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Gwen wrote:
Now, you do realize that all the bouncing back and forth you, Elkins, Eileen, and Tabouli have been indulging in lately is fanfic, right?
::small smile::
Oh, bite your tongue. It's speculation.
Heh. No, but seriously, I do see a distinction, albeit a very hazy one. Both fanfic and fanspec may be seen as attempts to impose ones own imaginative extrapolations from the original material on others, to colonize not only the canon itself, but also other people's readings of the canon.
The rules of engagement, however, are very different. Fanfic 'defends its thesis,' so to speak, by seducing its readers through compelling characterization, polished prose, a riveting plot...in short, through all of the tools of story-telling as a craft. Fanspec, OTOH, uses the tools of literary analysis in its attempts to convert and sway its readers.
Of course, the weapons in fiction's arsenal are just plain better than those at literary analysis' disposal—they are more convincing, more compelling, more seductive; they are altogether more effective. This is one of the major reasons, I suspect, that so many people who avoid fanfic altogether out of the fear that it might "sully" the canon for them are nonetheless perfectly happy not only to read, but even to engage in 'loose canon' speculation. It is also likely the reason that so many people give way to the temptation to enlist some of the weapons of fiction, even when they are writing a supposedly 'speculative' defense.
There's obviously significant overlap. Popular speculations often seem to me to owe their popularity far less to their canonical plausibility as to their fictive appeal. Neville Has A Memory Charm, for example, is certainly canonically defensible—but is that really why people love it so much? I don't know. I rather suspect that people love it mainly because they think that it makes for a rousing good story. We don't love certain speculations because we believe them to be true. Rather, we desperately want them to be true because we love them.
Looking at my own, er, contributions to these undoubtedly infuriating-to-many threads, I see...complication. The basic rock-bottom premise of my Avery fixation, for example—that Avery has been quite consciously and deliberately primed by the author to serve a more major role in future volumes—is dead solid canonical speculation. The basic premise of Fourth Man is far less plausible, but still canon-based. But all of the baggage surrounding the theory? The accrual of variations on the theme (Fourth Man With Imperius, Fourth Man With SHIP, With Remorse, With Guilt, and so forth)? The discussions of which branch of the MoM Avery should work in and why? The actual depictions of NervelessHysteric!Avery?
Getting pretty shady, I do agree.
Even poor NervelessHysteric!Avery, though, is really far more an in-joke than he is a character. He's not a character at all, really: he's a ludicrous caricature of a broken man. Even in a piece of humorous writing, even in a parody, he still wouldn't really make the fictive grade. Avery's really more commentary than character. He stands in as my personification of an entire collection of genres of fannish speculation: Sympathy For the Devil, Redeemable Villain, Guilt 'n' Angst, Reader Adoption of Minor Characters, and so forth.
Cupid's Snitch, OTOH, is a far trickier case, because it is parody, and parody is indeed a type of fiction. What makes it an odd case, though, is that it isn't really parodying the original source material at all—it is not a parody of the Harry Potter books in the least—but rather a specific type of backstory speculation about the source material. It's commentary on the commentary, and outside of the context of the discussions on this list, it is not only utterly unfunny but purely and simply bewildering (as my husband's evident puzzlement when I tried to explain it to him made abundantly clear).
So I'm not sure what to call this sort of thing. It's really neither fanfic nor fanspec, IMO, but (like the silly SHIPping role- play) some other form of play.
The Ludic Activity That Dare Not Speak Its Name?
Perhaps we should just call it "messing about with the props in the fictive wreckage while we wait for Book Five comes out," and leave it at that.
So on to a few brief comments on your Malfoy backstory (which I absolutely adore, by the way).
On the Plot To Kill Grindlewald:
I also time this conveniently just before the fall of Grindlewald in 1945. . . .Riddle and Malfoy were among a small group who tried to assassinate their erstwhile lord. But before they could do the job, Dumbledore and his merry band arrived on the scene and stopped him for them.
::nods::
1945. Grindlewald. An assassination plot. And...
Hey! Gwen, where's the Time-Turner? You know that there has to be a Time-Turner involved here somehow, don't you? How can there be impassioned ends-means arguments over the wisdom or the justification of going back in time to assassinate Grindlewald without a Time-Turner?
Please tell me that Dumbledore and his crew are using a Time-Turner, Gwen. Please? Please?
On the Imperius Defense:
Oh, yes, in my version, he went to the Ministry within 48 hours to "confess" his involvement (under Imperius, of course). . . .I think that in the wake of the tumultuous and shocking events of 31 October 1981, many of the DE's scattered. I think that might have been part of a plan--in case anything should happen. I have a feeling many of the DE's "covered their tracks" on 1-2 November and set their stories straight before they could accidentally incriminate one another.
Actually, all loose-canon snarkiness aside, that's precisely how I've been imagining all that going down as well. It certainly seems consistent with Hagrid's description of all of these wizards stumbling around confused, as if they'd just come out of trances. I think that if you wanted to make the Imperius defense stick, then you'd really have to turn yourself in to the Ministry and confess — and do so before not too much time had passed. The fact that so many of the DEs got away with it has always rather implied to my mind, as well, that they must have had a contingency plan already laid in place.
On Lucius Malfoy's Job:
Interestingly, the trading cards list him as "underminister," or something like it, according to report, but I don't see him being a civil servant, even if wizard politics is more like American, with campaigning and general elections to top jobs (and of course [corrupt] businessmen going into politics).
It could be a sinecure that came with the family name and estate. If there was once a wizarding aristocracy, or a wizarding equivalent of the House of Lords, then those old families could well have retained perks of that sort even once the system as a whole had been dismantled.
Gwen (who refuses point-blank to participate in the list's ongoing cyber-action role playing game, but you kids have fun.)
Gwen's words slowly echo away. The young mermaid on the smaller rock pushes her scuba mask up onto her forehead and looks around, eyes wide.
"But..." she whispers. "But I don't understand. Where was she speaking from?"
"I don't know." Elkins hugs herself hard, shivering. "That was...really kind of creepy, wasn't it?"
—Elkins
Posted to HPfGU by Elkins on February 21, 2002 9:37 PM
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