Non-HBP spoiler, was (SHIP: Oh, my.)

[Barry Arrowsmith]

--- In the_old_crowd at yahoogroups.com, Catherine Coleman <catorman at y...> wrote:

SPACE,
THE FINAL
FRONTIER -
WHICH 
BOLDLY
WENT 
SOMEWHERE
OR OTHER.

> 
> Anyway, I am totally "shocked and appalled" by the shipping 
> content of That Interview.   I can't  believe that Emerson and 
> Melissa acted in such a juvenile, gloating way.  I can understand 
> them being high spirited due to circumstance of interviewing JKR
> and all, and being R/H shippers as well, clearly, but the way they
> handled it....and I think Emerson's apology over using the word
> "delusional" makes things worse.
> 

As a long term resolute non-, even anti-SHIPper, I was a bit disappointed
myself that so much of this part of the interview concentrated on the
clumsy grapplings of teen-folk. Realistically it'd be impossible to set
HP in a mixed-sex boarding school and not have adolescent hormones
rampaging all over the place, but it would be nice if there was a touch
of the old chaise-longue cha-cha from a couple of the older members
of the cast list - a 'compare and contrast, I'll be asking questions later'
sort of thing. Pity it won't happen.

But Lyn's observations on relationships may well be germane - it's not
unlike Jo to include SHIPs for deeper reasons than for the entertainment
of readers. They're quite likely to end up having more resonance, more 
emotional bang than we've seen so far or than many readers might expect.
Yes, a surprising proportion of the front-line students seem to be 
satisfactorily paired off, but with the final part of the struggle still to come.
In plot terms that's awfully early to be celebrating happy-ever-after endings
- 'cos some of them won't be IMO.

We've had the books with the teen crushes, the almost puppy-love passions
Hermy/Krum/Ron in GoF; Harry/Cho in OoP; more or less everybody in HBP, 
but now comes the time of testing. As Lyn says, it'll be loyalties strained and
death doing the sundering and how they all cope that'll be central to book 7. 
All foreshadowed with the Longbottoms and the Cho/Cedric disaster in 
GoF/OoP. But this time it'll be with characters that the readers have identified
with for a long time.
Get ready to have your withers wrung. 

"Those that survive" is a phrase that herself has used on more than one 
occasion, and the general run of posts has often considered who is going
to end up on the wrong end of a green flash, but doesn't often consider
what this may mean to those left behind. The HP series has been classified 
by fans as a fantasy, an adventure, a whodunnit-and-why, but it is set up
to be quite a notable tragedy too, if Jo wants to take it that way. She may
well do so -"Death is a major theme of the series."

In a lot of ways I often compare Jo with Dickens - oh, not the quality of
the writing, though in years to come who can say? But in what she does
to her characters. Not many soft options seem to be on offer and except
for Harry's encounters with Voldy there have been fewer cast members
let off the hook when in dire situations than might be expected from the
usual childrens/teen tale. It'd be brave and unpopular to keep the trend 
going, but I hope she does.

Kneasy