[HPforGrownups] Two scenes for most everyone (was Re: Retribution for Snape the Teacher)

[lady.indigo at gmail.com]

No: HPFGUIDX 144224

Oh please.

colebiancardi wrote:
"b) you obviously don't work in a university or school - otherwise,you would
know it is the teaching place's business to know of sexual misconduct.  And
it also goes with staff & staff as well.  A boss cannot have a relationship
with his peons. Power position and all"

I wrote:
Was it ever stated that this hypothetical relationship would be taking place
while Hermione was still a student?  I must have missed it.

colebiancardi wrote:
"c) sexual misconduct is using a power position of a professor with a
student.  They don't care if it is "true" love or not"

I wrote:
This is assuming the power abuse will be implemented.  It's highly
POSSIBLE.  It's one of many reasons we frown on employer-employee,
student-teacher, adult-child, and incestuous relationships.  (Although
adult-child and incest have about a thousand other very good factors against
it, of course.)  But there are no guarantees that the two parties can't
handle this.  There is no outright law that declares this would lead to
power struggles, abuse, and emotional scarring.  And arguably, if the two
parties love and respect each other and act it, it in fact might NOT happen.
Again, this assuming Hermione would even be IN school when it happens; she
could well have graduated.

colebiancardi wrote:
"d) you seem to be very defensive that a) I loathe the idea of a
Snape/Hermione ship and b) have expressed that opinion due to it being out
of character.  You don't have to like my opinion, but then again, I don't
have to like your fanfic which has no basis in canon."

I wrote:
The only person who seems to be bringing up the plausibility or canon basis
of the relationship is you.  I'm sorry if I missed something from La Gatta
suggesting she was doing anything other than speculating.  That in my mind
is what fanfic is for: attaching your own interpretations/speculations to
the text, and writing them to what you consider to be believable.  You don't
have to have an interest in it.  She never demanded you did.  But you're
attacking the pairing morally, and this by proxy seems to attack fans of it
morally.  *I* have objections to that without having the urge to come within
40 feet of Snape/Hermione.

colebiancardi wrote:
"e) You're correct, it is not anyone's damn business who loves whom -but you
seem determined to state that there is nothing wrong about a fully grown
adult having an attraction(is that what you are now calling it?) to a much
younger person who has barely passed adolescence.  And where do I condemn
the actions?  I asked a question on where in this fantasy of yours does
Snape realize his attraction to Hermione?  On her 17th birthday?"

I wrote:
Her 16th?  Appearances don't change much from one age to another by then.
Several of my own friends were having sex - granted, with people their own
age, but nonetheless.  Snape can quite plausibly have an ATTRACTION then and
act on it several years later, when Hermione is OUT of school.
ATTRACTIONS, might I add, can't be helped.  Snape could have far worse
sexual demons than finding a sixteen year old girl attractive, make a
decided effort to shove them down, and never act on them.  What would you
condemn then?  His very existence?

There is no universal emotional experience when it comes to people, and
certainly not among teenagers.  I wouldn't for a second proclaim that
there's a definite outcome to any sexual or romantic situation.  There's no
magic switch that flicks when you turn 17 that says you know who you are and
can handle most situations.  That kind of thing may happen long after, it
may also happen BEFORE then.  There's also no magic edict that proclaims a
student-teacher relationship is bound to end in tragedy.  Or that Snape
having an attraction to a Hermione who is close to being of age, but not
quite there, will reduce Snape to a pedophilic monter.

All we know, all these laws (rightly!) exist by, is the most PROBABLE
outcome to a situation.  And we only use those guidelines based on current
society and culture.  The Greeks often engaged in pederasty, which Plato
said seperated them from the barbarians.  You just now talked about older
romances in which the age gap was much wider.  Both societies functioned.
With many limitations and flaws, but they did function.  To say that the
sole reason these relationships happened and worked was because we were too
unenlightened to know better is incredibly simplistic thinking.

Do I think our current conventions about age and sexuality are better?  For
the most part, definitely.  And we of course have to take into account the
societal conventions and teachings of today as opposed to hundreds of years
ago.  I do think we have every right in the world to, in real life, question
the wisdom of people who fall outside those conventions in certain ways.
But if within the realms of fiction we wanted to talk about exceptions to
the rule, characters that are deliberately being written AS exceptions to
the rule, I would take those characters into my mind as individuals.  That's
the gift of fiction, in that case: we would get to know those characters AS
individuals and the details of the situation, and decide for ourselves.

I can't see myself ever believing that of Snape and Hermione.  But it'd be
an attack on my conscience to say that someone *couldn't* write it, or was
somehow sick for writing it, far more than that writing it would put the
world in some kind of vague societal danger.

- Lady Indigo


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