Cabinet FIRST!

[Sydney]

No: HPFGUIDX 157928


Mike:

> > My analysis of the whole debate, in simple terms: The "suicide    
> > mission only" crowd were arguing that you can't put the cart      
> > before the horse. The "cabinet firsters" argued that they were    
> > putting the horse in front but they just wanted to know how many  
> > horses were pulling this cart. So, sorry Sydney, but the Cabinet   
> > firsters never had a problem with the direction your cart took,    
> > they (and that includes me) said they were going in that direction 
> > too, just getting there with more horsepower.


Betsy Hp:

> I strongly disagree with that, Mike.  The Cabinet First folks are 
> attempting to change the entire thrust of Draco's story.  They're 
> trying to make him that much more responsible for the mess he landed 
> in.  

Sydney:

... must... not... reply..to thread.. darn it.  Stupid willpower again.

I agree so very much with Betsy (astonishing, isn't it!).  Actually,
more than the way it affects Draco's arc, what I would worry about is
how it affected the very next scene with him. 

Taking the Spinner's End exposition about What's Happening at face
value, we see that Draco is given a task, something that nutty Death
Eaters (Bella) see as a huge honour (though a dead-producing one--
doesn't she say she'd be glad to 'give up' her [nonexistent] sons to
the Dark Lord?).  But the sane people-- Snape and Narcissa-- cue us
that it's not an honour, it's really a petty punishment for Lucius and
a death sentence.  We see Snape, always the 'double' character, giving
us both sides: the OMG Voldie fanboy schtick-- if he succeeds, it'll
definitely be amazing; and obliquely (because he can't come right out
and say, 'yes, Voldie's a vindictive psycho')-- this is all about
punishing Lucius, and Draco's meant to be killed.

Snape the makes some sort of mysterious effort to interfere in this
which we can anticipate will lead to Doom Ahead.

Now, when we next see Draco, he's bragging and boasting and excited in
the train compartment, being the Big Man because of his Important Task.  

Sticking with the reading that Narcissa was being used as Basil
Exposition, the audience reaction is:  hooo boy, kid, you have no idea
what's going on.  There's maybe a, "LOOK BEHIND YOU DRACO!!" element
for people who already care whether he lives or dies.  For people who
don't-- and this I think is really important-- there's maybe the start
of pity.  Draco thinks he's been given this cool important task but
actually he's just this patsy in a sideline to punish his dad. 
There's also a Hitchcockian irony in the audience knowing something
Draco doesn't, always a fun element in a scene.

If you discount Narcissa's take, you enter the train scene very, very
differently, and I think, to the detriment of the arc as it then plays
out.  First of all, you would have no idea what's going on-- there's
no dramatic irony because you've decided to ignore what Narcissa and
Snape give you.  The scene that way is, IMO, less interesting, more
vague, more just some stuff going on, than something that follows in
an interesting way from the scene before.  More critically, you would
see Draco as actually being part of the Big Plan that he's bragging
about.  He's a *threat*.  He really *is* an important DE and not a
slightly ridiculous 16-year-old.  Also, everything is his own fault--
it's a 'hoist in his own petard' thing rather than a 'person oblivious
to looming threat thing'.  There's no start of pity from the audience
and his emotional breakdown and Dumbledore's mercy don't follow, in my
opinion, as clean a line as if the audience's pity had been allowed to
start there. 


So I'm being adamant here that 'Cabinet first' is extremely different
*story-wise* from 'Suicide mission', even if it may not seem that
different *plot-wise*.  It seems like it's just a small change, a
little behind-the-scenes theorizing that doesn't move the furniture of
the story.  But it does move the furniture, it moves it quite a lot.
Draco going to Voldemort first is, in terms how you would tell the
story, a very critical point.  If you were telling a similar story
about someone you know, that's where you would start-- "so, Joe was
thirsting for pay-back, and so he went to the Mob, but then it all
went pear-shaped and he got in over his head".  "So Joe was thirsting
for revenge, and so when the Mob came and made him this offer he was
thrilled, but the poor sap didn't know that..."  is a different story.
 You wouldn't leave out the part that Joe actually went to the mob. 
It's where the story hinges.

For that reason, I find it extremely hard-- in fact, impossible-- to
believe a writer, especially a writer like Rowling, would leave it
out.  She doesn't have to write a scene with Draco and Voldemort to do
that.  She could have put it in the mouths of any one of the three
'exposition' characters in Spinner's End.  It's not, as I said, a
documentary and you can just wave your hand and say just none of them
happened to know about it or bring it up.  It's a million times more
important than any sort of logic about how the DE's communicate or who
called who or whether Voldemort's plan makes sense.  If Draco went to
Voldemort it needed to be either in that scene or the train scene,
period, and Rowling would have found a way to put it in.  In 'connect
the dots' terms, it would not be a line you'd expect your audience to
draw between dots, it would be a dot.  A big, black, dot.  Labelled
"IMPORTANT DOT".  Because that's where the line would TURN.

A small note about how the 'suicide plot' is introduced.  Steve
objects that I'm talking a line of dialogue from a hysterical woman as
'carved in stone'.  But dialogue is something you use for exposition
just as much you use anything else, especially if you're having to
compress a load of stuff that happens into one scene.  Of course
characters can be wrong, but then you have to actually contradict
them.  To use another analogy, a line like that, that gives
exposition, is a rolling ball that will continue to roll along until
something stops it by 'contradicting' it, giving it a push in the
opposite direction.  Until that is done, the ball is going to keep
rolling.  That ball is still rolling and until someone in the book
stops it, I'm considering it as exposition, not as misdirection.

-- Sydney, swearing this absolutely postiviley her last post on this
subject.   Geez, we're not even talking about Snape here, people!