Twist JKR? (was:Re: Dumbledore's pleading...)

[nrenka]

No: HPFGUIDX 141559

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "horridporrid03" 
<horridporrid03 at y...> wrote:

> Betsy Hp:
> That Voldemort is Slytherin's heir has an importance that goes 
> beyond CoS.  The fall of the house of Crouch is most probably 
> limited to GoF, but the return of Voldemort is not.  And, as I 
> said, Voldemort's easy manipulation of Harry, while not as BANG-y 
> to the readers, certainly has connotations beyond OotP, as does 
> Sirius's death.

But 'Voldemort as Slytherin's Heir' isn't particularly twisty, I'd 
say; it's something at least set up for us with the association of 
Slytherin and DEs.  *Ginny* being the person doing the things is the 
twist at the end of CoS (just like the revelation of Crouch!Moody is 
the twist), but Voldemort returning?  Eh, it's a major plot 
development, but it's not the 'thing we thought was one thing and 
turned out to be another', you know?

> Betsy Hp:
> Ooh, I think you're *really* mistaken here.  The resolution of 
> Snape's story arc will send screams of either joy or pain 
> throughout fandom.

Well, of course. :)  I've been waiting for that Schadenfreude for 
some time.  As at least some people are going to be screaming in rage 
no matter what happens, I'm counting on some first-rate entertainment.

> Folks on both sides of the issue are near positive they know the 
> real story.  Whatever reveal is made is sure to have some sort of 
> twist element to it.  Heck, the very fact that the Snape question 
> is taking two books to answer is suggestive, IMO.  And not of 
> simple house-cleaning.

I think it's possible to resolve it without anything particularly 
twisty--which in this case, I'd classify as something that neither 
camp (or none out of three or so) has predicted.  You know that it 
could be as direct as "this is actually what Snape did", without that 
kind of shock element.

Neri wrote the bestest ever description of Snape and how JKR has 
constructed him once, which I think he should repost or link to.  
*nudge nudge*  What it points out so elegantly is that Snape has 
always been based on withholds and deliberate construction out of 
minimal resources.  My argument is that that's a surprisingly easy 
house of cards to collapse, when a character is built more in the 
minds of readers than on the page.  (And that's simply empirical 
fact.  If I were LOONier I'd count pages, but life is too short, and 
I have other things to read.)  (I've been reading some 
unintentionally entertaining discussions of how that happened to some 
readers with Lupin, this past book.  No one hangs himself as 
efficiently as a reader who falls in love with his own conception of 
the character.)

> Betsy Hp:
> So?  That many suggested twisty theories have been shown to be 
> wrong doesn't mean there's not going to be any twist whatsoever.  
> The twist is JKR's method of operation.  As you point out in the 
> part I snipped, every book has had a twist of some sort.  It would 
> be weird if the ending didn't, I think.

Dangerous extrapolation to assume, although possible.  What I thought 
I'd been suggesting is that the fandom is overestimating and 
overvaluing the actual twist.  I didn't think either books 5 or 6 had 
a terrible amount of extremely shocking surprises, the big event at 
the end of book 6 being the major one.  Nothing says she has to twist 
at the end as well--it could be on a model where we move out of 
obscurity and into clarity and directness.
 
>> >>Nora: 
>> Not evil, but still venal and generally unpleasant?
>> <snip>
> 
> Betsy Hp:
> Yup! <g>  The "not evil" bit is exactly it.  I'd been arguing that 
> point for a while and it was very nice to have it cleared up once 
> and for all.  Slytherins are just as human as the rest of the 
> Hogwarts' student body.

Just considerably less well-behaved and contributing to the welfare 
of the school than others, and to at least some conceptions of 
society as a whole (not to mention pesky lurking ideas like the 
Good).  If Slughorn is a representative Slytherin, I suppose it's an 
improvement over Snape, Lucius Malfoy, and Voldemort.

But then I can also specialize in damning with faint praise. :)

-Nora prepares to slog through even more water...