How do the books affect children? (was: Why down on all the characters?)

[sistermagpie]

No: HPFGUIDX 179604

> Magpie:
> <SNIP>
> It just seems like you're having to cancel out a whole lot of times
> where people are drawn to Harry to make him unpopular. The secret
> army that appoints him their leader and leaps to defend him? Just
> using him as a Dark Arts teacher. Can't be counted as a social
> contact at all. And can't show any sort of popularity even though
> many individuals in the group actually do express positive feelings
> about Harry himself.
> <SNIP>
> 
> Alla:
> 
> And it just seems that you're having to cancel several times where 
> people dislike Harry and even hate him to make him popular 
> throughout. In OOP not just many people in school, the whole world 
> turns against him. Of course there is the mentioned before times 
in 
> PS, etc. IMO.

Magpie:
No, I completely acknowledged those times. I know there are times 
when everyone is hostile to Harry (though the whole school/whole 
world actually never turns against him). Saying that Harry 
is "unpopular" has certain meanings when you're talking about 
school. Snape, Luna, Neville meanings. Having everyone angry at you 
because they think you did something bad (lied about Voldemort, set 
a monster on everyone, stole the championship) does not make 
you "the unpopular kid" in terms of your usual social standing. (Not 
that Harry lacks for a consistent circle of friends during any of 
those times, btw.) Harry has times where he is, as a_svirn put it so 
well, notorious. Snape is "the unpopular kid." Harry is the socially 
fine kid who is occasionally Wrongly Accused. It's a totally 
different thing to go through.

Even when Harry is having one of his terrible times where everyone's 
angry at him, he's not picked on the way Snape is in his worst 
memory, nor is he picked on or neglected the way Neville sometimes 
is or Luna is. Despite all of Harry's anger at not being believed in 
OotP, the school *doesn't* turn against him at all. His day to day 
experience is pretty much just like always--and a number of kids 
stand with him in his club. The only person with whom he has any 
unpleasantness outside of Slytherins who are consistently unpleasant 
(and quarantined) is with Seamus, and that's an equal fight between 
the two of them. In his dorm Dean, Neville and Ron are all on 
Harry's side, and Seamus isn't even really against him. Harry's 
still got the friends he had before, he's still an accepted member 
of the Quidditch team, he makes more friends with the DA. His 
troubles in OotP come from Umbridge and the idea that people in the 
world don't believe him, not becoming somebody like Luna with no 
friends. (Ironically it's in that book that Harry has two moments of 
discomfort in being faced with the social isolation of people like 
Luna and Neville.) The only time his classmates ever really provoke 
him that I recall is in GoF where they're wearing Support Cedric 
badges and he knows that they resent him for becoming champion. And 
of course even then the whole's thing's made him very popular in 
Gryffindor. 


> > Magpie:
> <SNIP>
> >Honestly, I think JKR has 
> > made sure to make Harry basically cool throughout canon--and 
it's 
> > not like she doesn't know how to write social outcasts. She does 
> > them with Neville and Luna and Myrtle and Snape. I think the 
only 
> > change in HBP is that Harry's attractiveness has a sexual 
component 
> > and that's it. 
> 
> Alla:
> 
> Yes, and to me those times in PS and OOP Harry sounds if not as 
> social outcast, then pretty darn close to being one.

Magpie:
The whole reason those times stand out for Harry is because they're 
not normal. If he was actually just an unpopular kid his whole 
school experience would just be one grey haze of loneliness, not 
isolated painful memories when he did something bad or was thought 
to do something bad and lots of people got mad at him for it (though 
luckily in every single one of those times he still actually had 
friends standing by him).

-m