Likeable Slughorn (was: Villain!Dumbledore )

[prep0strus]

No: HPFGUIDX 177836

Mike:
> As to Sluggy's special treatment of the talented, Irene already 
> addressed that quite well. I'll just add that Harry sure seemed to 
> change his opinion of Sluggy once Sluggy began praising Harry's 
> (unearned) potions brilliance. I don't think Harry began to "like" 
> Slughorn, but he no longer found him exactly disagreeable. And 
> uninvited is not the same as rejected. Sluggy has just as much right 
> as anyone else to associate with whom he pleases on his own time. Not 
> everyone gets to be on the Quidditch team either.

Prep0strus:
Another poster mentioned liking Sluggy as a character. I think I did
as well, but since at this point in the story I was expecting a
character from Slytherin I could also like as a person, I was
disappointed.  And you're right about who Sluggy is allowed to consort
with - he's not evil, or even 'bad'. But I would hate him in real
life.  He's not searching for talent, and he's not befriending a few
students.  He's systematically trying to make a network of contacts to
aggrandize himself.  He seems a weak, small little man who has given
up larger ambitions to become the king of his own little universe of
people who he thinks are important.  He'll suck up to a child if he
thinks the child will mention him to their important uncle, and for
the most part, he doesn't care about the morality of the person,
though he does want to stay away from anything truly controversial,
because he's a coward.  He's a fun character, in both books, and a
different side of Slytherin, but not someone I'd want to spend any
time with, and not someone I admire in the least.

> Mike:
> I have been reading this thread and your opinions about Slytherin for 
> a while. Please correct me if I'm wrong, but you, like me, have no 
> problem with JKR portraying Slytherin as the "bad guy" house. That 
> is, JKR chose to create a house from which eminates almost all the of 
> the abominations in the WW, and in a work of fiction that's just 
> fine. Notwithstanding fandom's desire for House unity, Slytherin 
> redemption, or to find that "one good Slytherin", JKR never intended 
> to ameliorate what she presented as the initial impression of the 
> predominant Slytherinesque character, imo.
> 
> And again, this doesn't bother me when reading a work of fiction. She 
> did include ambiguities in some of the Slytherin characters, and even 
> made some of the Slytherins ultimately good. But she never wavered in 
> presenting *Slytherin House* as the place that needed a good power 
> washing. She could have corrected that impression and/or given 
> Slytherin that power wash but she did neither. Failed oppurtunity, 
> poor or lazy writing? Perhaps. I prefer to believe that JKR painted 
> Slytherin as "bad" from the get go and didn't want anything to dilute 
> that message.
> 

Prep0strus:
Well, I was going to back away from the discussion because at some
point I feel like I'm just furthering an argument rather than
furthering real discussion.  But, since you asked, I guess... I'm not
sure.

I'm a little disappointed, because I expected a little more.  The
hints that were given along the way that there WAS more led me to
expect something that wasn't there, and that's a little disappointing.
 It's not the biggest disappointment I have - I'm more upset over
dropped character threads like Draco's.  Perhaps that's related, but
not necessarily - Draco's story in HBP was interesting on its own
merits, and I was very disappointed in where that went in DH.  I think
the whole conclusion was messy - with wand rules we've never really
heard before, bizarre coincidences, and triple or quadruple layers of
protection on Harry that no one seems quite positive how to work out.
 Top it all off with a strange premise of ineffectual thumb twirling
for the majority of the book, and it's certainly not my favorite book
or what I feel is a worthy conclusion.

But simply having a group in work of fiction, especially children's
fiction, that represents things that are bad? No, I don't have a real
problem with that.  The people who are most upset seem to be those who
identified with Slytherin, thinking that they would be vindicated
later on, just to find out that no, Slytherin is bad.  Of course, some
maintain the houses have been shown to be equal, which I just don't
understand.

I also don't understand identifying with Slytherin.  I get not
identifying with Gryffindor.  But to identify with Slytherin, when
they're clearly shown so negatively, I don't understand.  I mean, I
too believed we would see more from them, but from what we saw, it was
basically selfishness, nastiness, and bigotry.  The kids, the adults -
they all seemed simply mean to other people, assured in their own
superiority, with a dash of racism thrown in.  It startles me as it
appears to startle JKR that anyone would want to associate themselves
with that.

> Mike:
> A slight disagreement here. I think it was Slytherin House's 
> predominant personality cult that was bad, not that all the people 
> sorted into Slytherin were bad. But of course, once sorted in, even a 
> good character bombarded by that predominant opinion (and with their 
> presumed predisposition for that kind of thinking) would probably 
> change their tune. I think this may have been the case for Snape. I 
> don't think he used the term "Mudblood" before starting school. And 
> though he was probably aware of the WW prejudice, or just 
> Slytherin's, against Muggleborns, I'm not convinced he agreed with 
> that position prior to entering Slytherin House.
> 
> Mike, an unrepentant Sluggy fan ;)
>

Prep0strus:
Well, it's hard for me to figure out which came first, the chicken or
the egg.  I don't know the people before they were sorted in.  I also
don't really know how sorting works.  It appears to be a complex mix
of genetics, desire, talent, and personality.  Snape wanted Slytherin
before going to school, and he knew something about it.  How much he
knew is unknown.  He did seem to have a fairly high opinion of
himself.  But did the hat put him there because he wanted to be there?
 Was he put there because his mother was? Was he put there because of
how cunning and ambitious he was?  Was he put there because of a deep
attraction to the Dark Arts?  Was he put there because he was of a
bitter, lonely, and vindictive nature that would leave him open to
manipulation by people like Voldemort?  Was he put there to fill the
hat's quota of half-bloods?

Again, because it's fiction, and not the real world, I don't know that
the house can be blamed for the way its students turned out.  They may
have been unpleasant people even without a house of unpleasantness to
hone their skills in.  Or, they might have become something else if
they were somewhere else.  It seems an academic exercise if it's
acknowledged that however they go in, they come out bad (which not all
acknowledge).  I don't know the answer.

~Adam (Prep0strus)