Sirius revisited/character discussions

[curly_of_oster]

No: HPFGUIDX 104191

I'm glad Marianne added "character discussions" to this subject 
header, because the response I was writing in my head has at least 
as much to do with why and how we discuss characters as it does with 
Sirius in particular.

Kneasy writes:
But I  do find it interesting that after cobbling together a long, 
not very complimentary screed on the life and times of Sirius he 
seems to have so few committed defenders. Has a silent reassessment 
taken place among the posters? 

Marianne responds:
Speaking only for myself, no.  I'm still passionately fond of 
Sirius, warts and all. But, I've been reading your posts since you 
joined the list and I think I've gotten the message of how you feel 
about Sirius. I doubt anything I can say will change your opinion of 
him, and I'm not sure I could even get you to scratch your head and 
say, "Hmmm, maybe she's come up with a microscopic point in his 
favor." ;-)

Now me (Lisa):
Marianne has touched on one of the two aspects of my response to 
Kneasy's question.  I've 'only' been on this list for about a year, 
but I think that's long enough to get a sense of how things work, 
and to get an idea of where a lot of the more vocal posters stand.  
It's also long enough to confirm that character discussions here 
aren't substantially different than on other lists I've been on in 
other fandoms (okay, one other fandom, but I have friends who 
confirm this is true pretty widely).  

We have a certain, limited amount of information about any of the 
characters.  This information is particularly limited in the case of 
the adults, whom we see only small pieces of.  Different people 
will 'read' this information in different ways.  Different people 
will come to different conclusions about the characters, depending 
in part on their personal inclinations, which pieces of evidence and 
character traits they choose to place emphasis on, etc.  I happen to 
like Sirius (rather a lot), but I can also recognize that he has 
faults/bad points, and I can see how other people could feel 
differently than I do.  Yes, I like discussion/argument for its own 
sake.  But after a while having the *same* discussion or argument 
over and over gets tiring/frustrating/uninteresting (at least to 
me).  I don't expect to be able to completely change anyone's mind 
(nor do I feel the need to).  However, having a 'discussion' in 
which the 'other side' seems to have not even the slightest interest 
in giving my point of view any sort of genuine consideration...well, 
I just don't have the time/energy/motivation for that.

My second, related, point has to do with how we have these 
discussions, and how people view canon and what counts as evidence.  
I shall use a couple of recent Sirius-related topics as examples.  
After Kneasy asserted that Sirius wasn't really very intelligent,  
Nora pointed out that McGonagall states in PoA that James and Sirius 
were at the top of their class.  I just looked it up, by the way, 
and she says that they were "exceptionally bright."  To which Kneasy 
replied that he "naturally discounts this," followed by complete 
speculation about McGonagall which is apparently meant to justify 
this dismissal of the provided evidence.  

In an earlier part of the recent Sirius discussion, I saw more than 
one post saying, in effect, "it's obvious that Sirius wasn't 
punished after the Prank."  Sorry, don't have the exact quotes, but 
I seem to recall some reference to an earlier discussion of the 
issue in which the list had supposedly agreed upon/been convinced of 
this???  Personally, I haven't seen any real evidence one way or the 
other in the books.  Assuming Snape genuinely believes it was 
attempted murder, it seems unlikely that anything short of expulsion 
(or perhaps even anything short of Azkaban) would have satisfied 
him.  He appears to hold a grudge against Harry because of his 
father, so is it surprising he holds a grudge against Sirius 
himself?  And the fact that we haven't been told that Sirius was 
punished is, quite frankly, a non-argument.  We haven't been 
told *lots* of things--that doesn't mean they didn't happen.  It's 
not as if we got some scene in which the topic actually came up and 
that one aspect of it was avoided.  Note that I'm not arguing that 
he *was* punished.  We simply don't know (yet?).

So here's the thing.  On the one hand it's apparently considered 
reasonable to ignore statements made by characters whom we know to 
be privy to the information in question (and who don't have a clear 
motive to either lie or embellish--why make a murderer look 
*better*?).  On the other hand, it's also okay to take a supposition 
for which we have no real evidence and treat it as if it were an 
accepted fact (and therefore use it as "evidence" in an 
argument/character analysis/whatever).  At this point, having been 
essentially asked why I'm not 'defending' a character I like, I find 
myself sort of throwing up my hands and asking, "What's the point?"  

Lisa