As most of you know who read my blog, I like fanfiction. I have been reading Harry Potter fanfiction for six years and so I have seen quite a variety of ideas come through. There are many debates that have sprung up on various subjects with new ones popping up after each book and the revision of older ones. Eternally popular are the shipping debates. Shipping or somewhat more correctly 'shipping comes from "relationship" and is both a verb and a noun meaning you are in support of a specific romantic pairing of characters. Sometimes fans even get it right: as soon as Tonks was introduced there sprang up a Lupin/Tonks ship that was proved true in book six. There are myriad other ships some little more than rafts lashed together and others that are luxury cruise liners. Most ships are given names that are then adopted widely (isn't the internet wonderful? We can all share our madness!) Believe me ther are some weird ones such as Sir Cadogan and the Fat Lady (called Whispers in the Walls) or Moody/Tonks called Constant Blue Chameleon. (If you are interested in seeing what other ships there are access the Ship Registry at Fictionalley Park. Beware not all of them are heterosexual relationships, not all of them are even human pairs.)
One of the biggest debates in this subject is of course who Harry will end up with. The debates on this subject can get violent. Many people are adamantly rooting for the H.M.S. Orange Crush (Harry/Ginny) with many rooting just as adamantly for the H.M.S. Pumpkin Pie (Harry/Hermione). Now my personal favorite ship for Harry is either the good ship Loonies and Lions (Harry/Luna) because it is a lot of fun--especially if you are attempting to write Luna--or the Lone Hero which is Harry/No one (a preference commonly referred to as 'landlocked').
I am not against Harry/Ginny but I am very very against Harry/Hermione (and very pro-Ron/Hermione). I am so against it that I simply cannot read stories that feature the pairing, no matter how well other elements are written or how well the plot is constructed. I cannot stand the H.M.S. Pumpkin Pie. It deserves to sink quicker than the Titanic and with out nearly as much media attention. I just started reading a story that then started looking like a Harry/Hermione pairing, and then I felt like taking a Beater's Bat to the author wanting to scream that it was all wrong and their characterisations were off and Harry and Hermione would not be compatible as boyfriend/girlfriend.
Can you see why I refuse to read them? I always get this way when I think about that ship.
After I read that bit of the story I had to go 'cleanse the palate' so to speak. So I hopped over to the HP-Lexicon to re-read one of the best essays I have ever seen on the relationship between Hermione and Harry. If you want to read it it is here (it also has great support for Ron/Hermione). I wish the author would update it for Half-Blood Prince but even without it there is a lot of stuff that the Harry/Hermione shippers are ignoring.
That said, I normally try to stay away from anything labeled 'romance' in the first place, and especially anything that even remotely suggests anything other than a platonic relationship between Harry and Hermione.
Now, don't you fell enriched and informed?
Didn't think so.
Well then, here is something of substance:
JKR on her website recently answered the latest poll question:
What happens to a secret when the Secret-Keeper dies?
I found her answer very interesting indeed:
I was surprised that this question won, because it is not the one that I'd have voted for… but hey, if this is what you want to know, this is what you want to know!
When a Secret-Keeper dies, their secret dies with them, or, to put it another way, the status of their secret will remain as it was at the moment of their death. Everybody in whom they confided will continue to know the hidden information, but nobody else.
Just in case you have forgotten exactly how the Fidelius Charm works, it is
"an immensely complex spell involving the magical concealment of a secret inside a single, living soul. The information is hidden inside the chosen person, or Secret-Keeper, and is henceforth impossible to find -- unless, of course, the Secret-Keeper chooses to divulge it" (Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban)
In other words, a secret (eg, the location of a family in hiding, like the Potters) is enchanted so that it is protected by a single Keeper (in our example, Peter Pettigrew, a.k.a. Wormtail). Thenceforth nobody else – not even the subjects of the secret themselves – can divulge the secret. Even if one of the Potters had been captured, force fed Veritaserum or placed under the Imperius Curse, they would not have been able to give away the whereabouts of the other two. The only people who ever knew their precise location were those whom Wormtail had told directly, but none of them would have been able to pass on the information.
So here is the question (copied from one of the members of my Yahoo!Group): how did Hagrid get to Godric's Hollow to retrieve Harry? Without Pettigrew to tell him, he shouldn't have been able to get there. And if Pettigrew told him, then he should have known the truth about Sirius...
Besides that what is the future of Grimmauld Place? Dumbledore died as Secret Keeper meaning it is still hidden. So though current members of the Order can enter (including Snape) no new members could enter. If Harry were to decide to sell the property he couldn't show it to a Real Estate agent nor to any prospective buyers. And what about a few generations in the future? When all those currently in the know die? Is Grimmauld Place doomed forever to be hidden? Of course book five shows us that it does not have to be a spoken revelation of the secret that will allow a person access, Dumbledore wrote a note for Harry to be able to enter the house, but surely they wouldn't keep something like that around, it is too much of a security risk.
So anyway, there is my extremely long post on a fictitious universe.
1 comment:
Wow. Now I know a *lot* more about the details of the HP world. I had a vague knowledge about both of these topics, but I had no idea that so many people had dedicated so much time to finding out more and supposing the rest. But I think it is a good thing... it fleshes out the universe even more. I think the more details added to a universe the better.
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