fragons/American wizards/detective stories/Puppetmaster

Sun Feb 13 21:49:26 UTC 2005

My word, this list has gotten ACTIVE since Kneasy joined. What will I
give up to make time for it?

Kneasy wrote in http://groups.yahoo.com/group/the_old_crowd/message/1017 :

<< Dragons, now.Would the study of such be termed Dracology or
Dragonetics? >>

According to the title of a recent book that I haven't bought yet,
it's Dragonology:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0763623296/qid=1108321782/sr=2-1/ref=pd_ka_b_2_1/102-5655853-2603367

Charme wrote in http://groups.yahoo.com/group/the_old_crowd/message/1041 :

<< such as a correlation or relation to the Norse word "draugr"
thought to be related to the word we now know as "dragon." Draugrs
were thought to live in the graves of dead Vikings, which is
interesting since one of the myths associated with dragons is that
they were purported to guard the graves of kings and possibly lends
something to the historical belief dragons were drawn to collect gold
and trinkets (e.g., king's treasures.) >>

My friend Lee says something I can't quite remember about the word
'draco' comes from a Greek word meaning 'guard' and referred to a
spirit guarding graves to punish grave-robbers.

Doug aka Eustace_Scrubb wrote in 
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/the_old_crowd/message/1013 :

<< JKR foolishly encouraged me to continue when she stated on her
website that "if anyone wants to write about American wizards they are
of course free to write their own book!" >>

Speaking (as Neri does below) of falling in love with one's own
theories, I am irritated at JKR's very amusing depiction of wizarding
North America being just like wizarding Britain except they play
Quodpot instead of Quidditch. Because I'm in love with my own theory
that wizarding North America, at least the USA part of it (I love the
Canadianness of the Laurentian School's back story) is the Wizarding
Wild West, no law except the fastest wand.

See, in *my* Potterverse, the wizarding folk are much less inclined to
emigrate than Muggles. JKR said many emigrated in hope that the New
World would have less prejudice against wizards, but I think they
aren't much troubled by prejudice against wizards in the Old World,
because they're so good at staying hidden. And they're also good at
meeting their material needs like food and clothing, so that wipes out
two main motives for emigration. While leaving the motive of
emigrating because pursued by Law Enforcement. 

And the Native American wizards who were already there would have
taken two looks at how the European Muggles treated the Native
American Muggles and immediately decided to stay hidden from the
European wizards. So they never reached out to offer magical education
to the muggle-born wizarding children of USA. (They educated their own
children by apprenticeship, not by school) So USA magic was on a very
primitive and self-taught level, and no wizarding government was formed. 

Until World War II. When some of the American soldiers in Britain were
unknowing wizards. Who innocently caused some difficulty to the
British wizards (e.g. accidentally dispelling the Muggle-dispelling
spells). Who decided that the only solution was to seek out and
educate the American wizards. Which led to enough mixed marriages that
enough British witches (and wizards) 'returned' to USA with their new
spouses to demand that wizarding schools be set up for their children.
A great revivification to the two tiny wizarding schools that had been
set up in colonial days and somehow hung on, New Hogwarts in New
England and La Lycee Magie de Terranova in Louis-y-Anne-a, and
foundation of new wizarding schools in California and Texas...

But what can one expect from an author who omits the Thunderbird from
Fabulous Beasts? (I believe the real Thunderbird, as known to
Magizoologists, is the same as the real Coatl, a between-bird-and-
reptile creature like they keep digging up in China, except with
wingspan, depending on species within the genus, of 12 to 36 feet, and
magic. Surely Muggles have already happened upon the remains of one of
them, named Quetzalcoatlus northrupi?

Carolyn asked Neri in
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/the_old_crowd/message/1027 :

<< Do you chuck away thrillers and detective novels once you know the
ending, or are there any you revisit? >>

As for me, when I used to be a big reader of detective stories and the
occasional thriller, I never tried to figure out the mystery and never
chucked the book away just because I'd read to the end and been told
the solution. The ones I liked, I read over and over. I read them for
the characters (often eccentric and implausible and humorous), and the
settings (often exotic -- but to me, a chocolate factory clearly
standing in for Hershey, an automobile company clearly standing in for
American Motors, the Navajo Reservation, and 1930s England are ALL
exotic), and the people had hopes and plans and were doing thing --
quite different from Real Literature, which at least in those days was
about boring unpleasant suburban men who sat around complaining about
how boring and unpleasant their boring and unpleasant lives were --
sometimes they considered murdering their wives or having an affair
with a despised undergraduate, but if they ever did so, it was
off-screen -- and they didn't enjoy it.

Boyd wrote in http://groups.yahoo.com/group/the_old_crowd/message/1033 :

<< Ah, yes, the eternal HPfGU question: is DD a scheming Puppetmaster
or merely a powerful wizard? Do we believe that DD is so smart that he
has caused Weapon!Harry to be, or at least positioned him for success?
The rebounded AK? Turncoat!Peter? Priori Incantatem? The prophecy,
Harry's visions, Harry's victory in the MoM? All thanks to DD? >>

There IS a puppetmaster of the Potterverse, and Her initials are JKR.
As far as the characters and their world are concerned, She is God the
Creator, and no sparrow falls except by Her intention. The characters
don't know that, and the kids could sit in their common room (or their
dorm room, or on the stair steps between) and argue about whether God
exists, and whether they have free will, and what makes Good good and
Evil evil, just as I recall from my high school and college days.

So the question of Puppetmaster!Dumbledore is to what extent he has
been let in on the Divine Plan. Does he just bumble the best he can
and be as surprised by the results as any naive reader? Does he
receive cryptic commands from God, like 'don't interfere with the
Dursleys mistreating baby Harry' and 'make sure the Potter boy gets
the other Fawkes wand'? Is he told the goals and has to figure out for
himself how to set them up: "Make sure that James and Lily die to save
Harry; make sure that Sirius is falsely imprisoned while the real
traitor escapes unsuspected; make sure that the real traitor is
re-united with Lord Voldemort in 1994"?

Neri wondered in
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/the_old_crowd/message/1054 : 

<< who is the personification of conspiracy theories, and how he/she
would get along with Faith <shudder> >>

It can't be TBAY!Pippin, excellently costumed as she is for the role,
as she personifies Vampire!Snape. Maybe it's Hercule Poirot. By the
way, the Safe House was built for ALL theories involving conspiracies,
spies, and disguises, not just for MD.

Iris wrote in http://groups.yahoo.com/group/the_old_crowd/message/1078 :

<< I remember several discussions on HPfGU about what people
called "Metathinking". It generally came after someone had come
aboard with some analyze based upon references to previous literary
or artistic or philosophic or psychoanalytic sources
 >>

IIRC 'Metathinking' meant treating the Potter ouevre as if it were a
book rather than real events that we were lucky enough to catch sight
of, such as admitting the existence of an Author. IIRC there were one
or two, maybe three, people who objected to Metathinking. One gave the
charmingly self-deprecating reason that he couldn't play the other
game because he had never read anything else. IIRC the others cried
out 'Metathinking!' as a magic incantation to protect their theory
from criticism . It seems to me that that theory was a form of
Puppetmaster!Dumbledore and the criticism that especially was called
Metathinking was the point I made above: yes, there is a puppetmaster,
but it's not one of the characters, it's the author.

Kneasy wrote in http://groups.yahoo.com/group/the_old_crowd/message/1030 :

<< Why did [DD] form the original Order and why choose the members he
did? >>

IIRC Herself said somewhere that the Order of the Phoenix had existed
before Dumbledore and it comes back into existence when it is needed,
so maybe the part about 'why did he form the original Order' is that
he was notified (by Fawkes, the portraits, the ghosts, astrology, a
dream, whatever) that it was time. That still wouldn't answer why he
chose those members.