Hmmm, I find this post a little bit confusing, but I know from days of yore about your pro-Draco anti-JKR-morality thing which I didn't really understand at first, but am growing to, I think.
It is a confusing post--I felt confused when writing it and went back over it, but never got rid of it completely.:-)
So I wouldn't fault anyone who ranted on about how Peter was ev0l and deserved to die messily, nor would I consider it an implicitly moral judgement as opposed to a fictional one - what you think should happen, vs what you think will happen, perhaps?
I guess it would depend on what the argument was, for me. I mean, I do like Peter as a character, but I doubt I see him very differently than someone else. I like him for being an effective villain and sort of speaking to my own not-so-nice impulses. So I wouldn't have a problem with his dying a horrible death in canon; I might argue with somebody who said he was just evil because I think it's probably more complicated. And I probably wouldn't say he "deserved it" because for some reason that kind of thing just disturbs me even if I don't like the person. I assume Peter will die, and he'll pretty much be responsible for it, but I probably won't consider it justice; it'll just be the outcome of things.
I do think it's a fictional judgment--that is, I would never assume that somebody saying something like that about Peter meant they were some kind of murderer or even supported the Death Penalty or whatever. They're talking about a fictional character so that's totally different. I definitely think people should be able to say what they want about fictional characters without somebody acting like they've just hurt a real person. But there are parts of it that might be a moral judgment in terms of just how you look at things in canon--that, I think, is more the type of thing you get into with the Slytherins, where some people say, "It's great that X characters did this! It was a satisfying, happy scene," and others say, "That was awful what X characters did. I didn't enjoy reading that scene." Both sides are making fictional judgments, but it's probably getting into something about what they react to and why. It's not like making a moral judgment on a real person, but it can still come from having different ideas about real life things.
What can get frustrating is the assumption that if you have two people with different interpretations one of them is intentionally subverting the canon. Like where people assume that their interpretation was honest and immediate and came from just reading the text while somebody else who didn't like it as much was intentionally reading it wrong or rejecting canon. Really people can just have different reactions to scenes. Now, sometimes people *do* intentionally subvert things or have interpretations that really can't be backed up by canon, sure--and I've seen that happen even with people who think canon's got it right. People make assumptions like that all the time; you can't tell they're doing it just by their coming to an uncontroversial conclusion. Not all interpretations are equally valid and we don't have to pretend they are, but to figure out which is which you have to look at canon and what the person is really saying about it.
In fact, that reminds me of the one time I actually predicted something in canon--only it wasn't a prediction. It was the Pensieve scene. Some people were completely shocked that MWPP turned out to be capable of being such jerks. But on FAP before Book V I remember suggesting just that and it being considered a subversive reading. But I wasn't being subversive--I was basing it on what we learned about MWPP in PoA and from the map. So in that case my more controversial reading turned out to be correct, but I don't think anybody who missed those signs was clinging to a fandom version of MWPP or just weren't really dealing with canon. We both just read the map scenes and reacted. I just read if differently than they did.
no subject
It is a confusing post--I felt confused when writing it and went back over it, but never got rid of it completely.:-)
So I wouldn't fault anyone who ranted on about how Peter was ev0l and deserved to die messily, nor would I consider it an implicitly moral judgement as opposed to a fictional one - what you think should happen, vs what you think will happen, perhaps?
I guess it would depend on what the argument was, for me. I mean, I do like Peter as a character, but I doubt I see him very differently than someone else. I like him for being an effective villain and sort of speaking to my own not-so-nice impulses. So I wouldn't have a problem with his dying a horrible death in canon; I might argue with somebody who said he was just evil because I think it's probably more complicated. And I probably wouldn't say he "deserved it" because for some reason that kind of thing just disturbs me even if I don't like the person. I assume Peter will die, and he'll pretty much be responsible for it, but I probably won't consider it justice; it'll just be the outcome of things.
I do think it's a fictional judgment--that is, I would never assume that somebody saying something like that about Peter meant they were some kind of murderer or even supported the Death Penalty or whatever. They're talking about a fictional character so that's totally different. I definitely think people should be able to say what they want about fictional characters without somebody acting like they've just hurt a real person. But there are parts of it that might be a moral judgment in terms of just how you look at things in canon--that, I think, is more the type of thing you get into with the Slytherins, where some people say, "It's great that X characters did this! It was a satisfying, happy scene," and others say, "That was awful what X characters did. I didn't enjoy reading that scene." Both sides are making fictional judgments, but it's probably getting into something about what they react to and why. It's not like making a moral judgment on a real person, but it can still come from having different ideas about real life things.
What can get frustrating is the assumption that if you have two people with different interpretations one of them is intentionally subverting the canon. Like where people assume that their interpretation was honest and immediate and came from just reading the text while somebody else who didn't like it as much was intentionally reading it wrong or rejecting canon. Really people can just have different reactions to scenes. Now, sometimes people *do* intentionally subvert things or have interpretations that really can't be backed up by canon, sure--and I've seen that happen even with people who think canon's got it right. People make assumptions like that all the time; you can't tell they're doing it just by their coming to an uncontroversial conclusion. Not all interpretations are equally valid and we don't have to pretend they are, but to figure out which is which you have to look at canon and what the person is really saying about it.
In fact, that reminds me of the one time I actually predicted something in canon--only it wasn't a prediction. It was the Pensieve scene. Some people were completely shocked that MWPP turned out to be capable of being such jerks. But on FAP before Book V I remember suggesting just that and it being considered a subversive reading. But I wasn't being subversive--I was basing it on what we learned about MWPP in PoA and from the map. So in that case my more controversial reading turned out to be correct, but I don't think anybody who missed those signs was clinging to a fandom version of MWPP or just weren't really dealing with canon. We both just read the map scenes and reacted. I just read if differently than they did.