Disappointment and Responsibility and The Prank/Requiescat in Pace: Unf

[sistermagpie]

No: HPFGUIDX 174940

Lizzyben:
No, what really broke the novel for me wasn't the lack of Snapey-poo
or Draco, but the lack of any example of a good, or even decent
Slytherin - and the total acceptance of labels & stereotypes that
this represents. I don't need to see a good Snape or Draco, but I
really did need to see some example of a good Slyth; whether that's
Pansy, Blaise Zabini, or even anonymous Slyths in the ROR, or
unknown Slyths staying for the battle of Hogwarts. We didn't see any
of that. I needed to see *some* indication that these children are
not eternally damned by a singing hat at eleven years old. But that
seemed to be the ultimate message - whether that's "ethical
Calvinism" or dehumanization of the other is, I suppose, a matter of
individual interpretation.

Magpie:
You know, I go back and forth on this issue because I think it's two 
separate ones, both of which say slightly different things. JKR shot 
both of them down in the book.

The first is having Slytherins stay for the fight. That, I think, 
would have made Slytherin at least like any other house. It would 
make allegiance more about individuals. By having all of Slytherin 
leave, JKR was pretty much being consistent about the linking of 
Slytherin with Voldemort throughout the books, especially in the 
seventh book. And if not linking them with Voldemort, showing they 
were not loyal to Hogwarts. At the end of the series I felt much 
more negatively about Slytherin than I had at the beginning. Being a 
Slytherin really did say something about your character that being a 
Ravenclaw didn't--it didn't necessarily mean you were a DE, but it 
predicted certain basic behavior traits as surely as being a House 
Elf did. They represented, as JKR said, the less noble parts of 
human nature (which leads to the odd suggestion that they might be 
carrying the burden of those traits for the other houses on the 
school scale).

Then there is the slightly different idea of redemption for 
characters like Snape and Draco, because especially with Draco 
because he was a kid like Harry, here's where we see whether 
prejudice can be beaten at a more important level than just fighting 
a war once it gets to the point of rounding up Muggle-borns and 
putting them in jail. It shows that it can be beaten at the 
individual level, which is where it's really fought first. I'm not a 
Christian either, but the preconceptions I had when JKR mentioned it 
being a factor was that I associate Christianity with an open-
heartedness and love of redemption--the worse the sinner, the more 
satisfying the redemption. It's that idea that we're all sinners and 
the expectation of reaching out to others and transformation. (In 
canon, for me, this was made into a sort of easier version on the 
level of being nice to a house elf and having it switch allegiance 
go you--not the same thing at all.) It's very much against how JKR 
ultimately uses her characters. This meant that certain things wound 
up feeling really unnatural to me in the story, while to her perhaps 
the way I felt the story pulling was impossible.

So what seemed to me to be the ultimate solution that people don't 
change and that it's more a case of recognizing the elect from the 
damned and dealing with them...that to me was far more damning for 
Slytherin. While having Slytherins decide to fight would have 
redeemed the house in showing that it was filled with people just 
like in other houses, the relative lack of hope for all bad 
Slytherins, even those who seem to have their path to something 
better laid out for them, was for me even more disappointing. I 
guess what I'm saying is for me it's about the possibility for 
change in the individuals in the House more than just proving the 
House itself wasn't bad--but both of these things send a clear 
message and JKR was for me very clearly negative about both of them.

And just to be clear, this had nothing to do with either Snape or 
Draco being *nice.* I never doubted Snape was DDM but also never 
doubted that he genuinely hated Harry and was mean to him and 
Neville for petty reasons. I also predicted Snape/Lily--it's just 
the ultimate explanation for him was far more limited than the 
potential I saw in the story--and yes, that's my own expectation, 
but it's never a good thing when the author writes a story that 
compared to what you saw coming was underwhelming. (Of course this 
wasn't just about those two either--I thought Harry was going to 
have to deal with other people in a humbling way too, which didn't 
happen. Oh well.) I didn't have a specific way I wanted it to be 
written, but the ending was a let down to me, so presumably I would 
have preferred something else.

It's also about real challenges to the protagonist which, as you 
say, never really happen. It was actually kind of fascinating to me 
the way I could always see even "surprising" revelations lining 
neatly up with the basic rules of life according to the series and 
Harry. (I think again this is why fanfic is so popular for this 
series--it often overturns the most consistent patterns in the 
story.)

This actually makes me think of another thing fandom concentrated on 
where at least my expectations turned out to be wrong: The Prank. 
That incident has always been a big issue in fandom, and I don't 
think I was alone in expecting some important information about it 
in DH.

In trying to think of why I was wrong in that, I thought about 
Dumbledore's line about choices showing who you are. JKR once 
misquoted this line in an interview as DD saying choices "make you" 
who you are, and that surprised me because they're not the same 
thing. In canon it's consistently the former--choices show who you 
are, because there's not a lot of change. (Even Neville actually 
shows who he really is back in PS/SS--at his core Neville has always 
been the kid who was the most brave for the best reasons at the best 
times while being kind and quiet other times. He becomes more 
superficially confident, but is very much the same boy. He goes 
through the same ritualistic story in DH as in PS.)

Although I had already really been shown in canon that choices were 
more about "showing" than "making" I think I did still look at the 
Prank and assume this was one of those choices that "made" 
characters who they were through the consequences. It was just so 
rich with them: Sirius makes this stupid choice (I always thought it 
was reckless rather than murderous) and surely it changed 
everything. I imagined Snape getting the message that he was 
worthless as far as the school was concerned and going further down 
the road to DE-dom. I know some imagined James changing his ways due 
to what could have happened. Perhaps it was this Prank that made 
people more able to believe Sirius could be a DE (a theory I know I 
heard). And Lupin--well, obviously he could never really trust 
Sirius again, could he? After he almost used his weakness as a 
weapon and destroyed his life?

But it turned out that the Prank wasn't life-changing at all. Snape 
just hissed and spit at the Marauders because that's what he did--if 
anything it was just a cover story to conceal his real focus on 
Lily. James just showed who he always was: a guy who could be an 
arrogant toe rag but also like his son had a life-saving thing that 
made him a magnet for life debts from people he hated. Sirius' 
reaction to the Prank at the time was the same as it was as an 
adult: Snape deserved it, and there were no bad consequences. And 
Lupin at the time seemed also like he was as an adult: It was just a 
Prank. Fine by me. Choices do have important consequences, but not 
in a way that makes the character-development less inevitable. It's 
usually easy to see what choices define the character, sometimes 
adding up to two main traits that act against each other.

Magpie:
> so not much concerned with morality

Eggplant:
Good! The last thing in the world I want is a heavy handed morality
lesson stuck into the middle of a Harry Potter book. If JKR wants to
send a message she'll write you an E mail.

Magpie:
Oh, I wouldn't go that far. The books send plenty of messages, and 
often in pretty heavy-handed ways. Not really exploring morality 
isn't the same as not presenting any as a given in black and white. 
JKR has no problem heavy-handedly presenting her own views on who's 
right and wrong in her book. 

-m