The Overarching message - Caning + Mind Reading, of sorts

[Geoff]

No: HPFGUIDX 191701

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, sigurd at ... wrote:

Otto:
I can agree, but I think you miss my point.

<snip>

Geoff:
I think that you are also missing my point.

In terms of this group, I wonder whether a majority of the members 
will actually want to extrapolate back into the real world. I think that 
many people gain enjoyment by just being in an escapist world and 
just forgetting all the problems of the real world. Dare I suggest 
that all authors just want to create a different world, not necessarily 
a fantasy world but one with differents place and ways of life. When 
I was quite small, I read Alice in Wonderland. I graduated to the 
Doctor Dolittle stories by Hugh Lofting and then to the Biggles books 
of W.E.Johns, beloved of most boys of my generation. And then, in 
1950, Dan Dare, pilot of the future, debuted in the "Eagle"comic, still 
today an icon of the sci-fi fan.

I know I and all my friends loved to let our imaginations run riot, but 
we knew that all these worlds were imaginary; they did not exist. The 
only one which approached reality was the world of Biggles, a pilot 
whose adventures before the War as a civil flyer and as an RAF pilot 
in the Second World War appealed to our sense of adventure. But we 
knew we were unlikely to follow him. It was an escape from the 
bleakness of the time.

I believe that most members of this group have enjoyed the cross-
fertilisation of ideas and theories as the books have emerged and 
the delight or loss when our thoughts on theories like "Who is Mark 
Evans?" or "Will Harry die in the final battle?" have either been proved 
right or shot down. I still like to let my imagination extrapolate what 
might happen beyond the epilogue in, perhaps, the next generation 
of the families or interpolate into the "missing" nineteen years. There 
are many surprising fans of the story; perhaps when your small boy 
brandishes his dowel and cries "Stupefy", the bullies might wave their 
hands and say "Protego" and leave him alone
. I have seen rows of 
seats in the cinema filled with expectant guys in their late teens and 
twenties waiting for the lights to dim. :-)

But I believe that we do not all want to deconstruct the books and 
analyse them  paragraph by paragraph, sentence by sentence or full 
stop by full stop; I, for one, vote for that. Granted some contributors 
do like to practise their dissertations for their doctorates on us but, 
as one of the List Elves pointed out very recently, this frequently drifts 
away from canon and is better served being on OTC. There have been  
times during the eight and a half years I have read and contributed to 
HPFGU when there would be several threads running in parallel and 
the list was not dominated by a few people with their own philosophical 
take and some of whom arrogate to themselves the ability to claim that 
their view is right and treat any naysayers in a patronising or impolite 
manner. that is not the ethos of HPFGU.

By all means have your own interpretation of the story; we all do.  But 
if you are going to make a point which contains maybe 10% of canon-
based, then perhaps, as suggested by the Elves,  OTC is the better place.
It has been very lonely out there lately