fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #2675 ]

[ SECRET POST #2675 ]

⌈ Secret Post #2675 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 02 pages, 033 secrets from Secret Submission Post #382.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

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MWPP fangirls should be glad Jo isn't writing a Marauders' story, because I got the impression her version of them was... quite different from the ones we came up with.

The thing is, post-MWPP fangirl days, I think I kind of like the version JKR was leaning towards better than the one my friends and I came up with.

Out of curiosity, what do you think is the version JKR would write? I've never had any theories on the matter, and it sounds like a very interesting topic.

AYRT

I just think fandom - especially pre-OoTP fandom - saw the Marauders as this jovial, fun-loving group of loyal friends, when it seems like they were torn apart rather viciously by the time the first war was coming to a close. I mean, Sirius suspected Remus was capable of murder. That's harsh. Not to mention the stuff they did in school - they used to take Remus around Hogsmeade in his werewolf form. That's pretty... screwed up. Not to mention the stuff they did after the fact. So I think the Marauders were really supposed to be immensely flawed characters - which I like even more in a way, it makes them more real and makes the trio's journey more poignant if you consider them the "second chance" so to speak, but I think a prequel would reflect that, rather than the more lighthearted stuff fandom seems to imagine. Does that make sense?

Oh definitely. I mean, it's pretty open to interpretation because we don't get to see much of them during their youth, so people have filled in the blanks with their own versions.

Which means thousands of people would be unhappy with what JKR did because "that's not how they were!!" even though how they were was never very clear.

The wank would be through the roof, and everyone would be wrong (except JKR)

It certainly makes sense!

I'm a bit torn as to whether I agree with you, mostly because JKR seems to be pathologically unable to write healthy and generally good characters/relationships. She and her narrative are blind to how screwed-up the best of her characters are. The things you listed more or less fall within the borders of the in-universe norm.

I think I'd rather assume that the Marauders would be flawed but that it would not prevent them from being shown as a "jovial, fun-loving group of loyal friends". Maybe they would have more flaws than fangirls tend to consider, but it still wouldn't be a radical paradigm shift.

Uhhh...can you like, give some examples of how JKR is unable to write good characters/relationships? I've always thought that she and her narrative are VERY aware -- far more aware than her readers, especially in book 5, which was IMO the most mature book. The emotional maturity of the series started sliding a bit in books 6 and 7 -- of how flawed the characters who are truly flawed are. Like, you know, Dumbledore, Sirius, Snape, Lupin, etc. And on the side of the students, the fact that they are teenagers who literally don't have fully-formed brains and are therefore totally and understandably inadequate human beings at the moment, which comes across quite well too. I've never seen either narrative blindness or "pathological inability to write good people."

So...examples, please? Sorry, but I can't resist letting a totally detached blanket assertion like this go without evidence, because now my curiosity about what YOU saw to give you this opinion has been all piqued. ;)

A month ago I would have been pretty certain of my opinion, but nowadays I began to notice that there may be more dimensions to this problem than I had previously thought. So, though this view is indeed based on my - factual - analysis of the narrative, I am not going to claim that I have definitive proof that your theory is wrong and mine is right.

Still. Dumbledore, Snape, and Harry may be the most obvious example. Okay, Snape is not supposed to be a "good" person, but it still sounds like the main reason he's been fighting against the Death Eaters is because of Lily. And we are supposed to see that he might have been a nasty human being, but in the end he also had great courage and moral values that helped him to choose the "right" way to act; but if his main motivation was his obsession with his dead high-school sweetheart, it... does rather undermine just about every good thing we know about him.

Dumbledore. Just, don't even get me started on Dumbledore. The problem with him is that he would normally (in a non-Rowling world) be absolutely irredeemable. Even if we do not talk about his sacrificing a seventeen-year-old (arguably, he had no choice), his choice of teachers for Hogwarts is still so incredibly fucked up that I'm sure many kids walked out of that school forever traumatized. Snape should have never, ever, ever taught anyone, let alone eleven-year-old kids. Kids tend to be vulnerable. His relationship with Dumbledore is adorable and all, but they are adults and hence equals. They can defend themselves and they aren't hurt by each other's coldness/maltreatment the way students are hurt by them. There can be no justification for keeping Snape in Hogwarts as a teacher, kindness or no kindness.

And Harry. Harry naming his kid after Snape and Dumbledore after they both have been such spectacular assholes to him. Is he a saint? I mean, yes, he is an incredibly forgiving person, but wouldn't that be super unhealthy IRL?

So, it seems to me that either a) Rowling made a conscious choice to write every single character as an asshole or b) the wizarding universe is so dystopian that healthy relationships and/or characters appear implausible.

Or JKR is really that blind to how bad some of the things she wrote for laughs and drama, or the plotholes she left behind would really be in the Real World.

Someone on FF.net has a huge long essay on the profile about how details in the early books written as comedic kid's books' exaggerated situations really fall down as the series starts to get more dark and serious in the later books.

Things like how the Dursleys treat Harry get waved off as being "Not That Bad" and apparently somewhere she said something about uncomfortable dinners Harry's family would have with them later in life. No, if someone was treated the way Harry was IRL, not only would they not be half as mentally healthy as Harry, but they would either cut ties with that family totally, or there is really something even more wrong with them that they continue subjecting themselves to that, not to mention subjecting wife and children to those relatives.

That's not even touching the problems with the romances, which none are shown to have decent development. That is probably the reason Harmonian writers are so very fond of accusing Ron and Ginny of dosing Harry and Hermione with potions.

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[ SECRET POST #2675 ]

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