What Came First: Task or Cabinet? - The Plan v1 & v2/Bigotry or Not?

[snow15145]

No: HPFGUIDX 157746



Magpie:
I admit I don't get the whole "Faith" schtick. Don't know what it 
means, 
never have. So I may be misunderstanding things later in the post--
sorry if 
I do.

Snow:

Some definitions of Faith as given in Hypothetic Alley are that:

Faith "believes what canon places before her. She is first cousins 
with those cute twins, Naive and Gullible."

"A staunch defender of authorial privilege, 

Faith "keeps tapping me on the shoulder and saying things 
like 'Shouldn't we let the author decide that?' and 'We can't know 
this yet,' and 'tsk, tsk.' She doesn't mind when I hang around with 
George and the others, but she'll never let me buy a badge. I think 
she's Jiminy Cricket's girlfriend." 

"In this sense, Faith may be seen as a supporter of the status quo, 
an upholder of authorial hegemony, and thus an enemy of reader 
subversion in all its forms."

Hypothetic Alley explained this way better than I ever could have 
attempted to. 

It is in no way meant to be disrespectful of your opinion but 
clarifies that you do not readily accept any alternative view of that 
which has been written (no matter what written manner it has been 
presented).

Snow (me previously):
You see, at Spinner's End, Snape never agreed to killing Dumbledore 
if Draco 
failed to, Snape agreed to "carry out the deed that the Dark Lord has 
ordered Draco to perform". Wording is everything with JKR. We will 
naturally 
assume that what was meant by this particular wording was to kill 
Dumbledore 
since
that is what inevitably happened

Magpie:
Yes, and that's not a bad thing at all. It's how books are read. Many 
people didn't get that Draco's task was to kill DD early on. They 
thought 
he was supposed to kill Harry or do something else. So they got more 
of an 
answer at the end when everything led to Draco trying to do what 
Voldemort 
told him to do in killing DD. If you don't accept this, the story is 
just a 
pile of random events. The end has nothing to do with the beginning, 
it's 
all just ever more complicated with little meaning at all.

Snow:

Well it does become a bit more complicated from your standpoint but I 
wouldn't say that it had no meaning at all. It's just that Faith 
hasn't been totally informed; she has jumped to conclusions based on 
assumption. Just because B (Dumbledore was killed) happened, does not 
directly relate that A (the plan) was to have Draco kill Dumbledore 
himself. 

Now when Faith is informed in the next book that the plan wasn't a 
straightforward Draco must kill Dumbledore himself, all the pieces 
will fit together and become much more clear.
 
A strategist or theorizer attempts to get ahead of Faith by 
nitpicking what she has been told. We are not attempting to change 
the story but to foresee where the next book will take us by 
scrutinizing questionable dialog. 

Faith sits and waits to be spoon-fed the information while the 
strategist attempts to beat the author to the punch. We are aware of 
every possible open alternate meaning that has been said and jump on 
it. 

Could there be an alternate route that still takes us where we 
currently think we are. 

Our thoughts don't take us astray from the obvious it simply takes a 
different route to the same conclusion, which does affect the story 
but not the direct result.
 
Snow (me previously):
but you can never be totally certain because this is where the author 
can 
make her twist. (Leading you to
the obvious conclusion is Faith's diversion)

Magpie:
I think the word choice in this case was to keep the reader from 
hearing 
flat-out that his mission was to kill Dumbledore, though it was 
fairly easy 
to guess, especially when the attempted murder attempts start 
happening.

Snow:

This is exactly what I am talking about. You see this as 
straightforward, given information. I see it as a bit too easy to 
accept. It feels like I'm being led by the nostrils to make this 
assumption. 

Magpie snipped slightly:

One of the many problems with these theories is that they are all 
unfalsified premises. There's nothing actually there. Whenever 
somebody 
points out a flaw in it given the story in canon--a story that has a 
structure and so has limitations and shape--it can be explained away 
with 
new inventions. And maybe that sounds exciting when you're coming up 
with 
the answers, but as its own entity it just reads like working your 
way 
around canon that wasn't written to support what's being said.

Snow:

I wouldn't call them new inventions but rather alternative 
suggestions with a very similar conclusion. The storyline would not 
change what happens at the end where Dumbledore dies, Dumbledore will 
still be dead and Snape will still be the one who killed him.
 
What it does affect is the reason Voldemort chose Draco; the reason 
Snape took the vow; the reason Snape was asleep instead of looking 
after his charge and securing the castle. 

It could also affect some things like the reasons why Dumbledore died 
and Snape killed him or why Draco was so confident at the beginning 
and becomes shockingly devastated at the end. 

If the plan became altered or enhanced from its original status, the 
end results would be quite the same but the reason it came to that 
point would be different. 

If Draco was of the understanding that his orders were to secure a 
way into the castle for the capture to kill Dumbledore and then 
learned that he was to kill Dumbledore himself, the result would be 
the same Dumbledore dies. But the reasons why people (like Snape) 
acted the way they did would be different. 

Snow (me previously):
To truly understand what I'm attempting to get across to you, you 
would have to open your mind and allow suspicion to enter. Be 
suspicious of Faith and question wording that could also be 
interpreted with another suggestion, a 
twisty outcome, like what we have been proposing (although this 
suggestion 
isn't all conclusive, there are others).

Magpie:
So it's basically what I've already allowed, that yes, this is the 
plot of 
the book but if the author still has the power to announce in the 
next book 
that the plot of this one was totally fake? Yes, if the next book 
takes 
time to explain that Draco was not given the task of killing DD early 
in the 
year, but instead was given the task of fixing the cabinet, and 
that's what 
Snape agreed to do, and then Draco committed some near-murders for 
some odd 
reason, and then Voldemort surprised him with telling him to kill DD 
late in 
the year, I will certainly revise my thinking on HBP (perhaps for the 
worse). As of now I just read the books using the normal 
comprehension 
skills I apply to any book and assume, until further notice, that 
this was 
the plot--just as I assume Barty Crouch Jr. polyjuiced himself into 
Moody 
and put Harry's name in the Goblet to get him to the Portkey, and 
Kreacher 
went to Narcissa with info about Sirius and Harry, and Quirrel had 
Voldemort 
on the back of his head, and Lucius slipped Ginny the diary and it 
possessed 
her. It's worked fine so far.

Snow:

This is an absolutely exceptional example of Faith. Faith believes 
only what has been presented to her without question. 

Magpie:
Why Snape took the Vow is a big question I am waiting to have 
answered. It 
becomes less of a question if the Vow isn't to kill Dumbledore. 
Because who 
the heck cares if Snape took a Vow to make a secret entrance into the 
castle? As to why he's asleep, that didn't seem like much of a 
question. 
He may be part of the Order, but he's at Hogwarts as a teacher, he's 
not on 
guard duty. He's got classes to teach the next day.

Snow:

Well making a secret entrance to the castle can greatly affect the 
lives of many including the headmaster. 

Snape being asleep when he is aware that Dumbledore is out of the 
castle and the Order is on full guard while all along realizing 
what `the plan' is and he is to protect his charge, `is' a bid deal 
in either version. 

Magpie:
If the DEs are disposing of DD there goes that whole important "you 
are/are 
not a killer" part of the must-not-call-it-canon-version which is 
rather 
focused on committing murder or not, sticking it in only at the last 
minute 
when you can't avoid it instead of letting it be central. And making 
the Vow 
something that mundane drains the scene of drama. And why would I be 
looking for substitute plans? I'm not in the market of an alternate 
version 
of HBP--if I was it would be the one that changed the H/G storyline, 
not the 
one trashing the storyline I enjoyed.

Snow:

True enough if the plan only started out with Draco's cabinets and 
didn't include the fact that Dumbledore was the main target in doing 
so. But did Draco become aware that he was to kill Dumbledore himself 
without assistance from the very beginning?
 
Did Draco feel confident from the beginning that he was a qualified 
enough wizard to handle the death of a powerful wizard all by himself 
or was Draco under the impression that he could have backup? 

Why did Draco feel the cabinets were so important in killing 
Dumbledore all by himself? 

Snow (me previously):
You see Faith can be as wrong as Sirius being the bad guy or Mad Eye 
Moody 
being good in GOF and yet most of us fell for the trap.

Magpie:
Sirius was revealed as the good guy at the end of PoA. The guy who we 
thought was Mad Eye Moody was revealed to be DE Barty Crouch Jr. at 
the end 
of GoF. Draco was revealed to be the would-be murderer of Dumbledore 
at the 
end of HBP. Do you have alternate theories for PoA and GoF too?

Snow:

Lol, actually I do
have an answer. 

JKR said that book six was like one half of the whole story being 
finished in book seven
so as you point out that the twists in POA and 
GOF were concluded in that same book and HBP has been said to be part 
one of a bigger book then the conclusion has not yet been 
accomplished like your other two examples have. 

Snow (me previously):
There is entrapment in the books, which is why they are so damned 
good but 
it is, more often than naught, Faith who leads us into the trap.

I finally learned with OOP, after several attempts of throwing the 
book 
against the wall and refusing to read further (for several minutes) 
to 
simply accept that JKR has her answer and I have to be open to it.


Magpie:
I don't understand your point. JKR has her answer and we have to be 
open to 
it, yet you reject the answers given in HBP.

Snow:

I'm not rejecting them; I'm merely using them to the same end result. 
JKR has a very good way of saying something that gives two meanings, 
the straightforward meaning and the more obscure one. A great example 
of what I mean can be found in HBP pg. 590

"Rosmerta saw me leaving, she tipped you off using your ingenious 
coins, I'm sure."

"That's right," said Malfoy. "But she said you were just going for a 
drink, you'd be back
"

"Well, I certainly did have a drink 
 and I came back
 after a 
fashion," mumbled Dumbledore.

Draco's view of Dumbledore's statement would only allow him to 
understand the straightforward answer that Dumbledore went into the 
bar and had a drink. The more obscure answer was that Dumbledore went 
to the cave and drank poison. 

This example is a given to the reader's of the double meaning but JKR 
uses this double meaning technique in other places where we become 
like Draco and only understand the straightforward answer and neglect 
to see that there may have an obscure, alternate answer as well. 

This is where `the plan' can be questioned as not as straightforward 
as we may think it is. (And yes we could be wrong but I doubt that 
will stop us because there has been a president set for such trickery)

Snow (me previously):
As this thread is similar to what I've just spoke of, I might agree 
that its 
outcome will be similar and that no matter how hard any of us may try 
only 
Faith will be able to enlighten you in the end.

Magpie:
This is more like: "Here's an alternate theory for the plan in CoS: 
Ginny 
faked the whole diary possession to get Harry to notice her."


Snow:

Nice one, I think you're getting the hang of things. (Just kidding) 

Seriously this book is only half of a whole book so its resolve has 
yet to come to light like the other books. 

Every book seemed to have a definite resolve where we found out who 
the bad guy was (thanks for the connection and enlightenment on this 
one); this last book left us hanging as to who the bad guy is. 

Was Draco the bad guy or was it Snape; was it both or neither? This 
book left us empty to a final conclusion unlike its brothers so can 
we treat it the same way? 

Cheers

Snow