[the_old_crowd] Subverting the genre?

[Susan Albrecht]

Kneasy reported, from "The Tough Guide to Fantasy
Land:"

"Colour Coding is very important in Fantasyland.  2.
Hair.  Black hair is Evil, particularly if combined
with a corpse-white complexion. ...3. Eyes. Black eyes
are invariably Evil.


SSSusan:
Well.  It's certainly looking bad, then, for my
DDM!Snape, isn't it?  Someone from the Pip! Squad of
Snape supporters want to help rebut this? :-)


Seriously, this sounds like a delightful book, with
gems like this --

"The Management here takes the reasonable line that,
without Gestures, most people would not know that
magic was being done. So all wizards wave their arms
about a lot."

-- and like this:

"[...] demons, dragons, elves etc all have magic  
that works in quite a different way.... The Rules (of
which) are not known."

SSSusan: Interesting, isn't it?  We do still wonder in
what ways house elves' magic is different from the
rules which apply to standard wizards & witches.  We
know they can somehow apparate within Hogwarts, but
what else can they do?


Kneasy quoteth further:
"Mentor. A Tour official who will be at your service
until halfway through the Tour, when you will
unaccountably lose him [...] He will be several
hundred years old and will probably have a long white 

beard; this will give him the right to be bossy, smug,
tiresomely philosophical and infuriatingly secretive
about all-important facts."

SSSusan: LOL. It does seem reasonable to ask, "In what
way *is* JKR subverting this genre, with this kind of
dead-on match to the standard?

  
Siriusly Snapey Susan, clearly with nothing to add,
but posting anyhow.