Villain!Dumbledore (was: re:HatingDH/Dementors/...Draco/.../KeepSlytherin Ho

[sistermagpie]

No: HPFGUIDX 177800

> > Prep0strus:
> > I take your point, and hers, but then I think she failed even 
more at
> > her objective.  She can say they're not all like that, but why 
didn't
> > she show us any who weren't?  
> 
> Pippin:
> Perhaps she wants to show us that when you're getting your
> information through distorted media, being a liberal
> requires as much faith as any religion that asks you to believe
> in the invisible. When the reporter is biased, the media will
> reflect that. If you only knew about black people from the
> newspapers I read in my youth, you would think they only
> existed to cause trouble -- which is much the impression
> Harry and the narrator give you of Slytherin House.> Harry doesn't 
*notice* the Slytherins when they're being good,
> and it suits JKR's purpose not to contradict that impression 
> except in subtle ways, like having some Slytherins stand to
> honor Harry, or coo over the baby unicorns.  Theodore Nott 
> never does anything obnoxious, and so from Harry's pov
> he barely exists. 

Magpie:
I don't think that works at all. We're not reading the newspaper, 
these aren't real people. We're reading about a world that is only 
created and exists within these pages. I don't believe this is just a 
case of Harry not noticing when Slytherins are being good. First, the 
narrator is not Harry, and second Harry *does* notice when they're 
being good. He also just sees right in front of him when they're 
being bad, which is most of the time. We saw some Slytherins stand to 
honor Harry and coo at baby unicorns--neither of those things says 
anything about their being good. They're following instructions of 
the headmaster in the first and liking cute animals in the second. We 
know the problem with Slytherins isn't that they are all DEs out to 
get Harry killed. She chose not to go beyond some of them toasting to 
Harry when the headmaster said to toast to Harry. They're not all 
bad. They are limited.

I also don't see how that quote of JKR's doesn't back up Adam's 
impression rather than contradict it. She understands the logical 
conclusion of "why don't we get rid of Slytherin?" She says they're 
not all Draco--they never were. Then she says she's not saying 
they're adorable--isn't that just more of what we've already seen? 
She says they're not all bad, as we see in DH. That doesn't translate 
to me as her saying that there are some of them that are good on the 
level of, say, Neville--it seems like she's even clarifying that's 
not what she means when she says she's not saying they're adorable. 
Remember here's she's defending against their all being expelled or 
shot.

In the books it seems to me Slytherin is 100% shown as worse than 
other houses (nobody could miss is), but they're not all bad, there 
are glimmers of hope in them that make them certainly not all 
Voldemort. It seems like that's what she's saying in her interview as 
well, which is why she can talk about the idea of house unity being a 
sort of dream the epitome of goodness might have, and a reason to 
keep around the "less noble qualities" of Slytherin in case things 
change, but can also make statements of concern about people 
identifying with Slytherins. There's certainly nothing I've ever 
heard her say in any interview that indicated this was really all a 
big test to see if readers knew to think they actually reading 
something more like a newspaper article that made Slytherins look bad 
and not a novel, which I think she would do if that were her point. 
Harry doesn't make up the bad things Slytherins are doing throughout 
the books.

Look at the way she talked about and wrote SWM. Harry thinks Lily 
hates James, the narrator presents her insulting him. Yet I thought 
it was clear from the scene she already liked him, and when asked if 
Lily didn't hate James so how did they get together in an interview 
JKR said, "Did she really? You're a woman. You know what I'm talking 
about" or whatever. The one Slytherin qutoe where she says that 
they're not all bad isn't correcting somebody's bad impression, it's 
responding to the question of why she's put them there at all being 
logical. From the interviews I've read that's usually her way. I 
can't see how she'd be so coy about Slytherin to the point where the 
real house is invisible to the naked eye.

Prep0strus:
'Use any means.' It's not, 'try their best' or 'work the hardest'
That phrase has stuck with me. Especially when it's exactly what we
see of Slytherins. Cheat, steal, kill - a Slytherin will do what he
has to do to get what he wants.

Magpie:
Yes, Slytherins are far more usually associated with those bad parts 
of ambition and almost never with the good, positive parts of it. I 
would put forth Snape as the one Slyth character who seems to show 
the good side--talent and hard work--in his HBP textbook, however we 
know he wound up in the DEs and he's not ultimately positioned as a 
genius who made great innovations in Potions. When I think of the 
books I still think of the best examples of ambition coming from 
Gryffindor, just as the finest examples of cunning usually come from 
that house--that is, talent and hard work leading to honest success 
for a positive end, and cunning used for the same reason.

Prep0strus:
I don't think we can assume that many unnamed Slytherins out there are
great people, when we were never shown one who is. That's the leap I
refuse to make. It's a work of fiction. The world is how it is
presented, and in order to make that kind of assumption, I want to be
shown in some fashion that it is likely. She had every opportunity to
show Slytherins as more than simply selfish and unpleasant, and she
took every opportunity to show, that no, they are all pretty much
unlikable. They may not all be evil, but they're all still shown
negatively. And that has way more effect on me than the idea that,
yeah, well, probably there are some nice ones out there. Which is why
I feel the real world is different from this created world.

Magpie:
ITA.

-m