How we picture characters

[Steve]

---  "Cheryl" <xcpublishing at ...> wrote:
>
> Someone on HP for Grownups brought up a discussion of 
> Lavendar Brown, who is generally pictured in fanfics as
> a blond Caucasian girl due to complete lack of 
> description in canon.  I always pictured her as a 
> slender, pale girl with sort of mousy brown hair.  ... 
> My question for you is:  How have the movies influenced
> your view when you read the books?  ...
>

bboyminn:

I don't substitute the movie characters for the book 
characters because I read the books before I saw the
movies. That said, Snape, Filch, Hagrid, and McGonnagal
from the movies are all extremely close to the way I
pictured them. Indeed they are so close the sometime
my mental images of them merge together.

While Dan, Emma, and Rupert are all close to MY Harry,
Hermione, and Ron, I do have my own unique image of them.
So, in that case, the movie images do not influence me.

As to Fan Fic, I usually just take it as it comes. I enjoy
the story and allow for some extrenal inconsistencies as
long as the internal facts are consistent and not 
glaringly counter to the books. As you rightly point out,
in some cases we don't know the details, so we can't say 
what is right or wrong independant of our personal image.

Here is a fun fact, or semi-fact, as the case may be, 
Draco is not discribed as having blond hair until Harry
sees him at the Quidditch (GoF) World Cup. That is four
book into the series. I always pictured him as blond, but
many fans pictured him having dark hair, and were surprised
when the author pointed out he was blond. At what point
did you realize that Draco was blond?

For the record, my image of Lavender is very close to your
own.

For what it's worth.

Steve/bboyminn