So I fall on both sides of the fence with JK. I love her and I hate her, I love and hate her books. But mostly I love the books. I love the fandom. I love the characters and histories she's created. If her books have some horrid failings, well, I can overlook that. I'm the squishy kind of English Major (20 & 25, really).
When it comes to literature, my main priority is: does this work tell me what it's like to be a human? If so, I can overlook a lot of faults. The best way to talk about humans is to have real ones in your books.
Harry Potter is full of strong, memorable characters. Neville and Luna are my favorites (which is why my re-reads always get more fun around book 5 - that's when they become badass).
Anyway, I recently stumbled, separately, upon a couple of articles about the Harry Potter characters that I really appreciated, only to find that they were all written by the same person. She appears to have all the same opinions as me, but states them better. So here's my shameless plug of her and her opinions:
Concerning SNAPE:
"We find out that teenaged James Potter is quite the insufferable show off, that he and Sirius were cruel to Snape, and that Snape’s idea of a good comeback to the bullying was to rebuff one of his oldest, truest friends in a way that was unforgivably prejudiced. What is contained in that unhappy memory is the moment where he loses Lily forever; though they obviously were not as close at that age as they had been as small children, she was not willing to cut herself off from him until he threw the word 'mudblood' in her face...James grew up a little and stopped being a jerk. Lily noticed. (We hear specifically from Sirius and Remus that Lily didn’t start dating him until their final year at Hogwarts, giving James a couple years to sort himself out.) Snape made some bad friends and started dabbling in things he shouldn’t. They went their separate ways. Except Snape kept carrying that torch for Lily. On paper it sounds sort of beautiful, but in actuality…that’s kind of creepy...Apparently he was fine with Voldemort killing Lily’s child and husband, the people whom she loved more than anything; he was only horrified at the thought of her death. And that’s not real love—caring for someone without considering their happiness is the exact opposite of love, in point of fact...The point is that Severus Snape is not a hero, and wouldn’t want to be called one. He is a man burdened by real demons, who makes the wrong choices, who pays for it with everything that is dear to him. And he’s the one who makes that bed. He knows he has to lie in it, knows that’s what he earned for himself, and that’s why he does everything in his power to make it right...Severus Snape doesn’t need pity because he’s not meant to be pitied—the owning of his failures are what make him exceptional."I'll admit that I love the flashbacks in Deathly Hallows, and that it's hard for me to make it through those scenes without tearing up. It doesn't hurt that Snape is played by Alan Rickman, who I'm mildly in love with. But this is something that's always bothered me. Snape is a creep, and as far as I can tell, he always has been one. It's weird to keep pining after a woman for 20 years, when she's clearly moved on and has her own life. Sure, it seems kinda romantic in a grand way, but really, that's not healthy. It's not mature in any sense. This jives with what we see of him in the rest of the books. He's constantly down on Harry for being James' son, he's obviously biased toward Slytherin house - these are not the actions of a mature man or a good teacher/role model.
One of the commentators had a very good point with this:
"If Harry wound up good at potions, it is because of Hermione's help, not Snape's teaching. We never actually see Snape teach. He tells them to open their books and make a potion, and then he goes around insulting the students' efforts.This is not to say that I hate Snape. He has many redeeming qualities and is certainly a great character, but as she says, there's no reason to get all gushy about him.
From the Half-Blood-Prince notes in Harry's borrowed book, we learn that Snape is an excellent and innovative potion-maker, and that he keeps meticulous notes of his experiments...He could have been helping the students understand the theories behind potion making, and teaching them techniques to improve their potions beyond the book's instructions. But he doesn't do that.
If anything, Snape should have been an author, writing books about potion making. From the quality of his work in his old potions book, he would have done well, as even his private notes were good enough that Harry could follow them and brew good potions. If the class is still using the same text as the fifty year old book Harry borrowed, then surely the wizarding world is overdue for a new standard potions text, as well as more specialized books for adults to use.
And if Dumbledore wanted to keep an eye on Snape, then commissioning him to revise the potions textbook, and perhaps other outdated texts, would have been a way to keep Snape under his wing without pushing him into the role of teaching, which he was quite unsuited for."
Concerning NEVILLE:
"It’s a lesson in self-worth under stronger personalities that most human beings could do with at some point or another. Because society at large insists that the only people of value are leaders and their closest confederates, people like Neville are dismissed at first blush much in the same manner that he is dismissed by his classmates in his first years at Hogwarts...This is why Neville’s very first act of heroism is a perfect juxtaposition to Peter (Pettigrew)’s failings when he stands up to Harry, Ron, and Hermione in the Philosopher’s Stone. Dumbledore recognizes it as such, and rewards him for his body bind with the final points needed to win Gryffindor the House Cup. He makes it Neville’s personal victory by announcing him last...More important than Neville’s defense of what’s right is his role as a keeper of hope...He has the hardest job of anyone, and it’s a responsibility he takes on without being asked or expected to do so...That distinction makes Neville Longbottom the truest of Gryffindors and a surprising balancing point of the entire Harry Potter narrative. Who Peter Pettigrew might have been had he understood that courage wasn’t about blind action, but about doing what was needed even if no one ever asked...He fights for a family that is no longer present, wants to make his parents proud though they will never consciously know what he is doing in their memory."Neville isn't a leader. But he isn't a follower either. He's the guy who marches to his own drummer, and who, when the going gets tough, buckles up and does what needs to be fucking done. He's more self-assured than the other members of the team, it seems. We don't see as much of him, but from what we do see of him, it seems that he's not the kind of guy who agonizes over his decisions, or who is constantly second-guessing himself, despite his flaws and weaknesses. Neville has his own code, and he sticks by it. He's a fucking Paladin. He's Ned Stark and Captain America rolled into one. It almost seems as if he's acting without thinking, but he's able to do that because he knows who he is and that lets him see what needs to be done. When it comes to honor and bravery, Neville is where it's fucking at.
She also has articles on RON ("He’s a tactician, the one who will find the simplest answer to a problem provided that the situation is dire enough to ensure his clear head."), HUFFLEPUFF (This one makes me sad, because I'm a Slytherin, but I wish I was a Hufflepuff), RIVER SONG (Whoops, switched genres!), THE DOCTOR, STARDUST, THOR, and lots of other stuff I have feels about.
Sorry for the sort of non-post, but it's been a long week! Cheers, y'all.
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