[HPforGrownups] Re: Ship predictions(scenarios)

[Shaun Hately]

No: HPFGUIDX 90753

On 10 Feb 2004 at 21:32, BrwNeil at aol.com wrote:

> I can't believe I've let myself be drawn into this discussion, but here goes.
> 
> My first question is which came first, ships or fanfiction?  I can't believe 
> that anyone upon first reading SS or CoS even thinks about ships unless they 
> have been brainwashed by fanfiction.  These are 11 and 12 year old kids.  They 
> will be 17 when they leave Hogwarts.  What percentage of people in the world 
> marry someone from their graduating class?  Yet we have determined that Harry 
> and Ron must pick their future mates from either their class or the one 
> directly behind them.

Personally, I'm not into shipping - it just doesn't figure in my 
reading. Maybe Harry will wind up marrying a classmate - maybe he 
won't. For the moment, it doesn't concern me one way or the other.

But the Wizarding World is different to our own - somebody I notice 
has just mentioned one point I was going to make - that it is a 
world at war, and when that happens, people often do marry much 
younger than they would in times of peace. But there's more to it 
than that. In many ways, the Wizarding World seems more... 
primitive than ours. I don't mean that in a bad way - but to me it 
seems to me to be in many ways, a rather old fashioned society. And 
in such societies, again, it wasn't uncommon for people to marry 
very soon after they became adults - and in the Wizarding World, 
they seem to become adults at 17. Both in law - and in fact, as 
well.

We really don't get a great view of wizards on the cusp of 
adulthood - we've really seen Percy, and Fred and George at this 
stage only. Percy is working at the Ministry straight out of school 
- and after a relatively short time, he's in a position of some 
responsibility. Fred and George do start their own business very 
early. It seems to me that unlike our modern world - where somebody 
in their late teens really is still generally seen as a pseudo-
child - they may have adult rights, but most people really don't 
expect them to really be adults, in the wizarding world, they do.

I find myself looking quite a bit at the scenes of the disturbances 
just after the Quidditch World Cup in Goblet of Fire. Mr Weasley 
sends the children into the forest to hide - but his older sons - 
including Percy is only barely out of school - all charge off with 
him to help deal with the disturbance. Percy *is* an adult. 

Maybe the fact that there's no Wizarding universities make a 
difference - to an extent the existence of the University in our 
society, acts as a buffer between childhood and adulthood.


Yours Without Wax, Dreadnought
Shaun Hately | www.alphalink.com.au/~drednort/thelab.html
(ISTJ)       | drednort at alphalink.com.au | ICQ: 6898200 
"You know the very powerful and the very stupid have one
thing in common. They don't alter their views to fit the 
facts. They alter the facts to fit the views. Which can be 
uncomfortable if you happen to be one of the facts that 
need altering." The Doctor - Doctor Who: The Face of Evil
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