A Humorous Anecdote
Mar. 19th, 2012 10:58 pm![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
sweettalkeress.livejournal.com posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
deathtocapslockSo the last time I visited TVTropes’ Harry Potter pages, I came across someone who said that in actuality, everything about the last book made sense because don’t you see, the events of the series HAD NEVER HAPPENED BEFORE and so the characters COULDN’T HAVE KNOWN HOW ANYTHING WOULD WORK and so all the supposed inconsistencies are really just addressing that point!
This of course is basically bullshit because whether intentional or not there’s only so much inconsistency that the audience can be expected to go along with, and the characters can only plead ignorance so many times before all willing suspension of disbelief is dropped.
Case in point: awhile back I stumbled upon a wacky story which made no sense whatsoever and was written by an author who’s probably no older than 15 who somehow decided that she was an expert on science and medicine. Anyway, one scene that really stood out in terms of lunacy was a scene in which a character gives birth to a baby that’s part-human and part-dragon. Now, that doesn’t make any sense in its own right, but since the author clearly expected us to go along with it, I went along with it. So the character does some research and learns that dragons in their world are ovoviviparous.
Now for those of you who aren’t well-versed in animal biology, ovoviviparous animals (which are mostly snakes, lizards, fish, etc.) give birth to live young. However, rather than set up an organ system the way mammals do it, with an organ to house the offspring and an organ to provide nutrients, these creatures produce eggs with yolk and all the features associated with any other egg, except that they never leave the mother’s body (“ovoviviparous” literally means “egg” + “live-bearing”).
So it doesn’t make any sense for a human to have a baby that way because a human’s physiology just can’t change that way, but since the author expected us to go along with the idea that it was magic, why not?
So then, in a scene that makes no sense, the character has her part-dragon, part-human baby… and it comes out with an umbilical cord! So, for those of you who missed that, an umbilical cord is used specifically to connect the developing offspring to the placenta. In other words, a truly ovoviviparous animal doesn’t need one because her offspring are nourished in a conventional egg with yolk. In the end, my suspension of disbelief was completely thrown out the window, and no attempt made by the author to argue “but really, there was NO WAY THE CHARACTER COULD HAVE KNOWN that she wouldn’t be reproducing ovoviviparously” would have made any difference.
That is what reading through JKR’s inconsistencies (and the fandom’s reaction to them) is like. Except, nowhere near as funny.
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Date: 2012-03-20 03:17 am (UTC)Ow.
There's a difference between characters not being aware of everything ahead of time or of all the rules governing their world, and those rules actually being in effect (including ones of basic logic and causality). The characters might not know what's going on, but the author better know.
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Date: 2012-03-22 03:31 am (UTC)It really amazes me how far people will go to justify their love of these books. Hopefully they will eventually fade into obscurity so that the rest of us don't have to hear about them. *sigh*
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Date: 2012-03-20 07:03 am (UTC)DH has an idiot plot. Only someone who's on the same intellectual level as the characters in such a plot would fail to recognize this. Honestly, such tortured rationalizations show both how desperately bad DH is, and how desperate the JKR dittoheads are to rationalize its badness away.
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Date: 2012-03-20 08:38 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-03-20 11:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-03-20 02:34 pm (UTC)But yeah, I'm going to add to the chorus of those saying that there is a vast distance between a shocking reveal that makes you look at the previous series in a new light, and an ass pull (or worse, a series of ass pulls) that is designed to haul your rotting carcass of a story over something vaguely identifiable as a finish line. The main difference to me is logic. The first will actually make sense when you go back and reevaluate what you thought you knew. If you've done your job really well, it will work even better than the fan theories and leave everyone in awe that anyone could come up with something so awesomely unexpected (this almost never happens, but a creator should still dream and aspire). On the other hand, ass pulls confuse the plot further without adding anything of value or substance, serving only to move the plot from one arbitrary point to the next, turning what was supposed to be a journey into a slide-show where the projector keeps breaking down and half the slides are in sideways, backwards, or upside down.
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Date: 2012-03-20 04:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-03-21 02:39 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-03-21 11:44 am (UTC)I really love fanfic sometimes. That author rescued my favourite character from some of that horrible cheesiness that JKR inflicted, and fixed a stupid plot contrivance, with one eminently appropriate idea.
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Date: 2012-03-23 03:33 pm (UTC)http://occlumency.sycophanthex.com/viewstory.php?sid=6153
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Date: 2012-03-24 02:42 am (UTC)Thanks for the link!
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Date: 2012-03-21 03:30 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-03-21 09:39 pm (UTC)Kill VM, then commit suicide, perhaps? Maybe that would destroy the powers of the Elder Wand as well!
DD would have to hope that the wand's power to induce hubris in its master would not have time to kick in (so Harry wouldn't hink he could live and control the Horcrux) before his careful programming worked ... but maybe his own hubris would cover that.
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Date: 2012-03-21 10:14 pm (UTC)After DH, reallly, nothing makes sense any more. I still don't believe in the Elder Wand! Still less do I believe that Harry could have gotten mastery over Draco's wand simply by yanking it out of the other boy's hand.
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Date: 2012-03-22 05:27 am (UTC)I don't see it either, which is why I am inclined to think Dumbles was planning to deactivate the EW by dying undefeted, and leaving Severus custody of a 'dead' EW as a distraction for Tom. With the risk that Tom would kill Severus for it before Severus had the chance of telling Harry about the Harrycrux. But the latter can be overcome by having Dumbles' portrait deliver the message. Now that Terri found the evidence that headmasters portraits can indeed show up in portraits in other parts of the castle we know this is possible.
This still doesn't explain what Dumbles planned for after Harry's 'death'. Because there would still be Nagini and Tom himself to deal with.
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Date: 2012-03-22 07:17 am (UTC)It's rather hard to believe that this has never happened before after all, even if the wand does induce hubris. Did none of the previous owners have unfortunate accidents or illnesses? For that matter, how do we know there's been a clear and unbroken chain of command until Draco muddied it by disarming Dumbles and Harry then took it unknowingly by snatching Draco's original wand? Allowing for the wand to return to default mode allows for some degree of confusion- several false owners pass until the current 'true' one dies, at which point whoever's left with mighty phallis wins. It might also work if the degrees of separation between the wand that defeated the EW and string of wands that were only defeating each other became too great.
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Date: 2012-03-22 01:43 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-03-22 09:26 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-03-23 04:13 pm (UTC)In which case... had it not been for the unforeseen circumstance of Draco disarming Dumbles on the tower, Tom would have been the thing's legitimate master after that bit of grave-robbing. Imagine how well THAT would have turned out.
Good planning, Dumb One.
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Date: 2012-03-24 12:54 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-03-22 11:06 am (UTC)Severus' custody of the wand, dead or not, though, didn't distract VM for long ... not sure why DD would think it would. Severus' lifespan after VM decided he had control of it must have been expected to be measured in seconds, surely. (Maybe a bit longer if it actually worked for him and was in his hand - but I'm sure that's not what DD had in mind!) Perhaps the 'dead wand' plan was just to make VM overconfident later? A little bit easier for whoever's job it was to kill VM after the Harrycrux was gone - if VM thought he was invincible when he was really only nigh-invincible? :P
Another thought. As a portrait, would DD be able to change his plan, if he realised that being disarmed by Draco would 'count'? Or is a portrait only a partial recording, not able to make decisions?
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Date: 2012-03-22 03:15 pm (UTC)Mirrormere claims DD wasn't really painting a bullseye on Snape's back by trying to make him the master, because he hadn't expected Voldemort to learn of the Elder Wand's existence. The main reason the "latent plan" sprung a leak was that Harry blew his cover during the Seven Potters episode. Losing their confrontation caused Voldemort to realize he'd need a serious weapons upgrade, he consulted Ollivander and the rest is history.
This seems like a pretty clever fanwank with at least one glaring weakness. As you pointed out, Snape having the live Wand would mean Voldemort could accidentally become its master at any time, just asking for Snape's normal wand would be enough. If Dumbledore accepted that risk, he was an idiot. However, I think mirrormere is correct that DD never intended Harry to have the Elder Wand. The universe made it to fall in Harry's lap anyway because he deserves all the awesome stuff because shut up, that's why.
(Another weakness of mirrormere's theory is that if Snape was really meant to have the live wand, he should have been told about it. What kind of irresponsible, useless leader intends to give his subordinate an unbeatable weapon with which to defeat the Big Bad and not tell him he has it? Snape could have easily regained the mastery from Draco if he'd known it was an issue.)
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Date: 2012-03-22 03:45 pm (UTC)So Dumbles knew for certain Tom would be seeking some other wand. And he knew Tom had access to someone who might put him on the path to the Elder Wand itself.
So which wand would Tom choose as his alternate wand? In DH he used the opportunity to humiliate Lucius, but it would be as logical for him to ask for the wand that defeated Dumbledore (it had proved its power, it was lucky or some other line of thought). Or, once Severus is installed as headmaster, just go after Dumbledore's wand as spoils of war, proof of Voldemort's superiority over the dead headmaster. The only way to really keep a 'live' Elder Wand out of Tom's hands is to destroy it or put it somewhere inaccessible. As things turned out, it was fortunate that Tom picked Lucius' wand rather than Draco's.
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Date: 2012-03-22 09:20 pm (UTC)This makes me think that portraits either don't have the agency of living people, or perhaps don't remember all the way up to their death. If DD's portrait realised Draco had defeated him and the wand was still 'live', surely it would have done something about it? How hard would it have been to get SS to take it out of the tomb and hide the thing or throw it in a volcano or something? SS wouldn't have to be told the real reason, I'm sure ... and surely the risk of SS knowingly owning the Elder Wand would be less than VM with it anyway, in DD's mind?
BTW, do you suppose VM thought that the wand didn't actually work for DD or Grindelwald, since neither of them killed the previous owner?
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Date: 2012-03-23 05:42 am (UTC)I agree.
This makes me think that portraits either don't have the agency of living people, or perhaps don't remember all the way up to their death.
Sorry, but no. That's too easy an out for Twinkletoes. Portraitdore knew enough to order Severus about, so clearly he had agency. Also, he wasn't at all surprised when Harry treated the Elder Wand as a 'live' one (and then demonstrated that this was the case when he repaired the broken holly wand), so he must have learned or figured out what happened. Even if the portrait didn't remember the events on the tower (and why wouldn't it? At which point would its memories from life stop?) the obvious thing would be for portraitdore to ask Severus to fill him in on any missing details for the purpose of devising tactics. No, Albus' problem (well, one of them) was he did not believe anyone but Harry could withstand the temptation of the Elder Wand. He himself could guard it but couldn't bring himself to get rid of it, so surely someone so less morally pure like that spy of his that constantly hangs about with Tom would be taken over completely. Taking out Dark Lord Tom to replace him with Dark Lord Severus wasn't worth the bother.
As for what Tom believed - he saw Albus dueling with the EW. Whether he considered that Albus' native level or the result of enhancement by the EW is something only Tom knows. He knew his own magic was not enhanced by the EW.
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Date: 2012-03-23 11:32 am (UTC)Otherwise, it shouldn't be to hard to come up with some pretext why the wand - or all the contents of the tomb, if he wanted, to confuse the issue - needed to be hidden or destroyed. SS apparantly thought the Elder Wand was a fairy story, like most people in the WW except the lunatic fringe of Hallows seekers - or have I got the wrong end of the stick there? Leaving it where it was, it was very simple and obvious for VM to get his hands on, and as you say DD knew that VM would be after it.
On the portrait - sure, it ordered SS around (so you're probably right) but they were topics DD probably planned to nag him about anyway :). And as for not seeming surprised by what Harry did with the wand, well, isn't seeming wise after the event his usual mode?
Finally, I could easily believe a portrait wouldn't remember events leading up to its death, since people often can't remember chunks of time before a serious accident, and being zapped to death must surely cause some brain trauma :). I'll offer the !$%^& that much of an excuse ... I wish I knew how they are supposed to be created though (does anyone?). Are they a recording or a ghost?
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Date: 2012-03-23 04:38 pm (UTC)However, that's not what she wrote.
Violet (the Fat Lady) can get drunk and yell at students when hungover, shirk her duties to go off and play with friends, run away from danger, and lie to students. Phineas can be uncooperative to Dumbles, express admiration of someone he opposes philosophically, and react to news of his last scion's death. Sorry, Turing test here--if it acts exactly like a human (albeit in an artificially restricted environment), I have to assume it has human agency. How would you program a recording to choose to lie to a student out of annoyance?
And the portraits (and the ghosts) demonstrably learn things their living selves had never known. The originals of Sir Cadogan and the Grey Lady did not speak nor understand modern English, nor any dialect close enough to allow for comprehension of contemporary students. Nor could they have tolerated modern mores.
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Date: 2012-03-23 04:22 pm (UTC)The two previous Most Powerful Wizards had their powers (and reputations) enhanced by the (undisclosed use of the) Deathstick--and I equal or best them, unaided!
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Date: 2012-03-22 01:26 pm (UTC)What's worse is that in book 7 we're told that Dumbledore knew he was dying; in book 6, he doesn't behaves as if he knew this- if he only had a few months left he could surely have divulged more information and spent his time better.
Also, some gender-flipped Harriet Potter:
http://maaria.deviantart.com/art/Harriet-Potter-II-280079697
http://maaria.deviantart.com/art/Harriet-Potter-267897457