Character behaviour

[Karen]

No: HPFGUIDX 148278


On Thursday, February 16, 2006, at 03:37 PM, lupinlore wrote:
>
>
> Hmmm.  Well, to make a long, long, long story very short, many
> people found Dumbledore's speech in OOTP to be cold and
> unsympathetic, particularly when he was talking about Harry and the
> Dursleys.  He seemed to brusquely cut Harry off when Harry protested
> that Petunia didn't love him, and to generally have the
> attitude "You're alive kid, so you don't have any right to complain
> about anything."  Worse, perhaps, he gave the impression that he was
> fully aware of the situation at the Dursleys and even expected it,
> and that he either did not care or actually approved.
>

(only leaving Lupinlore's post in because it leads me to these 
thoughts. This is not aimed at anyone in particular but some fans in 
general)

kchuplis:
I am once again absolutely boggled by the expectations of some people 
as to how characters are supposed to behave or act. This is just plain 
silly. Dumbledore had two choices; leave Harry with a wizarding family 
where he could be tracked down in about two seconds flat or leave him 
with the Dursleys.  If I was him I would have made the same decision. I 
don't quite know either, when the entire end of OoTP revolved around 
DD's feelings FOR Harry, made plainly clear that it could be considered 
cold in any manner. But I am equally baffled how people assume that 
because Lupin loved his schoolmates, probably the ONLY people who had 
ever shown him compassion and kindness and gone to considerable risk 
for him has to be IN love in order to achieve this. Or because he lived 
in #12 (What, Lupin is supposed to live in the gutter when one of his 
best friends, who is desperately lonely after 13 years of isolation 
with only dementors around has lodgings and most likely offered #1 
because he was lonely and #2 because Lupin has no home, no job, no 
nothing. Is he supposed to say "Sorry, old chum, wouldn't be seemly." 
Would any of you not do this for someone who was your BEST friend??) . 
Do people have NO close friends whom they aren't IN love with but still 
love?? Am I so unique in this regard to understand one can feel loyalty 
and love for someone and yet not want to be jumping into bed with them?

To be honest, some of the things I read utterly befuddle me in regards 
to how egoistic people become in regards to how characters should 
behave or express themselves. It seems ultimately self defeating as 
well. If all characters behaved just as we would like, how boring a 
book would THAT be? I, at any rate, am more interested in complex 
relationships than having things all nice and neat.

  Look at the choices these "people" have. Is it so easy? Should DD just 
risk it that Harry can be protected by wizards when his own parents, 
powerful wizards with more vested in Harry's welfare than any other 
family, could not? And Lupin, should he have told DD about SIrius 
ability? Yes, but we know he doesn't have a great deal of backbone, 
that he is downtrodden and doesn't even fight for himself. Yet, he is 
going to tell DD this when he feels it will demean him in DD's eyes 
(right? no, but human, yes.), PLUS, it's pretty hard to cut old ties, 
old beliefs. He may accept what the MoM says of Sirius, the reports, 
but if it was me, I'd have a hard time believing it of MY close friends 
especially when it runs contrary to what I know of that person's 
character (everyone seems to agree that NO one would have believed it 
of Sirius). I don't think so, but Lupin also isn't the type that would 
be marching around the MoM with the sign "Free Sirius Black".

And is Lupin any different than everyone else who seem to feel as long 
as Harry is with DD at Hogwarts, no matter how close Sirius gets he's 
safe? This thought is expressed over and over. But suddenly Lupin is 
supposed to expose his secret, his friends secrets as easily as you 
open a jar of spaghetti? That's what is so lovely, to me, about all 
these characters. They make real choices, mistakes and decisions and 
they aren't some cardboard cut out of the citizens of Happy Peachy 
land. A book could be written about each of them. If they were all just 
really nice folks who always did the right thing these books wouldn't 
be worth opening. IMO.