Dragons, Produced and Tickled, and Other Pleasantries

[pippin_999]

--- In the_old_crowd at yahoogroups.com, "nrenka" <nrenka at y...> wrote:
>

> 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.  

Pippin:
Part of the fun of being a Snape fan is inventing excuses for Snape. Taken
altogether, they would make a white-washed individual barely recognizable
as the character from the books. People do the same for their other favorites,
such as Harry and Sirius, excusing behavior of which the author herself
has been critical.

It is not necessary to find Snape "rock-hard and dependable as diamond" 
in order for him to be DDM. Even Harry wavers occasionally, is misled by 
his biases and his emotions, and is deeply unwilling to accept Dumbledore's 
assurances as to other people's innocence. But his allegiance is not easily
shifted, for all that.

Nora:
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...".

Pippin:
And despite this long habit, neither Dumbledore nor Voldemort regards
him as particularly slippery? OFH!Lucius Malfoy is more like it, methinks.

Nora:
> 
> 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. :)

Pippin:
What about anti-werewolf bias? That seems to be moving front and
center,  ESE!Lupin or no. It's interesting that Fenrir seems to
be trying to create a racial identity for werewolves, that it's something
he thinks they need in order to gain recognition for their interests.

I said, over on TOL, that even innocent young Harry's dearest 
dream was to be surrounded by people who look just like him, and
people wondered what I was talking about. Here's the passage:

"And slowly, Harry looked into the faces of the other people in the
mirror, and saw other pairs of green eyes like his, even a little
old man who looked as though he had Harry's knobbly knees --
Harry was looking at his family, for the first time in his life.

The Potters smiled and waved at Harry..." -PS/SS ch 12

Isn't it strange how our hearts go out to Harry, and yet his dream
is little different than Slytherin's? Harry even assumes that he
gets all his desirable traits from his wizard relatives, the Potters,
and yet we know (and so would he if he thought about it) that
his green eyes come from Mum. 

If the blood ideology is singled out, it's because it's more
ubiquitous than most of us are willing to admit, and harder
to fight because we may be indeed biased genetically toward
the familiar. But the enemy is intolerance, not the longing for
family, don't you think?


Nora:
> 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.  

Pippin:
Harry got some too. I started HBP with a group first time through
(waves to Rita and CV) and we all agreed that Harry got what he deserved
with Draco's train stomp. So it isn't just the chronically ill-behaved
who get comeuppance. I think that while JKR indulges herself in
punishing the manifestly guilty, she regards it as highly dangerous for
her characters to make themselves the agents of comeuppance. They
too will get what they deserve. Judge not...

Dumbledore rarely punishes, and when he confronts wrongdoers,
he seems more inclined to teach than to vent his wrath. Even the
bouncing wineglasses he visits on the Dursleys seem more directed
at getting their attention than at negative reinforcement. Though it
could be I am just whitewashing my favorite character, I suppose. <g>

Pippin