Conspiracy Theories

[Geoff Bannister]

No: HPFGUIDX 96843

A few days ago I referred back to a thread I started on "Second 
guessing JKR" and mentioned my sense of HPFGU developing something of 
a hothouse atmosphere. So I thought I'd ramble on a bit further along 
that tack....

I said that I am not a good conspiracy theorist but do not object to 
others belonging to PACT (Paranoid Association of Conspiracy 
Theorists) but there are times when the whole group becomes a trifle 
unbalanced because of the conspiracy theories flying around.

There seems to be a pattern in that particular threads  become the 
flavour of the week and dominate the postings for several days before 
disappearing into a limbo only penetrable by those fully trained in 
unearthing the mysteries of the Yahoo search facility. Sometimes 
these theories are interesting and lead to the exchange of a lot of 
information.  Some threads pass me by and leave me unmoved. I am not 
interested in the possibility of Snape being a vampire, I don't get 
too involved with theories about Dumbledore or Lupin being ESE, 
manipulative or time-turners. OTOH, I do get interested in young 
Master Evans, whether various folk will become items and how the 
prophecy will work out. My exception to this is the sort of situation 
where a thread re-surfaces - for example, someone breathlessly writes 
that they have found a boy called Mark Evans in OOTP. Do we think he 
is related to Harry? I inwardly groan because this topic appears as 
regularly as the leaves in spring and recently resurfaced only about 
a week after the same fascinating snippet has been revealed.....again.

Some of these theories soar off into the stratosphere of the wild and 
wacky. McEnroe's "Man, you can-not be serious" flits across my mind 
on occasions. Like Kneasy I think there is a surplus of theories 
available; a series of parallel universe stories might be a useful 
exercise to occupy the waiting!

I groan again when two or more posters lock antlers like the deer on 
my local Exmoor and we get the collision of opposing ideas in 
the "Yes it does – No it doesn't – Yes it does" posting, which get 
longer and longer without being decently snipped and as a result I 
tend to read less and less. Perhaps when this type of exchange 
reaches more than a screenful of repetitious material, the posters 
should agree to disagree?

The point I am reiterating in this ramble is that, as I have said 
previously, I wonder whether Jo Rowling has her story planned to the 
level of intricacy that we seem to believe. Whether every second word 
needs to be analysed? Why was the passive tense used there? Why a 
conditional clause here? With all the combined thinking power we can  
field, it is possible that we are putting in more nuances and 
subtleties than JKR has in fact considered. She has a set plan in her 
mind and has presumably constructed the plot to lead us to that 
point; she may not have thought of some of the variant 
interpretations which we, in our little corner of the hothouse behind 
the cacti, have managed to produce to satisfy our take of the story.

Great will be the cheers (or the gnashing of teeth) on "dies irae, 
dies illa" ** when all will be revealed in Book 7, a book which I 
think we shall all open with trepidation, apprehension and hopefully 
satisfaction as we seek to find whether our pet theory has achieved 
congruence with that of the spinner of the web which has drawn us 
together in the group.

** The day of wrath, that day... Listen to the Verdi setting when you 
finally open your Book 7.    :-)  

P.S.  It is all great fun in the end isn't it?  – or why are we all 
here in this fictional hothouse watering our particular exotic plants?