Waiting for the dinner bell to do the bell thing

[ewe2]

Talisman and Kneasy rescue us again! The trouble is, in the process, their
encyclopaedic roaming of canon so addle a poor simple penguin's brain there's
little left I can make sense of, let alone contribute to. But I do have
thoughts to wit:

A good read of the List turns up some fascinating flotsam among the seaweed.
Talisman has made a massive structure based on the idea that it is DD who has
manipulated Riddle, as a way of explaining the gaping hole of canon where
Riddle's backstory is supposed to be, and it's not the first explanation of
how Riddle got to be Heir of Slytherin. It is in fact, one of the most vexed
questions in HP fandom judging by the sheer output of questions about what
constitutes an Heir, is that literal as in bloodlines, how does one become one
if that isn't the case, and so on. Note the lack of interest in Ravenclaw and
Hufflepuff. It's all Gryffindor and Slytherin, the "active" or "yang" houses
as some have seen it. It seems odd that in a story exhorting all wizards to
pull together despite their perceived differences, some appear more equal than
others in this noble quest. That POV is pretty handy sometimes. Surely the
other two Founders had a voice in this ancient Argument? Does relative
passivity doom half the Hogwarts population (perhaps half the WW?) to mere
onlooker status? Where are their Heirs and why are they sleeping on the job?

Other questions are raised by the Talisman/Kneasy thesis, which are a little
more abstract. For instance, canon makes no explanation or excuse how the
entrance to an ancient Chamber happened to exist anachronistically in an
upper-floor girls bathroom. There is no canon for this question. You will go
insane trying to keep up with the bizarre explanations on the List, all
attempting to make this detail "fit" into Potterverse Reality. Of course
there's no such thing, and it's pointless to try. Much of CoS smacks of
metaphor anyway, so why not a fairytale-like conjunction of concrete reality
and the Big Scary Hole. I like to think of it as an example of how the scary
seemingly-random universe to a child's POV settles down into something more
and less to an adult. And the Chamber of Secrets has always jarred; surely an
ironic a title as any.

It's certainly fun to spin theories; as much fun to watch too. But I'm
beginning to doubt that we can realistically expect all canon to fit. I think
this is because it's the kind of trap readers have always attempted to set for
authors. What do readers expect to gain by bailing authors up against the wall
crying WHY? other than an embarrassed excuse and a quick getaway? And I think
that if JKR hasn't by now realised what this means in her case then she's
considerably less clever than she appears. The example I gave of the CoS
entrance is a classic trap of this kind; what explanation would suffice? I'm
sure you can all think of several better ones that you'd like to spring after
book 7. Just be wary about slapping your money down; I suspect there won't be
a lot of change out of your theory fiver. Then there's the Star Trek
explanation: how Spock comes back from the dead is much more improbable than
the improbable situation leading up to his death in the first place.

Implicit in Kneasy's remarks about the games fandom plays, is a kind of
Pavlovian response. That is, our obsession is redirected from the object
(canon) to the representation (what canon implies). I know that's stating the
bleeding obvious to some, but I get bombarded with this truism literally every
day, and the reaction to the Lupinlore Manifesto has been most instructive in
this regard. The devil is indeed in the details. Perhaps an illustration from
that other over-the-top fandom, the Tolkienistas, is helpful. Because once
Tolkien had finished LotR, he never got anything properly finished. He was too
busy trying to tie up the loose ends introduced by the LotR additions to
Middle-Earth and answering questions that it raised. The fans are not
completely to blame for this; he admitted he found this game 'only too fatally
addictive' as well. But it is putting the story aside for the world the story
inhabits, and trying to make _that_ world fit _this_ one in its fundamental
assumptions. Kneasy makes a good point; this theorising is only proper during
the life of the series, not beyond. I'm as prone to metathinking as anyone
here, but I draw the line at specific orders to the author, which to me is one
of the prime logical results of "extending" canon to fit the shape one sees
in it. What would be the result if the HP movies were made _after_ the series
with no authorial input rather than the current arrangement, to make another
parallel with Tolkienism?

Time to make some dins, and if my brain isn't completely scrambled I'll
continue in like vein anon.

-- 
Emacs is an alright OS, but it lacks a decent editor.