Evil Snape/ JKR and Christy

[pippin_999]

No: HPFGUIDX 154468

> Alla:
> 
> Look, I think this is the case of using different definitions again. 
> To me "twist" means SO unexpected plot turn that there is absolutely 
> NO WAY that I could predict it.
> 
> And that is what I see in Christie works, yes.
> 
> The plot turns you listed, well, no to me they don't quite count as 
> twists.
> 
> Surprise? Maybe, but even those are not quite there.
> 
> I don't quite remember how shocked I was when Quirrell turned out to 
> be a villain, since I read the books closely together in 2000, but I 
> think I remember that I was not SHOCKED.
> 
> And as to CoS, I am not sure that I was even surprised, I mean not 
> that I figured it out well in advance of course, but from the moment 
> Harry was in Chamber, I figured he would encounter major evil there.
> 
> And major evil is bound to be connected to Lord Voldemort, no?
> 
> And Prophecy? Twisty? Surely not for me, as I said in one of my posts 
> upthread, that was a "that's it?" moment for me.
> 
> Prophecy not controling events? Um,I do not count as twist either, 
> more like JKR doing some damage control over readers saying " that's 
> it?" in OOP. Besides, despite Dumbledore pronouncing it, he IMO 
> clearly acted as he believes in prophecy, so I personally don't see 
> the twist here one way or another. Again IMO.
> 
> Could you please giving me the definition of twist you are using, 
> maybe we are arguing over semantics again.

Pippin:
It sounds like we have very different Christie experiences :). I did
read some of them over and over, especially The Mirror Crack'd, and
I got pretty good at spotting the villains on first reading, not 
by analyzing the clues but by analyzing the characters. Hint: you
can put your money on the _other_  nice young man, or the 
ever so helpful female nanny/governess/nurse/companion. 

What I mean by a twist is a story arc that seems to point in one direction
but turns out to go somewhere else. For example in The Mirror
Crack'd, (SPOILERS AHEAD) the actress Marina Gregg is supposed
to have reacted violently to someone she saw on the stairs during
a party, and all through the story Miss Marple is hunting that person,
who must have tried to poison Marina, but it turns out the reaction 
was to the painting above the stairs, and far from being the intended 
victim of the poisoning, Marina is the poisoner herself. 

I don't see nearly the backtracking in canon that you do -- JKR had
a plot in mind from the beginning and hasn't changed it much, IMO.
The shift in the import of the prophecy was, IMO, planned and
necessary in order to provide a  resolution to Book Five which turns 
out to be false almost as soon as Book Six is underway, so that Five, Six
and Seven become one story.

I agree that JKR is straightforward, or at least drops anvil-sized hints,
about some things, and that Voldemort will be defeated by love is
one of them. But other things are complicated. Isn't it funny that we
are attracted to Snape by the complexity of his character, and yet
expend all this bandwidth trying to reduce him to some three-letter
formula or other? :) 

I think much of canon is directed at showing us
that people do not fit into neat little categories. Even the purely
evil Voldemort is capable of doing good he does not intend, while
epitome of goodness Dumbledore sometimes must let others 
come to harm. Most of the canon characters are a good deal
more muddled than they are, so that Harry often finds 
people he distrusts  among the good guys, and people he likes
among the bad guys.

Pippin