World Building (was Why did Snape _really_ hate Harry?)

[Jerri&Dan Chase]

No: HPFGUIDX 186970

>Betsy Hp:
>What I find so disappointing is that, imo, the essay is logical
>and canon is not.  Where the essay provides a neat answer
>that gives both Snape and Dumbledore some depth (Dumbledore
>becomes rather coldly calculating, but very, very clever; Snape
>is given complex and all too human motivations and drives),
>canon gives us an answer that serves mainly to flatten them.
>Dumbledore becomes a judgmental, fool.  (How stupid to you
>have to be to just *let* an eavesdropper go like that?)  Snape
>becomes pathetic.

You bring up a point I have been pondering for some time.  You use the word 
"logical".  I have been finding canon less and less logical from GoF on.  I 
have been a long time reader of Fantasy and Science Fiction.  Both of these 
fields often involve "world building".  I read and enjoyed the first two HP 
books, and then PoA and the wonderful plot twists caught my fancy and I 
became a "true believer".  The reader was learning about the Wizarding World 
as young Harry learned about the Wizarding world.  Sure, there were 
occasions when the WW didn't make logical sense, when numbers didn't add up. 
Little things had Nick been dead 400 or 500 years, had there been modern 
type plumbing "1000 years ago" or so, when the Castle and Chamber of Secrets 
had been built.  And there was a lot we didn't know yet about the Wizarding 
world.  I knew that there was a 7 book series to be completed (I knew that 
from a few chapters into SS/PS, without having read or heard anything about 
the HP trend, it was obvious from the first, to me.)  I assumed that as we 
went further into the books that the world building process would become 
more complete.  As Harry learned more about the WW we would also, and it 
would become as "real" as a subcreation/fictional world can be.

I was wrong.  As each book came out there was more and more complexity but 
the new aspects didn't hang together with the ones we had seen in the 
earlier books.  And interviews and JKR's web site only made the 
inconsistencies worse and more obvious.  How many students at Hogworts, how 
big was the WW, how does the economy work, how come G. didn't win the house 
cup when the "legendary Charlie Weasley" was seeker?  And how long ago was 
that anyway?

I have come to the reluctant conclusion that JKR wasn't a "world builder". 
She created very compelling characters and put them into interesting and 
adventurous situations.  But as far as the Wizarding world and rules of 
magic, too much of the time, in spite of all those years of planning and 
charts and stuff, she seems to have been "making it up as she went along", 
like Hans Solo.  Time turners a great plot device for PoA, suddenly without 
warning they are there, and then break them all so that they can't be used 
later.  (And no explanation as to why someone, on one side of the other 
can't make more.)  Lucky potion a great plot device in HBP, but why doesn't 
Snape or Slughorn or someone make up a batch for the big battle?  Or, why 
doesn't Lord V have someone make some up for his side to use?  And these are 
just a few tiny examples.  And the essay "Why did Snape really hate Harry?" 
and many other great, logical essays about the books which DH sank show many 
more.  She has admitted and the canon show that JKR has a problem with 
"maths", but this seems to extend to logic.  And also, to remembering what 
she has written vs what she planned to write.  This is shown in things like 
the infamous "return of the Slyterines" at the end of DH.  I could list 
many, many more places where the canon doesn't make logical or mathematical 
sense.  And as finally disclosed in DH, not even the character development 
makes logical sense to some readers.

Now, there are good and even great aspects of JKR's creation.  If there 
weren't I wouldn't be part of a group like this.  But it is so much less 
than I had expected, do to lapses in logic, world building, maths and 
similar issues.

Jerri