![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kascheA couple of days ago (after consistent and protract laughs about a certain game, called Cruising Room) Agnese and me started talking about Peter, then OotP, then the Pensieve.
Well, that Peter's characterization in OotP is POOR is no news to anyone, I think. He's exactly the Peter you see in fanfictions. Which is a very crappy, bidimensional, unrealistic Peter. (Now, if you (generic "you") don't want to put Peter in a fic, it's all right by me. I won't care, probably not even notice much, especially if it's a one-shot. But if you do, please put at least some thought on him.) At this point, I'm seeing two explanations: E1, JKR wrote an awful chapter. It happens. Maybe that day her husband was being an ass, her children were trying to drown each other, or wanted to eat insecticide, or were trying to kill the cat with poisoned sushi. Only, you can easily forgive such a lack of care (in their writing) in a ficwriter, not in someone like her. E2, we're seeing the scene through Snivelly's eyes. (Which would make sense, seeing how we're watching something that came out of his head. Like, straight out from his brains.)
Honestly, I've always supposed that a memory from a Pensieve couldn't be not biased. Only at a later moment I knew there was a "floating camera" theory going around. Taking it as a given, though, means that the valid explanation for "Snape's Worst Memory" is E1. But if it isn't so, the whole memory makes more sense: I have no problems with thinking that Snape saw the Marauders that way. He hated them with a passion. Could his own memory (which, I repeat, is a silvery mass going from his head to the Pensieve) come out uninfluenced by this?
If I remember correctly, one of the points F-C supporters brought up was the fact that in the memory there were also things Snape wasn't supposed to know. That's true. Well, I could have an explanation for that: I say that it depends on when the memory was placed in the Pensieve. Think about it. Once, in your life, Fact A happened: you didn't understand all of it, for whatever reason. At a later date, you find out the missing bits of information. Automatically, after this, when you think of Fact A you fill in everything that was missing. And after that, believe it or not, the two memories (Fact A following informations) become so intertwined that you couldn't put in a Pensieve only half of the pair. We have reasons to believe that Snape finding out (and being almost eaten by) Remus' true nature was enough of a shock to condition many other things. It shouldn't be hard to connect it to a OWL question on werewolves.
I realize this may be a bit like climbing mirrors - or I'm just too much of a optimist. Have I talked complete nonsense? Where am I wrong? You are obliged to answer that.
By the way, we also realized that I - we - would better stay away from LJ in general, in-between HBP release and us reading it. You know, as Serena and Agnese both know pretty well, the very morning of the day OotP was released I happened to read an article about it, which ended with something like "and the readers will find out which is the character that's going to die: Sirius Black, Harry's godfather." I just swore so LOUDLY. And cursed the journalist him/herself (obviously, the article wasn't signed), along with all his/her generations to come.
Note to self: remember to stop reading newspapers around mid-July, too.
I really meant the bit about telling me where I could be wrong.
Well, that Peter's characterization in OotP is POOR is no news to anyone, I think. He's exactly the Peter you see in fanfictions. Which is a very crappy, bidimensional, unrealistic Peter. (Now, if you (generic "you") don't want to put Peter in a fic, it's all right by me. I won't care, probably not even notice much, especially if it's a one-shot. But if you do, please put at least some thought on him.) At this point, I'm seeing two explanations: E1, JKR wrote an awful chapter. It happens. Maybe that day her husband was being an ass, her children were trying to drown each other, or wanted to eat insecticide, or were trying to kill the cat with poisoned sushi. Only, you can easily forgive such a lack of care (in their writing) in a ficwriter, not in someone like her. E2, we're seeing the scene through Snivelly's eyes. (Which would make sense, seeing how we're watching something that came out of his head. Like, straight out from his brains.)
Honestly, I've always supposed that a memory from a Pensieve couldn't be not biased. Only at a later moment I knew there was a "floating camera" theory going around. Taking it as a given, though, means that the valid explanation for "Snape's Worst Memory" is E1. But if it isn't so, the whole memory makes more sense: I have no problems with thinking that Snape saw the Marauders that way. He hated them with a passion. Could his own memory (which, I repeat, is a silvery mass going from his head to the Pensieve) come out uninfluenced by this?
If I remember correctly, one of the points F-C supporters brought up was the fact that in the memory there were also things Snape wasn't supposed to know. That's true. Well, I could have an explanation for that: I say that it depends on when the memory was placed in the Pensieve. Think about it. Once, in your life, Fact A happened: you didn't understand all of it, for whatever reason. At a later date, you find out the missing bits of information. Automatically, after this, when you think of Fact A you fill in everything that was missing. And after that, believe it or not, the two memories (Fact A following informations) become so intertwined that you couldn't put in a Pensieve only half of the pair. We have reasons to believe that Snape finding out (and being almost eaten by) Remus' true nature was enough of a shock to condition many other things. It shouldn't be hard to connect it to a OWL question on werewolves.
I realize this may be a bit like climbing mirrors - or I'm just too much of a optimist. Have I talked complete nonsense? Where am I wrong? You are obliged to answer that.
By the way, we also realized that I - we - would better stay away from LJ in general, in-between HBP release and us reading it. You know, as Serena and Agnese both know pretty well, the very morning of the day OotP was released I happened to read an article about it, which ended with something like "and the readers will find out which is the character that's going to die: Sirius Black, Harry's godfather." I just swore so LOUDLY. And cursed the journalist him/herself (obviously, the article wasn't signed), along with all his/her generations to come.
Note to self: remember to stop reading newspapers around mid-July, too.
I really meant the bit about telling me where I could be wrong.
