[HPforGrownups] Re: Political positions of the characters/James reacting to Remus' lycanthropy.

[Magpie]

No: HPFGUIDX 150478

>
> a_svirn:
> *Vigilante* is even more ironic. They were anything but. It is the
> Marauders who were law-breakers, not their victims.

Valky:
In war people change the degrees of their moral compass, they act out
their feelings of entrapment in chaos, striking out at the nearest
symbols of the enemy. Children pick up lethal weapons, and others drop
bombs on semi-related civilian settlements. The war doesn't make it
less wrong, but that doesn't stop people getting caught up in
themselves as heroes of a cause and going through with such awful
deeds, despite that they are otherwise good and moral people.

Magpie:
But are you honestly seeing any of this in this scene?  As a_svirn said, 
it's a peaceful afternoon.  They're in a good mood.  They're on top of the 
world.  Far from being affected by a war or feeling afraid, they seem like 
they think they're pretty much invincible.  Snape isn't practicing any Dark 
Arts.  He's just sitting there and they're bored and they start calling him 
names. They're not even standing up to him, they're taunting him, getting 
him to fight.

I think a_svirn's point--and this is what I see in the scene as well--is 
that they're using the fact that Snape is these things to explain to Harry, 
who has correctly called them on just plain bullying for fun, why they did 
it.  At the time the war doesn't seem to be on their minds at all.  If it 
was supposed to be JKR would have written something to show that.  But she 
goes out of her way to not do that.  James just can't stand the kid.

And that is a danger that's always there in the books, to use the fact that 
you're on the "right" side to justify little things that aren't right at 
all, or that have nothing to do with the good fight.  When you start saying 
that just because they could find a good reason to dislike Snape means that 
picking on Snape is always connected to that reason, you start dividing the 
world into humans and people who are always okay to pick on.  Who we are is 
shown by what we do, so there's only so many times you can say, "Well, I 
acted like a X here...but that doesn't define who I am, you should let that 
slide."  Eventually it does define who you are, and in Snape's case it 
probably defined James.  I'm sure if you told him James was picking on him 
that day because he was just so upset about the war and Voldemort he'd have 
rolled his eyes and laughed.  And probably so would James.  Even while all 
three of us agreed that Snape was, indeed, up to his eyeballs in the Dark 
Arts.

It just seems like JKR intentionally gave us a scene where MWPP are in the 
wrong.  She also gave us the backstory that James was a good guy and Snape 
wasn't.  The scene seems, imo, to be about exactly this--are the "good guys" 
being good here just because some people can be treated badly without it 
counting?  Even Harry is ambivalent about that.  Seeing the scene he 
instinctively sees Snape as the victim--yet thinks if it were Malfoy (his 
own Dark Arts obnoxious kid) he'd deserve it.  Harry himself starts the book 
wanting to fight.  He picks a target whom he has great reasons to hate, but 
he's not fooling himself that he's fighting with him because of that at that 
moment.

I think what we see in this scene is much what we see with characters in 
fandom--and people in life. We react to people personally sometimes far more 
passionately than we do for idealistic reasons.  We may like to list the 
moral reasons for hating them after the fact and enjoy finding them out, but 
if we're really honest what we're doing is far more personal and far less 
noble.  I have no problem believing that James hated the Dark Arts, that 
Snape practiced them even as a kid, that James wanted to fight Voldemort 
when he got out of school.  I still think he's just picking on a convenient 
target in the scene, and perhaps in the long run making things worse for 
himself and his side in the war.

-m