Deathly Hallows, chapter 2

[anehan]

In Memoriam

* The Dursleys are leaving tea cups outside Harry's bedroom door. What are they, house elves?

*Harry has never learned to heal wounds and thinks it's a serious flaw in his magical education. Maybe he ought to have, you know, studied during the six years at Hogwarts instead of letting Hermione do all his work for him. Sorry, Harry, but you have no one else than yourself to blame. Normal people, if they had a lunatic after their blood, would have actually devoted some time for making sure they weren't completely unprepared.

* Harry has never cleaned his trunk before. Gross. Our Harry isn't much for hygiene.

* Finding a fragment of the mirror Sirius had given him, Harry feels a sudden upsurge of bitter memories, stabs of regret and longing. He suffers, I tell you.

* Harry is going to take his photograh album and a stack of letters with him. Good lord, what does he think he's going to do with them. The boy is an idiot.

* And we come to the sickening obituary by Elphias Doge. One more person whom Dumbledore managed to hoodwink into believing he was a noble person.

* Dumbledore never revealed the remotest anti-Muggle tendency. Except when he bullied the Dursleys. But that doesn't count, because the Dursleys totally deserved it.

* Dumbledore became the most brilliant student Hogwarts had ever seen and constantly outshone his friends. Bet he liked that. It would have done good for him to be second-best at something. Instead, everything confirmed him in his belief that he was superior to others and that it was his duty to manipulate others for the greater good.

* According to Doge, Dumbledore never had Ministerial ambitions. True enough. He just wanted to take over the world.

* "Albus Dumbledore was never proud or vain". Ahahahahahaa!

* Dumbledore's losses "endowed him with great humanity and sympathy". Bitch, please. The man is clearly incapable of empathy.

* Doge was right in one thing, though: Dumbledore always worked for the greater good. Too bad his methods and definition of "greater good" were rather questionable.

* Harry had thought he knew Dumbledore quite well. What made him think that? The great openness Dumbledore displayed in his dealings with Harry, perhaps?

* Harry thinks that the idea of a teen-aged Dumbledore was odd, like trying to imagine a stupid Hermione. Much as I love Hermione, I have no problem in imagining her stupid. She isn't half so clever as she likes to think. For example, what good did it do to the DA to brand the traitor's face? It didn't prevent Marietta from squealing.

* The only personal question Harry had asked Dumbledore was the only one he suspected Dumbledore hadn't answered honestly. That's too naïve even for Harry.

* Unpleasant Skeeter may be, but I at least would rather read her book than any more of Doge's pennings. There might ever be a shred of truth in what she writes, if you manage to discount the more lurid details.

* Skeeter calls the Potter-Dumbledore relationship unhealthy, even sinister. Brava! At least someone finally got it right.

* Another chapter in which nothing happens comes to an end. I really need that alcohol to get through this.



Informed Attributes:
Dumbledore is noble. No, really.

Misdirected Answering:
Did you hear what Dumbledore got up to as a teenager? What do you mean, you're not interested?

Nut o' Fun:
Desiccated beetle eyes.

Final score: 3. Nothing happens in this chapter.

Comments

Re: pt 2

[cressida0201.livejournal.com]

Hmm, but isn't that tautological? Of course those who have the inclination to turn a given relationship into slash will do so.

What I mean is that an inclination to slash (or het ship) is all you really need. If you find a few tasty ingredients such as friendship, animosity, respect, resentment, etc., you can use them to make cake with, and there are virtually no ingredients that cannot be used to make cake, although the result may not be to everyone's taste.

Again, you said that I could not deny that something in the text leads people to the slashy/shippy reading. I don't think there has to be anything in the actual text to suggest a sexual relationship; just give people a few ingredients to work with, and they'll add the sex on their own.

IMO, the question is, what gives large numbers of devoted fans that inclination?

Indeed. But I don't particularly want to get into the larger topic of "why do people slash?" or we'll be here all year. I'd like to stick to the sub-question of "Is it because the text objectively points in that direction?"--both in general and in the specific cases of Sirius/Lupin, Sirius/James, and Snape/Lupin.

I don't agree that any relationship that is even remotely interesting will be turned into slash by a significant percentage of fandom.\

Ah, but you've added a new qualifier there: "by a significant portion of fandom." I think the popularity of various ships is often governed by things other than viability. Fandom trends, availability of archives, the average age of the fans, interpersonal politics...all of them can affect the size of a given ship. Probably the biggest factor, IMO, is how many fans find a particular character attractive in any sense of the word. I include things like "has an interesting set of issues" under "attractive" for this purpose; anything that catches the imagination is a form of attraction. There probably are people who will ship or slash characters who don't attract or interest them on any level at all, but I have a feeling they're pretty rare.

If fandom finds them more interesting, I think it's because it finds them more slashable and not vice versa.

Just when I think we might find a place we can agree, you turn around and say something like this!

First of all, you seem to be equating "fandom" with slash fandom, unless you really believe that all fans judge the interest of various interpersonal relationships based on their slash/ship potential.

Second, in your opinion, does "fandom finds them more slashable" mean "the text contains more objectively sexual cues"?

Re: pt 2

[violaswamp.livejournal.com]

I don't think there has to be anything in the actual text to suggest a sexual relationship; just give people a few ingredients to work with, and they'll add the sex on their own.

I think if you put enough ingredients in, that is a suggestion of sexuality. By sexuality, I don't mean that the text is suggesting the two characters are secretly shagging like bunnies, just that there is an erotic frisson to their interactions. If you put in enough component parts, people will see hints of the whole that could be made out of it.

I do think the "significant portion of fandom" is a necessary qualifier, because otherwise the discussion becomes trivial, especially in a fandom as big as HP. Of course stuff besides the text influences what fandom as a whole does. But it's interesting to see how many of the trends that currently exist in HP fandom were around back in the early days of fandom when everyone was on HPFGU and the influence of stuff like fandom history/politics was less weighty. The popularity of sexy-sympathetic-Draco, for instance, and the existence of Harry/Draco shippers. That says to me that there is something that people are seeing in the text that led such interpretations to be popular in the first place.


First of all, you seem to be equating "fandom" with slash fandom, unless you really believe that all fans judge the interest of various interpersonal relationships based on their slash/ship potential.

I think the vast majority of HP fans do so. I really haven't seen much to contradict this. Fans who write and read gen and do huge meta posts on non-sexual relationships are much rarer than those who write/read shippy fic and meta ( whether slash or het), in my experience.


Second, in your opinion, does "fandom finds them more slashable" mean "the text contains more objectively sexual cues"?

I suppose that depends on what you mean by "objectively." Certainly I think the text contains more empirically sexual cues. That is, for certain relationships, the author uses buzzwords and scenarios that are going to remind a great many people of sexual or romantic situations. That is what I mean by "fandom finds them more slashable." For instance, the infamous joint birthday gift from Remus and Sirius. A joint birthday gift from two people who live together is going to remind people of what married couples do. A lot of Ron and Hermione's interactions pre-HBP (when their relationship becomes explicit) also look like married-couple interactions, hence the Ron/Hermione shipping long before JKR made their relationship explicitly sexual. And I don't think any of these people are particularly contaminated by slash-fandom or ship-fandom to notice these things. I know casual fans of the books who have seen it too. So I think there are "objectively sexual cues" in the sense that a) many people see them, and b) they're not unreasonable for seeing them.

Re: pt 2

[cressida0201.livejournal.com]

I think if you put enough ingredients in, that is a suggestion of sexuality. By sexuality, I don't mean that the text is suggesting the two characters are secretly shagging like bunnies, just that there is an erotic frisson to their interactions. If you put in enough component parts, people will see hints of the whole that could be made out of it.

Three things:

1. This sounds an awful lot to me like "people will slash any relationship that is at all interesting in any way."

2. Surely "erotic frisson" is in the eye of the beholder? I want to be allowed to judge for myself whether a given interaction has erotic frisson or not. I don't think anybody has the right to simply inform me that it's there.

3. The assumption that a non-sexual relationship is somehow incomplete is one of my big pet peeves.

I do think the "significant portion of fandom" is a necessary qualifier

And I think that once you introduce that element, you have brought in so many extra-textual factors that you can't draw conclusions about the text based on it. So I fear this line of conversation may have hit a dead end.

First of all, you seem to be equating "fandom" with slash fandom, unless you really believe that all fans judge the interest of various interpersonal relationships based on their slash/ship potential.

I think the vast majority of HP fans do so.

...

...

Well, if that's your honest belief, then once again, I'm not sure we can go any further with this. Because it is my equally honest belief that most fans actually do not base their interest in a relationship on slashability, particularly when you talk about Fandom at large.

Fans who write and read gen and do huge meta posts on non-sexual relationships are much rarer than those who write/read shippy fic and meta ( whether slash or het), in my experience.

But you're limiting your sample to online fandom, and further to the portion of online fandom that expresses fannishness by reading and writing fanfic and meta. That's not at all the same as Fandom with a capital F.

A joint birthday gift from two people who live together is going to remind people of what married couples do.

I don't mind people saying that, but I don't think it's fair or accurate to push the slash reading or assume that everybody should/does agree with it based on such slender evidence.

So I think there are "objectively sexual cues" in the sense that a) many people see them, and b) they're not unreasonable for seeing them.

That's not my definition of an objectively sexual cue. I acknowledge that it's awfully hard to say that anything exists objectively in a text, because so much is based on interpretation. But I'm talking about cues that point toward a sexual interpretation and only a sexual interpretation, with a minimum of ambiguity. Your definition seems to be more like "Something that could be read as sexual without twisting logic too badly, even if the non-sexual reading is equally plausible." Which, I think, answers my question about where slashers get their material.

P.S.

[cressida0201.livejournal.com]

Looking at this after a night's sleep, it looks a bit snappish to me. If it looks that way to you too, I apologize. You've been very polite all along, and I certainly don't want to abuse that. Maybe I shouldn't try to write late at night!

Re: pt 2

[violaswamp.livejournal.com]

1. Not really. I don't think anything "interesting" must necessarily be a component part of sexuality. So saying that putting in enough component parts of sexuality will suggest the whole isn't the same as saying that anything interesting will necessarily be taken as sexual.

2. Surely this is the same as any other category of interpretation? Of course you have the right to decide if something (erotic or not) is there in the text, but other people have the right to state that your opinion is wrong if they can back it up. Yes, there's an eye-of-the-beholder component to this, but IMO no more so than all other things involved in interpreting a book.

3. Then it's a good thing I never said that. I was talking about sexuality as "the whole," yes, but only because we had previously been discussing its component parts. I never said or implied that the non-sexual relationship isn't a "whole" relationship in its own right.

But you're limiting your sample to online fandom, and further to the portion of online fandom that expresses fannishness by reading and writing fanfic and meta.

Yes. Since we were, after all, talking about fanfiction and things like shipping archives and online commentary, that seems like a fair and reasonable limitation. And in my past experience when I've heard people talk about "fandom" they meant "online fic-writing fandom." Maybe this usage is more idiosyncratic than I thought. I'm not 100% up to speed on fan vocabulary.

But I'm talking about cues that point toward a sexual interpretation and only a sexual interpretation, with a minimum of ambiguity.

I see. That's a much narrower interpretation than I'd use about objective cues of any kind, because I think you can say that a text objectively contains hints of a given kind of interpretation without saying that it objectively mandates that interpretation, but that's a nitpicky point on my part.

Which, I think, answers my question about where slashers get their material.

Not to beat a dead horse, but if you're conceding that there's something in the text that can reasonably be interpreted as slashy, then doesn't that at the very least affirm the idea that there's some textual basis for the slashers' interpretation, and that it's not all down to outside factors?

Re: pt 2

[cressida0201.livejournal.com]

So saying that putting in enough component parts of sexuality will suggest the whole isn't the same as saying that anything interesting will necessarily be taken as sexual.

I would say rather, anything interesting will be used to make something sexual, even if other ingredients have to be added from outside the text in order to get to the sexual part. Some elements do lend themselves more easily to the technique than others, of course.

Surely this is the same as any other category of interpretation?

But that's my point. You're taking away my right to interpret.

Of course you have the right to decide if something (erotic or not) is there in the text, but other people have the right to state that your opinion is wrong if they can back it up.

I disagree. Opinions are neither right nor wrong; that is what makes them opinions and not facts.

Since we were, after all, talking about fanfiction and things like shipping archives and online commentary, that seems like a fair and reasonable limitation.

You were using the point that Sirius/Remus was a popular pairing with "fandom" to support your position. If it's only popular with a certain segment of Fandom (I'm using the capital F to denote a wider category than just the portion who are writing slash fanfiction), then that makes its popularity less significant.

And in my past experience when I've heard people talk about "fandom" they meant "online fic-writing fandom."

I've often seen it used that way too, but for purposes of this discussion, I don't think that limiting ourselves to online fic-writing fandom is especially productive.

Not to beat a dead horse, but if you're conceding that there's something in the text that can reasonably be interpreted as slashy, then doesn't that at the very least affirm the idea that there's some textual basis for the slashers' interpretation, and that it's not all down to outside factors?

Not to beat a dead cake, but I'm going to return to that metaphor once more. I have never denied that a text may contain eggs, and that it is possible to make cake with eggs. But I get annoyed when people claim that the text contains cake on the basis of the fact that it has eggs. Clearly this doesn't bother you, but it does bother me. I don't think either of us is going to convince the other of her opinion at this point.

Re: pt 2

[violaswamp.livejournal.com]

I disagree. Opinions are neither right nor wrong; that is what makes them opinions and not facts.

Ah, now we're getting into the question of whether an interpretation can be "wrong" or not. Perhaps "wrong" is, well, the wrong word, but I'd certainly say some interpretations can be better-supported or more fact-based than others.