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Mar. 4th, 2011 12:36 pm![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
ladyhadhafang.livejournal.com posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
deathtocapslockAm I the only one a little bothered by Dumbledore? Not only with the fact he could end up in the Guinness Book Of World Records for "Most Incompetent Headmaster of All Time" (though I'm sure there's worse. :P), but also because...he just bugs me. I know JKR was trying to write him as the "flawed Yoda", so to speak (and to be fair, he's nowhere near Yoda. XD), but it's also how...preachy he gets. Towards Fudge, for example. You know, in Goblet of Fire, with, "You place too much importance on purity of blood, yadda yadda et cetera et cetera" -- which considering how he treated Tom Riddle and the Slytherins is...slightly hypocritical isn't it? Probably bad writing on JKR's part, though. :/
Anyways, sorry 'bout the rambling. Thoughts?
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Date: 2011-03-06 03:22 am (UTC)Not only that, but Lily was no ordinary young woman. She was a trained warrior, an Order of the Phoenix member. She had probably been in battle before. Yet when she was attacked by someone she knew was on the hunt for her and her family, and who had given her warning by killing her husband, she just stood there and begged for mercy, like some Muggle picked at random off the street. How stupid is that?
I've heard children inherit their intelligence from their mothers. That appears to be true in Harry's case.
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Date: 2011-03-06 12:55 pm (UTC)And what do we get in DH? Voldemort bursting inside, James running to fight him without a wand and getting killed in two minutes, and Lily shrieking and doing nothing to save herself other than trying to barricade the room and pleading with Voldemort. She didn't have her wand on her, she didn't try to hex him, she didn't intentionally trick him or anything. And she was supposedly a member of the Order? She was supposedly this precociously talented witch? You're right; she was just about as resourceful and useful in that fight as that poor Muggle woman with kids in DH was.
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Date: 2011-03-06 02:47 pm (UTC)I think Rowling didn't include the "fighting bravely" thing in the DH flashback because it would be too awesome/interesting. :P
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Date: 2011-03-07 04:17 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-03-07 07:32 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-03-07 05:21 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-03-07 05:36 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-03-07 09:46 pm (UTC)You know what though, it occurs to me that if she noticed Voldemort was uncharacteristically offering her a chance to live, using that to buy time could have been exactly what she was trying to do.
If you were in hiding, and were part of a secret order, you'd probably set some sort of magical burglar alarm to alert the others if an unauthorized person was in your safe house, right? (Maybe it's connected to one of Dumbledore's silver instruments.) In fact, since Hagrid gets there before the Muggle emergency crews show up, it's a safe bet that there's some sort of monitoring going on. They don't let out the identity of the secret-keeper because they think there's a spy - but that doesn't mean they couldn't have let some of the other Order members in on the secret, either via note like in OotP or by Polyjuicing Peter into Sirius. They couldn't betray the secret even if they wanted to, and then James and Lily would have backup.
So maybe Lily was expecting the cavalry to come any moment to distract Voldemort and give her enough time to escape with Harry, and she just had to hold out till then - and since Voldemort was being so weirdly non-homicidal toward her, that seemed like a good direction to take.
But no one made it in time :(
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Date: 2011-03-08 03:42 am (UTC)On the 'net I've seen justifications along the lines of "they are in hiding and they think they are safe so they don't keep wands at hand" but that is just ridiculous.
If wands = guns (something only used for protection / killing) it would be, not smart (you have a powerful psychopath wanting to kill you and your kid and you don't have anything to defend yourself with?), acceptable.
But from what we see of wizards they use wands for every little thing. From cleaning, food preparing, moving things.... the works.
P.S. Now, it might be only me but if I was a witch taking care of my baby you can bet there would be a lot of banished dirty diapers. ;)
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Date: 2011-03-09 02:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-03-09 05:29 am (UTC)Wow. I did not remember that. Evidently JKR forgot as well. No surprise there, canon established in one book is tossed out the window when she does the next. Wtf kind of terrible author is she, and only a select group of people recognize it, argh, it drives me nuts.
People defend her by saying that she wanted to make it realistic, two young adults against a psychopath, what chance did they have, oh, the cruelty of life, etc. but...they were members of the OotP! They defied Voldy three times apparently! They knew their lives were in danger! You think they'd've taken precautions, trained for the worst case scenario, something! I guess we see where Harry inherited his slackness from, the way he sits around all summer and doesn't even learn to heal a paper-cut when he knows he's going to be at the forefront of a war is honestly earned. *eyeroll*
Also, it's annoying how many things Lily could've done. Retrieved her wand while James held off Voldy by dying
stupidlynobly and fought. Jumped out the window and run for it. Maybe it'd be hopeless, but it'd be a chance! More than standing and screaming!Isn't this the witch who was so talented she had mastered wandless magic as a kid, was able to control magic rather than release it in uncontrolled bursts like normal kids? She wasn't able to do anything? Except MORONICALLY, OMG, THE STUPID, IT SLAYS ME ask for Voldy to kill her instead. Yeah, she obv knows he's there for Harry- why the hell would he come there for the boy and then kill her and leave him alone?
ARGH.
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Date: 2011-03-09 02:10 pm (UTC)Where in that story did Voldemort imply that James had run at him without a wand and had died in five seconds? Where in that account did Voldemort imply that Lily had done nothing but shriek at him and beg for mercy? Why on earth would Voldemort, who’s supposed to be evil beyond measure and who’s trying to kill Harry, lie to him to make him feel better about his parents? What motivation would he have for doing so?
/Isn't this the witch who was so talented she had mastered wandless magic as a kid, was able to control magic rather than release it in uncontrolled bursts like normal kids?/
Just like Tom was. Yet when it came time for the final showdown, she wasn’t able to do anything to defend herself against him. I was confused and disappointed too. We were told so many times about how clever and powerful Lily was, yet when we finally saw her in action, she didn’t use any of her magic at all. Where was her wand?
/Yeah, she obv knows he's there for Harry- why the hell would he come there for the boy and then kill her and leave him alone?/
This is the same reason why I thought that Bella Swan’s “sacrifice” in “Twilight” was stupid. After James, the villain, tells Bella to come to him or her mother will die, Bella just obeys his orders without question. Somehow, she just thinks that James will let her mother go as soon as she arrives. Never mind that James is a vampire and there’s nothing to stop him from killing Bella’s mother after he’s done with Bella, making Bella’s sacrifice completely pointless.
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Date: 2011-03-09 03:26 pm (UTC)Well, he did need something Harry had. Perhaps he was hoping that would convince Harry to give him the Philosophers' Stone? He did tell Harry that he should give him the Stone so his parents wouldn't have died in vain - so it seems Tom was attempting to put up his old charm from his school days. But he obviously lost much of his charisma and brains when he vaporised.
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Date: 2011-03-09 03:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-03-11 02:52 am (UTC)OTOH, if Lily's putative awesomeness and power was 90% BS, that would explain why she didn't do much to rescue Snape besides nag James and Sirius. She wasn't able to rescue him.
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Date: 2011-03-09 02:49 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-03-09 06:06 pm (UTC)If Rowling intended for Voldemort to be so ridiculously powerful that no one stood a chance (and it's implied as much I think in book 1), then she should have hinted somehow that Voldemort was lying when he told Harry they put up a fight. And, you know, made Voldemort scarier in the rest of the series.
If on the other hand she was going for what looks like the solution that fits most of the pieces - that Lily was trying to delay for a few minutes so the cavalry could come, and since we see that Dumbledore is able to send someone within minutes of their deaths it seems reasonable that they know the Order is monitoring the house and will show up if something's wrong - she should have said so! I know they're all lacking in common sense and so in RowlingLand, it's more likely that Dumbledore was monitoring secretly and the Potters hadn't set up any magical alerts to let their best buddies Sirius and Peter (and Remus?) know if something was wrong so they could come help, but how much are we supposed to swallow here?
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Date: 2011-03-09 06:09 pm (UTC)Because why would he waste time bargaining and trying to get her to stand aside, even for a minute? Yet he does.
Warning: *Shameless* ATLA plug below. XD
Date: 2011-03-10 12:55 pm (UTC)Or if Lily had actually tried to put up a fight. Sort of like, say, Katara when Zuko arrives in the Spirit Oasis with the intention of capturing Aang (mostly to regain his honor after his father banished him -- it's a long story). Instead of just standing there and pleading with Zuko not to get Aang, Katara actively *uses her skills against him* to keep him from capturing Aang (which unfortunately didn't end up in the live action movie for...some reason). Granted, Katara's later defeated by Zuko when the sun comes up (because, you know, waterbenders draw their power from the moon, and firebenders draw it from the sun), but the intent is worthy of admiration. There's no doubt that she was scared, but to quote John Wayne, "Courage is being scared to death, and yet saddling up anyway."
Granted, one could argue they were in different circumstances (Katara being in her element -- no pun intended -- and Lily...not), but like Lily, Katara was basically all alone against Zuko. Lily *knew* what Voldemort was capable of; why didn't she transport Harry to safety, then just pull a You Shall Not Pass on good old Voldemort. I mean...she and James *thrice defied him*, for Christ's sake!
What do you guys think? :)
Re: Warning: *Shameless* ATLA plug below. XD
Date: 2011-03-10 06:50 pm (UTC)Re: Warning: *Shameless* ATLA plug below. XD
Date: 2011-03-10 06:50 pm (UTC)Re: Warning: *Shameless* ATLA plug below. XD
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Date: 2011-03-10 10:48 pm (UTC)When we are talking about "brave" James&Lilly vs Voldy fight we see and the things writen om GoF, isn't the way "shades" of people Voldy killed getting out of his wand inconsistent with the way they died?
DD tells Harry that they come in the order they died (the most resent murder toward older ones) but Shade!James appear before Shade!Lilly!
As she was murdered after him shouldn't she been the next after Cedric to say "Hi, Harry! Your deus ex machina is here to save you!" :(
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Date: 2011-03-10 10:56 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-03-11 05:08 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-03-06 02:46 pm (UTC)I've heard children inherit their intelligence from their mothers. That appears to be true in Harry's case."
Must not laugh...must not laugh...
What the hell; you win a free Internet. XD