Prettyveela's Poll - long!

[sistermagpie]

prettyveela has put up a poll here asking people to pick a side in various HP canon conflicts. As usual I have trouble actually picking a side, but I did eventually vote in all of them. What I keep thinking about after doing it, though, is not which side I chose but exactly why I picked one or the other. All the situations are so different that although it

Comments

[teratologist]

One time gettingshitdone took a 'leadership training' seminar (for personal reasons of my own, the word 'leadership' makes me gag violently) in which they did an exercise kind of like this; they told everyone a long story about a princess who left her neglectful husband, ran away with a minstrel who abandoned her, wound up in a forest inhabited by an evil wizard, sought succor from her uncle who turned her away because he disapproved of her behavior, and on the way back through the forest was killed by said evil wizard. After the story you were asked to pick who was responsible for the princess's death and the 'right' answer was the princess, because she was the protagonist and the class was meant to promote the myth that we, as little protagonists, succeed and fail entirely based on our own choices. No one picked the evil wizard as responsible, perhaps because for the narrative to make sense in the context of the seminar's bullshit you basically had to take as given that the evil wizard was a force of nature and not a character in his own right.

Nothing to do with Harry Potter really, I just wanted to get that off my chest.

[sistermagpie]

OMG, that's hilarious. Of course that never occurred to anybody when they were coming up with that story. If they'd had her die of thirst or something they could easily have made in the princess' fault but no, they have to have her killed by somebody who's somehow not responsible for her ending up dead!

It does seem like he's supposed to just be the embodiment of evil, but still...good thinking.

But then, I would always fail at a leadership seminar anyway.

[teratologist]

I could get into a long rant here about how of course it had to be a princess because male aggression in general so often is presented as just another amoral force of nature that women are expected to deal with, but I'll spare you.

[sistermagpie]

I did notice she was walking alone in a forest. What did she expect?

[merrymelody]

Oh, there's a story similiar to that, I found it in a Paul Zindel book. http://www.angelfire.com/ok/freshenglish/teambuild.html
In that version, though, you're supposed to put the people in order of blame, and the order shows what you value most in life.
Certainly didn't end the way gettingshitdone's group did though - that sounds fucked up!

[teratologist]

That does seem like a better way of doing it, although I still don't see how you can rate anyone's responsibility ahead of the assassin's - I don't associate a responsibility for not killing people with valuing money as much as with valuing, you know.... not killing people.

Anyway, if he's a paid assassin, who hired him? The husband? The lover? The boatman, to drum up business?

[merrymelody]

Yeah, it's kind of odd that some of the characters motivations seem cross over to the people blaming them - you'd think it'd be the opposite.

I dunno if it's supposed to be responsibility so much as morally who's worse - I mean, I'd blame the assassin if it were down to the former, but for the latter, I'd probably say the lover comes out most contemptible.

[ljash]

Wow--I'm pissed off and I'm only kind of able to picture the seminar and everything. And you're right--no female character even in sight. All male characters are forces of nature and the princess should suck it up and form a corporation in her uncle's town or something.

[teratologist]

While I think you're radically overstating the existence of both free will and meritocracy, which is a subject that people can certainly legitimately disagree about, my main quibble is that you're sort of missing my point. In order to make the princess 'responsible' for her death (as opposed to the break-up of her marriage or whatever) you have to assume that the evil wizard is not 'responsible' for his actions, so there's still a neglect of responsibility, it's just invisible instead of overt.

[teratologist]

To illustrate what I mean a bit more clearly, imagine that the story was told from the evil wizard's point of view. Trying to blame the princess's death on her choices then would read like exactly the sort of thing you decry. *Of course I had no choice but to kill her, your Honor, she left her husband and she was in my forest!*