[the_old_crowd] Dragons, Produced and Tickled, and Other Pleasantries

[silmariel]

Sorry, took longer than expected.

> --- In the_old_crowd at yahoogroups.com, silmariel <silmariel at t...>
>
> wrote:
> > Mmm never? Oh, well. Let's say then that her interests and that of
> > her readers converge here. She likes writing him, we like/hate
> > reading him, but few people has a no-reaction to him.

> Nora:
> He does get a disproportionate reaction in terms of his page time.  I
> wonder if we aren't pinning too much weight and importance on him,
> though.
>

Let's see him pre and post-Hbp. Till OoP I simply could say I though he was 
written to get attention, he is very theatrical, he is given scenarios. Of 
course, it may be to much reading on my part, but the 'there's more to Snape 
than first met the eye' was something I had clear. Nowhere in the Aliens saga 
is the beast used as in the first film, and we all know that was made though 
carefully considered appearances.

Post HBP, if I am to find that Snape is not central to the plot, I would have 
the same objection I had with preHBP serves-for-nothing Draco. Now I see 
Rowling has done something relevant with the character that justifies so much 
screen time for the little brat, with him not being even an adequate rival 
for Harry (in the past, that is, when he was only an annoyance).

She didn't need more screen time or other methods than in the other books. 
Snape has been always there,  lurking, making a few 'let's get attention' 
appearances, and that was ok, to me.

Now I have images of pink flamingos, I mean, all this paraphernalia of the HBP 
textbook is out of the treatment I was used for Snape, and not needed at all, 
imo, so she must be setting the scenario for something. 

> > She loves the characters she kills, that's true. About Grawp, well,
> > she did write Dobby, she did write Sirius.
>
> And she has genuine affection for the latter (per interview), which
> seems to grate upon some to no end.  You can't predict everything
> based on who the author likes or not, but it's not a bad heuristic
> for the tone of their ultimate treatment.
>

I think you can love a character and at the same time have no mercy regarding 
what you consider to be his faults, and dislike, at a visceral level, a 
character, and nonetheless be able to see his good points. It seems she does 
it, by the way she talks of Sirius. My concerns start where she doesn't seem 
to be aware of the character she's made.

With Ginny, for example, I have a conflict when it comes to Zacharias Smith. 
She sais she hexes him because he annoyed her. To start, Ginny is easily 
annoyed, but to end, what I know of that guy from OoP is that he was a 
non-traitorous DADA member whose worst crime was to be an skeptic and to be 
brave enough to confront Harry with the doubts half or more the wizarding 
population had. Perfect girl? Huh? Integration of the houses, remember, not 
hexing Hufflepuffes that I'm not aware exactly why (offscreen, sorry) are 
supposed to be annoying to the point of being hexed.

> I suspect that's a rather rarified way of reading the events which
> have taken place, although it's surely one that she's thought of.  I
> have no faith in any of my predictions, but 'hiding in plain sight'
> may well be the strategy.  I can think of all the supposed
> discrepancies and little clues in past books which haven't proven out
> yet.  Given that, it wouldn't shock me that she put a BANG at the end
> of book 6 to work through its side-effects (and not reverse it) in
> book 7.  YMMV.
>

Peter was hiden in plain sight, also Barty Crouch, also Remus Lupin had it 
tatooed in the name he was a werewolf. She's made an habit of it, I can 
assure you than when authors do not play mouse and cat with me and they are 
WYSIWYG I don't go looking for hiding in the front surprises. We've also seen 
the ESE Sirius turning to be an ok guy.

But for tastes, I really don't care in the least if Snape is bad, only that 
she has to make it very good considering the text for not almost every other 
character being dumb, and well, if so, what a pity. Check author as not 
relevant, go on to the next. 

If he is bad and nonetheless the books are elegant, I'd be the first to 
applaud, but I can't see, with elements in hand, such a good and edged 
traitor as ESE!Lupin as depicted by Pippin, would be. The sweeter the tongue, 
the harsher the bite.

Sincerely if Snape is ESE he has been doing certain things that I don't quite 
understand, as not being unconscious a little more time in PoA, that perfect 
oportunity to get ridden of Harry (by Lupin, no less :). The argument that he 
needs Harry alive to defeat LV and so turn into the next dark lord is purely 
anti the character himself, imo, I'm glad JK agrees with me here. 

What I know is that I can't trust and I have to recheck everything Harry 
thinks or deducts, because he has a very narrow view, and he usually 
diminishes or ignores useful clues until the end when he suddenly understands 
everything as an ephiphany. 

I haven't seen that change this year. He didn't even see coming that Snape was 
the HBP and he accepted multiple versions of what Tonks was about, and that 
he happened to be right about Malfoy only tells me that if you always play to 
the same number in the lottery, if it is the winning number, you'll win, but 
doesn't add anything, imo, in Harry's deductive capabilities. So I expect him 
to be utterly wrong about people's affiliations, as always.

The thing is, all those discrepancies are not if Snape is DDM and she pulls 
out a good reason for all the things DD has been saying about Snape (and the 
conditions, just after Sirius death it is not the time to attack Sirius and 
defend Snape, but she did it).

> Maybe so, but does he have the scale and the ferocity.  I don't know
> how Rowling is going to pull off her denoument, whether it's going to
> be death or some other mechanism.
>

I think by fantasy standars he is ridiculous, he is the kind of problem to get 
ridden of in a book. I think the scale is adecuate, but too real and the 
organization, methods and ideology also. It clashes with him as Dark Lord. 

When Dark Lords go dumb disbelief is not suspended, when the brightest wizard 
Howgards had goes really dumb, being him too tied to reality, I can't help 
but laughing a little. Is the risk of meshing genres, imo, because when I 
read about the DL supossed intelligence in a high fantasy book, I know I can 
expect him to be stupid, but Voldemorts falls short in the make believe 
category. Maybe if he wasn't called Dark Lord but another tittle and had less 
delirious gore tastes for decorating his horcruxes (an obsession for deaths 
can be expressed in other ways), I could take him seriously. Or not, as in 
fantasy. But he is in the middle, and doesn't work, for me.

That said, Voldemort is not the DE and the whole war, he's only the DL.

The how is he going to be dispatched off hasn't interested me. I though Jo's 
suggestion that Neville could be a living HX was interesting because as sure 
as Harry is willing to sacrifice himself, he wouldn't be willing to sacrifice 
Neville.

> The blood ideology seems to be the dominant form of bigotry in the
> series.  It's the one given a giant past from founding on, and has
> been shown in the actions of any number of characters (Voldie, Lucius
> Malfoy, Sluggy, Fudge, the whole Ministry) to be the primary cancer
> of wizarding society.
>

It's the most visible, but I think the point is, it doesn't mind why you 
discriminate, only that you do.

Say, the blood ideology is only the current excuse for discrimination, but 
Voldemort would find another, as adherence to any doctrine, or invent it if 
required. 

I think it is a very useful tool because we get sided with the muggles, so she 
can make us hate the other part, the one that is attacking us, instead of 
seeing externally the problem, in wich case I assume everyone would have 
caught by now her 'integration is the response' approach. Liked it or not, 
agreed or not, but caught it.

But of course, if you are trying to make the point of how easily is for 
violence and anger to enquist and escalate to the point of blinding reason, 
this is a perfect approach, and the more Slytherin, Draco and Snape are 
viscerally scapegoated by the fandom, the better. Blood lust, imo, very well 
developed by the author.

> It means that she makes him (IMO) even more bathetic than genuinely
> pathetic.  (Pathetic is a hard word to use in this case because it
> makes me think of both older and newer connotations of the word).  

Mmm sorry I was only aware of the 'deserves pity' meaning.

> I
> must be one of the only readers who actually found Snape *less*
> sympathetic after OotP: it was a case of "You've been sulking and
> sitting on all of *that* for so many years?"  I guess that he would
> like to present himself as justified and the wronged party, but his
> version of "me me me" is used by Rowling to make him ridiculous, too.
>

I detailed at lenght in a post why I didn't buy that argument as being 
aceptable, because I agree, that's not a reason to remember and hate during 
15 years, with your enemies: 1 dead with spouse, 1 in jail, 1 as a pet, 1 as 
a discarded member of society. DD sais some scars don't heal, not that Snape 
has been unable to heal them, which would be more appropiate considering he 
has just remarked Sirius' faults. I think everybody agrees that particular 
scars do heal in most of cases, so DD would be downright unfair and OOC, imo, 
in trying to defend Snape if that's all he had.

But the worst memory incident did contained a line that I thought to be 
enlightening: Harry though it wasn't fine to do that to Snape, instead, say, 
Draco, *who deserved it*. As I think no one deserves bullying, I thought 
Harry had crossed a line.

> > I don't particularly like the Goth side, I prefer the sarcastic
> > bastard side.
>
> About half the time the humor is sharp and cutting, the other half
> it's fifth-grader caliber.  The latter is supremely embarrassing when
> being used by a grown man upon his student charges.  Again, YMMV.
>

Yes, this is the point where the fantasy does work for me and would be boring 
not to have him as a teacher, I also don't imagine as real the Longbottom 
family throwing him out of the window to see if he is magical, it goes in the 
fantasy pack.

> > He's the Spock type. Don't ask me how it works, but it always
> > works.
>
> One wonders what the fandom fallout will be if Rowling decides to
> puncture that possibility...
>

I think she is unaware, or she would be an hypocrite if surprised by questions 
about snape and romance. But the archetipe is wide-spreaded, so she doesn't 
need to have made the connection to that particular character, it's only that 
I can't help but seeing it.

> -Nora keeps her options open, but notes that there are a lot of fans
> on both sides of issues who would be devastated to be wrong
>

Agreed. 

Silmariel