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

[in_interval]

Interesting - I went and took the poll before I read your responses so I could compare my own. I agreed with all your answers except for Ginny vs. Ron and I could have gone either way on that one.

In particular on Percy vs. Arthur, I came down on Percy's side because of the parenting dynamic. I agree with what you've said about Arthur. I also think, though, that in a parent/child relationship, the parent is the one with most of the power and so has more of the responsibility to show maturity in an argument. Arthur not trying to understand Percy is worse than Percy not trying to understand Arthur.

Thanks for the pointer!

[sistermagpie]

The two fighting ones are interesting--not only do both people have to have a point, but it's all people who presumably all really care about each other: father/son, brother/sister. With the siblings neither one of them is really supposed to be more mature.

[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

[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?

[trobadora]

I agree with you on all of those. With Hermione especially, what I hold against her is less what she does in a desperate situation than that she never seems to regret the unexpected consequences.

[sistermagpie]

Yes, people are right to say that she's improvising and panicked when she first does it. What's weird is the whole, "Yup, totally meant to do that. Don't mess with me" attitude afterwards.

[trobadora]

Actually, come to think of it, it's the same thing with the Sectumsempra - I'd be a lot less inclined to put the blame on Harry if he showed a little remorse afterwards, as opposed to complaining about not being allowed to play Quidditch.

[arclevel]

Yeah, that was what *really* horrified me about the scene. Not that he damn near murdered one of his classmates, complete with blood and screaming and salvation by luck (that Snape was within earshot), but that, after the first 30 seconds or so of sheer shock, his reactions were, in order, "OMG, I have to hide the book, Snape can't find out about the book!!!", "gee, I feel a touch bad about -- wait, Ginny thinks it was cool? Woo hoo!", and "OMG, Snape is such a jerk, making me miss Quidditch and file stuff just because I nearly murdered one of his students
".

[seaislewitch]

A few were hard to choose, because there are those annoying grey areas. *g*

Arthur vs Percy
To me, Arthur is a camper -- someone who has little ambition. I think he should have a bit more because he's got SEVEN kids to take care of! Regardless of Molly's argument about the Ministry keeping him down, I still think Arthur has let his family down. I think it was secretly embarrassing to Percy that his father didn't have the kind of ambition he has. I think Percy would have thought his family would be proud and happy for him when he got such a great job. They weren't and that hurt Percy, so he made the break. I don't blame him at all.

Pensive Snape vs James
That was an attack, and Snape was not to blame in that one particular instance. We only have that one scene to judge the relationship between Snape and the Marauders, though. For all we know, Snape and other Slytherins could have attacked the Marauders the day before, and this was a retaliation.

Hermione vs UmbridgeUmbridge was to blame. She's stupid and evil. I was surprised

[sistermagpie]

I can see why Arthur's happy at his job the way he is...but I can see why he drives Percy crazy. Not that it's Percy's business what kind of work ethic his dad has, but you can see why he loses it when Arthur suddenly tries to play the role of badass official who knows all. I think that's often probably a mistake with Arthur the way he's constantly interfering in things that have nothing to do with him and pulling strings when he shouldn't be...maybe that's supposed to come across as competance, but it doesn't.

With the Marauders and Snape I do always assume there's a big history there. I'd imagine there's another day where Snape can't help but hex James for no reason. That day it would just be Snape's fault.

If I was going to vote for who gets the most blame in general in OotP, it would definitely be Dumbledore. And then he ends the book with a big speech about how he's going to confess how much blame he has...and then goes on to blame everybody else.

[q_spade]

If I was going to vote for who gets the most blame in general in OotP, it would definitely be Dumbledore. And then he ends the book with a big speech about how he's going to confess how much blame he has...and then goes on to blame everybody else.

Too right. In fact - there's no need for me to bother voting on that poll, because someone beat me to it!

[seaislewitch]

Dumbledore. And then he ends the book with a big speech about how he's going to confess how much blame he has...and then goes on to blame everybody else.

Exactly! *snort*

[go_back_chief]

I think it's hard to judge the events/arguments we haven't seen for ourselves, ie the fight between Arthur and Percy and the prank. That said, I'm completely on Percy's side in that fight, because as you say, it seems clear to me that it's about so much more than just the promotion and what exactly Percy said to Arthur and vice versa (neither of which we can know). It wouldn't sdurpise me if Percy did say an awful lot of hurtful stuff to Arthur in that fight, things that he might even have known wasn't fair, and that were bound to hurt him, because he wanted to. This is really about the respect Percy never got from either Arthur or from his siblings, the fight was just his way of rebelling, protesting. And while we haven't seen the fight, we have seen how Percy was treated by everyone in his family save Molly, which makes it really easy for me to pick a side there

[sistermagpie]

The Ron/Ginny fight is so weird for me because obviously Ron starts it and there's really no defense for what he says. As you say, even if he's been raised to see girls as people who have honor to be protected, he's obviously just projecting his own screwed up issues. But Ginny's reaction still seems so over the top to me and so completely destroying him I don't really get it. Really it comes down to it being yet another Mary Sue moment for me. Ron's just set up to look dumb all the way around, especially since he is trying to do something nice on one level. (Not that I think that's really the case, actually. He may believe superficially he's protecting his sister, but really he's just freaked out seeing her snogging Dean, imo.)