World Building And The Potterverse

[horridporrid03]

No: HPFGUIDX 167627

> >>Betsy Hp:
> > It does mean that any theories based on time (minutes, hours,    
> > days, years) are doomed to possibly end up in the "oh dear,      
> > maths" trash pile.
> > <snip>
 
> >>Pippin:
> A lot of theories based on what turned out to be sequencing errors
> have bitten the dust. But we know that they were sequencing errors
> because JKR fixed them. She swapped 'descendant' for 'ancestor',
> she re-wrote the wand order, and she's had plenty of time to 
> insert some information about what Lupin was doing while Sirius
> was in jail, Pettigrew was in hiding, and James was a-moldering in
> his grave. It wouldn't even contradict anything that's already     
> there. But she hasn't. If that was the only gap in Lupin's history 
> it wouldn't amount to much, I agree. But he's been MIA in every    
> book.

Betsy Hp:
Yeah, but so has Charlie's quidditch cup.  JKR's never fixed that.  
So does that mean there's some deeper mystery attached to Charlie 
being one of the best seekers ever without ever winning a season?  Or 
does it mean that it was a color commentary that got messed up with 
JKR's inability to use a calculator?

Of course you could well be right and there is something dark about 
Lupin's not talking about the time between the opening chapter of 
PS/SS and PoA.  Or, he could have been a clerk in a store in France, 
carefully sewing patches onto his patches. <g>

> >>Pippin:
> <snip>
> IMO, if you can connect the dots from book to book with some       
> consistency, and the outcome would have some obvious relevance to   
> the plot, you've got a real clue, not a mistake.
> 
> I guess we're not bothered by the same things, if you see
> the Hand of Glory as a great big deal but the things I mentioned
> in PS/SS didn't bother you. They jarred me on first reading because
> they seemed senseless.
> <snip>

Betsy Hp:
Oh, I can totally tell we're not. <g>  That you don't understand what 
a contradiction Draco having the hand is to what we'd learned about 
the character tells me such.  It's the equivilant of Lupin mentioning 
his long term job at Fortescue's icecream shop (or more properly, 
Flitwick mentioning it as something everyone knows about).  I mean, 
it doesn't change the plot of the series, but it sure plays havoc 
with our understanding of the character.

[pulled from another post]
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/167571
> >>Pippin:
> <snip>
> So where is the problem with Draco getting the hand and Ron knowing 
> what it is and that he had one? 
> <snip>
> As a prefect Ron had opportunities to be near Draco when Harry
> wasn't there. It's not wizard contraband. It was openly for sale.
> If Draco bought it before he planned to use it in a secret plot,
> I'd expect him to brag.
> What am I missing?

Betsy Hp:
You're missing what all the rest of us are missing: a scene or 
comment when the above was established.  I'd also add that *how* 
Draco got the Hand should have been an important insight into the 
character.  Did he defy his father's obvious distaste for the sort of 
people who'd own such a thing and buy it on his own?  Did his mother 
defy Lucius and get the hand for Draco?  Did Lucius change his mind?

That's why Draco's ownership is such a flint, IMO, beyond Harry's 
sneaking the Marauder's map from Fake!Moody's office.  While Harry 
snagging his map is completely in character, Draco getting the hand 
actually goes *against* how he's been presented up until now.  If 
Lucius sneered at the Hand, Draco would sneer at the Hand from then 
on.  Something occurred to change that, either with Lucius or with 
Draco.  Or, more likely, JKR recalled mentioning the hand and Draco 
together and forgot that the mention had to do with Draco *not* 
getting the hand.

[back to this post]
> >>Pippin:
> <snip>
> There are multiple times in canon where items disappear or         
> reappear, and JKR doesn't always let us know immediately. The       
> leprechaun gold, various invisibility cloaks, the marauders map,    
> and so forth. IMO, something's up with that. The clue here is not,  
> maybe, that the hand itself is important but that we should be     
> alert that items may not be where we think they are. Harry's       
> invisibility cloak is AWOL at the moment. The complacent assumption 
> is that JKR so far omitted to write that he got it back...but we'll 
> see.

Betsy Hp:
This doesn't make any sense to me at all.  Leprechaun gold fades as 
established, quite carefully, by canon.  Harry leaves his 
invisibility cloak behind once, and Dumbledore returns it.  I frankly 
think it was a bit sloppy not showing Harry snagging his map back 
(again, asking a question JKR didn't mean to ask) but JKR gave an 
interview and cleared it up.  And I'd note that she was surprised 
that readers were confused.  So, not a stylistic choice.  If Harry 
suddenly shows up with invisibility cloak in hand, that'll be another 
sloppy mistake on JKR's part, IMO. 

> >>Betsy Hp:
> > But I still think the books are meant to be a bit of an escape, a 
> > nice armchair adventure where good will triumph over evil.  I'll 
> > be interested to see if they're meant to be something more.

> >>Pippin:
> What's Dolores Umbridge doing in a book like that?

Betsy Hp:
Playing the part of evil.

> >>Pippin:
> If good always triumphed over evil, would Sirius be dead? Or Cedric?
> Or even the poor unicorn in Book One?
> <snip>

Betsy Hp:
Of course!  Killing the good and innocent (red shirts, IOWs) is how 
one establishes evil, or tells us just how evil the evil is.  But the 
end will more than likely show good triumphant and evil thoroughly 
chastened if not out and out destroyed.

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/167614
> >>Lupinlore:
> <snip>
> Actually, I think there are two DDs, and herein is where at least
> some of the trouble arises. There is DD the plot device and DD the
> character, and the actions and attitudes of the one don't always   
> mesh too well with the actions and attitudes of the other. DD the   
> plot device appears in PS/SS to leave Harry at the Dursleys. DD the
> character now confronts the Dursleys in the first part of HBP. It   
> is in some ways efficient to have a single character carry so much 
> of the plot, but there are a lot of problems with that approach.    
> The DD situation illustrates one of them.

Betsy Hp:
Oh my goodness, Lupinlore.  Prepare yourself.  ::takes a deep 
breath::  I.  Agree. <rbg>

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/167565
> >>Neri:
> This is not what I meant. I never wrote that the HP series was a
> parody. It most certainly isn't. What I did write was that the *WW* 
> is a parody.

Betsy Hp:
If that was the goal, I think JKR would have done better to write the 
Muggle world much more realistically, so that the reader gets the 
switch between realism and parody.  Instead I think it gets a bit 
confusing.  Plus, aren't we supposed to take the current WW war 
seriously?  Isn't Voldemort supposed to be a real threat, not just a 
parody of one?

> >>Neri:
> <snip>
> IOW, the HP series is a realistic/fantasy plot superimposed over a 
> parody *background*.
>  This paradoxical combination naturally results in a few clashes,   
> but mostly it works surprisingly well. The readers usually know
> immediately what was intended as parody, and therefore should not be
> taken seriously, and what was intended as realism. 
> <snip>

Betsy Hp:
Like how when "good guys" get tortured it's a heart-wrenching and 
terrible thing, but when "bad guys" get tortured it's cartoonish and 
funny?  Or is it more that we shouldn't take the MoM or the WW news 
system seriously... except when they mess with our hero?  Slavery is 
wrong, until it's Harry who owns the slave?

The interesting this is, I think you may well be right.  And I have a 
hope that JKR is using the parody technique to set up some 
interesting ethical and philisophical questions that will be 
resolved, or maybe just revealed in DH.  My *fear* is JKR chose to 
use this sort of technique and it's run away from her and now she's 
stuck writing about so-called good guys who actually do some pretty 
horrible things all in the name of parody.

> >>Neri:
> The interesting thing is that, for me at least (and I think for many
> other readers) JKR's parody successfully generates a *more*        
> believable world than if she was deliberately attempting serious   
> world building.
> <snip>
> Sure, it's fun to play world building in the Potterverse and I do   
> it a lot myself, but I don't see much point in blaming the Author   
> for not doing well something she has never intended to do.

Betsy Hp:
I get that.  For me, the issues come in when the lack of some sort of 
basic foundation leads to a few jarring mistakes.  And it also, IMO, 
steals a bit of depth from the series.  But of course that's more of 
an aesthetics thing.  I do wonder if JKR meant for her readers to see 
the WW as such a brutal and ugly place, but I think that goes back to 
the question or whether or not she *meant* to posit the various 
ethical dilemmas that pop up throughout the books 

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/167624
> >>Carol:
> <snip>
> But it really seems unfair to expect an author who sees
> herself as a writer of children's books, and who seems to be       
> focusing primarily on plot, secondarily on characters and themes,   
> and who seems to be quite consciously manipulating the point of    
> view for her own purposes, to be overly concerned with world-      
> building. Her world is our world with a difference, not a long-ago 
> and faraway Secondary World.
> <snip>

Betsy Hp:
For one, doesn't JKR bristle at the idea that she's 
writing "children's books"?  For another, I think what's being 
pointed out is that *not* being "overly concerned with world-
building" has not served her well.  And finally, interestingly enough 
I read JKR more for her characters than her plot.  Weird, huh?

Betsy Hp