Slytherins come back WAS: Re: My Most Annoying Character

[sistermagpie]

No: HPFGUIDX 180162

> > Betsy Hp:
> > Okay.  Just like I can assume that in "The Empire Strikes Back" 
> when 
> > Vader says "join with me" Luke said "sure!", and what we see in 
> the 
> > movie is actually a Jedi mind trick Vader used to confuse the 
> > audience?
> 
> Alla:
> 
> Nope. I say just as we can imagine that more rebel forces 
> participated in that last battle than we saw. IMO of course.

Magpie:
I raise your "nope" and say we can't--because we're not asked to 
imagine more rebel forces here, we're asked to imagine non rebel 
forces who shouldn't be there. Or more like if Han Solo had never 
appeared in A New Hope again after the scene where we see him leaving 
and we're just supposed to assume that he showed up unexpectedly and 
joined the battle. We see his return--we have to, because we saw him 
leave. We saw him choose to say this fight was not his own. That's 
why this Slytherin reading is going against what's actually there. 
They've been characterized as leaning the other way by nature and 
needing special circumstances to act otherwise. And we're never told 
they're there at all. 
 
> Betsy Hp: 
> > Because, this strikes me as a similar thing.  Slytherins 
returning 
> to 
> > fight *against* Voldemort shouldn't be something the reader has 
to 
> > either guess at or read so deeply between the lines one risks the 
> > accusation of making things up whole cloth.
> 
> Alla:
> 
> Why not? What if this moment of same importance for JKR as 
> Dumbledore knowing because of the spell what happened in DH? Very 
> secondary one I mean.
> 
> To me it is clear that she showed that Slytherin is not all bad 
> through individual stories. So she left it for us to fill in. 

Magpie:
I'm not sure what spell you're referring to with Dumbledore, but I 
doubt I'd think it was the same thing. The point is, this isn't 
something she left for us to fill in--she filled it in herself in the 
book. She just filled it in differently than she's doing in the 
interview. Those "individual stories" are important because they show 
Slytherins going against what their first inclination was--individual 
Slytherins who have a reason to do that. In this case we're not only 
inventing individual reasons for characters we don't know, we're 
inventing the characters doing it in the first place because 
according to canon they don't do it. They leave. The only mention of 
those Slytherins after they leave is Voldemort talking about 
Slytherins other than Draco joining him. Then we have a scene where 
completely different people are described joining the battle later. 
If we were told that the Slytherins returned *then* we'd be filling 
in. As it is we're not filling in, we're re-writing. Why would I put 
them at the battle when the author made a point of telling me they 
weren't at the battle?

Alla:
> And of course Phinelius' words as some people remarked make little 
> or no sense if they did not. To me anyways.

Magpie:
They made perfect sense to me the first time--as they must since 
Slytherin students are not written as returning to fight in the book. 
Slytherin played an important part in the destruction of Voldemort 
without any return of the Slytherin students. Snape alone made a huge 
contribution.
> 
> Betsy Hp:
>   (The accusation I'm 
> > leveling, actually <g>.)  If this *is* what JKR meant to have 
> happen 
> > than she's a crap writer for making it so impossibly unclear.  If 
> > it's *not* what JKR meant to have happen, then she's just a very 
> > strange interviewee.
> 
> 
> Alla:
> 
> Or she does not feel a need to spell out every detail. I will stick 
> with this one.

Magpie:
Me too. Only I stick with saying this isn't leaving details not 
spelled out. This is writing one thing and misremembering or changing 
it in an interview. It's not like saying "Harry got his map back at 
the end of GoF." That's filling in, because we know he gave the map 
to Moody and then we know he has it again later. This isn't filling 
in that Draco's dad must have gotten him the Hand of Glory because 
even though he doesn't buy it in CoS he has it in HBP. (Though there 
again JKR seemed to have forgotten that she wrote Draco as not buying 
it in CoS.) Those things are filling in. This is making up whole 
cloth. 

Alla: 
> I would call her to task if she was writing a book called the story 
> of Slytherins and left this moment that unclear. 

Magpie:
I don't think anybody's really calling her to task in that way, 
though. They're just saying no, that's no what you wrote. The words 
are on the page. I mean, she wasn't writing The Story of Colin 
Creevey's Camera either, but that doesn't make her any less wrong 
when she says that Colin never really took any pictures, because it's 
right there on the page that he did. It's not an important detail, 
but it's still there. This detail is more important, and it's talking 
about things that aren't mentioned rather than what are, but still, 
if I can't go with plain words on the page what's the story made of? 
Slughorn returned with parents of non-Slytherins and shopkeepers. 

-m