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]

It's also worth noting that we don't actually know how effective such advice is because Harry *doesn't regularly practice it.* He tries once, IIRC, and then gives up. He doesn't seek out more detailed advice - from Snape, from Dumbledore, or from the library - he just gives up.

I, however, am personally of the same opinion as Jodel RE the lessons as a whole: to wit, that there was something else going on that year (Watsonian view - Doyalist is clearly that JKR's a hack who didn't think it through). Because the way it's set up, the very un-Slytherin emphasis on the contents of the Pensieve (Snape couldn't do it ahead of time and hide the blasted thing?), the *impossibility* of Snape being seen to have *effectively* taught Harry (recall that Voldemort knows he's teaching the boy, and would expect him to make only minimal effort)... none of it adds up right for me.