bullies? twins, padfoot and prongs

[nrenka]

No: HPFGUIDX 118630


--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, Magda Grantwich 
<mgrantwich at y...> wrote:

> Madga: 
> Nonsense.  If that had been the case, Remus and Sirius would have
> mentioned it when they were talking to Harry (and their purpose
> during that talk was to redeem James' image in Harry's eyes).  It 
> was not some misguided crusade - James was acting like a jerk and
> although charming and basically nice on the whole was capable of
> acting in a manner unworthy of him because he wasn't getting enough
> negative feedback for it.  

Well, as has been discussed before ad nauseam, in part because it's 
not exactly going to help Harry deal with the issues at that moment, 
who is focused (rather like Lily) on the sheer indignity and 
awfulness of it.  

I am extremely, extremely wary of arguing from absence-in-mention to 
absence-in-actuality in JKR's world.  It's a good way of getting 
smacked upside the head, because she likes to not mention things and 
then suddenly bring them out, so we have to go back and fill them in 
as 'always there influencing things but we just didn't know about 
them'.

> If it was such a principled anti-DA effort, why did he offer to 
> ease up on Snape if Lily went out with him? 

Because he's also trying to attract Lily, which is probably a little 
more on his mind.  

I don't want to make James out to be a completely consistent 
principled thinker, given the general tendencies of 15-year old 
boys.  But everyone has an ideology--anyone who tells you otherwise 
is just unaware, or taking the ideological stance that ideologies 
don't matter. :)  

I think there were a lot of political issues rushing under the 
surface, and one's language and behavior certainly indicates one's 
politics.  It makes "Because he exists" make a little more sense, as 
an ontological assement of Snape on James' part.  Or, as I am 
grateful to a correspondent for the turn of phrase, "a schoolboy 
enactment of a visceral response that can be parsed ontologically".  
Existence carries with it qualities, particularly in this moderately 
essentialist worldview of JKR's (choices show, they don't make).

We don't know whether it's true or not, but one could give me a 
hypothetic and expand that into "Because of what he represents, 
because of what he is involved with and thus is".  It makes sense 
with a whole nexus of illustrative choices--Snape as DE, James as 
pureblood member of the OotP marrying a Muggleborn witch.  And it's 
fair to try to parse all characters' words and actions for deeper 
meanings, right?

And I screwed up the quote in my last post: it's "Fear is not just a 
vice, or a deformity of our character.  It is the underlying 
psychological and moral medium that makes vice all but unavoidable".

-Nora sings along: Crudele, acerba, inesorabil' morte