Oh, TV Tropes...!

[sweettalkeress.livejournal.com]

Quite honestly, the Harry Potter stuff on that site has gotten to the point where I can't read it because just about everything is fawning over how great and super-special-awesome the series is, oh, and how Snape is an evil douchebag who wanted to get Harry and James killed so he could keep Lily. But this... this makes me want to scream:

"Hermione... [is] one of the smartest and more pro-active females in the whole Harry Potter canon and English literature in general"

WHAT THE FUCK?!?!?!

How could they make such a claim?! Hermione is a better heroine than, say, Tiffany Aching?! How about Eliza Doolittle?! And I'm sure you could come up with other examples.

No, no, in Harry Potter it seems fairly obvious that the most powerful women in the series are antagonists. Sure, Hermione's perfectly independent and capable, but in the last several books it's like she becomes Harry's servant because he's too lazy to do anything himself!

God damn it, Harry Potter wouldn't bother me so much if everyone didn't insist it was the greatest thing since sliced bread!

Comments

[condwiramurs.livejournal.com]

In trying to determine how accurate the "it's all about James" reading is, I find it telling that he only brings up James when he is comparing specific behaviors of Harry's to James' behavior. And in a way that suggests that behaving like James is not the way to go. This tells me that he isn't acting so much out of wild hatred as he's trying to teach Harry *not to behave that way* and that he thinks using the example of his father is going to stand a chance of *getting through* to Harry.

Of course his wording my be influenced by some residual negative feelings - not surprising given that these are moments when Harry explicitly reminds him of James - but it's a far stretch from that reading of a few particular events to the assertion that everything he ever does or says to Harry is motivated only by an unreasoning hatred of him due only to his parentage. And not, say, legitimate frustration of a teacher dealing with a disrespectful, lazy and inattentive student. Or the need as a sleeper spy to put on a highly visible display of wanting nothing to do with the son of the Muggleborn woman whose life he had begged Voldie for and then not received. Or even, the pain of being confronted day in and day out with the living reminder of the woman he loved, had been treated badly by and had accidentally gotten killed. I'd say it's probably not one thing, either. There's a lot going on in his head, and Harry doesn't exactly have the greatest track record of reading Snape correctly.

As to the topic of lingering feelings regarding James in general: what never gets pointed out is the fact that he's a spy and an Occlumens, who knows that he will probably have to face Voldie again when he returns and had better have a convincing case to set out when he claims to be a still-loyal Death Eater. His feelings about James and co were likely known to Voldie, and quite possibly played a greater or lesser role in his joining up in the first place. Given this, it makes a lot of sense for him to decide that a good strategy would be to go back to Voldie and show him that his feelings are still quite genuine and he's still basically got the same attitudes he had as a teenager. Therefore he not only would not attempt to "get over" the James thing completely, he would make sure to fan the flames from time to time so as to keep a little spark alive. It's not like being in his position would *allow* him the space to do the sort of psychological housecleaning that others get - not when his credibility as a spy basically rests on the contents of his head.