Character flaw or author sloppiness? (was Re: A Defense of James Potter)

[va32h]

No: HPFGUIDX 175464

I had made a personal vow *not* to wade into the whole Snape/Marauder 
*thing* again, but the comments in a particular post made me think - 
how much of the negative characterization of James is intentional, 
and how much of it is the result of author sloppiness? 

frumenta wrote:
ever since OotP my feelings for James went from indifference to 
outright hatred and I haven't managed to shake them.

It is a combination of canon and his bullying ways and how he and 
his friends continued bullying Snape even after nearly killing him 
in the Prank. It's in his descriptions, his air of having been taken 
care of that Snape lacked. It's in how JKR described his upbringing 
in an interview as the son of parents who had him late in life and 
doted on him. How he was rich and good in sports and presumably 
smart... He is the quintessential jock in a movie and on top of 
everything he got the girl. It's also, from JK again that he never 
needed a well-paid employment. How he didn't notice that Peter 
resented him all these years and went along with the change in 
Secret Keeper and how passive Lily was in all that (didn't she have 
any friends? We're meant to believe that James' friends are her only 
friends too). 

va32h:

So - my thinking. The timing of The Prank vis-a-vis SWM has never 
been firmly established in canon, but for some reason most of fandom 
believed the Prank came after, not before. 

Did JKR intentionally place The Prank before SWM because she wanted 
to communicate something to us about James, or did she just not think 
about it at all, the way she didn't think about Flint spending 8 
years at Hogwarts or Polyjuice Potion having a one hour time limit or 
the ever-changing methods of detecting underage magic or the Secret-
Keeper concept that changes from book to book and indeed chapter to 
chapter?

James' employment - did JKR *intend* James to be a spoiled, rich, 
layabout, or did she simply not bother to think up a source of 
employment for him? Lily has no named job either - nor Pettigrew, 
whom one would expect to need paying work as he is not living off 
family money. We know that it's nearly impossible for Lupin to find 
work, but what line of work is he in, when he's not teaching at the 
only wizarding school in Britain?

You see what I mean? James' lack of employment could be a reflection 
on his character or it could be a detail that JKR just didn't include 
because she hadn't bothered to think of it or because it wasn't 
relevant to the story. 

JKR has said that she needed James to be rich, so she made him rich. 
Just as she needed Harry's grandparents to be dead, so she made them 
all dead, without any explanation of how or when or why. 

Lily didn't have any friends: again, is this meant to tell us 
something about Lily or about James or is it something that JKR felt 
would just clutter up the plot and didn't need mentioning?

I have been called a nitpicker in the past for complaining about 
JKR's mixing up of details (see the examples above) or failing to 
address obvious questions, but I think James is an excellent example 
of why she needed to not do stuff like that. 

If the author chronically makes mistakes in continuity, how are we to 
evaluate the sequence of events as relevant to James' character? If 
she chronically avoids answering the most basic of questions about 
multiple characters, how are we to assess the importance of the 
absence of certain information?

For years we thought that James and Lily's occupations must be 
important, because JKR wouldn't tell us what they were. Now it seems 
(to me at least) that JKR wouldn't tell us, because she hadn't 
bothered to come up with that particular detail, because it wasn't 
relevant to her.  


frumenta:

 > And then there's the mind-boggling fact that this guy who has 
> Voldemort after him, who has supposedly thrice defied Voldie as 
> stated in the Prophecy just lies back and plays with his kid in the 
> house while there's a Dark Lord in his back yard. Said Dark Lord 
> blasts his door open and James sprints to the hall to see what 
> happened without bothering to pick up his wand. Just how stupid was 
> this guy? And I just love how he tells Lily that he'll hold back 
> Voldemort... How exactly? What did he do for a living anyway? What 
> did he do in the Order? Sure, there was the whole Secret Keeper 
> business but what if Peter was tortured and forced to give away the 
> secret? He didn't have any other measures, any way to get his 
family 
> out of there.

va32h:

Well I've addressed the job issue above. I don't think James was 
stupid for playing with his son - James did not know that Voldemort 
was in his backyard, the whole point of the Secret Keeper charm (at 
least in that incarnation) is supposed to be that it protects you 
completely. 

I'm sure that one of Moody's first afterlife conversations with James 
took him to task for his lack of CONSTANT VIGILANCE, but I didn't 
find it stupid for James to set down his wand for a minute at a time 
when he believed his family to be safe. 

How would he hold Voldemort back? I don't know - hand to hand combat? 
Throwing the furniture at him? I think it's an instinct to jump up 
and fight, to try and ward off an attacker, even if you are woefully 
outmatched. What else could he do? Run away, or call out, "Lily, were 
screwed! We're all going to die!" and just laid down and let 
Voldemort kill him?

frumenta:

the character himself comes short anyway you look at him. I think JKR 
truly failed with him.

va32h:

There we agree.