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deathtocapslock
* Collin’s really acting like an obsessive stalker here. I wonder if that’s how Harry appeared to Draco in HBP?
* Ron’s malfunctioning wand actually sounds quite dangerous, but nobody thinks it might be a good idea to replace it. Although OTOH having a lax attitude towards safety seems to be one of the few things about the WW that seems consistent throughout the books (they’ll show it again when Percy tries to stop people using dangerous cauldrons), so maybe I should be thankful that it isn’t just one of these things that changes whenever the plot demands.
* I assume that JKR’s just forgotten to mention the try-outs that every Quidditch team apparently does each year.
* I’m just going to tune out while Harry recaps the rules of Quidditch for Collin.
* Everyone’s not bothering to pay attention to Wood’s new tactics. Remember kids, teamwork’s for suckers! You just do what you want to do!
* Wood is still upset over Gryffindor losing last year. Serves him right for being too thick to have a reserve Seeker, IMHO.
* Note how Wood’s first reaction upon seeing Collin is to jump to the conclusion that he’s a Slytherin spy. Not that he’s in any way biased against Slytherin, or anything like that.
* Remember chaps, looking like a troll = evil. Part-giant, OTOH, = misunderstood woobie. Even though trolls don’t really seem much worse than giants.
* There are no girls on the Slytherin team, just to remind everyone that they’re sexist, and therefore evil. JKR hates sexism, which is why she took care to include so many liberated, independent-minded women in the novels.
* Wood’s “spitting with rage” now. Christ, Oliver, calm down, it’s not the end of the world. Maybe the Gryffindor and Slytherin teams could just play a friendly, or something.
* “Aren’t you Lucius Malfoy’s son?” says Fred, looking at Draco with dislike. Remember kids, it’s wrong to judge people based on their family.
* Is it possible to smirk so broadly that your eyes are “reduced to slits”, or is Draco actually grinning with happiness here?
* I don’t think that Malfoy did buy his way onto the team. For a start, Seeker is the most (i.e., only) important position in the game, and I don’t think that flying on better brooms would compensate for having an inferior Seeker. Secondly, he’s on the team for at least three years, when the Slytherins could easily have ditched him as soon as they’d got the brooms. They’d even have had a good excuse after losing that Quidditch match in “The Rogue Bludger”.
* Lucius seemed like quite a harsh, demanding father when we saw him in Borgin and Burke’s, IMHO, so the thought that he’s pleased daddy enough to make him buy new brooms for the team is probably making Draco grin even more.
* I bet he looks adorable in this scene.
* Now I can’t stop thinking of Lauren Lopez in A Very Potter Sequel. “Don’t worry, daddy, you’ll love me after this! I’ll catch that Snitch, mark my words!”
* Just thought it interesting to note that Malfoy wasn’t involved in the conversation until Ron brought him in. It’s not like he was strutting up and down, boasting about his new broom, or anything like that.
* Hermione’s the one who starts with the personal insults. Really, I think that the good [sic] guys are acting worse than the baddies here.
* If the theory that Draco’s really just happy because he’s finally made his daddy proud is right, then implying that he’d just bought his way onto the team is probably one of the most offensive things Hermione could say. Unsurprisingly, he responds with one of the most offensive things that he could say.
* Draco calls Hermione a “Mudblood”, despite the fact that she’s a Muggleborn, and therefore cannot be expected to know what it means, suggesting that either she’s upset him so much he’s not thinking straight, or that he wants to keep face in front of his teammates by responding to her insults, but at the same time doesn’t want to upset her. If the latter, it could be evidence for some kind of D/Hr ship.
* JKR seems to be expecting us to go “ZOMG Draco’s an evil racist!” suggesting that she’s forgotten why exactly it is that racism’s considered so wrong. I don’t think it’s just that you’re looking down on people for the way they were born – if it were, then jokes about stupid blondes would be considered as bad as jokes about stupid black people. Rather, it’s wrong because minorities often suffer from discrimination (and in many cases have suffered from it even more in the relatively recent past), and racist language helps to reinforce and normalise the prejudiced attitudes which lead to such discrimination. Because we haven’t really see people suffering from anti-Muggleborn prejudice, it’s hard to think of “Mudblood” as a particularly serious insult.
* This, BTW, is why I disagree with people who say things like “Rowling uses the Harry Potter books to teach children not to be racist.” If she were really doing that, she’d show how racism affects people’s lives (cf. To Kill a Mockingbird). What she’s actually doing is taking real racism and using it in lieu of actual worldbuilding and characterisation. We already know that racism is wrong, and we think Draco’s a bad person because his use of the term “Mudblood” is superficially similar to real-life examples of racism; we don’t learn about how racism is bad from its effects on HP characters, because it doesn’t really have any.
* Anyway, back to the actual story…
* Once again, the good guys are the first to use force. Why am I not surprised?
* I think it’s sweet the way Flint dives in front of Malfoy to stop him being attacked. The Slytherins often seem to look out for each other the most (see also Lucius patting Snape on the back when he’s first Sorted). Contrast this with the Gryffindors in PS, who refuse to speak to Harry, Hermione, Ron or Neville after they lose some House Points.
* What’s this, one of the good guys has suffered some negative consequences as a result of attacking someone else? Hold on while I go make a note of this in my diary.
* Again with the clothes! Lockhart’s wearing robes of “palest mauve” today. Harry’s really starting to look rather gay now; given JKR’s fondness for stereotypes (viz. the Finnegans) and inability to write a decent romance (chest monster!), I wouldn’t be at all surprised to find her way of showing homosexuality would be having someone spend all their time looking at their crush’s clothes.
* Note how Hagrid doesn’t remonstrate with Ron for trying to curse Malfoy. Clearly he’s a responsible adult and an excellent candidate for a prestigious teaching position.
* I know Hagrid doesn’t like Lockhart, but he really should know better than to undermine him like that in front of his pupils.
* So the jinx on DADA has been in place for what, forty or so years now? And people are only just starting to twig? I know wizards are slow learners, but really…
* Also, couldn’t Dumbledore find ways to either discover how Riddle jinxed the position and undo it somehow, or to get around it, such as hiring two teachers who each teach on alternate years or getting rid of DADA and replacing it with a class which is functionally indistinguishable but has a different name (“battle magic”, perhaps?).
* I think that this scene was one which the film actually did better than the books. Yes, having Hermione getting all upset may not have been fully logical, but it at least made Draco look like a hurtful bully rather than an eccentric crank. It also suggested that someone might have called Hermione that before, hinting at actual day-to-day anti-Muggleborn prejudice, which is more than the books ever managed to do.
* “Maybe it was a good thing yer wand backfired.” Wait, is Hagrid glad that Ron got to be on the receiving end in the hope that he’ll be less likely to curse people in future? No, of course not, he’s worrying that Ron might otherwise have got in trouble.
* Hagrid comes across as so judgemental when he says “’Spect Lucius Malfoy would’ve come marchin’ up ter school if yeh’d cursed his son.” Clearly, caring about your children being attacked is a sign of great evil. Good guys know that being randomly hexed is what makes a man out of you.
* Although Lucius doesn’t seem to have done much when Draco was hexed into unconsciousness on the train (twice!), which probably foreshadows the Redeemed!Malfoys situation at the end of DH.
* Hagrid’s been breaking the law to make his pumpkins grow faster. Which couldn’t possibly be dangerous in any way, oh no.
* Suddenly, Draco’s gossip about him getting drunk and setting his bed on fire looks awfully plausible.
* Everybody hates Filch, which is entirely understandable, given all the times he complains about having to clean up the mess children make and, erm, gives them detention for breaking the rules. Yep, entirely understandable.
* So how does Parseltongue work, then? ’Cause surely Lockhart ought to have heard it, even if he didn’t understand what it was saying? Or is it a sort of telepathy? But then Ron managed to speak it in DH…
* Awfully convenient the way the basilisk goes around describing its evil plan to itself, isn’t it? Do basilisks just have really bad memories, and need to keep repeating their plans to themselves in case they forget?
* Part of me can’t help but feel pleased that Ron vomited slugs over that trophy. Maybe next time he’ll think twice before hexing someone. Or not.
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Re: Who are the good guys really?
Date: 2010-10-25 05:08 pm (UTC)I don't think there was an unbreakable vow but what does it really say about James/Sirius/Dumbledore? How did Dumbledore handle the situation, that is what I would love to know, how he dealt with Severus or more how he dealt with Sirius and James.
And the fact that JKR is showing it happened before the worse memory scene - maybe that wasn't her intention but by how the events fall in the prince's tale Lily is still talking to Severus and makes the accusation of James saving him. So it sure as hell seems like it was before the worst memory event.
We get that James hates Severus and vise/versa - but what about James/Sirius being best friends with remus Remus? It just seems so shallow and thoughtless - and yet Severus still kept the secret or at least seemed to. We don't have any evidence that Remus was kicked out of school or expelled for being a werwolf. It wasn't till POA that it seems he was publicly outed.
What does it say about Sirius, not even the part about trying to get Severus hurt or killed. The part that Sirius was willing to allow his friend Remus to be the tool. These are the good guys? Really?
Okay find, we get that fans and even JKR and even Dumbledore might say they were young and stupid. But is what Sirius did any more wreckless and stupid than Severus joining up with the Death Eaters?
Or was James so stupidly, ridiculously arrogant that he assumed that Snape wouldn't let the secret slip even while being humiliated?
The be fair, we don't know what Severus did in school we haven't totally been shown everything. We know that Sirius says Severus didn't miss an opportunity to curse James.
BUT, being that even the young before prison Sirius seems capable of doing very irrational thoughtless things I'm not sure how much I can trust his word entirely on the James/Severus conflict. Especially because Sirius and even Lupin seem bias.
Lupin even complains about himself that he never stood up to his friends but it still comes across as not a big deal when Harry was telling them what he saw in the pensive.
If it was just school boy pranks, harmless teasing, jokes I might not have as much of an issue and be more ready to agree with the 'good guys', but the werewolf stuff seems far worse than just a joke.
The abuse we were shown in the worst memory don't seem like something I would like to witness my friend being subjected to. No matter what Severus would have become, if I had been his friend and I had witnessed James do that to someone. I don't think I could reasonably decided a couple years later, to marry the guy and have his child.
Though we're told James went through a big miraculous change in 7th year - I just seriously doubt I'd be able to think of him as date material.
I just don't get why we're supposed to think James was so special or great or even remotely smart.
If Lily and Severus really were best friends, she should have tried to help him.
I really hope JKR will at some point clear this up becuase we don't see in canon that it happened. We don't even see anything in the Prince's tale to show us that they had that much contact after the end of 5ht year.
I know that JKR say something like Severus was attracted to loathsome people and loathsome acts, or she said something like that in reguards to a question about the Lily/Severus stuff.
I'm just curious how she thinks Severus' character is any different from lets say...Dumbledore? Wasn't he as a teenager and young adult aiming to take over the world and thus got his sister killed in the process.
What I can't figure out is why lots of fans still see Dumbledore as being better than Severus?
Hell, How is Severus any different from James and Lily, who decided to go with Peter?
Re: Who are the good guys really?
Date: 2010-10-25 05:33 pm (UTC)Yes, I've seen arguments from anti-D/Hr fans about how Hermione would never marry someone who bullied her friends. Well, how would that be any different from Lily marrying the guy who mercilessly bullied *her* best friend? Sure, Draco's racist while James isn't, but both of them are bullies. And you're right, Lily married James right out of high school, so it's not as if they were dating for several years, grew older and wiser together, and then got married.
/Though we're told James went through a big miraculous change in 7th year - I just seriously doubt I'd be able to think of him as date material.
I just don't get why we're supposed to think James was so special or great or even remotely smart./
We're *told* that James changed (from Sirius and Remus, no less), but we're never actually *shown* any evidence that he did. Right after Sirius tells Harry that James grew up, he admits that James still hexed Snape behind Lily's back, that Snape was a "special case." And then during the dramatic reveal of the night of the Potters' murder, James runs at Voldemort *without a wand.* Grew up and matured, my foot.
Re: Who are the good guys really?
Date: 2010-10-26 03:36 am (UTC)Re: Who are the good guys really?
Date: 2010-10-26 03:59 pm (UTC)Re: Who are the good guys really?
Date: 2010-10-29 06:30 am (UTC)Ugh, good point, seriously. I hate on Sirius enough for the werewolf 'prank', but James has a lot to answer for. And people bash Snape for 'holding grudges', well, what James did was so much worse, he didn't even have anything to have a grudge for. Just a shabby little kid who wanted to be in a different house than him, and there you go, long-lasting violent prejudice is formed.
Re: Who are the good guys really?
Date: 2010-10-29 02:28 pm (UTC)And I guess I feel I would be a little bitter too, and inclined to hold onto grudges, if I was constantly being attacked and never receiving justice or protection from the authorities, but was instead silenced whenever I tried to bring my attackers to account for their actions. I know exactly what it feels like to have been the target of a group of bullies, yet to be the one punished by the authorities when I attempted to tell. A lifetime of that would warp anyone.
Re: Who are the good guys really?
Date: 2010-10-31 01:03 pm (UTC)Re: Who are the good guys really?
Date: 2010-11-01 04:14 am (UTC)I am glad to make you happy. Be PROUD of being one of the few who can see the good beneath the snark.
After all, our Sevvie saves the world. Trufax.
And we aren't just some tiny minority of disgruntled crazy fangirls either. Did you read the piece in the Christian Science Monitor after DH came out about the moral journey in HP? It ought to be required reading for all HP fans. Snape fans everywhere cheered.
read (http://www.io.com/~janis/snape.html)
Re: Who are the good guys really?
Date: 2010-10-26 04:10 am (UTC)We also have James agreeing with Lily that Severus never initiated an attack on James before SWM. He was only 'guilty' of 'existing'.
Re: Who are the good guys really?
Date: 2010-10-26 07:36 am (UTC)Every time I defend Snape, people tell me that he brought it on himself, that he probably attacked the Marauders plenty of other times that we didn't see. So if there's something there to show that Snape wasn't the one to start fights, that'd be handy.
Re: Who are the good guys really?
Date: 2010-10-26 12:15 pm (UTC)Am assuming you are talking about James, The worst memory scene in OOTP has Lily asking James, 'What's he ever done to you?'
James reply was simply that severus 'exists'
There was no comment about, Severus curses me all the time, James never complained that Severus killed his owl or shot his dog or anything. He just basicly attacks and abuses Severus because he 'exists'
Re: Who are the good guys really?
Date: 2010-10-26 11:30 pm (UTC)One comment I got was that Snape is so nasty as an adult that it follows that he was like that as a kid, that he provoked them- yeah, because it's totally impossible that maybe he turned out nasty and bitter as an adult because kids were bullying him for years and he had nobody to turn to and the authority figures didn't care enough, even when he almost died?
Re: Who are the good guys really?
Date: 2010-10-26 11:40 pm (UTC)Re: Who are the good guys really?
Date: 2010-10-26 01:51 pm (UTC)Re: Who are the good guys really?
Date: 2010-10-26 02:26 pm (UTC)Sorry no text in front of me most of the time when I'm posting. My posts tend to be between eating breakfast and getting ready for work or lunch, etc. etc.
Re: Who are the good guys really?
Date: 2010-10-26 11:27 pm (UTC)Lily's worst accusation against Severus is that he approved of Mulciber's Dark magic
Exactly! I've pointed this out myself- if he DID anything, she would've said! It would've been a lot more relevant to say 'oh, you attack innocent people for no reason', after all. But the usual rebuttal to that is 'but- he- he called her a Mudblood, he's evil!' *sighs*
Re: Who are the good guys really?
Date: 2010-10-26 11:48 pm (UTC)None of this of course rules out an speculation that Mulciber indeed tried something really rather bad, but I think it ought to be obvious that that is in fact just what it is: speculation. There is nothing conclusive in canon either way.
Re: Who are the good guys really?
Date: 2010-10-26 12:50 pm (UTC)And I might add that comment alone is such a completely vile thing to say to someone.
I know they are all kids here, but it gets to a point the more you think about it the more understandable it is that Severus was so nasty to Harry. Harry was sort of the complete ruin of what Severus held most dear in his life.
Is what James said about Severus any worse than Severus complaining that Harry is arrogant? I can't remember every single one of Severus' insults to Harry but Harry is arrogant and he does break rules because he thinks he knows better than anyone else. A lot of Severus' insults and complaints do have a measure of truth to them if not 100% true.
Well apparently James did something no other character did throughout the history of the series - he made a major change in how he thought and acted. Riggghhhht.
I'm still trying to figure out how any of the stuff Severus said to Harry comes across as worse than James saying Severus deserves what he gets souly because he 'exists'.
If we're going to talk about double standards somemore then isn't what James said about Severus just as horrible and offensive as anything Voldemort ever said about muggles/muggleborn?
This was supposed to be the good guy right? Who supposedly changed in 7th year. Was he nicer to Severus? Apparently not. Did he ever say he was sorry or try to make amends? If he was still abusing Severus then I doesn't seem likely.
Besides we all know there was another reason James was abusing Snape. He might not have paid as much attention to Severus except for the fact that he (James) liked Lily and wanted her. Severus in his mind was competition.
James had to find a way to show how much cooler, powerful and fun he was and apparently his way of doing that seems no better than what Mulciber was possibly going to do to Mary. Wow Lily, how shallow are you?
I just don't get the attraction when she's so dead set against abuse of another person.
JKR made Lily look incredibly shallow because of this. She should have at least given us a little more in the Prince's tale to explain - because James and Lily both come across as pretty shallow characters.
This version in the USA would be the Jock captain of the football team and the most popular head Cheerleader get engaged during senior year and she got pregnant so they had to get married.
I do wonder if that was the real reason Lily and James got married. I know Molly was spouting off about people rushing to get married. That is probably who JKR intended that conversation to mean (James/Lily) because molly would have known them from the OOTP back then.
But it comes across to me as Lily and James were not being responsible and Lily got pregnant so James did the right thing and married her. But I digress, JKR sort of seems to make them the example of the perfect couple. Oh Darling, you have a stag...Oh sweetheart I have a doe! We're made for each other (barfs!)
I'm pretty sure JKR isn't going to play the Lily got knocked up card but thats how it looks to me.
In fact if it was something that happened in the heat of the moment; say maybe on a OOTP mission or SOMETHING.
If it was something like that I could find the character of james and Lily more believable, or at least Lily...instead of she decided to Marry this guy and have a kid with him because (insert the wonderfulness of James and reasons to marry him here).
Re: Who are the good guys really?
Date: 2010-10-26 03:21 pm (UTC)Well, Lily is a woman, and according to an interview with JKR, she knows "what we're like." (I still *cannot* believe she said that.)
So, apparently, it's fine for Lily to like James for being a "bad boy," but people who like Draco, Severus, or any other bad boys in HP are just being "delusional?"
/I just don't get the attraction when she's so dead set against abuse of another person./
We never see Mary, but I'd assume that she's not in Slytherin, she's not a boy, she looks relatively normal, and she's not poor. In other words, she's not like Severus. Or maybe it's just another case of "It's Okay If A Gryffindor Does It." Even if the victim is Lily's supposed best friend.
/She should have at least given us a little more in the Prince's tale to explain - because James and Lily both come across as pretty shallow characters./
They just do not come off well in OotP or DH. It's one thing for Harry to realize that his parents weren't perfect; it's quite another to *show* that they were clearly nasty, self-righteous, and shallow people, but insist that they were really good people at heart.
If you want to be really cynical and uncharitable toward Lily and James, you could say that *that's* why they were made for each other - because they were, like you said, the archetypal Bullying Jock and Snobby Cheerleader.
Re: Who are the good guys really?
Date: 2010-10-28 03:01 am (UTC)I had the same reaction. When I first read their story I was sort of thinking that that was the way things were. It's a shame, really, because I couldn't see such a paragon of love and forgiveness as Lily was supposed to be seeing anything in James and marrying him right out of high school but I could see her needing to marry him for getting knocked up.
Of course, when I first read SWM I assumed that Lily hadn't known Snape before and was sticking up for some random unpleasant student who needed her. Guess I was wrong there....
Re: Who are the good guys really?
Date: 2010-10-28 02:47 pm (UTC)That's why I thought that the Severus/Lily shippers were misguided before DH. I kept thinking, "What do you mean, maybe she might have known him?" As a fellow student, as an acquaintance, maybe, but as a *friend?* In no way did Lily act like she knew Snape personally in SWM, which was why "The Prince's Tale" came out of left field for me and seemed like fanfiction.
Re: Who are the good guys really?
Date: 2010-10-29 02:01 am (UTC)Re: Who are the good guys really?
Date: 2010-10-29 02:29 am (UTC)Re: Who are the good guys really?
Date: 2010-10-26 09:16 am (UTC)What I can't figure out is why lots of fans still see Dumbledore as being better than Severus?
A+ comment! I shall remember this for any debate in future, because wow, what a brilliant point!
Of course, Snape is a nasty person, he's mean to kids. Even though his whole life is a shitfest, while Dumbledore has all the praise and recognition and power. But I never got how people could say Dumbledore's better when he's the one who let kids get hurt even when he could've stopped it, while Snape's the guy that busted his ass trying to help whenever anyone was in danger.