What do we lose?

[pippin_999]

Carolyn: 
> The issue for me is that the first three, arguably four, books seemed 
> full of tantalisingly adult clues and sub-text. From OOP onwards, she 
> has seemed to want to resolutely eradicate that kind of speculation. 
> I suppose there are only so many buckets of cold water you can take 
> before walking off in disappointment (although, of course, I remain 
> secretly convinced that Snape IS a vampire and Peter was betrayed).
> 
> Originally I thought she was going to create a very clever, complex 
> 21st century fairytale-cum-detective story that could be read at all 
> sorts of levels, and be extremely ambiguous in its messages. That 
> seems pretty unlikely now, though I suppose she could go mad and 
> write a 1000-page finale that leaves us all breathless, confused and 
> desperate for explanation, which she decides never to provide.

Pippin:
But, erm, that's what we've got. Well, the moral message probably isn't
ambiguous. Murder and racism  are not the answer. The answer's behind
a door in the MoM-- and what kind of an answer is that?  Ursula LeGuin 
said something like, the only people who object to imaginary answers 
to the problem of evil are those who think they've got a real one.

But the clever, complex 21st century fairytale is alive and kicking, IMO. 

Right now the issues raised in the last book have overshadowed everything
else, to the grave detriment of fandom discussion groups, which suddenly
seem to have nothing else to talk about. But that is classic misdirection. The
howls of outrage by fans who feel they were misled about shipping will
be nothing to those who feel they were misled about Snape, especially
if the real villain turns out to be Lupin. :) People will feel ill-used, and
woe betide JKR when people realize that they really did get the wool
pulled over their eyes. She's been laughing at us all the time. How 
dare she!

But honestly, I never thought my piddling contribution to JKR's net wealth
had purchased me the right not to be laughed at -- good grief!  We
fans *are* a funny lot. And why shouldn't she laugh at us? We laugh
at her, don't we? Call her innumerate and jeer at her for being bad at 
maths? It's no fun being smart and being bad at arithmetic. Everyone
thinks you're doing it on purpose. I know.

But I also know what this is, this sudden surge of bad feeling. It's tension.
The fandom went nuts like this just before OOP came out. We knew
someone we cared about was going to *die* and it made some of us
more than a little crazy. But at least in those days, we knew when the
release date was going to be, and we knew when there were going to 
be interviews and chats. 

We  could *prepare* for them. But now information spurts unpredictably 
from the website and there's no knowing when a choice theory is going 
to be shot down or, just as bad from the point of view of discussion, 
confirmed. It makes the only safe objects of discussion things we 
*know* she's not going to tell us before 7 comes out. But that raises
the tension to nutcase level. At that point, like Ginny, the only sensible
thing to do is act like you don't care, whether you do or not.

Pippin
who agrees that Peter was betrayed