(nvbl)/What's fun about the HPs?/Amortentia and re The morality of love poti

[sistermagpie]

No: HPFGUIDX 152435

doddiemouse:

> This would fit into the parallels between Harry and Snape....Can 
you 
> imagine how angry Snape would be that Harry's DA group was more 
> successful than his because he(Harry) put no limitations on who 
could 
> join...(if Snape could create one....then being a member of 
slytherin 
> he could/would only teach pure bloods.....)

Magpie:
Err...Harry put plenty of limitations on who could join.  The DA was 
a highly confidential group (with secret code coins to boot) made up 
of a small group of students who were either approached because they 
seemed like good candidates or who happened to hear and wouldn't 
take no for an answer (Zach).  A lot of it depended on who you 
happened to know--obviously there were no Slytherins in it, which is 
significant because the hat had just sung about how all the houses 
were supposed to unite and the DA was partially Hermione's response 
to that.  Only it wound up reflecting the schism instead of changing 
it.

This isn't meant as a scolding of the DA or anything, but it wasn't 
an open club everyone could join.   

Alla:

Me thinks everybody in that thread stayed quite nicely in canon land
while bringing in canon examples, but of course I am actively
participating in that thread, so take my whinings with the grain of
salt too as biased party. :)

Magpie:
Heh--me too.  Because I think the reason people are drawn to talk 
about the books is because nobody can agree on what actually 
happened in any particular scene.  The books are practically 
designed that way, so people are always describing scenes 
differently than the way they actually happened, or basically 
they're just unable to describe the scene without getting biased and 
slanting events towards one character or another.  That, of course, 
is a big concern in the books as well, so it's probably not 
surprising.  

The Tom/Merope thread, for instance, has got its facts in terms of 
what the characters do, and then lots of persuasive writing where 
one character is presented sympathetically and another is presented 
in a bad light.  For instance, Tom (and Cecelia) are rich and 
snobbish, Tom is used to getting what he wants, Tom is upset that he 
finds himself married to an unsuitable bride (feel free to compare 
him to the genocidal murderer character being disgusted at the idea 
of marrying a Muggle just because she's a Muggle), Merope is a poor, 
gentle soul who has been abused and just wants love (you wouldn't 
deny her love, would you?), she's penniless, she lives in the 1930s, 
she made a mistake...  The events are re-written to turn the Love 
Potion into a beauty treatment to make it into an easier, more 
familiar story where the moral is that Tom Riddle was shallow and 
Merope was wronged.  The way the book is written easily allows for 
that kind of thing-it even encourages it, though I think it's a trap 
(at least I hope it is, otherwise the books support a justice system 
based on the most superficial, cynical and deceitful impulses).  

When you take a character who reads negatively (by making him rich 
and maybe suggesting he's a snob) and then a character who reads 
positively (abused by bullies) and then put them in a situation 
where the second character abuses the first, you're totally playing 
into peoples' natural desire that the two things be reconciled.  
We'd rather the victim be the person we most identify or sympathize 
with.  Only in this case that's not what happened.  I think that's 
why I and perhaps others feel compelled to keep replying in the 
thread, not because we want Merope reviled--I can honestly say I do 
feel sympathy for her--but because for some reason I can't stand to 
see the facts distorted.

The Fleur situation is also written this way, imo.  I agree that 
it's basically a comic subplot not to be given as much weight as the 
analysis suggests it has, but the fact remains that the joke turns 
on a reversal: we spend the whole book hearing Fleur talked about as 
an awful person, we're encouraged to laugh as the good characters 
find her insufferable, the narrator subtly laces all her moments 
with hints that she thinks she's all that, though our pov character 
himself is always a bit bemused by the fuss over her.  But the final 
scene does not turn on people finally blowing up at Fleur.  Instead 
it turns around and burns them, revealing that all along she's the 
one who's been treated more unfairly and we, as the reader, were 
somewhat complicit in it if we never saw it.  The issue isn't 
resolved with Fleur agreeing to work on her oh-so-horrible 
personality, it's resolved by her showing what's really important to 
her and proving herself a force to be reckoned with in the family. 
This will probably lead to better behavior on all sides, that's the 
main issue. Obviously Snape in PS/SS was a big example of this--
Harry was perfectly right about his reaction to Snape personally, 
but was wrong to try to force that into Snape being the villain 
because of it.

Personally, I've never much longed to spend time in the WW either.  
The books never captured my imagination in terms of my just loving 
them and wanting to read them over and over etc.  I was just drawn 
to the fandom because I felt compelled to talk about them.  I think 
Elkins has put this better, but basically it's the conflict I 
constantly feel about the books that makes me need to talk about 
them and work them out.  I like doing that.


-m