Twist JKR? (was:Re: Dumbledore's pleading...)

[nrenka]

No: HPFGUIDX 141615

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "horridporrid03" 
<horridporrid03 at y...> wrote:

> Betsy Hp:
> Weirdly enough, I see my understanding of Snape's character as 
> being quite direct. YMMV, of course. <g>

I point you over to Neri's post.  It does require at least some level 
of explanation to get around the whole killing the mentor thing: the 
more direct answer (in brute and unaesthetic terms of simply 
calculating 'how much extra explanation does this take?') is that 
there are no mitigating circumstances.

> Betsy Hp:
> Leaving Ron as a more complex character, IOW?

Ron is already a more complex character.  He has considerably more 
page time, we spend time with him, we get him deliberating about 
things, developing as a character.  These are things that we have, 
not things that we have to imagine or think are implied (for some 
very loose uses of the word 'implied'.)  He's dynamic.  Ron is a 
character who's active in the present, while we're still hung up on 
Snape's past as the key to his present.

> Snape's interest as a character will remain.  Just as Sirius's has. 

Sirius' interest has diminished considerably since he died, for most 
posters.  I know of at least one one-time prominent poster who has 
mostly lost interest in *canon* (which is what I was thinking of: the 
life of fanon is of peripheral interest to this list) because he's 
gone.  For those fans who actually care about hewing to the canon 
line, there will likely be a good number disappointed at the pathways 
cut off and the explanations given.  I think of, slightly tangential 
but related, the whinging that Snape's whole "I am HBP, yo!" thing at 
the end of the book was OOC.  It makes me wonder how people knew 
Snapeykins so *well* to declare that.

> Betsy Hp:
> And I covered that in the part you snipped.  To repeat, I've not 
> really seen JKR setting up any character (or any house, for that 
> matter) as an example of The Good.  Even Dumbledore slips and 
> stumbles at times.  That's more CS Lewis's line.

Any character in and of himself, no--but that doesn't invalidate The 
Good as a lurking background concept.  Mercifully she's not taking 
the Lewis approach, but there do seem to be moral absolutes which 
exist in the morality of the Potterverse.  Those things are 
independent of their imperfect realization in the human characters.

> Betsy Hp:
> The idea of leaving your family to die being an example of selfless 
> good is exactly the kind of backwords thinking that threw me out of 
> the last Star Wars movie.  Voldemort was certainly willing to 
> sacrifice his family.  We're setting him up as an example of "The 
> Good" now?

Voldemort was willing to do it to further his own ends, which are 
evil and not nice.  Dumbledore admits that he made mistakes precisely 
because he held Harry in and of himself as more important than 
abstract people whom he didn't know personally.  As well, law of the 
excluded middle comes in here, too--although that leaves us with far 
too many hypothetics for my taste.  It's a classical ethical 
situation to grapple with, and pops up in any number of foundational 
texts.

> > -Nora wouldn't mind, now that we mention Schadenfreude, Draco 
> kicking it just to further frustrate hordes of shippers...
> 
> Betsy Hp:
> Heh.  You've not noticed the Sirius fans at all then, have you? <bg>

I rather think that I have.  There's been some very, very 
entertaining wailing this time around about him and Lupin, including 
charming statements about how Lupin is a vile filthy creature now 
that he's not totally gay.  But dead!Draco would produce the kind of 
flailing, weeping and especially the moralistic lamenting (JKR is 
mean to kill him off!!!) which is particularly fascinating to watch.

-Nora thinks that high above the Bay in Switzerland is where it's at