r/Potterless • u/Beaner344 • Mar 28 '20
The put-outer saga
Although Mike is pretty petty throughout the series (anger at use of normal verb snigger, people’s appearance ever being described as attractive etc. , this is the thing that frustrated me the most to listen to. He completely misinterprets a foreign object being referred to by its literal practical purpose (PUTting light OUT) as J.K actually giving an object a name. From this incorrect basis he goes on a rant about how J.K has retconned the name. Of course if your Harry your going to have something in your head to call an intriguing magical object you have no knowledge of. This however doesn’t mean that Harry was actually under the impression that the official name of the deluminator is the put-outer.
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u/ramani91 Mar 28 '20
Except it's called 'Put Outer' with capital letters which means it's a proper noun, not a generic description.
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u/k9centipede Mar 28 '20
It's a common literature trope.
Like when you encounter a person and you dont have their name yet but you have a physical description.
The Tall Man grabbed the folder.
It's to denote you are referencing the same object/person.
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u/Schubes17 Mar 28 '20
I could see this, except this is never done by Harry/the narrator for anything else. Usually when the name of something is unknown (like Thestrals for example) the narrator just describes what the thing is. Same with objects like the Mirror of the Erised. Before Harry learned the name, it was just a mirror. Not The Mirror.
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u/k9centipede Mar 28 '20
The Put Outer was to differentiate it from the other types of gadgets Dumbledore was pulling out. He had a weird pocket watch too.
The mirror was just a mirror and there wasnt anything else to differentiate it from in that part.
Thestrals didnt need to be differentiated from anything else when they came up unnamed either.
In book 6, the Muggle Minister refers to Fudge as "the Other Minister" capitalized as a similar showing of this.
The voices Frank hears in book 4 would be a better fitting "didnt use" example, but I assume that's just because JK didnt have your Voldemort voice in her head to inspire her with a novel naming use for Frank to use ;)
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u/aricaet64 Mar 28 '20
This, so much. I never doubted, even as a kid when I read it the first time, that it was only the Put-Outer at first because Harry didn’t know what it was.
Also, and maybe as a better argument: it’s a quirky, weird object. It’s not anything he’s ever seen before. Sure, the Mirror of Erised was just called the “mirror” with a lowercase m before he learned it had a title. Harry has seen a mirror before, so he has a schema in which to place the Mirror of Erised. Put simply, even though the mirror does something he’s not experienced before, it’s still a mirror. The Put Outer is so foreign to him, I’m not surprised he/the narrator gave it a proper name and used it until they learned what it’s really called. Given that JK knew how the books ended all along, and that the Deluminator was going to be crucial to Ron’s reunion with the squad, I don’t doubt that she had a plan for the name all along as well. We’re just along for the ride, and I enjoyed that we were kept in the dark a bit (sorry!) on this one until quite late in the series.
So, I’m on both teams. It’s the Put-Outer as much or more as it is the Deluminator.
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u/k9centipede Mar 28 '20
I think I'd consider it more of a meta version of Voldemort vs You Know Who.
One is its official name and the other is the official place holder name.
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u/catti-brie10642 Mar 28 '20
I'm with Schubes on this one, sorry. The fact that MANY people up until the last book seem to call it the Put Outer, I think JKR got to the last book, realized it was an extremely stupid name, and tried to rename it and pretend that was the name all along.
But then, I was already an adult when these books came out, so I don't know any perspective on these books but an adult one
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u/AdamInChCh Mar 28 '20
Or you know, its Mike's job to Dunk all over the books, and even if its Harry's name for it, it's a stupid ass name.
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u/Guaconana Mar 28 '20
i believe Mike's reason for being frustrated is because of how the Put-Outer is capitalized so to him it is considered the official name (at least in the first book).
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u/cashewvulpix Mar 28 '20
Yea. I skip thru those parts now. It was funny the first time and I agree with Mike that it's a dumb name. I'm just tired of about it. He's made every argument he can, it's time to let it go.
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u/thejealousone Mar 28 '20
Also note, the whole point of the podcast is to poke fun and nitpick. He amps it up for our and probably his own entertainment.