Comments on some posts in 33400 range

[Rita Winston]

No: HPFGUIDX 33763

TOKEN ETHNIC CHARACTERS

Cindy Sphynx wrote:
<< (none of the major characters fighting evil are minority). >>

Until GoF, I had a vague impression that Hermione was a light-skinned
black, maybe of West Indian ancestry. I probably got that idea because
Hermione reminded me of a girl I once knew so I imagined her looking
like that girl.

If Hermione had been stated to be West Indian, there would have been
complaints that she was an 'Oreo' and acted just like a white kid thus
disrespectfully ignoring ethnic differences in culture. (Except that
many people would have reflexively assumed that she founded SPEW because
of being a minority herself.) And if the author had conscientiously
tried to model her on brainy offspring of West Indian dentists, there
would have been complaints of stereotyping, limiting West Indians to
reggae music and jerked chicken and excluding them from classical music
and French cuisine.

It's another can't-win situation for an author.  

(Btw, are you Textual Sphinx?)

Barb wrote:
<< I would love to know whether Lupin also had the third year Slytherins
study boggarts, >>

I wrote a fanfic about that. It's on The Dark Arts
http://www.thedarkarts.org/authorLinks/Catlady/ 

This is actually relevant to the above conversation, because I'm always
afraid that someone someday is going to accuse me of being a bigtime
racist because the one kid who screamed and ran away from her Boggart is
the one kid who was explicitly described as 'brown' (in another fic). I
hadn't intended for ANY of the kids to fail, but it happened... and her
'ethnic background' is just a matter of how she looks: she was raised
totally old-fashioned British lower-upper class.

SLYTHERIN

Alexander Lomski wrote:
<< Difference between a Slytherin and a Gryffindor IMHO lies (snip) in
their inner motivations. For a Slytherin, ambition is perhaps the most
important
quality >>

That's what the Sorting Hat keeps saying, but watching the Slytherin
characters (Draco, Goyle, Crabbe, Parkinson, Bulstrode, Snape, Riddle)
in action makes me think that revengefullness is even more basic to
being a Slytherin personality.

A Barkeep in Diagon Alley wrote of Draco:
<< His father, there's a different story. He deserves whatever is coming
to him. >>

I agree. Lucius is a horror, quite deliberately evil. But as long as
people are discussing how Draco, and Dudley, and Riddle, and old Salazar
himself, came to be evil, is anyone wondering how Lucius became Lucius?
It seems to me that it would be relevant to the Draco discussion if
Lucius got that way simply because he was raised much the same way he is
raising his own son.

Alexander Lomski wrote of Salazar and Muggleborn students:
<< Another reason is that if it was security issue, Salazar would
definitely bring it into debate on whether mudbloods should be accepted
>>

According to Professor Binns in CoS, he DID. "He disliked taking
students of Muggle parentage, believing them to be untrustworthy."

Lucky Kari wrote:
<< (Which makes me wonder why the orphanage didn't try to track down
that worthless Riddle Sr.?) >>

My theory is that Riddle Sr never actually MARRIED Jr's mother. He may
have broken  off the engagement because he found out she was a witch, or
he might have never intended more than a casual affair in the first
place. I believe the latter: the son of the big house thought he was
casually seducing a girl from the village. He was surprised that she was
so stupid enough to think that he was really going to marry her just
because she got pregnant. He never did find out that she was a witch.
Despite this, she remained enough in love with him to name the baby
after him, and she told her parents that she and Tom Sr had secretly
married because she was ashamed of being an unwed mother. It WAS the
1920s.

WITCH BURNING

Lilah P, Margaret Dean, SpyGameFan, LordCassie, et alia wrote of witch
burning. 1) I have been told there is a book titled BURNING WITCHES IN
MISSISSIPPI which recounts an event which took place in 1913. 2) If the
Muggles had taken away Wendelin's wand before tying her to the take, she
would not have been able to save herself with a Flame Freezing Charm.
The wizarding folk can be very helpless if we catch them asleep or
without their wands.

GRUBBLY-PLANK

Amy Z wrote:
<< Is it just me, or is JKR slyly informing us about Professor
Grubbly-Plank's sexual history when she has Lavender say about the
unicorn, "How did she get it? They're supposed to be really hard to
catch!" (Medieval tradition had it that only a female virgin could tame
a unicorn. >>

Professor Grubbly-Plank always struck me as a gentle parody of the aging
political lesbian. What is the definition of 'virgin' for unicorn
catching purposes?
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