Dark Magic (ignoring Dumbledore's age/ Goblin's view on property)

[Ceridwen]

No: HPFGUIDX 176611

> Adam (Prep0strus), who's sure he's gotten himself into hot water
> again, but after again reading the Sorting Hat songs in full is just
> more disgusted with Slytherin, and more disappointed in JKR

Ceridwen:
Acutally, just lukewarm water.  Okay?

Prepostrus:
It's so fashionable to identify with evil characters and smooth over
their flaws, and to look for the lack of perfection in good characters
and overemphasize their flaws, until everyone is floating around on
the same moral ground. 

Ceridwen:
It's equally as fashionable to set the characters at extremes, so the 
good are ridiculously good and the bad are the worst there is.  
Rowling did a poor job, in my opinion, of showing a virtuous Lily and 
an evil and getting worse Severus.  This is what I'm trying to show, 
what I actually see in the text, not some fashionable reading.  
Thanks, but a fashion plate I'm not.

Prepostrus:
Except that they're not. We can point to many
many problems JKR had with the way she tried to get things across,
with her contradictions and issues, but what she intended is pretty
obvious. I don't mind it when people castigate her for creating an
`other' and for making Slytherins, etc., her `whipping boys', but it
goes too far when we blame the other CHARACTERS for this. We have to
judge the characters on what they do. Only the author is responsible
for the entire universe. And I don't think you can blame Griffindors
for looking down their nose at Slytherins, because in the world, as
created, the Slytherins are bad. Dark arts is bad – some have said
dark=slytherin, and that may be, and it may be a flaw of JKR's, but
it's not the fault of Griffindors. Griffindors didn't create this
`other'.

Ceridwen:
Blaming the characters?  We do that all the time here.  Dumbledore is 
a puppet master, Snape is abusive, the Weasleys are the ESE-est 
family in the WW, etc.  We go back and forth between plot and story, 
between characters and author, between what I see and what someone 
else sees, all the time.  Within the context of the story, I 
certainly can blame Lily for judging without all the facts.  I can 
also see that she doesn't know she doesn't have all the facts.  I can 
see that maybe Severus shouldn't have trusted Sirius any farther than 
he could throw him like a Muggle, but I can also see a boy this age 
grabbing the chance and running with it.  Harry gets obsessed with 
people and foolishly follows them.  I blame him for that, but I also 
blame his upbringing for making him more secretive than he should 
have been.

Should I not be reading things this way, and instead trying to 
psychoanalyze Rowling?  I can't do that because I'm not an analyst.  
Should this board be strictly for analysts?  How are we supposed to 
discuss the books, the story part, if we don't blame or praise the 
characters?  These are the legitimate vehicles Rowling used to get 
her story across.  She gave these characters personality traits, 
lives, deaths in some cases, which is why I call her the Creatrix of 
the Potterverse.  I don't see how we should not blame, etc., the 
characters when we discuss the story.  Just because Gryffindors 
didn't create Slytherin as "Other" doesn't mean we can't say they're 
wrong for assuming that all Slytherins are evil.  That would fall 
under the context of the story, not the plot.  What Gryffindors do 
with the world they are given, most certainly can fall on the 
Gryffindors' shoulders.

Ceridwen.