Less than 1000 posts in a month - why now?

[juli17 at aol.com]

No: HPFGUIDX 180205

Carol wrote:

One more purely personal tidbit. Snape is dead, and  while I believe
he's happy in the afterlife (yes, I do know he's a  fictional
character), I can no longer think about him in the present. I wish  she
had let him survive to be headmaster of Hogwarts or at least  allowed
him to escape to a deserted island to put all of his  marvelous
knowledge of Potions and DADA and spell invention into books  that
would actually be useful to Hogwarts students. So much  wasted
potential. It's a sadder loss, for me, even than the death of  poor
Cedric at seventeen. The WW without Snape isn't the WW any more.  For
me, I mean. I'm sure others feel otherwise.
 
Julie:
It wasn't just Snape per se for me, although if he'd survived at least  there 
would be one interesting person left in the WW! I also would have taken  
Lupin.

Much as I enjoyed some of the adventures of Harry and his schoolmates,  they
were still children with no past to live down, no grievous mistakes to  
regret, etc.
They hadn't lived enough yet, not like those characters from the Maruader  
era.


That was one morally conflicted, messed up lot of  very imperfect individuals 
(yes,
even Lily!) who made many unpleasant mistakes in life. They were  
*interesting*
because of these conflicts and mistakes, and JKR killed them all off, one  by 
one!
(Okay, two were dead to start with, but you get the point). Which pretty  
much 
killed a big chunk of interest for a lot of us adults I think. 
 
To go on from DH would be to tell stories of what has gone before, such as  
more
specifics about what happened during the Maurader era. And to be honest,  I'm
not really that interested in reconstructing the past of characters when I  
already
know how their lives turn out. Hence my lack of interest in the second set  
of Star
Wars movies. Who really cares how Vader got to Biggest Badass in the  Galaxy,
when I know he did and how it all ended for him (ridiculously, but that's a  
whole
other subject, as is the similarity between the sugary meltdown  epilogues of 
DH
and the original Star Wars trilogy). Suffice to say I don't really  care how 
the
Marauders and Snape grew to hate each other more each day, or how  Snape
pined after Lily while she never even noticed, etc. etc. But that's  me.
 
As for Harry and friends, we know they lived their next 19 years in shades  
of vanilla,
with their tidy jobs and marriages, and their happy homes full  of adorable 
kids. Which
is good for them of course, but totally boring for the reader (or at least  
for me). The 
only main child character whose life I'd like to follow after the  events of 
DH concluded
would be Draco. He had a messed up adolescence and made some serious  
mistakes,
so his journey to relatively decent person and happy life  (if either or both 
are actually
the case) might be interesting to read. Or maybe Luna, because she is so  
incredibly
odd that her life would have to be at least somewhat interesting ;-)
 
Barring that we move to the children, Albus Severus, Scorpius, et al. One  
can only
hope they will inject some edginess back into the WW, heck even a bit of  
darkness, 
which clearly went missing from the Harry Potter generation of adults!  At 
least I'd
need that if I am ever to read books about them ;-)
 
As for that argument about who owns the characters, well JKR doesn't own  
them in
the sense of how we individually see them, but she does own them in a sense  
that
she could at any time decide to write another book about them, making any  
changes
she wants to their lives. For example, she could have Snape reappear 19  
years later
as Albus Severus goes off to start Hogwarts, saved by Fawkes, by a time  
turner, by
his own potions, or whatever (after all there was no body mentioned in DH,  
and no
portrait). She's likely not going to do this, but she *could*. She owns  
Snape that way,
dead or alive, as well as the other characters, and I think  we have to 
respect that (I
do anyway), even while we can  continue in our hearts and minds--and for 
some, in
fanfic--to see them absolutely any way we want (which is how we each  
individually 
own the characters). Anything JKR says in interviews is either gravy, or  
completely
irrelevant, depending on how you look at it. Either way I personally don't  
see why
some people get so worked up about her interviews. I really don't. But  
again, that's
me.
 
Julie, done rambling for now 



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