Disarming spell/ Character's choices

[sistermagpie]

No: HPFGUIDX 185473

> > Mapgie:
> > I don't have a big problem with it--I get why it works. I'm just 
> > saying that as the solution to the problem of "how do we have the
> bad  guy killed but still make a point about how our hero is 
morally 
> > superior for showing mercy" it works because it lets you have it
> both  ways. You make one choice but there's no real suspense that we
> won't  get the consequence of the other. 
> > 
> 
> Pippin:
> As Bilbo Baggins once said, it's not a bad ending because it's been
> used before.

Magpie:
I didn't say it was good or bad. I said it's been used before because 
it's a neat way to have it both ways. I didn't deny the 
destructiveness of malice implied in it. I just pointed out the 
neatness of it. In contrast, for instance, to the earlier scene in 
PoA where Harry decides against killing by actually protecting Peter 
and then lives with some serious consequences from that decision. 

Pippin:> 
> JKR certainly didn't take the easy way out with the Slytherins -- it
> would have been a cliche to have them prove themselves by letting 
them
> do something gallant and impressive to save Harry, but that hasn't
> kept a lot of people from complaining bitterly that it didn't 
happen.
> Not that the Slyths can't be heroic, but if they're gallant and
> impressive, it's never for Harry's sake, and if they do something 
for
> Harry, it's not gallant and impressive. 

Magpie:
I'm not sure what the Slytherins have to do with anything. Whether or 
not having the Slytherins do anything gallant or whether or not 
people are bitter or complain about it doesn't say anything about 
whether or not the kill/don't kill issue is side-stepped or not with 
Voldemort. 

Not that I'm agreeing that the decision not to have the Slytherins or 
a Slytherin do anything other than what they did in canon was 
particularly easy or not either. The fact that some readers 
were "bitter" at the way they were handled doesn't prove to me that 
the author thought she was doing something all that daring or 
difficult, there. In fact when pressed about it a bit she threw in 
some Slytherins in an interview as if she'd actually done that to a 
limited extent--doesn't get much easier than that. 

Pippin: 
> We never get a stand up and cheer moment for the Slytherins. But
> really, why should we? If we're grown up enough to appreciate their
> virtues despite being overshadowed by Harry, then we ought to have
> outgrown House partisanship, too. 

Magpie:
Who said anything about needing a stand up and cheer moment for the 
Slytherins to begin with? We were talking about the attention drawn 
to Harry using "nice" spells and the focus on killing as tearing the 
soul leading up to Harry being in a situation where Voldemort casting 
an AK himself kills him (Voldemort). As for Harry naming his kid 
after Snape the anti-hero...that actually does seem pretty easy.

-m