 
Weasleys, Potters, teachers, death eaters and Slytherins; all shape 
shifters and dead people; all toads, cats, rats and kneazles to be 
whatever they are as I encounter them; to be surprised, delighted 
and/or entertained when they are revealed to be something different; 
weep when they die, rejoice when they reproduce, and not begin to 
speculate on Book VI until Christmas, when, if no publication date is 
announced, I will take a cannonball leap into a roiling sea of 
convoluted mythologizing, improbable backstories and really gross 
slash pairings (whoever wrote that Snape/Hagrid scene will serve 
their detention washing altar linens for a month!)

...but I'll keep my inner Hermione safely waiting.

--JDR