Question...

[conuly]

Why is everyone theorizing that Snape and Lily were secretly in love with each other? Yes, he never insulted Lily to Harry's face - but the one time we see her stepping in to save him, he calls her a mudblood and she retaliates by calling him Snivellus. That doesn't seem very loving to me! At most, it seems like she didn't like James picking on people, no matter who those people were.

Yes, yes, they were both "brilliant in potions". And? All that means is that they were both brilliant in potions. It's certainly possible for Lily to have been independantly brilliant without needing the help of the Half-Blood Prince.

I find it unlikely that Lily had a crush on Snape, or was in love with him, but we don't know much about her.

I find it even less likely that Snape had a crush on Lily. If he did, it was most likely tainted with some degree of actual hatred (mudblood) or even self-hatred (OMG! NOT A PUREBLOOD! ANGST! ANGST!) because, really, Snape's got issues.

And I repeat, what I know of Young!Snape, I like. Bezoars... hee.

Oh, and another question: Wasn't Hermione going to get her comeuppance for being so manipulative? I sure hope that the comeuppance wasn't in the form of an entire book of angsty lurve, because if so, I think I'll have to kill something. And why don't the good guys get called on their bad behaviour? Wait, hold on....

Well, why not? The Weasleys are slightly racist. They're patronizing instead of hateful, but it's there. Remember Molly's words when we first met her? "Swarming with muggles", she said. Arthur is curious about muggles, but only in the sense of "look at the cute primitives". Frankly, I almost prefer the outright hatred of the Death-eaters. At least it's honest.

The twins are bullies. They shove a boy in a vanishing cabinet, and he nearly dies. They play tricks on people weaker than they are, including muggles, who by definition can't fight back. And it doesn't matter if Dudley is a "great, bullying git", he's terrified of them.

Hermione is manipulative. She really, truly is. Her behaviour, in fact, is unconscionable. What's worse is the matter-of-fact way in which she does it. "Oh, I picked him because I knew he'd irritate Ron the most." "Oh, I thought the centaurs could take care of our little problem for us." "Oh, even though I know they don't want this, I'll just trick the house elves into freeing themselves."

Harry is developing a scarily ambigious morality. Not ambiguous in the sense that "well, abortion can be right for some people, but wrong for others" or in the sense that "stealing bread is okay if you're starving", but ambiguous as in "it's fine to hex the squib just because I can" and "it's okay to practice jinxes on random passersby, even though I don't know what they do" and "maybe I'd do something nasty to somebody for no reason if they generally deserved it, like Malfoy". Sure, a lot of the time he's just a good-good person, but... those traits show up with disturbing clarity.

Dumbledore does twinkle altogether too much for his own good. He scares me.

So why doesn't this get commented on like it ought to be?

Comments

[leora.livejournal.com]

Actually, I was just discussing book 6 with my lothario tonight, since now we've both finished reading it. And one of his main comments was that he was glad that the characters were becoming more mixed, with fewer poor evil or pure good characters. And I think that's part of the point of the structure of the series. The books are designed to show the perspective of a character who is growing up and to be aimed at an audience of roughly the same age. The mixed morality was always there, but now it's more obvious and a big part of growing up is learning to accept the mixtures of things and not seeing them in simplified absolutes. Thus we see the good side of Malfoy and it becomes harder and harder to point to a purely good or a purely evil character in the series - except Mrs. Norris who I think is likely purely good, but I'm biased.