death to capslock

Love in HP

Wed, 06 Feb 2019 20:20:00 GMT

Posted by: torchedsong.livejournal.com

Since Valentine's Day is close by, I thought this topic would be fitting to bring up ~~and ramble about until I get it off my chest.~~

Here comes a few (potentially) silly questions I have about love as a reoccurring and major theme in the HP books: is love a redemptive and saving force? Is it a reflection of our inner nature and morals? Does it make us better or worse than we are? Is it proof we’re capable of good? Or is it simply a nice message to have in a children’s series i.e. love is more powerful than anything?

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Lessons in Immortality

Tue, 25 Aug 2015 18:22:00 GMT

Posted by: sunnyskywalker

Condwiramurs, Terri, Sweettalkeress, and the rest of you are just too inspiring. I had plans for last night (okay, probably involving silly pictures of cats, but still), and instead all your brilliant commentary inspired me to write a short fic. Your punishment is to suffer the results. (Er, but only if you want to.)

Lessons in Immortality
Characters: Albus Dumbledore, Tom Riddle
Categories: Gen, PG
Word Count: 972
Summary: Albus is determined that his NEWT alchemy students not be lured onto any of the tempting, dark paths to immortality. Especially not Tom Riddle.

Fic this way

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Indestructible VII - Miscellaneous Cards I

Wed, 19 Aug 2015 22:37:00 GMT

Posted by: condwiramurs.livejournal.com

All right, as promised here are the remaining miscellaneous bits I need to cover along with our look at Severus himself. I’ve decided to fold the discussion of occlumency in here too, since it’s not that complicated to need a long post by itself.

However, for the sake of length, I’ll be posting this in sections. The first three cards in this set first, and the other three later.

In “Part VI – Dark Marks and Dark Arts,” we moved ahead in the alphabet from A for Albus and alchemy, to D for dark and death. Let’s continue skipping along the alphabet here and see what we’ve got.

This time:

F, for flight.

I, for immortality.

L, for love. (Can’t forget that.)

Next time:

O, for occlumency.

P, for purity.

T, for tower, with a side jump back to C for cave.

Then we can get back to our main subjects, S for Severus and V for Voldemort. And then I can finally go back to talking about moral arcs and that gravity assist thing I mentioned a while ago, and explain my two readings of the last books. Which I’m really eager to do after I get through all this stuff.

So, onward.

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Indestructible - Introduction and Part I

Fri, 31 Jul 2015 16:47:00 GMT

Posted by: condwiramurs.livejournal.com

Or, a multi-part meditation on Severus Snape, moral struggle, and love.

All that thinking about terri's Greater Love and the fic I'm writing has prompted me to blather on a bit about how I see Severus as embodying the more complex aspects of moral struggle that work their way into the HP books, despite JKR's refusal to let him openly come into his own on the page. I’ll be posting the parts of this as they get written (that is, in between writing sections of my dissertation, sigh). It’ll be more a sprawling web of related pieces than a single long argument, I think, so I’ll just post whatever feels complete enough at the time. This is an introduction of sorts to the theme, and to my view of Severus. It’s a view heavily inspired by our own terri and mary, as well a few others over on Snapedom and elsewhere.

I suppose my view of Albus is somewhere between terri’s Fool Albus and marionros’ Narcissist Albus, with a large helping of swythyv’s Well-Intentioned Moral Failure Albus. When I’m being generous.

(Hey! I can be as cynical and petty as any potions master too, you know – no claiming perfection of spirit here. XD )

My view of Voldemort… Well, we’ll get to that, in time.

Onward.

* * *

Indestructible – Part I

"You’ve got to hide your love away…” sang the Beatles.

Well. I don’t think they meant it quite this way, but looked at from a certain angle it’s an apt theme song for our dear Professor during the most spiritually trying phase of his struggle, and the war, that we see.

And no, I don’t just mean the surface fact of hiding from Voldemort, even under torture and Legilimency, any memory that might betray that he, in one way or another, loved and loves a girl named Lily. Or even a boy named Harry, or a man named Albus.

That’s the easy part.

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Thoughts on how "love" is portrayed in Harry Potter

Fri, 26 Jun 2015 22:28:00 GMT

Posted by: sweettalkeress.livejournal.com

Not too long ago I had some major brainwaves about love, which I thought would be relevant to our discussion about Harry Potter. Rowling in her books loves (no pun intended) to portray love as this all-powerful force for good (except when it’s not). The thing is, though, she seems to have a pretty messed-up idea about what “love” really means.

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