Right. The chief problem with Rowling's idea of aging the readership of her books along with the characters is that certain things that fly in a children's book are absurd and nonfunctional in a book aimed at older readers. Snape being so emotionally involved with his students is something you can chalk up to the nasty teacher in a boarding school trope, but -- taken realistically, it's also creepy and not an attribute of career longevity. And I think the realistic take becomes more and more salient the older the characters and the readers get.
Actually the reason the Potter books really lost me was that blithe adherence to genre tropes, in a situation that made them feel monstrous to me. The whole thing with Rita Skeeter, and the involuntary tabloidization of children, rang real-world alarm bells with me, and I just couldn't get past it. Same again, when nobody stepped in and said, "No, this won't do" when the Goblet of Fire had Harry's name in it.
I think, if the characters (and intended readership) were still 7 or 8, or if the tone of the novels were consistently droll and unrealistic, I could have given it a pass, but because I was being asked to take seriously (in some ways, for the first time) the danger of Voldemort, I couldn't help but take seriously the increasing instances of adults failing to act like adults.
I am loving Ron-is-Dumbledore.
In some part, I confess, because it beats the hell out of Ron-is-Toast.
it's also creepy and not an attribute of career longevity.
There are always those teachers you can't hardly fire because of connections or tenure.
I am certain that it's going to turn out essential that Snape be kept around and that Dumbledore has made a point of doing so. Besides, what has he done that's so rotten? He gives one kid extra demerits while the rest of the world tip-toes around the brat. Sure, he has issues about Harry's parents and certainly over-shares, but the Dursley's aren't complaining so who is going to stop him?
Any teacher who over-shares with peri-pubescent kids is probably not long for his middle school. It doesn't have to be big pointy arrows of criminal activity; he just sets off all the creepiness alarm bells. He's the sort of guy who, IME, probably gets kicked upstairs into administration just to reduce his number of opportunities for being reportably creepy.
But, you know, Hogwarts isn't a school with any kind of professional review board, or for that matter safety laws. I don't actually think we're meant to take Snape seriously as a disciplinary case waiting to happen -- it's just that I can't not apply real-world knowledge to his protrayal, and in the real world, he looks pretty bad.
I'm also frighteningly convinced by that Ron is Dumbledore argument.
I'm half intrigued/convinced by Dumbledore-as-Ron, half want to smack the writer of the web site for taking a kid's book waaaaaaay too seriously.
half want to smack the writer of the web site for taking a kid's book waaaaaaay too seriously.
Which is kind of ironic, considering the board you're posting this on.
Dude, if you ever find me wanking anything for more than 500 words, feel free to smack me upside the head and tell me to go get some fresh air.
Maybe Ron couldn't go back and save Buckbeak, in some part, because then there would have been THREE of him.
And it's interesting that Ron doesn't know about the time travel...
So the theory is that, at some point in the future, Ron goes back to the 19th century and takes the name of Dumbledore, right?
My questions are:
1. Why go back so far? It's odd that Ron/Dumbledore would just bide his time for 140 years or so, especially given the number of things that could go wrong that time. The obvious reason would be in hopes of preventing the Riddle/Voldemort/Death Eater crisis, but if he meant to do that, he failed. (And even then, he wouldn't have had to go back past the '50's.) As for wanting an aged physical appearance -- they're wizards, and there must be a thousand spells and glamours that would achieve that.
2. Who filled Dumbledore's role in Timeline A, the one Ron went back to correct? If there was no one, it seems likely the school would have fallen apart.
2. How was Ron's cover in the 19th century arranged? And on the same note, what have we heard about Dumbledore's boyhood? If Ron posed as an orphan/foundling wizard, as seems easiest, I would want to have heard that about Dumbledore -- that he rose from nothing -- as it would likely be part of his legend (for those who liked him) and something to be used against him (for the Malfoys and co.).
The physical resemblance is striking, though, so I'm not willing to dismiss the idea entirely. What might be possible is that in Timeline A, Dumbledore died at some point during or before that covered by the books, and Ron went back, artificially aged and head crammed with everything Dumbledore knew, to fill his shoes.
