Question How much do you think Mrs. P railroads?

How much do you think Mrs. P railroads the events that we see?



How much of the plot do you think is due to Mrs. Potter?

Mods, do you think this should be moved to Characters as a/the Mrs. Potter Thread?

Mrs. Potter was a wizard; Harry.

Sorry, but someone was going to say it, I just beat them to the punch.

As for how much Mrs. P. railroads... I'm not gen 1, but I'd say quite a bit.

Yes we been waiting for you to bring this up. Rest assured that you're being completely alarmist. We have it on excellent authority that your fears are completely unfounded, and nothing to worry about. We've been advised you may want to consider taking up psychiatric help. Thank you have a great day.

I don't think that what Mrs. P does is railroading, exactly. I don't think that she has a specific destination in mind - instead she watches all the possibilities, and nudges them so that the best possible ones occur.

But even if she wanted to railroad, there's a limit to how much she can influence the future, because the more central a precog is to events, the harder it is for those events to be predicted by precogs. That's why, I think, Mrs. P stopped teaching at Whateley - the farther removed she is from events, the more control she has over her influence.

P's been working on the railroad
Planning out your day
She's been working on the railroad
Just to pass the time away.

Can't you see our fortunes growing
Plans start so early in the morn
Can't you hear the prophet groaning,
"The threads of fate are worn."

Kettlekorn wrote: P's been working on the railroad
Planning out your day
She's been working on the railroad
Just to pass the time away.

Can't you see our fortunes growing
Plans start so early in the morn
Can't you hear the prophet groaning,
"The threads of fate are worn."

LOL. Nicely done, Kettle.

Thanks for that, Kettle. Needed a good laugh.

Her main influence seems to be getting Carson to let the Don get away with mind rape. Almost everything else has been nudging things along at exactly the right time. So she's not so much railroading as using loaded dice during a very long game.

Feels more like she said to let all the bullying happen to prepare the students for what is coming. In particular Team Kimba and all the other focus characters like Kayda, Loophole, and Kodiak, so they are more better prepared and experienced in actual fights for taking on the Bastard. Because the Bastard winning would be a world ending event. Also possibly to prepare the students for the more corrupt elements of the MCO and their tactics, who seem to be trying to take over the organization as a whole.

It's been mentioned that it was specifically the Don who was to be left alone. The other bullies were able to ride on his coattails.

Domoviye wrote: It's been mentioned that it was specifically the Don who was to be left alone. The other bullies were able to ride on his coattails.

Darn, been a while since I probably read any mention of that in the stories I forgot. Wonder if it is because he will finally turn against Hekate's Master and be the trump card needed to stop him by telling who he is or some other reason.

The only other actions of hers that I recall are helping Tennyo stay with the Kimbas, rescuing Sara, and defeating the Chessmaster. Especially in the case of Tennyo, she seemed to be trying to take the least amount of action possible that would allow Tennyo to make her own choices.

Defeating the Chessmaster was actually the one that took the least action. She made a cheerful phonecall to distract him. With Tenyo she actually had to show up to make the deciding vote.

She left the message for Merry with the hairdressers in the mall.

Note that all the things we see Mrs. P do, is not all that Mrs. P has done... Or did someone take that into account and I just didn't notice?

And there are probably a lot of things that Mrs. P takes credit for (with just a mysterious, smug smile) that she never had a hand in.

bergy wrote: And there are probably a lot of things that Mrs. P takes credit for (with just a mysterious, smug smile) that she never had a hand in.

The opposite is probably equally true: there are things she doesn't admit to influencing, but she did.

Assuming that Mrs. P does railroad everything... What would you interpret her morality, or stance on murder is?

Like she could have stopped the Halloween attack? Or perhaps not... and what does that say about her?

She probably sees it alot like a good general who is determined to win. There will be casualties, if she tried to keep it completely bloodless, everyone loses. She accepts that and does what's necessary for the majority to survive. Tears can wait until the war is won.

Malady wrote: Assuming that Mrs. P does railroad everything... What would you interpret her morality, or stance on murder is?

Hrd to actually connect her moral beleifs with her precognition.

Malady wrote: Like she could have stopped the Halloween attack? Or perhaps not... and what does that say about her?

She is aware of a major, civilization ending, threat in the near future because of her precognition. She looks at the possibilities and sees that taking action to stop the Halloween attack causes there to be less chance of beating the bigger threat. The "troops" to fight that threat are trained and experienced in battle because of the Halloween attack.

Precognition is a major game changer for morality, since you could be aware of a greater evil that will come, if this lesser evil is stopped.

Also, it's entirely possible that she couldn't have prevented the Halloween attack even if she tried. There was another precog involved, and the future might have been too tangled for her to prevent total loss of life.

There's also the nontrivial matter of keeping oneself out of the sights of the opposition. As long as Mrs. Potter keeps intervening by means of gentle "nudges", only the people directly involved know that she did anything at all. She only intervenes more directly if she can keep her intervention secret -- for instance, in instructing Mrs. Carson to give a lot of leeway to the Whateley bullies for a while.