Canon supportability (was: Snape's Backsid-- er, BacksLide)

[Judy]

Nora Renka wrote, in regards to some fans' overly positive 
interpretations of Draco, Snape, etc.:
> if you have any concern about the supportability 
> of your interpretation, it's definitely *not* an anything goes   
> world.....

I think the question here is what a fan is using the books *for*.  If 
the books are intended as a starting point for one's own imagination, 
then it *is* anything goes. It's not as if JKR is entitled to control 
the contents of a person's own thoughts.  If one is trying to discuss 
the books with someone else, then "the supportability 
of your interpretation" really does matter.  Unfortunately, some fans 
seem to confuse the two, and wind up doing things such as using 
Fanfic!Draco to try to support their arguments on HPfGU. I definitely 
agree that this gets tedious pretty fast.  

I said:
> > I'm not sure that JKR's comments mean that Snape is ESE.  I do 
> > think she intended him to be an unlikable person -- bitter, 
> > vindictive, and so forth -- and that she's perplexed by his many 
> > fans. She doesn't understand that we want to *save* him!...

And Nora said: 
> I actually think that she does understand that--but she knows him, 
> what he is, how he thinks, and I don't think that Snape such as he 
> actually is, when we find out what makes his little head tick, is 
> going to be the 'saved by the love of a good woman' type....

It's possible that JKR will *never* reveal enough about Snape to let 
us know whether he could be saved.  It's even possible that she 
hasn't fleshed him out enough in her own mind to tell if he could be 
saved or not, although I tend to agree with you that JKR knows him 
quite well.  

In some cases, such as Lucius, I think it's quite possible that the 
character is not all that well fleshed out in JKR's mind.  And, it's 
quite possible that we won't get to really find out what makes Lucius 
tick. So, fans who support Redeemable!Lucius or (especially) 
Redeemable!Snape might get their hopes dashed, but it's also possible 
that JKR might never get around to dashing those hopes. And, some 
fans might not *care* if JKR dashes their hopes. I find Snape a very 
interesting character to contemplate, and if the Snape I imagine 
turns out to not quite correspond to the one that JKR wrote, it won't 
bother me all that much. 

Also, whether one believes Snape to be "savable" or not depends not 
just on the backstory JKR has written for him, and the future books 
she intends to write, but on one's theory of human nature.  A person 
who believes that most prison inmates can be rehabilitated will 
probably be more likely to see Snape as savable than someone who 
believes that most prison inmates are incorrigible.  So, regardless 
of how Snape turns out in the books, fans can still differ as to 
whether Snape *could* have been saved.  "If only Harry hadn't blamed 
Snape for Sirius' death!" some might say.  "Nah, Snape sold his soul 
to Voldemort when he joined the Death Eaters," others could retort. 


On a somewhat different topic, I said:
> > (I'd definitely want to speculate on why so many women 
> > are into Male/Male ships.) 

Nora said:
> I'll admit to hating shipping with a passion, but there's one easy 
> answer to that question that works across fandoms: the male 
> characters are more interesting, or there's more of them.  Combine 
> that with the unfortunate tendency to think of everything in terms 
> of pairings, and why not?  There's always the other easy answer: 
> because they like reading it...

It's the easy answer that intrigues me: *Why* do heterosexual women 
like reading and male/male romances?  I suspect it's the feminine 
equivalent of men who like to look at pictures of two women making 
out.  The reader/looker gets to fantasize about the opposite sex in a 
relationship, without the pesky intrusion of someone of one's own sex 
there, to serve as a reminder of competition. 

As for there being more male characters, I don't think there's the 
whole story.  Some of the male characters who get shipped are 
extremely minor. Why ship one of the main male characters with Justin 
Fitch-Fenley (sheesh, I can't even remember his name) when one could 
just as easily ship with Parvati or some other minor female character 
instead? 

I said that 
> I haven't come across many Voldemort fans  

And Nora said:
> You haven't been lookin' in the right places...

Really?  Where do they hang out? (I'm curious *purely* for research 
purposes, of course....)

-- Judy