Varitek...I didn't say she had a relationship with Snape! (That indeed would be unthinkable.....) really, you should go back and read it more thoroughly...There was a part in there where I know I said that the flower imagery wasn't a suggestion of their PRESENT mental state (God forbid!) but Jo giving a visual allegory of their future puberty, and an allusion to what that MIGHT have blossomed had things gone another way, on many fronts. I was just stating that there was some kind of (initial) attraction of some sort, a childish attraction, some kind of phsycological thing going on that IF he were more presentable both physically and in his ways, it could have ripened at a later date into something else. Should I just put a disclaimer in my posts that says "This is what happened, but JKR likes to screw around with our minds, so she drops that kind of little liguistic bombshell and watches the debris fly"? There are SO many shades of gray here and you seem to be reveling in black and white. Some things in the HP saga are black and white (I could list all the moral ones you do, but nobody by the end is pure.)
As to reading too much into possible sexual imager--or at least suggesting that it does not exist-- I don't think I am. This stuff is right out there in black and white, esp things like the flower, and I'll be waiting for the scholarly journal article someday that picks up on it. It's just as clear as the sensual imagery in the origional 18th-century version of Beauty and the Beast. (forgot the author's name--her name is something like 6 words long. )Have you read the origional version of Beauty and the Beast? Cocteau hints at some of this stuff in his film but even the film--with a few notable exceptions-- is considerably toned down. I'm not being pretentious--I'm not the one who's going to be writing this stuff. (and good luck on your article BTW.)
As for Patronuses--you state that "it is something innate in that person's soul that determines the Patronus". Like the deamons in the HDM series. I have read HDM and know what you mean. Though I think there are other influences to Jo's creating the Patronus..such as Native American spirit guardian lore--where, for some tribes, the honor was accorded to some in the tribe that they had the privalege of choosing their guardian upon their adult naming day if their deeds merited it,just as they chose a new name,or were accorded one---- and, more recently, Jean Auel's "Earth's Children" series (the Ayla and Jondalar books, where everyone has an animal totem.) Exactly! That is what I was saying....although I merely stated it was the nature of the memory. I should have added that the person's soul interacts with the memory too, but thought that the soul but was too bovious. This in my mind would determne the existence of the doe Patronus on his part.....You think that this would preclude SNape from sharing her Patronus; I see it as the opposite.
(I can't believe that New Line had the guts to try to make HDM into a film...those books are downright blasphemous, I read them several times to get over my shock and if anything it has only grown with time. Lyra's farewell tearjerking speech to--I'll call him James b/c I forget his name--about her love for him is like sickly-sweet poison. Never was anything so verbally lovely written in service of such a blasphemous cause. And I KNOW about the whole "Republic of Heaven"crap. And no, I am NOT Catholic, and glad I'm not. For me, HDM is the anti-LOTR, the modernist blast from the current perpetually erupting geyser of cynicism and despair. Good luck indeed explaining "dust", New Line. And making Lyra a couple of yrs younger won't help. And I knowwhat you'llsay, Varitek, "you're not open-minded enough, there are several layers in that story, etc" but I have read the series at least 10 times and it all seems pretty clear to me. Anti-Catholic or mainstream religion, I can see that--but anti God? When the angels, who are named, are the bad guys, that says enough for me. And there aren't any LOTR-like shades of gray. Lyra has far fewer flaws than Frodo--or Harry. Her name says it all. Of course New Line will take the angels out of the film, anyway.
As to your essay, good luck! If I had the time to get into an argument with you on Leaky I would--but I am very busy and trying to finish the book also. Like I said, you'll get many rebuttals more harsh than mine if it gets published, b/c there are some outright Snape worshipers out there, those for whom he is redeemed and at the end good. I didn't think he was, and like I said, for me, the beautiful imagery associated, subconsciously, with him iin Book 7 s Jo's moving suggestion of what could have been. There will be many more than I who love the character, but I don't hold him up as a "hero" in the traditional sense. I don't...I am merely intruiged and moved by him.
Oh..and how is the office situation BTW? What do you think of our dear Governor and Bruno? PATHETIC isn't it? (I'm in Albany, yep, 2 1/2 hrs north of you...mwahahaha
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A bit like this thread, really! (I mean that in a good way; I'm one of her 'obsessives' afterall!)
If the Wizarding world had TV, I could just see her doing a TV show, with Hagrid as her assistant. "This weeks' episode: wrestling the baby Blast-ended skrewt" or whatever. Hagrid telling her to put on protective gloves and she says (dreamy voice) "Gloves? Daddy never used gloves" and diving right in....or discovering a new species of dragon, an egg hatches and the baby dragon spits out purple fire, Luna's hair catches on fire and she says (dreamy voice) "Wow! I never saw purple fire before!" before charming it out....I can just imagine Evanna Lynch doing this in a film, smash cut to Neville watching the TV at Hogwarts and freaking out, " I TOLD her not to do this!" Sending his Patronus to yell at her, and then she sends hers back to inform him "(no more dreamy voice) "Neville, darling, if you contest me one more time, when I get back, you will sleep on the couch for a week." The marriage of Neville and Luna could be a sitcom all in itself, I wish I knew how to do this stuff on the Internet, I'd be writing one right now.........choking on my iced tea, must stop....no more books, and thus, no more movies! DANGIT!
