TV Tropes fanbrats on Bellatrix: A Parody of a Rant

[sweettalkeress.livejournal.com]

So… as I believe I have lovingly demonstrated, occasionally I’ll come across something on TV Tropes pertaining to Harry Potter that makes me want to kick babies. Case in point: I was reading reviews of a My Little Pony dark fic entitled “Cupcakes” when there was one author who threw in a casual mention about how Bellatrix was ultimate evil, and not worthy of any sort of Freudian excuse. So, to ease my troubled mind, I made this parody of their opinion of Bellatrix (for example). The rant below is technically taken from a series of rants by a fanfic author about characters who figure in her stories, but I’ve adapted it for my own purposes:
 
I truly hate this woman because...well, there's absolutely, positively nothing to like about her! She has no redeeming qualities, whatsoever!
First off, she tortures [Hermione]! Need I say more?! How can any [HP] fan like this psychopathic bitch or think she's just misunderstood?! There's nothing TO understand about her -- she's just an evil lunatic! \_/
There's absolutely NOTHING that can possibly be said to defend [Bitchytrix’s]* rotten behavior or explain why she's so detestable! I know a lot of people theorize that she was abused as a child or that somebody who was really close to her died and she just doesn't know how to express herself, but you know what? Those theories are pure speculation! There's NO evidence to back them up, which technically renders them invalid! (At least [Dudley], [James], and the like have actual proof, no matter how subtle or obscure, so that a case can be made in their favor, but with [Bellatrix] it's all "maybes" and "what ifs," and that just doesn't fly!) Besides, even if [Bellatrix] really is from an abusive family or if somebody close to her died, it DOESN'T excuse her from being so mean to [Harry, Ron, and Hermione]! Uh, [Harry] came from an abusive family, [his parents] died when [he] was a little [boy], and [he] was abandoned and tortured by [Muggles] for most of his life, but do you see [HIM] out [killing] and torturing people?! I don't think so – [Harry is] the sweetest, most loving character [in the book], despite all of the hardships [he’s] been through! This chick has serious problems! O_o
So once again, nuff said. [Bellatrix] isn't misunderstood at all -- some people are just evil, and she's one of them. She's a self-centered, psychotic bitch. Period. Paragraph. End of story.
Okay, I'm pretty much done playing lawyer for now. So to recap, [Harry, Ron, Hermione, and James Potter] = good. [Voldemort, Snape, and Bellatrix] = bad.
 
*XD

Comments

[oneandthetruth.livejournal.com]

This person doesn't seem to get an important distinction: that you can have sympathy for the abused child someone was, and be angry about the suffering they experienced, while still being appalled and disgusted by the violent and dangerous adult they became. While it seems to be true that certain kinds of violent behavior, including psychopathy, have a hereditary element, that can be overcome by a very loving and supportive upbringing.

OTOH, I've read many true crime books, including several by John Douglas and Robert Ressler, legendary heads of the FBI's profiling unit. In none of those books have I read an account of a violent criminal, particularly a serial killer, who did not come from a very violent, abusive, and neglectful background (where the criminal's background was discussed at all). Fortunately for society, the vast majority a people who suffer like that do not become violent criminals, but the fact remains that childhood abuse often translates into adult violence. Oryx is right. It's important to study people like Bellatrix and Voldemort to try to figure out why they went bad when other people from similar backgrounds did not. Only then can we prevent people from turning out like that in the future.

[sunnyskywalker]

It does seem useful to know that what goes into making a violent person like Bellatrix. No, not all kids turn out the same way given the same conditions - but not all people who eat high-cholesterol diets have heart attacks either, and that doesn't mean the ones who do are just mentally willing their hearts to malfunction out of sheer perversity, or that the ones who escaped wouldn't have been still better off if they'd had better diets. There's other factors, which may or may not be under a person's control, and separating them all out and figuring out how they interact is helpful.

[sweettalkeress.livejournal.com]

The distinction between sympathy for an abused child and horror at the bad things said child did as an adult is actually something I'm trying to play around with in a fanfic I'm writing about one of my favorite villains. I'm deliberately setting him up as very sympathetic as a young person, and then I'll make him behave badly as an adult, just to see what people make of him for it.

Fanfic

[terri-testing.livejournal.com]

You're writing a post-Voldwar Harry-centric fic?

Harry was sympathetic enough in chapter 2 of PS, if not quite Jane Eyre....

(Which, when you think of it, is actually a more interesting study--how does someone deprived and abused become strong enough to choose what is right...?)

Re: Fanfic

[sweettalkeress.livejournal.com]

Actually it's from a completely unrelated fandom, and I just happened to make that connection XP

I suppose Harry could have made better choices if he had had a positive role-model growing up, but he kind-of didn't. And when he got to the Wizarding World, what he saw only reinforced the bullying and similar he had faced in the Muggle world (and no real vantage point to ever think bullying and violence were wrong or abnormal, since he never shows any compassion to any other abuse victims, ever, not even teenage Snape, whom he explicitly identifies with on one occasion), but then he also acquired an inferiority complex from all the disproportionate hype placed on his head. Potentially, he resents his Muggle teachers because they let him get abused and didn't do anything, and he resents Snape because he reminds him of his sensible Muggle teachers who failed to save him (it probably doesn't help that Snape is rude for his own reasons). So the only person we ever see trying to instill some sort of conscientiousness or good sense he ends up turning into his own bitter enemy.

Re: Fanfic

[annoni-no.livejournal.com]

Y'know, this has me thinking about another conversation I was following about Harry's (lack of) ability to empathize or even manage basic socializing with his peers. It was brought up by some of the commenters there that in their experience, even at their most isolated and bullied, there were always a couple of other kids at the bottom of pecking order who would be willing to play and commiserate with them, even if they weren't willing to stand up to the bullies on their behalf. But for someone as naturally inclined to black-and-white thinking as Harry, would he be able to recognize that nuance as a small child without someone pointing it out to him?

Normally, this duty to explain that just because someone wasn't strong enough or brave enough to stand up for you in a tough spot doesn't mean they're a terrible person would fall to a child's parents or guardians. Petunia and Vernon, however, would never have bothered themselves that closely with Harry's social situation, and if they did, they might even have thought this the preferred outcome since it helped 'beat the magic out of him.' Without any older siblings/relatives he could rely on for help, the only other people in a position to straighten out his thinking was his teachers. Except from the background we're given, his teachers never saw Dudley and his gang behaving badly enough that they had to be reigned in (and you know Harry would have reveled in such a memory), and they don't seem to have seen any reason to intervene on Harry's end either.

End result? Harry never had anyone to knock him out of the (reasonable for a child) thinking of 'You didn't stand up to the big bad bully for me when he was beating me senseless?! FINE! I guess you were never a REAL friend ANYWAY!!!' This sense of hurt rejection would only have been exacerbated if *Harry* had tried standing up for his 'friends' against Dudley the way he expected them to do for him. And it is canon that Harry will put himself in a fight against bad odds for someone he considers a friend: witness the initial confrontation between him and Ron versus Draco, Crabbe, and Goyle, which he seriously thought might turn into a fist fight against at least two boys who handily out-massed him, among other incidents.

So Harry turned his back on the kids who had 'betrayed' him and refused to interact with the fakers even when he wasn't being actively targeted by Dudley (which, given Harry was a preferred target and Dudley et al. seemed to have a knack for avoiding the teachers, probably wasn't as often as Harry wished). If the teachers then saw Harry rejecting company without knowing Harry's perspective, or even how bad Dudley's bullying was, they probably, and reasonably, would have assumed the issue was Harry's alone. Harry, in the meantime, forced to choose being deciding everyone else in his year was a complete jackass, and just blaming Dudley for the situation, went with the (only slightly) more reasonable course of just blaming one person instead of everyone. Blaming his aunt and uncle for his teachers' view of him would then be a less reasonable outgrowth of that decision.