death to capslock

A new hypothesis concerning the DADA Curse

Sun, 22 Sep 2019 13:00:00 GMT

Posted by: sunnyskywalker

You'd think by now I would have learned not to believe anything Dumbledore says uncritically. Let's take another look at the passage where he confirms the curse's existence:

"Oh, he definitely wanted the Defense Against the Dark Arts job," said Dumbledore. "The aftermath of our little meeting proved that. You see, we have never been able to keep a Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher for longer than a year since I refused the post to Lord Voldemort."
--HBP Chapter 20, "Lord Voldemort's Request

You'll notice that he never actually says Voldemort cursed the position. He doesn't even say he suspects Voldemort cursed the position. He just says that no one has lasted longer than a year in the job since and lets us draw our own conclusions. Even for a man who routinely uses academic hedging and waffling, that's... curious. He isn't afraid to "believe" or "suspect" things like the exact means by which Merope Gaunt got Tom Sr. to run off with her, so why so circumspect here?

Maybe because the means by which Voldemort proved he wanted the job wasn't as straightforward as cursing the job himself.( Read more... )

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Let’s You and Him Fight: How Snape and Lupin’s Conflict in PoA Furthers Dumbledore’s War Strategy

Fri, 18 Jan 2019 22:57:00 GMT

Posted by: sunnyskywalker

Thanks to torchedsong for bringing up the topic of character complexity (or the destruction thereof). JKR's desperate attempts to force characters that had grown beyond her control back into simpler, Really Good vs. Really Bad boxes in DH always gets me thinking.

Some HP characters I used to love disappointed me so much once I'd processed DH that I lost sympathy for them for a while. JKR excusing some characters’ flaws and not others also makes it tempting to blame her pet characters and dislike them forever more. Now, I prefer a complex cast of characters who might have sympathetic motivations and flaws which inevitably bring them into conflict over what I felt JKR wrote in DH, so I’ve been trying to re-examine the HP books with a view toward finding some sympathy for all the characters, even the really terrible ones. (No luck so far with James. I’m not sure I’ll ever manage that.)

This led me to Prisoner of Azkaban, where Snape is responsible for brewing Lupin’s medication and making sure he takes it. Even Dumbledore ought to have noticed that this is a no-good, horrible, very bad idea. Snape will be freshly reminded of the time Lupin nearly killed him at regular intervals. Lupin will be freshly reminded of the time he nearly killed Snape because his good friend Sirius set him up (and possibly react by trying to minimize it all to avoid a debilitating guilt-spiral), plus will face the anxiety that maybe the guy he bullied for years and nearly killed will poison him in revenge. Why on Earth would anyone set them both up for this? Yes, Snape is one of the few people talented enough to brew Wolfsbane… but Dumbledore is supposed to be a genius at everything magical, and he studied alchemy, which surely has skills that translate to potions. Why can’t he brew the Wolfsbane and deliver it with a twinkle? Even if he can’t, why can’t he deliver it instead of Snape? Forcing them to deal with each other directly over such a fraught subject is guaranteed to make them both suffer.

*headdesk* Probably because that’s the point. This is part of Dumbledore’s war strategy. Snape is probably in on it to some degree—not that it makes it any less miserable for him.( Read more... )

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The DADA Curse

Sat, 02 Dec 2017 18:42:00 GMT

Posted by: sunnyskywalker

I have to thank Terri for posting, which inspired me to dust off some notes myself and pull them into some sort of order!

I’ve been re-reading some meta, and there are enough interesting bits and pieces about the DADA curse that I wanted to wrap it all up into one post. Most of this is not new; it’s just a synthesis of disconnected comments. ( Read more... )

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Why write the Defense job as the cursed one?

Fri, 04 Mar 2011 17:31:00 GMT

Posted by: lynn-waterfall.livejournal.com

Why did JKR make it be the Defense job that was cursed? Having a cursed class did allow her to regularly introduce new professors, and I can understand wanting to do that, particularly since the action was mostly confined to the school. But why the Defense job?

I can think of some unflattering reasons, such as not wanting to write a hero who can really *do* stuff, or not wanting to have to work out what kind of stuff such a hero would *do*. Or maybe she just wanted to ensure that readers would be interested in the class that happened to be cursed, and Defense would naturally get readers interested, particularly young readers.

Are there any really good reasons? ( Read more... )

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death to capslock

A new hypothesis concerning the DADA Curse

Let’s You and Him Fight: How Snape and Lupin’s Conflict in PoA Furthers Dumbledore’s War Strategy

The DADA Curse

Why write the *Defense* job as the cursed one?

Why write the Defense job as the cursed one?