deathtocapslock | A Humorous Anecdote (Reply)

So 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.