Elizabeth Culmer (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
edenfalling) wrote2009-08-19 11:20 pm
edenfalling) wrote2009-08-19 11:20 pm
Entry tags:
wherein Liz is still annoyed at having to work around J. K. Rowling's idiosyncrasies
I've been prodding at "Secrets" ch. 14 tonight -- I got through McGonagall's class and shunted Colin away for the moment (thank god). And then I realized I had an entire day (roughly 10am to after dinner) to get through before Ginny and Daphne meet to maybe establish a truce, and while normally I could skip right over that, one thing I am trying to do in this chapter is show Ginny attempting to reintegrate into Hogwarts -- or maybe just integrate at all, since she spent so much of the year rebuffing everyone in favor of her friendship with Tom, or her private war with Tom. So I didn't want her to just go off to the library or lurk in the common room. I wanted her to interact with somebody.
And then it occurred to me that Ginny obviously interacts with Harry at some point during the last month of term, since he makes the (obviously false, self-centered, and surface-only) observation that she was perfectly happy again. So I have sent Ginny wandering down to the lake where she will bump into the trio and... I dunno, do something.
Why do my outlines persist in expanding on me???
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In a related note, I have been trying to make sense of the timeline for the Weasley's vacation in Egypt, since that will be the setting for my epilogue. I have a CoS timeline calendar I printed from the HP Lexicon site years ago (holy shit, May of 2002 according to the printer notation) but that is completely unhelpful on this issue.
*pause*
I have just gone back to the site and looked up the calendar for PoA, but it is exactly the same for the dates in question (basically the month of July). The thing is, Harry receives letters and gifts on his birthday, July 31. One is a clipping of an article about the Weasleys winning the Galleon Draw and going to Egypt. The article is written as if the trip is something planned for the future, but the picture is clearly taken in Egypt. Hermione says the article appeared in the paper 'a week ago,' which would mean on July 24.
But the article says the Weasleys will spend 'a month in Egypt,' and Ron says they'll be back 'about a week before term starts,' which implies they left on July 24 and will return on August 24... so they cannot have already been in Egypt for the picture to be taken unless someone snapped it as soon as they stepped out of the Floo (or whatever wizards use for international travel), which seems odd. (Unless it was a posed photograph for promotional purposes? I suppose that's possible.)
In summary, ARGH.
My conclusion is that Hermione is being accurate (she usually is) and the article ran on July 24. But the article writer and Ron are being looser about time spans, and the Weasleys left around July 20-21 and will return maybe as early as August 21... which means Arthur won the lottery around mid-July (maybe as late as the 17th) so as to give his family a few days to pack and prepare, and Charlie and Bill enough warning to finagle time off work. (Charlie was on the trip, interestingly enough. He's not mentioned by name, but 'all nine of the Weasleys' -- 'six sons; and one daughter' -- are in the photograph.)
I think the main problem is that the article is the sort of human interest fluff one writes immediately after a person wins the lottery -- trust me, I sell newspapers, I know what those articles look like -- and yet the timeframe means it cannot have been written until at least a week after Mr. Weasley won, so the time flow of the entire section is confused.
Stupid Rowling and her epic fail on anything involving numbers and math. *grumble*
And then it occurred to me that Ginny obviously interacts with Harry at some point during the last month of term, since he makes the (obviously false, self-centered, and surface-only) observation that she was perfectly happy again. So I have sent Ginny wandering down to the lake where she will bump into the trio and... I dunno, do something.
Why do my outlines persist in expanding on me???
---------------
In a related note, I have been trying to make sense of the timeline for the Weasley's vacation in Egypt, since that will be the setting for my epilogue. I have a CoS timeline calendar I printed from the HP Lexicon site years ago (holy shit, May of 2002 according to the printer notation) but that is completely unhelpful on this issue.
*pause*
I have just gone back to the site and looked up the calendar for PoA, but it is exactly the same for the dates in question (basically the month of July). The thing is, Harry receives letters and gifts on his birthday, July 31. One is a clipping of an article about the Weasleys winning the Galleon Draw and going to Egypt. The article is written as if the trip is something planned for the future, but the picture is clearly taken in Egypt. Hermione says the article appeared in the paper 'a week ago,' which would mean on July 24.
But the article says the Weasleys will spend 'a month in Egypt,' and Ron says they'll be back 'about a week before term starts,' which implies they left on July 24 and will return on August 24... so they cannot have already been in Egypt for the picture to be taken unless someone snapped it as soon as they stepped out of the Floo (or whatever wizards use for international travel), which seems odd. (Unless it was a posed photograph for promotional purposes? I suppose that's possible.)
In summary, ARGH.
My conclusion is that Hermione is being accurate (she usually is) and the article ran on July 24. But the article writer and Ron are being looser about time spans, and the Weasleys left around July 20-21 and will return maybe as early as August 21... which means Arthur won the lottery around mid-July (maybe as late as the 17th) so as to give his family a few days to pack and prepare, and Charlie and Bill enough warning to finagle time off work. (Charlie was on the trip, interestingly enough. He's not mentioned by name, but 'all nine of the Weasleys' -- 'six sons; and one daughter' -- are in the photograph.)
I think the main problem is that the article is the sort of human interest fluff one writes immediately after a person wins the lottery -- trust me, I sell newspapers, I know what those articles look like -- and yet the timeframe means it cannot have been written until at least a week after Mr. Weasley won, so the time flow of the entire section is confused.
Stupid Rowling and her epic fail on anything involving numbers and math. *grumble*
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There are justifications on why the story might have been held. Depending on the news cycle, a non-time sensitive piece might be held. I know the newspaper I worked at kept "canned" stories for either a slow newsweek or because one week had so many time sensitive stories that any kind of feature was pulled. Most papers have a limit of pages set by advertising, and the news hole they can fill will be prioritized. That would explain why the "timing" of the piece doesn't match the pic that accompanied it; if it was canned for some reason, a lazy editor might not bother to update it. And The Prophet is not the most reliable/respectable adherent of journalistic integrity. (Often reading the "news" articles JRK writes makes my AP-style oriented brain flinch...)
Of course, it's really just JKR using deus ex machina to do a big info dump, so thinking TOO hard on it will only lead to tears.
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True, unfortunately. I think the combination of a canned article, a lazy editor, and a more up-to-date photograph is probably the best explanation. Of course, that raises the question of how the Daily Prophet got hold of the photograph... *sigh*
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i was under teh impressio nte whoel article was takign palce in egypt itself. so it sorto f said the weasleys [are in egypt now and] will stay for a whole month.
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Yeah, clearly the article was not published until the Weasleys had been in Egypt for a day or three, but if it was written at that point, it should have been phrased more like, "Arthur Weasley, who won this year's Galleon Draw, is spending the money on a family trip to Egypt; here is a photograph of the Weasleys on their first day of sightseeing; blah blah blah" -- thereby shifting the focus from the lottery to the trip. As it is, the article makes it sound like Mr. Weasley has only just won the lottery and is planning a future trip to Egypt.
Basically, the article's time of publication (determined from Hermione's letter to Harry) and implied time of writing (determined from internal cues) do not agree with each other.