[HPforGrownups] Re: The Huge overreactions from a five minute time span.

[Magpie]

No: HPFGUIDX 150153

> kchuplis:
>
> I keep coming back to this too. How much of this is because it is how
> SNAPE saw it. In the other pensieve memories we have seen, the
> subjects have not had necessarily any kind of bias or at least not
> anything like what we know of Snape. We have no idea how much bias
> colors a pensieve memory.  And seeing anything in isolation can be
> deceiving. I really can't see everyone calling James a great guy (and
> everyone HAS except Snape) if he was really as big of a git all the
> time as the pensieve scene showed. If one were to describe many of
> Harry's adventures, he would or could sound like an arrogant show off
> and yet we know that is never in his intentions. Perspective
> perspective perspective.

Magpie:
Actually, we do know that the Pensieve memories are accurate.  But I just 
wanted to comment on how interesting I find this whole idea, especially 
paired with this example from another thread:

Catherine Higgens:
Actually, Ginny wasn't walking down the corridor jinxing everyone who got in 
her way, she jinxed 1 person (wasn't it Zacharias again? Sorry I can't fing 
HBP at the moment) because he wouldn't stop annoying her about what happened 
at the MoM? And it was also him she crashed into, you'd have thought he 
would have learned not to get on her bad side by now. Ginny isn't perfect, 
but at least she's not wishy-washy. She can defend herself (she does have 6 
older brothers!).

   I think we can pretty much say by now that getting jinxed by a friend is 
a pretty common thing in the WW. One of the twins told Harry not to be on 
the receiving end of her bat-boogey hex, to me it sounded as though they had 
been on the receving end of one. I don't think that this is mean, aggressive 
or bad-natured on Ginny's part, but rather being a teenager with magical 
abilities...

Magpie:
See, I find it immediately funny that one would pair "And it was also him 
she crashed into, you'd have thought he would have learned not to get on her 
bad side by now. Ginny isn't perfect, but at least she's not wishy-washy. 
She can defend herself (she does have 6 older brothers!)" with "I don't 
think that this is mean, aggressive or bad-natured on Ginny's part, but 
rather being a teenager with magical abilities..."

To me, yes, this is mean and aggressive and bad-natured.   It's not 
defending herself, either. Good for Zach for not just "learning not to get 
on her bad side." I couldn't figure out why everybody seemed to hate Zach 
from the year before.

I bring it up because I think this is something that's getting lost here, 
which is that somebody can be a great guy and a grade-A jerk at the same 
time. It happens all the time.  I thought ever since PoA the Marauders 
clearly taunted Snape cruelly (they tease him through the map and I assumed 
that's the way they spoke to him in school), but I never thought this didn't 
fit with the James who became an animagi to keep his friend company or threw 
himself in front of the door to protect his family.  James' jerk qualities 
go right along with this heroic ones.  What's great about the Pensieve is 
it's not even just James being a bully (and nothing in this scene is taken 
out of context--he's not being framed and there's no bit of Snape "starting 
it" that's cut out) it's James being vain and an idiot, ruffling his hair 
and looking to see if the girls were watching etc.  Harry has to forgive him 
for that too.  Yet Harry himself could easily come across badly in a 
snapshot from an enemy's pov too.

So it's not necessarily that James had to change all that much at all. 
McGonagall, imo, is a perfect example of the kind of thing that's being 
denied in the OP of the thread.  She gets positively misty over the 
Marauders being such little scamps, and this is apparently when she's 
remembering the kids who picked on Snape, not the Order members. People just 
have personalities that strike other people differently--and it's not always 
connected to them doing the right thing or not.  I liked James a lot more 
after the Pensieve scene because he made me laugh in the way he was a jerk. 
Ginny I can't stand.  In a book full of bullies she's the one I have no 
warmth for.  Some people think Sirius is a jerk no matter what his tragedies 
are. For some people Snape could turn out to be Aslan in disguise and still 
be a jerk.

For Snape, James was a jerk and he never changed, no matter what he did--and 
you know, Snape was probably right, because I don't think James ever really 
changed fundementally. He was always a hero as well as the guy who hexed 
people.  The only way they could have gotten together, imo, would be if they 
had a serious conversation and got to see how the other person saw them and 
understood the other person.  Basically, they would need exactly the type of 
thing that Rowling loves to write about, where they saw their past 
interactions differently knowing how the other person was feeling. I think 
Harry is primed to do this where James and Snape never did.  They need to 
get beyond the self-satisfied idea that all the people who count think 
they're great and all the people who don't think they're great don't count/ 
he started it because what I do is justified and what he does is just him 
being a jerk.

-m