Vision of Characters (was: Slash andhomosexuality)

[vulgarweed <fluxed@earthlink.net>]

Kathryn:

> I'm beginning to think I'm the only one around here who not 
only doesn't
> have a concrete opinion of the characters that cannot be 
shattered but in
> some cases has multiple opinions of the characters.
> 
> For many of the characters I don't feel we have enough 
evidence to know
> exactly hat they're like (and a lot of what we have is biased by 
the fact
> that it's seen through the eyes of Harry Potter).
> 
> This is especially true for me for the kids - partly because there 
is so
> much potential there for how they would develop in future. 
<snip>


> So I am totally unable to get what people are talking about hen 
they refer
> to certain images as ruining their view of the potterverse or 
changing it
> fundamentally.
> Am I alone in this? Am I totally nuts? Should I worry that I have 
multiple
> versions of the characters dancing around in my brain?

No, Kathryn, you're not the only one at all. Even the movies, I've 
found, have not affected my own mental images of the 
characters very much at all (much as I love Alan Rickman's 
interpretation of the character, the Snape in my head doesn't 
really look like him; I could say the same for Rupert Grint, 
Richard Harris, Maggie Smith, Tom Felton, etc. etc. Except 
Robbie Coltrane - he IS my Hagrid, and that was scary!!!) And 
yes, I too find myself reading stories that have very different 
interpretations of what they all might really be like - in the past, in 
the present, in the future, whatever. Each "truth" only holds true in 
that one particular story, after all. The mark of good writing is just 
that which enables and encourages me to accept *this story's* 
version for as long as the story lasts. I'm usually really happy to 
find a story that can help me look at a character in a whole new 
way I wouldn't have thought of myself. 

And I don't find this in any way diminishing of the -reality- that the 
characters have in the books. Haven't we all been an angel to 
some; a monster to others? Haven't we all wondered about the 
great what-if, the road not taken? Couldn't we all, in fact, be 
_dramatically_ different people than we currently are if certain 
circumstances in our lives had turned out differently, if the luck of 
the draw of place and time had been different, if some different 
choices had been made? (If our parents had made some 
different choices; if the government of the countries we live in 
had made some different choices....etcetera etcetera). These 
questions lead into too much infinity to be answered, but fiction 
is a place where they can be studied and played with.

AV