I'm loving this post. Something I always need to 'shake off' the bad parts of fandom in the same way - that Gryffindor and Slytherin are not equal opposites, they are just different. Different bad, different good. I've often seen Gryffindors as not having the 'nous' to appreciate what is handed down in Slytherin - boorish jocks come in every house (looks at Flint and Fred and George), but Gryffindor's self-righteous tendency and back-slapping, practical-joke playing could create more of them.
if you were going to break down alliances between houses there was the everybody-against-Slytherin one, then the Gryff/Slyth rivalry vs. Huff/Claw as the two "recessive" houses, and then Gryff/Huff vs. Slyth/Claw. It wasn't anything I could really point to, I just felt like there was this subtextual thing where Hufflepuff was like Gryffindor Junior because it was based more on emotion. I just got the feeling Ravenclaw's "intelligence" was closer to Slytherin's "cunning" and so was a bit more suspicious because it put head over heart.
Absolutely. I came to the same conclusion.
Thinking too much just seemed sort of suspicious, which is why the allegedly intellectual Gryffindor specifically puts down "books and cleverness" in favor of "courage," and whose intellectual curiosity is all in the service of a cause. Hermione's yet to let research change her mind about anything that I can remember. Part of her smoothing over ethical questions is the way she doesn't go into any study objectively.
This pinpoints exactly why I'm always suspicious of Gryffindor - it seems more about the grunts and the agreement with mass opinion, than the individualism and ambitious striving of Slytherin. I know you could probably make a case for the other way round (Crabbe and Goyle classic grunts, DEs only want mass opinion) but OTOH you could differentiate between classic Slytherin thinking as embodied by Salazar and Phineas Nigellus, and wack-job extremist thinking a la Voldemort, who twisted and stretched pureblood thinking to its logical extreme. Which is not to say that Slytherin thinking is bad - like you say, it's a style of leadership with its good and bad points. Logical extremes, OTOH, are always bad by definition.
(OT: Phineas always reminds me of Blackadder telling off Pitt the Even Younger for spouting off teenaged agonised poetry to him (3rd series), with this line: 'He is planning something to do with me, then?' said Harry swiftly. 'Did I say that?' said Phineas Nigellus, idly examining his silk gloves. 'Now, if you will excuse me, I have better things to do than listen to adolescent agonising . . . good-day to you.' *g*)
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2004-11-01 04:31 pm (UTC)if you were going to break down alliances between houses there was the everybody-against-Slytherin one, then the Gryff/Slyth rivalry vs. Huff/Claw as the two "recessive" houses, and then Gryff/Huff vs. Slyth/Claw. It wasn't anything I could really point to, I just felt like there was this subtextual thing where Hufflepuff was like Gryffindor Junior because it was based more on emotion. I just got the feeling Ravenclaw's "intelligence" was closer to Slytherin's "cunning" and so was a bit more suspicious because it put head over heart.
Absolutely. I came to the same conclusion.
Thinking too much just seemed sort of suspicious, which is why the allegedly intellectual Gryffindor specifically puts down "books and cleverness" in favor of "courage," and whose intellectual curiosity is all in the service of a cause. Hermione's yet to let research change her mind about anything that I can remember. Part of her smoothing over ethical questions is the way she doesn't go into any study objectively.
This pinpoints exactly why I'm always suspicious of Gryffindor - it seems more about the grunts and the agreement with mass opinion, than the individualism and ambitious striving of Slytherin. I know you could probably make a case for the other way round (Crabbe and Goyle classic grunts, DEs only want mass opinion) but OTOH you could differentiate between classic Slytherin thinking as embodied by Salazar and Phineas Nigellus, and wack-job extremist thinking a la Voldemort, who twisted and stretched pureblood thinking to its logical extreme. Which is not to say that Slytherin thinking is bad - like you say, it's a style of leadership with its good and bad points. Logical extremes, OTOH, are always bad by definition.
(OT: Phineas always reminds me of Blackadder telling off Pitt the Even Younger for spouting off teenaged agonised poetry to him (3rd series), with this line:
'He is planning something to do with me, then?' said Harry swiftly.
'Did I say that?' said Phineas Nigellus, idly examining his silk gloves. 'Now, if you will excuse me, I have better things to do than listen to adolescent agonising . . . good-day to you.' *g*)