Dragons, Produced and Tickled, and Other Pleasantries

[nrenka]

--- In the_old_crowd at yahoogroups.com, silmariel <silmariel at t...> 
wrote:

> My concerns start where she doesn't seem to be aware of the 
> character she's made.

<snip description of Ginny>

For heuristic purposes, I think a different tack is more productive.  
She says what she has about Ginny, and that gives us insight into how 
she's thinking of the character and her role.  Ignored and 
complicated in the ways that *we* want to complicate it at our own 
risk.  I remember a thousand predictions that Harry would wise up and 
not have anything to do with that nasty manipulative Dumbledore in 
book 6, too.  For predictive purposes in a WIP, betting against the 
author is a losing proposition.

> 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. 

ESE from the beginning of time Snape doesn't make too much sense to 
me, either.  That's why I (and others) have postulated a Snape 
described as OFH--out for himself.  This allows for his allegiances 
to shift and waver depending on the situation and what stresses he's 
under.  DDM!Snape seems to be as rock-hard and dependable as diamond 
despite his manifest emotions and biases, which I admit I find hard 
to buy.  OFH!Snape looks at both sides and looks for the best place 
to be--and he doesn't know he's in a series of books called "Harry 
Potter and the...".

> So I expect him to be utterly wrong about people's affiliations, as 
> always.

The 'always' assumption is a potentially dangerous one, because it 
sees the series expanding into infinity much as it's already gone.  
Good mathematics, perhaps, but not good literature, which often 
depends upon the breaking of repeated cycles and the resultant 
thwarting of reader expectations/predictions.

> But he is in the middle, and doesn't work, for me.

On the other hand, see above and the Ginny comments.  "Works for me" 
and "works for the author" have nothing to do with each other.  Their 
importance to us depends on what mode we're in.  I'm in predictive; 
I'll go back to critical when the pieces are all here.
 
> It's the most visible, but I think the point is, it doesn't mind 
> why you discriminate, only that you do.

I don't think so.  I think there's something particularly about blood 
ideology, its kind of essentialism, which is being singled out.  I 
don't think Voldemort could have built what he did on the doctrine 
of "kill the stupid", for instance. :)

> 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.

I think she has some problems with how Slytherin is scapegoated by 
the fandom.  However, this relates to a point below...

> 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 wonder how this meshes with a part of Rowling's own worldview, 
talking about Umbridge:

MA: Are we going to see more of her? [Jo nods.] You say that with an
evil nod.

JKR: Yeah, it's too much fun to torture her not to have another
little bit more before I finish.

----------------

She clearly believes in giving ill-behaving characters their 
comeuppance, in her role as the writer of the story.  I'm not saying 
that she thinks Harry is justified in his "he deserved it" towards 
Draco, but JKR *has* made Draco the punching bag for several books, 
making him the object of what I think of as deserved Schadenfreude.  
She's writing the books and thus gets to choose what kind of moral 
universe that she's presenting, and some kind of karmic payback seems 
to be operative.  It's open whether this has now shifted, and whether 
it applies more to minor characters (Lockhart comes to mind) than to 
major and more complex players.

> 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.

I'm a little lost here, because it's all 'real' in the context of the 
books.  No reason not to assume that the Longbottoms really did toss 
him out the window.  Or is it more that you can say "Oh, fantasy--
doesn't bother me", unlike the bullying which is all too "real"?

There's a difficult question, because it's arbitrary/unique to each 
person where to draw this line.  One person may take seriously 
something which is purely fantastic to another, and then we get sharp 
arguments about meaning and importance.

-Nora would bet the farm that "Who on earth would want Snape in love 
with them?" will have a clear antecedent statement/event by the time 
we finish the series