my Remus Is Good! crusade and sketchy Snape (was Lupin is worse) (longish)

[Justine]

No: HPFGUIDX 99556


Pippin:
Rowling has tricked me over and over again in 
the books by encouraging me to draw false conclusions from 
context.

Justine:
Right.  In the books.  Are there any instances in which Jo says something in an interview and then flips it around?  When she's asked about her favorite characters, she lists "Harry, Ron, Hermione, Hagrid, and Professor Lupin."  http://www.mugglenet.com/scholchat1.shtml
He's with good company.

Pippin:
Remus definitely has his admirable qualities, and Jo is always 
effusive about them in her interviews, but she also points out that 
he has his flaws. She makes them sound rather endearing, but 
they are flaws all the same.

Justine:
>From my many readings of her interviews, if something's not what it seems, she is either very coy about it or she skirts the issue entirely.

Pippin:
She has never said, as she has of 
Dumbledore, that Lupin is goodness.

Justine:
Who else besides Dumbledore has she said that of?  The closest I can think of is calling Remus kind.  

Pippin:
Is Lupin terrible but great? He can use the patronus charm, and 
he uses wandless magic to make a light that doesn't go out in 
the presence of Dementors. Snape considers him even more 
dangerous than Sirius--in the shack he restrains Lupin, not 
Black.

Justine:
She has not said he is a great *wizard* though.  Her words were "great man."  If we're going to put an emphasis on words, let's put an emphasis on words.  Plus, Sirius has no wand at that moment, and Remus is about to transform.  Also, I have some questions about this regarding Snape (or, rather, questions about Snape regarding this) that I'll bring up later.

Pippin:
Is Lupin kind? Undoubtedly.  But Jo is  explicit that not everyone 
who is kind  means well. Tom Riddle brags of his kindness to 
Ginny. Fake!Moody's kindness to Neville reminds Harry of Lupin, 
no less.

Justine:
I think we can trust Jo rather than an arrogant and evil Tom Riddle to know what kindness is.  Fake!Moody, on the other hand, might cheer up Neville like Lupin does, but there's a stark difference between Fake!Moody and Professor Lupin.  Remus never transfigures Draco into a ferret and bounces him up and down on the floor.  He doesn't Imperio his students for the sake of learning.  Instead, he lets them face and defeat their fears.  I really think she put that in to make us trust Fake!Moody rather than to give us a reason to distrust Remus.

Pippin:
Our children have to live in a world where, 
unfortunately,  people who have genuinely earned their 
admiration do dreadful things and  bigots try to take advantage of 
it. A beloved athlete kills his wife. A  financier who  gave millions 
to charity goes to jail for cheating little old ladies of their
savings.

Justine:
We already have examples of that.  There's, of course, Fake!Moody.  Then there's Lockhart, who never really earned the trust of Harry, Ron, or the staff, but earned the love and admiration of thousands, perhaps millions of fans in the wizarding world, and turned out to be a fraud with a penchant for destroying people's minds.  And what about Ludo Bagman?  He's a former star athlete who got into some risky business with the bad guys because he was stupid, then got a job in the government and screwed that up by developing a gambling problem.

Besides, that wasn't my point.  I raised the issue that Remus, being symbolic of the maligned outcast, shows how stereotypes are wrong... your examples of a "beloved athlete" and benevolent financier don't have bad stigmas attatched to them the way "werewolf" in the wizarding world does.  You're talking about people acting out of character; I'm talking about broken stereotypes.  An athlete is not shattering any stereotypes by being good at physical things.  He's a name on a product, essentially, so his killing his wife basically does nothing to malign the name of "athlete."  Being an athlete does not imply anything of a person's mental and moral state--being a werewolf in the wizarding world does.  Same with the financier: giving to charity may imply moral character, but in today's day and age, that's merely a given in affluent circles, so a financier giving to charity is not breaking stereotypes, so his misdeeds would not in turn reinforce any.  But being a "good werewolf" (and if
 someone tells me that Luna is the "good werewolf," I'm sorry, but I need more canonical evidence than her name) is breaking wizarding stereotypes that are obviously not widely accepted, so making him a traitor is basically reinforcing those stereotypes in the kid's minds, especially those who grew up in the wizarding community like Ron.

Ally:
While JKR has said Remus is a wonderful man, she has said he's a 
wonderful man with a flaw, and consider some her principal themes:  
people are not easily categorized and can possess good and bad 
qualities; and a person must have constant vigilance to make the 
right choices in life.  To me, having Remus make a mistake that hurts 
the Order b/c of his flaw would fit very well into these themes.

Justine:
I completely agree here.  I can very easily see Remus making a mistake (without turning traitor) that hurts the Order, and I actually somewhat expect it.  I'm not going to say that Remus can do no wrong.  He most definitely can; he just won't do it purposely.  

Now for my questions about Snape!  How long has he been spying for Dumbledore?  Because depending on how long he's been in that position, he may have had knowledge during the events of third year that Sirius actually wasn't the traitor... logically, if he was a Death Eater, and was in the inner circles of "former" Death Eaters (Sirius does refer to him as Lucius Malfoy's lapdog) he'd have some knowledge that it was actually Peter who was the spy for Voldemort and Sirius was innocent.  That would perhaps explain his restraining Lupin over Sirius, but wow look at the size of that can of worms!  "He served Voldemort for a time, but at some point before the Potters' murder and Voldemort's downfall, turned against the Dark Lord and became a spy for Dumbledore. Snape still has the Dark Mark on his arm."  That's from the Lexicon.  If Peter had been Voldemort's spy for a number of years before James and Lily were murdered, there could very possibly have been a time at which their services
 overlapped.  If Snape has been in good favor with Lucius for all these years, why on earth did he get no information about the actual spy?  

Justine
(Pippin, your first post on ESE!Lupin begged someone to convince you otherwise.  I'm probably not doing a very good job, but I'm having fun trying!)

 

		
---------------------------------
Do you Yahoo!?
Friends.  Fun. Try the all-new Yahoo! Messenger

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]