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

[madderbrad.livejournal.com]

Sorry, didn't want to take up your time.

Now we know that the 'schoolboy grudge' was not about 'being better at quidditch' but about being systematically bullied and harrassed and nearly murdered by the boy's father and his cronies for seven years.

*Whatever* the reason for Snape's hatred of James ... it's still a fact that he was a nasty git to James's son. You've tried to paint Harry as 'misbehaving' in Potions, but that's not really correct; I don't believe Harry did so at all. Certainly his behaviour was within normal parameters for children, which a good teacher should have been able to handle without personal attacks and insults, etc.

Knowing all that, why do people still regurgitate old and outdated opinions that have been PROVED TO BE WRONG?!

Because Snape's case is one of the few things that Rowling got right?

It's funny ... I discovered deathtocapslock around the time of Montavilla's excellent sporking of DH, and I know there are many here who happily criticise Rowling and all of her bad writing. It's sort of discontinuous when we broach Snape territory and some here switch over to the canon side. I get dizzy. :-)

Basically you and Rowling are much of an accord when it comes to Snape, right? She tried to keep his allegiance a mystery until the end, when it was revealed that he was on the side of the good guys. In order to keep the mystery and doubt going for seven books she tried her utmost to make him unlikeable ... to Harry and we readers. Seven books of nasty git behaviour and Harry going overboard on his reciprocating hate.

And then, at almost the last page, we find two things that showed that he was honestly a 'good guy' - that "those I could not save" line, and the fact that there was a period there, after Dumbledore told him that Harry was destined for sacrifice, that he no longer had the reason - that had kept him going for so long - protecting Lily's son - to continue. Yet he didn't break away from Dumbledore, but kept to the plan.

I dunno. Do you think Rowling erred in not making the proof of Snape's motivation more 'obvious'? I recall noting the "those I could not save" thing but didn't realise there was an interval where he didn't have protecting-Lily's-son to keep him driven; that was pointed out to me by another fan.

On the other hand ... 'Albus Severus'. You can't get more obvious than that as to what Rowling wanted readers to think.

I still stand by what I said before. I acknowledge that Snape was on the side of the good guys. And that it appears he was thus even without the obligation/promise to save Lily's son.

I also note that Harry's hatred of Snape - which Rowling needed to drive home to keep her mystery going for seven books - was lopsided, exaggerated or unwarranted in places.

But Snape was still a nasty git. And a bad guy at the start, please remember. They don't hand out Death Eater badges for reciting poetry, after all.

I guess one reason why I just scoff at Snape's rendition and turn away is because I found the whole loves-Lily thing, as rendered by Rowling, too weak to hold the weight it was under. Pretty hard to believe, that a man would keep going under duress for 18 years due to an unrequited crush on a girl who not only spurned him but married his worst enemy. Plus I don't believe that Snape truly 'loved' Lily - I've mentioned that before in this community. So for me the whole issue of Snape has holes in it. I do acknowledge that the official canon line is that he was redeemed by the end, though.

But he was still a nasty git. :-)

[for-diddled.livejournal.com]

"And a bad guy at the start, please remember. They don't hand out Death Eater badges for reciting poetry, after all."

They don't, no, but it seems unlikely that the original DEs were particularly evil, at least in public. Sirius mentions that a lot of people initially supported Voldemort, which would be fairly unlikely if his supporters were going around murdering and torturing people. Snape might have joined without really knowing what he was getting himself into, and then been unable to escape when he found out what Lord Voldemort was really like.

Also, none of the main characters seem to know that Snape was a former DE -- as opposed to, say, Lucius, whose sinister past is common knowledge. Whatever Snape was doing, it can't have been very public, so he probably wasn't out there committing mass murder and wide-scale torture.

[sunnyskywalker]

I was just checking the Occlumency lessons, and there's a very interesting bit where Harry accidentally breaks into Snape's mind with Protego. Unlike in the movie, this isn't the point where Harry sees SWM, nor is it the point where Snape throws Harry out. Harry sees bits of some very personal memories - Tobias yelling at Eileen, a girl laughing at kid!Snape trying to get on a broom, things like that.

And Snape basically just tells him that was unexpected, good job, let's keep going. No yelling or nasty comments, at a time you would definitely expect it. I think he's often nasty rather than just firm with students - but then, even the supposedly kind Flitwick has students writing "I am a wizard, not a baboon with a stick," McGonagall is often unjustifiably awful to Neville imo, and turning students into small rodents and bashing them against stone floors is something you just get a warning for, so I can't really say his classroom behavior stands out at Hogwarts. (The teaching there is truly awful.) Harry doesn't seem to see anything wrong with Flitwick or McGonagall, or even "Moody," so it seems like his problem isn't so much that Snape can be nasty as that Snape is nasty to him and not Seamus, Neville, or Draco. *dislikes Harry even more*

[oneandthetruth.livejournal.com]

turning students into small rodents and bashing them against stone floors

I've seen people refer to the Ferret!Draco incident as involving a rodent before, but that's not true. Members of the weasel family are carnivores, not rodents. /pedant point

[sunnyskywalker]

Good to know! I thought a carnivore was any meat-eating creature in general, though? (Lions, eg.)

[oryx_leucoryx]

There are all sorts of carnivorous animals, but specifically members of the order Carnivora include several mammalian families, among which are Felidae (cats), Hyaenidae (hyenas and similar), Herpestidae (mongooses), Canidae (dogs), Ursidae (bears), Mephitidae (skunks and stink badgers), Mustelidae (weasels, badgers, ferrets, otters and the like), Procyonidae (racoons and the like), Odobenidae (walrus), Otariidae (sea lions, fur seals) and Phocidae (true seals). Go to the wiki article to see why they are grouped together and how they are interrelated.

[sunnyskywalker]

Ooh, that's very cool! I was sick through a lot of freshman biology and don't remember anything, so this is awesome. (Though that teacher was also the one who described the Big Bang as "the explosion when the Earth was created, which is why the rest of the universe is rushing away from us," so she might not have explained this properly either...)

Re: part I

[oneandthetruth.livejournal.com]

'Snape hated James' (and therefore ill-wished James' friends Lupin and Sirius) and that this presumed hatred of James was based on Snape childishly still minding as an adult that James was 'better at Quidditch' and thus on his abiltity to 'hold a schoolboy grudge' (which makes him sound extremely petty).

It's also ludicrous on its face. Snape is a nerd, and one almost never sees nerds who are jealous of the athletic prowess of jocks. On the contrary, they're usually contemptuous of it.

Nerds and jocks

[terri-testing.livejournal.com]

But it is common to see jocks expecting others to be jealous of their sole claim to glory!

[danajsparks.livejournal.com]

----You've tried to paint Harry as 'misbehaving' in Potions, but that's not really correct; I don't believe Harry did so at all. Certainly his behaviour was within normal parameters for children...

Was it within normal parameters to throw a firecracker into another student's cauldron?