Emtional satisfaction and traitors was Re: ACID POPS and Tee

[pippin_999]

No: HPFGUIDX 157818

Sydney:
> Again, if this was an Agatha Chritie book, in being primarily a
> mystery, I'd say the lack of tension could be cunning plan to conceal
> the aha! factor.  Because in a mystery you want to use the audience's
> instinctive understanding of story against them.  I don't think in the
> long run this is *mainly* what JKR is doing though, and though the end
> of a book may be surprising in some way it's not going to be
> surprising in an 'anti-story' way.  Does that make any sense?
> 
> So, that's what I mean by, most people don't see a Lupin betrayal
> because it's not emotionally satisfying.  I don't mean, because most
> of us like Lupin (I confess I do, so it might be a point against my
> argument!) and would be unhappy if he turned out 'bad'.  I mean
> because, most people's 'story instinct' isn't feeling a stress there
> than needs to pay off.  I don't have any huge canon reason except a
> general feeling, though, so I don't see anything I can really reply to
> in the ESE!Lupin threads.
> 
> However, if I'm wrong I'll be the first to take my hat off to Pippin!
> 
Pippin:
PS/SS wasn't primarily a mystery either. You could have resolved it
with Snape as the villain and it wouldn't have made any great difference
except to remove a layer of complexity from the plot. Of course because
it wasn't primarily a mystery, none of us were expecting an Aha! moment.
But some of us were thinking that Snape was *such* a cliche children's
book villain and the book could use a bit more complexity.

You mentioned earlier that HP is a child savior story. I think that's right.
You gave Scooby as an example. But in Scooby stories the monster always
turns out to be a fake, and the real villain is a traitor who's using the
fear of the monster to get what he wants. He's not a traitor the kids 
are leaning on, he's a traitor that the people they're trying to help are
leaning on. 

Now, if you wanted to add a layer of complexity to a Scooby story,
you might make the monster real. Then you could resolve the situation
with the monster not by revealing it as a fake but by showing that it 
wouldn't have had such power if the traitor weren't helping it, and if
the good guys hadn't trusted the traitor so blindly.

It's true Harry hasn't been leaning on Lupin. But Sirius did, Dumbledore
did, and they're both dead. Hmmm.

In 157732, you mentioned that Voldemort doesn't have the psychology
of a real world terrorist. It's kind of a gap in the story that deals with
terrorism that we don't seem to have a villain who does. They all seem
to be sociopaths or seeking personal gain, with the possible exception
of Regulus and Draco. Regulus believed in the cause but  seems to have 
backed out when he found out he'd be expected to kill for it. Draco would 
have killed, only he found that killing was harder than he thought.

But what would happen to  a person who found that killing was, after all,  
easier than he thought it would be? Who flirted with murder as Harry
has flirted with the cruciatus curse, until one day he found that he had
done it?

Pippin