Dumbledore's pleading/What Horcruxes Dumbledore and Harry destroyed?

[lupinlore]

No: HPFGUIDX 141602

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "pippin_999" <foxmoth at q...> wrote:
<SNIP>
> 
> But I don't see how you could take JKR's constant references to
> clues, hints, red herrings and detective stories at face value and
> *not* conclude that there is an unresolved mystery plot and that
> it's rather bangy. Whether it has anything to do with ESE!Lupin
> and/or DDM!Snape we'll all know when Book Seven comes out and
> not before, but we have established, I think, that neither can
> be refuted without resort to Flints and/or poetic license.
> 
> Either is, of course, a possibility, but Rowling has corrected
> Flints that seemed to impinge on major plot points, and she
> has never yet, to my knowledge, explained away a major, plot-
> relevant discrepancy by claiming artistic license. 
> 
         
But what's a Flint?  What's a Bangy plot?  What's poetic license?  
What's a clue?  What's a red herring?  What's a major plot point?  Now 
we are truly into philosophical territory, because so MUCH of this 
argument hangs on the understanding of those words.

To wit, many people very fervently believed that certain aspects of the 
Harry/Hermione relationship were clues that gave insight into a major 
plot point, i.e. a developing H/Hr ship.  Others held that these things 
were in fact red herrings.  Many said if these points were dismissed 
that would constitute introducing a bunch of Flints.

And yet, it turned out they were, from JKR's perspective, neither clues 
nor red herrings.  They were...nothing.  They weren't even Flints, from 
her perspective, they were just things that happened that didn't 
necessarily have much meaning, or at least not any meaning beyond the 
obvious.

I know some people argue that shipping is a special case that shouldn't 
be used as a test for the rest of the plot.  I don't really hold with 
that, as I see shipping as being very central to the development of the 
story, albeit a central component that hasn't been handled very well.  
Still, there are plenty of other examples that don't involve shipping.  
Many people were (and possibly still are) firmly convinced of such 
things as the importance of the gum wrappers, a too-strong obliviation 
spell cast on Neville, the central role of Mark Evans, etc.  With 
regard to Snape, specifically, you don't have to go far back to find 
people who thought his connection with vampires was well foreshadowed 
and inevitable, or that it was clearly foreshadowed that Harry 
would "rise above" and learn to ignore Snape -- maybe even apologize to 
him -- as a key component of becoming a player in the fight against 
Voldemort.  All of which came to naught, and all of which were probably 
not clues or foreshadowings, or even red herrings, but simply obvious 
events into which fans read far too much.

I don't think Nora is denying that there will be some twists and 
bangs.  I think she is warning us that they may well not be the twists 
and bangs so many people firmly expect and firmly believe to have been 
strongly foreshadowed.  Also I think she is reminding us that in the 
course of the series twists and bangs are actually not as prominent in 
the plot arc as many people believe.  We had a major twist in book one, 
and no real twist in book two (I agree that Voldy being the heir of 
Slytherin wasn't surprising, and that the Ginny plot didn't have any 
effect on the series as a whole, although if you want to call it a 
shipping foreshadow, I guess I can go with that).  Book three was very 
twisty and bangy, with two major twists (three if you want to count 
Lupin's lycanthropy).  Book four had one twist that, like Ginny in CoS, 
really didn't carry beyond that book. Books five and six haven't really 
had any major twists or bangs at all, with the possible exception that 
James wasn't quite the saint Harry thought (we still don't know if that 
will turn out to be a major plot point or not), although obviously 
important plot developments have occurred.

I think part of the problem is that JKR sees things from a very 
different perspective from her readers.  She often, I think, forgets 
that we don't know the whole series.  Thus she is, I think, often very 
baffled as to why people don't pick up on things she thinks are 
perfectly obvious, or why people insist that certain things are 
foreshadowed when in fact they are ... nothing.  Because of this 
bafflement, her remarks, which I think she means to be helpful, often 
just further stir the murk.  Of course, it also doesn't help that we 
don't have the tone in which she says things.  To take one example, 
when she said in the three part interview, in answer to whether Snape 
is evil, "Well, you've READ THE BOOK, what do you think?" she could 
have been conveying completely different meanings depending on whether 
he tone was baffled, level and straightforward, light and humorous, 
arch and mysterious, or sarcastic.

So, to sum up, I suspect that things which seem like mysteries to us 
seem to JKR to be perfectly obvious.  I suspect that the twists and 
bangs we get may not be the twists and bangs we expect, and that the 
twists and bangs may not be as major and earthshaking as people expect.
As Nora points out (I believe, and I'll point out if she doesn't), we 
are getting toward the finish line, and there are a LOT of things JKR 
has to wrap up in one book.  At a minimum she must find four horcruxes, 
destroy Voldemort, deal with Snape, deal with Wormtail, deal with 
Draco, get Ron/Hermione going, have an Umbridge appearance (she's 
already said that's going to happen), show Bill and Fleur's wedding, 
finish off with the Dursleys, and include her epilogue.  That's at a 
bare MINIMUM.  In addition, there are all sorts of other subplots, like 
Lupin and Fenrir or the fate of Percy, that people will be terribly 
disappointed if she leaves hanging.  In other words, JKR has a LOT to 
do in a book she wants to keep shorter than OOTP.  That doesn't leave 
all that much room for twists and bangs, as twists and bangs have to be 
extensively explained to be satsifying (particularly in the last book, 
she can't put off an explanation till later) and that takes space.  The 
more straightforward she keeps things, the more chance she has of 
completing the task she has set for herself -- albeit I don't envy her 
the task even were she to keep things as simple as possible.  As I've 
said before, she really HAS backed herself into a corner.  The problem 
is, unlike Harry, she can't wave her hands and apparate out this time 
(or at least I hope she doesn't do that again).


Lupinlore