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The HMS STFU - In Which Dumbledore Is Supposedly Omnipotent and Self-Aggrandizing...
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| | Subject: | In Which Dumbledore Is Supposedly Omnipotent and Self-Aggrandizing... | | Time: | 09:09 pm |
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| I give you The Dog that Didn’t Get Exonerated in the Night in which the usual Manip!Dumbledore paradigm is once again trotted out for display. For bonus lulz, ![[info]](http://www.journalfen.net/img/userinfo.gif) marionros got good and wound up and blasted a few screeds about how that horrible fucktard Harry Potter is NEVER WRONG AT ALL NO SIR THE BOOKS NEVER SHOWED THIS (never mind that, uh, we do indeed read that in the "big reveal" scenes at the end of the books, that the gaps in Harry's (and therefore our) knowledge are filled in); she also doesn't seem to grasp the concept of a POV character who introduces us to the world in which he or she inhabits.
As seems to be par for the course, trying to find ways to prove that the Death Eaters weren't really all THAT bad and such, we get this bald-faced assertion:
So Grindlewald was the Dark Lord of his time, and Voldemort did a bid to the title a couple of decades later. Bagged it too (although I still don't get why everybody was so afraid of him. All that talk of 'he did great things.. Terrible, but great' and what do we get? A few murders of muggles and old women! A two-bit muggle crook can do better than that! The DE's would faint at seeing 'Silence of the Lambs'!).
*coughBULLSHITcough*
Voldemort did a hell of a lot more than "A few murders of muggles and old women", Ms Ros. He founded a terrorist organization devoted to overthrowing the lawfully constituted government of his nation. He counselled the commission of murder, torture, vandalism and property destruction by the members of his organization. Every action proved that power for its own sake no matter how convoluted the pathway was his basic justification. Else why greedily snatch at all elements of immortality? Even though he had his Horcruxes he wanted a Philosopher's Stone and had no compunction about drinking Unicorn blood.
But hey, why let the books speak for themselves when you can make stuff up? Example by means of this detour:
Sirius loathes Snape and calls him 'Greasy Git'. Harry loathes Snape and calls him 'Greasy Git'. We might assume that Neville also loathes Snape, but as far as I know, he never referred to him as 'Greasy Git'. Just because Neville loathes Snape but doesn't call him Greasy Git doesn't mean that those who do call him Greasy Git don't loathe him.
It's amazing how these fen can make it all about Snape amid meta about Dumbledore. The making stuff up is that the words 'greasy' and 'git' never occur together once in the books. Chew on that, Ms Ros, and quit substituting fanon for logical analysis.
Then The Corruption of the House System in which terri_testing takes a little sideswipe or three at James by insinuating he didn't respect his mother, and then goes on to basically portray Dumbledore in a manipulative light again. The actual logistical underpinnings of her assertions seem quite weak. How would, as she claims, a mass Obliviate work on twenty some thousand people? (Since that is, in effect, what she's proposing as the reason why nobody remembers what House Dumbledore happened to be in; she says (paraphrased) 'the spell works on books and memories')
My spork is in storage at the moment so I can't do more than take a few feeble stabs at these meta-pieces which probably have grains of truth, but which seem to be built on a helluva lot of speculation and more than a bit of fanon.
ETA:
Oh for chrissakes mary_j_59 came along and managed to bring in some of that ridiculous Four Elements of Nature theory as well as demonstrate just how badly she excels at Missing The Point.
Her comment is here and I'll be over in my corner of the universe, karate headdesking at the ridiculousness of her ability to ignore what the Sorting Hat and Dumbledore both said about Slytherin traits.
Son of ETA: I noticed a segment of the LJ comments over there segued into some very revealing comments made by the Snapefen. My JournalFen entry regarding what I saw is linked. | comments: Poke a delusional shipper     |
| After all, they were right—Tom Riddle had been an esteemed alumnus of Slytherin House.
The problem is that none of Dumbledore’s supporters seemed to know which Slytherin Voldemort had been. How then did they know his House?
Right. He was almost certainly broadcasting the fact that he was Slytherin's heir all over the place. | | (Reply to this) (Thread) |
| (Anonymous) | | Link: | (Link) | | Time: | 2009-11-05 11:25 am (UTC) |
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| although I still don't get why everybody was so afraid of him. All that talk of 'he did great things.. Terrible, but great' and what do we get? A few murders of muggles and old women!
So the fact that he managed to find and open the Chamber of Secrets after it had been hidden and sealed shut for a thousand years isn't all that great?
And setting the Basilisk loose on the students isn't all that terrible? No? How about murdering his family at 15/16? Or attempting to murder Harry as a baby? Or killing Hepzibah Smith just so he can steal from her afterwards? Or him deliberately creating six Horcruxes?
Clearly their definition of 'terrible' is not the same as the one in the dictionary.
- Europa | | (Reply to this) (Thread) |
| (Anonymous) | | Link: | (Link) | | Time: | 2009-11-05 11:29 am (UTC) |
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| 'James didn't respect his mother'
...Whuh? *goes to look* Okay, she is REALLY reaching for reasons to dislike him.
As for the 'greasy git' thing...I think I remember seeing something like it in canon, but I can't be certain. Believe me, I would LOVE to know for sure that marionros is just that fanon-obsessed.
night_train_fm on LJ | | (Reply to this) (Thread) |
| (Anonymous) | | Link: | (Link) | | Time: | 2009-11-05 11:38 am (UTC) |
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| Oh, and there marionros it goes again (in the house system thread) about James 'polluting Lily's mind'. I saw her going on about that years ago.
What really confuses me is why anyone else in the terri/oryx/mary/etc crowd take her seriously. I mean, you can agree or disagree with them, but I've never seen any of them sink to the level of OTT bile she seems to positively revel in. All the 'nooos' and 'toerags' and Gratuitous Capitalisation make my head ache.
ntfm | | (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread) |
| | The closest you might get is Snape's worst memory when Sirius Black in the memory makes crude remarks about a 'grease spot' etc. And Fred and George call Snape a git in OotP but that's kind of par for the course. XD | | (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread) |
| Could we all please stop feeding this troll? This is the same person who, on Snapedom (on SNAPEdom!), rehashed the same old pablum of how evil and nasty, petty and cruel Snape is, blah blah blah, over and over again, with just enough of smallminded vitriol thrown in to goad people into responding. One wonders why such people need the negative attention they so desperately seem to invite. Are they so insignificant and invisible in daily life that any response on the internet gives them a sense of power?
No matter. It's a troll. A sad little person, assuredly, and with entirely too much time on her hands. Ignore her, and eventually, she will go away.
Looked in a mirror lately there, marionros? | | (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread) |
| I don't get marionros. Voldemort murders and orders others to murder without so much as a second thought. Even his own followers are not immune to this. And Voldemort murdered Snape--but then marionros seems more inclined to blame JKR for that, which just shows she's going out of her way to stand up for the bad guys.
Marionros conveniently forgets that HARRY FORGIVES SNAPE in the end. Snape, who Harry hated MORE than Voldemort (and who JKR once called "more culpable" than Voldemort, because Snape has experienced at least some form of love.
Harry, as I believe I have noted before, reaches some kind of detente with Draco between the Battle of Hogwarts and the epilogue (they can at least share a platform without sniping at one another), feels legitimately sorry for Draco, tries to save Voldemort from a fate worse than death (the implication is that an incomplete soul can't pass on, so Riddle would be stuck essentially in a limbo between life and death FOREVER), and ends up naming his son (implied to be his favorite) after the man he once hated MORE than Voldemort. But since it wasn't Severus Albus Potter, I guess it's not enough for these people.
As for all this claptrap about Dumbledore, for the last time, HE'S NOT GOD. The deception over the Secret-Keeper Switch (as I call it) was so complete that there was not one member of the Order other than James, Lily, Sirius, and Peter who knew about it (if someone had told Remus they could have spared Sirius twelve years in Azkaban--and, for that matter, spared Harry nine years and three months under the "care" of the Dursleys, but that didn't happen). Dumbledore believed that Sirius was guilty, just as surely as everyone else did.
And it didn't help that Sirius honestly believed that he had killed James and Lily--by convincing them to make the switch.
Could Dumbledore have insisted Sirius be tried? Could he? For all we know, he didn't earn most of his titles until after Voldemort was already defeated the first time around. And I think people tend to give Dumbledore too much credit--yes, he's a powerful wizard, very perceptive, and very influential, but he's not omniscient.
And because he dared to be mean to Snape, apparently that means he was in it for himself and for power, not to SAVE THE FRIGGING WIZARDING WORLD.
While Snape, of course, could not possibly have joined the Death Eaters because he'd been brought up with Slytherin- and wizard-superiority drummed into him by his mother and because he was genuinely obsessed with Dark magic. It can't be because he genuinely believed in the Death Eater cause (apparently Snape is incredibly brilliant yet it never occurred to him that the girl he stalked for years might be a target of the Death Eaters). No, he has to be the universe's bitch.
As for Harry and Neville "hating" Snape--SNAPE STARTED IT. Harry would have been willing to get along with Snape had Snape not been projecting the image of the man he despised onto an eleven-year-old kid who'd never so much as given him a dirty look. And Neville was TERRIFIED of Snape for a long time--because Snape hated him just as much as he did Harry. Hell, Snape's unjustifiable picking on Harry may have been a large part of it. | | (Reply to this) (Thread) |
| and who JKR once called "more culpable" than Voldemort, because Snape has experienced at least some form of love.
Marionros has stated at least once that she thinks that's BS because Lily never really loved Snape in any way, shape, or form, no sir. | | (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread) |
| (Anonymous) | | Subject: | He should have just given Snape the By-Gawd respect he deserved! | | Link: | (Link) | | Time: | 2009-11-05 11:10 pm (UTC) |
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| | How dare he arrive at Hogwarts ignorant of how self-sacrificing Snape had been for the previous twelve years! | | (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread) |
| I think marionros wants to be writing fiction, not analyzing someone else's fiction, because that's a whooooole lot of making stuff up there.
Of course, since we know what she thinks constitutes "good" literature, any fiction she concocted would probably suck. Tough luck for marionros. ;) | | (Reply to this) (Thread) |
| First of all, I am not a big fan of the style in the first essay. I've said before that I love Swythyv, but I don't love her tendency towards one-line paragraphs and constant questions, and I really really don't love the way Terri is pastiching her all the time these days. Second, I'm kind of irrationally annoyed that she's co-opting Sirius, whom we know she doesn't care about, to criticize Dumbledore.
Albus was entirely correct. Sirius Black’s sentence could not be overturned.
Without implicating Albus Dumbledore.
I really think that if things had gone according to his plan, (Sirius didn't die, and all that) after the war Dumbledore would have willingly taken the full blame for all sorts of things, including this. If he had still been alive to manipulate public opinion, etc., I'm confident that he would have shouldered the blame for letting the Marauders become illegal animagi under his nose* and all of that. He wasn't that selfish. He would have realized that he was old and had had his life, and that it was more important that Sirius et al. got to live theirs with as few clouds hanging over them as possible.
* btw, I'm also reasonably confident that illegal animagery also had a prison sentence, and that by trying to reserve that information until he was ready to let the Ministry know he was trying to keep the Ministry from having a legitimate reason to lock Sirius up.
I don't quite understand why she thinks the Ministry didn't know Remus was a werewolf when he was at Hogwarts. Oryx_leucoryx's logic in the first comment thread makes no sense to me. Why would he have only had to register when he came of age? It's pretty clear that the magical world is assholish towards werewolves, so I see no reason why they wouldn't say, "As soon as you're bitten, we're keeping track of you, we don't care that you're four."
not use a title like 'Dark Lord' because that would give him too much honour (supposedly)
Oh, Marionros. | | (Reply to this) (Thread) |
| They're all trying to be SRS BSNS like the Red Hen's style. *rolls eyes*
I have often felt that the laws on werewolves were somewhat laxer in the 1970s. This parallels the real world, where some laws weren't as strict (certain drugs laws as one example; mandatory sentencing for drug offences didn't become the status quo until the 1980s). So werewolf registration may not have been automatic and certain jobs might have been left open to them (physical labor too hard for a house-elf, or other such demeaning ones). It was Umbridge's presence in the Ministry later on that led to a hardening of the anti-werewolf laws.
There's an interesting allegory to how fear and paranoia about things are used to justify stricter laws that accomplish the opposite of the intended effect. :P | | (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread) |
| We see Harry recieving Christmas and birthday presents from his 'BFF', but have we ever seen Harry send so much as a christmas owl? Not that I can remember.
It's just not shown - Hermione and Ron mention getting presents from him, even though we never see him buy them. At least Lynn_waterfall refutes this, but she's still missing the point that just because we only hear about it a couple of times doesn't mean it only happened those times, fr srs.
What we have seen, however, is that every time Harry has a conflict with Ron or Hermione [...] Harry just goes off in a snit and ignores them for *months* until Ron and Hermione come to *him* and apologize or otherwise show their throats. That's not how friendship works, people!
No, but it's how people who are poorly socialized work. It was pretty obvious in GoF that JKR considered Harry's paradigm wrt anger and forgiveness to be screwed up. | | (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread) |
ikabod | | Subject: | Wow, this got tl:dr | | Link: | (Link) | | Time: | 2009-11-05 03:38 pm (UTC) |
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| The usual suspects are wanking again. This bit from marionros is fun:
“Professor Snape’s version of events is far more convincing than yours…. without Pettigrew, alive or dead, we have no chance of overturning Sirius’s sentence.” Albus Dumbledore, PoA, “Hermione’s Secret”
The thing which infuriates me about that quote is how, as per usual, Dumbledore makes Snape look like the bad guy and then succeeds in making his own shit smell like roses. I mean, the way he presents it to Harry clearly says, "well, you could tell the truth but that nasty Snape will insist in telling his version, which is faulty and bigoted because of his petty grudge against poor Sirius, and he will, alas, be believed above you, dear Harry."
Snape's version WAS "faulty and bigoted because of his petty grudge against poor Sirius" and it would not have been believed because Fudge did not want to believe it. He wanted the political score of capturing the "escaped Death Eater" and was not at all interested in the truth. How did marionros miss that?
But there are several things wrong with this.
First, Dumbledore neatly omits from mentioning why he himself has not made his own statement. Wouldn't he, Headmaster of Hogwarts, Mugwump and Dark Wizard slayer extraordinaire, be believed above unimportant Snape?
Once again, marionros reveals that she did not read any scenes that did not involve Snape. She is completely missing (or ignoring) the political games that Fudge played. Would Fudge have taken Snape's word over Dumbledore's if he could gain political advantage from it? Absolutely. Anyone besides rabid Snapefen who doubts that?
Harry could've asked him that if he a) had the brains and b) wasn't fuming and stewing in his, once again stoked, hatred against Snape (handy for Dumbledore, that hatred of Snape, isn't it?)
Could it be that even 13 year olds are smart enough to recognize the political realities they were dealing with? Snape was NOT the victim in this scenario. The falsely accused Sirius was the victim here. Snape was telling a "faulty and bigoted" version of events. Marionros seems to conveniently forget that Snape's version was wrong. And it was willfully wrong. He wanted to see a man get his soul sucked out because that man was a dick as a kid - and he was willing to ignore evidence of that man's innocence to get his petty revenge.
Secondly, since book seven we know without a doubt that Snape wasn't so much a 'Dumbledore's man through and through' as more Caliban/Ariel to Dumbledore's Prospero. He is bound to Dumbledore, and follows his orders even if and when it kills him. So why didn't Dumbledore command Snape to tell Fudge whatever it is Dumbledore wants him to tell? Because Dumbledore doesn't want to, that's why.
Here's where their evil manipulative Dumbledore rant and victim!Snape characterization falls apart. If Snape was truly Dumbledore's slavish victim who followed "his orders even if and when it kills him" he would have followed orders here and told Fudge what Dumbledore wanted. Snape would NOT have gone against DD here if he was as beaten and downtrodden as they like to think. Clearly DD's hold over Snape is not as complete as Snapefen imagine. And they point to this as some inconsistency in JKR's characterization rather than see it as the contradiction of their own logic that it is. Amazing.
Then of course, yes, there is the fact that there are several ways in which Dumbledore could've shown Fudge the truth, up to and including Pensieve memories, but it is the subtle way in which Dumbledore uses Snape to once again make Harry hate Snape and love Dumbledore for his own gain galls the heck out of me.
Once again missing the point that Fudge was NOT looking for the truth here. He was looking to gain political capital and anything said in Sirius' favor by anyone would have been ignored. | | (Reply to this) (Thread) |
| All that talk of 'he did great things.. Terrible, but great' and what do we get? A few murders of muggles and old women! A two-bit muggle crook can do better than that! The DE's would faint at seeing 'Silence of the Lambs'!
LOLOLOLOL. Yeah, because our standard for the villain in a children's book should be Hannibal freaking Lecter.
Personally, I thought Voldemort progressed from kind of cartoonish at the start to genuinely terrifying by the end; you would be hard-pressed to create a villain who was any scarier than him and not totally wig out the kiddies. Murder, torture, mind-control.... people disappearing, people turning against their neighbors, silent takeover of the power structure that people were too afraid to acknowledge was happening.... purges of undesirables, destruction of families, teaching teenagers how to hurt other teenagers, and to enjoy it.... Maybe it's just me, but I find that last one the worst, when we learn that people like Crabbe and Goyle were allowed to torture their classmates and they learned to enjoy it. Voldemort and his people basically corrupted and destroyed the souls of a bunch of children. Does it get worse than that?
But I guess if Voldemort's not eating Harry's liver with a nice chianti, he's just not scary enough! | | (Reply to this) (Thread) |
| (Anonymous) | | Link: | (Link) | | Time: | 2009-11-05 07:05 pm (UTC) |
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| So Grindlewald was the Dark Lord of his time, and Voldemort did a bid to the title a couple of decades later. Bagged it too (although I still don't get why everybody was so afraid of him. All that talk of 'he did great things.. Terrible, but great' and what do we get? A few murders of muggles and old women! A two-bit muggle crook can do better than that! The DE's would faint at seeing 'Silence of the Lambs'!).
Oh please.
Voldemort murders people without so much as a second thought, wizards & Muggles alike, advocates genocide, tortures people (including his own followers), kills his father & grandparents & framed his uncle for the murders, creates multiple Horcruxes, starts a terrorist organization with the objective of overthrowing the government by means of murder & torture, & tries to kill Harry as a baby.
Yeah. Not scary at all. IMO the graveyard scene & the cave scene are the 2 scariest scenes in the series.
And the rest of the DEs are not cuddly little bunnies. They torture & murder countless people too. Bellatrix is nearly as bad as Voldie. She tortured 2 people into insanity. And there's the Carrows, who took sadistic pleasure in torturing children & making other children torture children. And let's not forget Fenrir Greyback *shudders*
But I guess if you want to whitewash Snape & completely gloss over the fact that he very willingly joined the DEs, you have to make them out to be "not so bad after all."
-jesatria @ lj | | (Reply to this) (Thread) |
| although I still don't get why everybody was so afraid of him. All that talk of 'he did great things.. Terrible, but great' and what do we get? A few murders of muggles and old women! A two-bit muggle crook can do better than that!
Oh dear... -_-
Also, what was she expecting? Extremely detailed descriptions of the hundreds of killings and tortures mentioned, unmentioned, and barely mentioned throughout the series? Most readers understood the true danger of Voldemort without having to read how exactly Neville's parents were tortured, for instance (btw, I'd like to remind marionros that Voldemort was the intellectual author of many crimes. Just because he didn't kill lots of people with his very own wand/hands it doesn't mean he's not an actual serial killer) | | (Reply to this) (Thread) |
| My favorite bits from the second essay:
"The problem is that none of Dumbledore’s supporters seemed to know which Slytherin Voldemort had been. How then did they know his House?"
Hmm, yes, excellent question! How did they know he was a Slytherin? Do go on!
"I know of no way for someone to have found out accidentally that Lord Voldemort had once been sorted to Slytherin. It’s not as though there was a Slytherin Mark that someone could accidentally glimpse. So the information was most likely released by someone who knew that Voldemort had been Riddle, but who had a reason for revealing Riddle’s House but not name."
Fair enough, good point! So, your thoughts?
"Well, we do know that when Tom was in seduction-mode, he harped on points of resemblance between himself and his prospective victims. So he might have mentioned to some of his Slytherin would-be recruits (Severus?) that he had sorted to their house, without revealing more. And one such recruit might eventually have turned that information over to the Ministry (voluntarily or otherwise), and from there to the Prophet."
Well, that's a perfectly logical and reasonable explanation! Maybe you're not as crazypants as people clai--
"If Tom had truly been set on making sure no one traced his identity, his cover identity on his return from his studies abroad was probably vaguely foreign."
But, wouldn't that not make much of a difference? I mean, he'd still look the same (unless he got his face changed up in the books and I don't remember it), so--
"The people who, in canon, did take it as a given that Voldemort’s house was Slytherin were… Hagrid and the Weasleys, and then the Trio after them. Albus Dumbledore’s biggest and most (to be polite) unreflective supporters. Is there a reason that it would benefit Albus to spread rumors that Lord Voldemort was a former Slytherin?"
...Oh. So you came up with a nice, neat, logical explanation, and now you're just going to hurl it out the window in favor of something you yanked out of your hiney? ...Well. If that's how you want to play it.
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| Hannibal Lector ate some brains and Buffalo Bill tucked his balls away. Voldemort was able to track down and kill people the momment they said his name.
Psshaw, what a lamer. | | (Reply to this) (Thread) |
| (Anonymous) | | Link: | (Link) | | Time: | 2009-11-06 10:42 pm (UTC) |
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| If two-bit crooks normally murder multiple people in marionros's world, I sure wouldn't want to visit there.
Am I imagining things, or is the basis of her complaint that there wasn't more extreme and graphic violence in the Harry Potter books? Because, while I don't buy "they're just children's books" for everything (we're not talking The Poky Little Puppy here), I think Voldemort's actions were plenty scary, all things considered. Does someone have to eat faces to be a villain? Voldemort took over all of England's wizard bureaucracy, and had the power to move on to the rest of the world. It was quite clear what would happen to Muggles and any wizards who didn't fall into line. That's a lot scarier than some serial killer.
~clio_1 | | (Reply to this) (Thread) |
| (Anonymous) | | Link: | (Link) | | Time: | 2009-11-07 01:02 am (UTC) |
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| | Marionros is a showboating nutter. She's hard to take seriously. I think people like Terri_testing and Mary_j_69 are much more fun in their earnestness. | | (Reply to this) (Thread) |
| I can't even make sense of what they are saying .. it's just blah blah blah Sanpe blah blah blah Snape. I feel like I've lost a few brain cells trying to make sense of it LOL.
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lakme | | Link: | (Link) | | Time: | 2009-11-07 04:44 am (UTC) |
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| | Yeah, Voldemort is nothing compared to James Potter. He never hung anyone upside down, sheesh! | | (Reply to this) (Thread) |
| In PS/SS, Ron makes eyes at the Boy-Who-Lived and starts nattering on about the Wizarding knowledge Harry doesn't have. Harry then notices in sympathy Ron's relative poverty--with which he can empathize, having been raised deprived--and tactfully finds a way to gift Ron with goodies. Harry offers to 'swap' a pasty for a dried-out sandwich.... Eventually, of course, Draoc shows up and confirms their alliance.
But it's already been negotiated. Harry, the outsider, is well-armed with money and a reputation; Ron, the insider, is poor and ignored. Knowledge for a share of fame and fortune? Swap? Deal!
Yes, who gives who gifts, and when, and what, is highly important! It's part of negotiating relative status.
If Harry, who's one of the richest kids in Hogwarts, only bothers to think about giving birthday/Christmas presents to his best friends after fourth year, that says something about him. Especially as he used his wealth to buy Ron's favor in book one!
...This whole "friendship" thing is kind of a new concept, isn't it. | | (Reply to this) (Thread) |
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The HMS STFU - In Which Dumbledore Is Supposedly Omnipotent and Self-Aggrandizing...
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