Spoiling the fun

[Barry Arrowsmith]

--- In the_old_crowd at yahoogroups.com, "susiequsie23" <susiequsie23 at s...> wrote:

> So then what *is* the reason, do you think, Kneasy?  If Jo's not letting info slip in order 
to direct people away from "unfruitful" pursuits, then why is she leaking info?  You didn't 
buy the "she doesn't want huge segments of pissed-off fans at the end, so she's letting 
them down on a few issues now" possibility?  (Damage control, as it were?)  If not that, and 
if not a concern over not wanting us to not go too far afield, then why *is* she doing it?


You tell me.
But I don't think that the possibility of pissing off a few hundred thousand
fans has much to do with it. If half the female fan-base can grit their teeth,
dry their eyes and get over Sirius, and 'the nice, gentle people are inviolable'
brigade can swallow the arch-Goody getting chopped down, then she'll
hardly be in fear and trembling because she's not sorted the Longbottoms out,
especially as something nastily permanent could well befall young Potter - 
which would cause her to be crossed off a lot of Christmas card lists..

Could be a combination of things - clearing the decks and damping down fan
expectations. It's a possibility (no more) that although the basic plot thread
was right there from the start, minor threads and sub-plots weren't, were added
to provide the required complexity/depth - but that what at one time seemed 
like a nice bit of background/detail/minor action has come back to bite her on 
the bum, metaphorically speaking. It might be obstructing the resolution of
something else that's more important to the books.

Rewrites have been done before - whole chapters dumped - holes discovered
and fixed. Maybe it's happened again. Perhaps somewhere there's a not-quite
satisfactory-enough version of HP where Frank and Alice live happily ever after, 
but it had to go. Doesn't explain spilling the beans on RAB, though.

Nope. Like much else to do with HP we lack sufficient information to be sure.

Kneasy