@ Silens: As much as I agree with many of your points about Snape, this is the "Awesomize a character" thread, not the "Character-X Apologist" thread. Nothing you wrote furthered Snape's awesome factor, at least for me, nearly as much as it, for lack of a better word, explained Snape or, as I said, came across as a treatise from a Snape apologist. Not that one couldn't argue that other posts (such as the Neville post in particular, IIRC) didn't stray into that territory as well, but still.

As I said, I agree on many of your points, and Snape is already one of the most nuanced and varied characters in the series.

EDIT: @ shinysavage: In Snape's defense, the only time in the series we ever see him say "Mudblood" is in that memory. Nowhere else in canon does he use the word, which is a point in his favor in my opinion. While Malfoy and others use it as an offhand offensive comment, Snape never, ever does. He knows what it cost him, ultimately.

 

@Portus: He stopped using the term after his fall out with Lily, but in DH as we find out, he used to call Muggle-borns mudblood save for Lily. It was only after Lily called him out on it and broke her friendship that he stopped using it.

@Silens: I do believe that you glossed over several points while discussing Snape. The most important one being that we can hardly say that Snape was the Marauders victims. According to DH, Snape was himself involved in several violent pranks that Lily said was Dark arts. Snape was as much of a bully as James, perhaps more so because of his use of Dark arts. Strangely, people never mention this while going on the long 'James is a bully' rant.

Secondly, I do not believe that life at Slytherin would be too harsh for Snape. He was after all welcomed by Lucius Malfoy when he was sorted.

It should also be kept in mind that Snape never became the good man because he say the folly of his ways. He was happy enough to be a Death Eater till it threatened Lily.

Finally, yes, Snape is definitely an interesting canon character. It's the various shades of his persona that makes him interesting. But he's not a character that I'd call awesome. He was an angry, bitter man bullying a child because he had grudge against his dead father and more importantly, an orphan child whose parents death was partially his fault.

 

Ah, but here's the thing, Portus - I'm not debunking Snape's faults here. If anything, his massive insecurity and unwillingness to advance his own life is one of the most utterly infuriating elements of his character, and something I've been trying to rectify in Rewriting the Song. He's a massively flawed character who never took enough of a stand for his ideals.

But the funny thing is that this is DLP. Throughout the past, Snape has been branded here everything from a pussy-whipped snivelling bit of shit to a child molester. So, despite my massively obvious bias (hey, I stated it before the tl,dr), I tried to write a 'awesomization' that fit a little closer to a DLP point of view. And I expected, it didn't completely work, but hey, that's what happens when you're trying to 'awesomize' a character that has a richly detailed progression of story and character development.

EDIT: Johnny Farrar - perhaps I did gloss over a few things, but here's the funny thing - you never really saw any of those scenes that depicted Snape as victor vs. victim. Part of this is Rowling's faut - we never really got a balanced perception of anything when it came to Snape. But another part of it is different - for instance, why didn't any of Snape's friends step up in Snape's worst memory? And keep in mind that Malfoy was gone after Snape's second year, and sure Lucius might have protected Snape, but I suspect Lucius rather treated Snape like a valuable tool, and wasn't really a friend to him in the slightest, at least not to the same degree Lily was.

As for Snape's involvements in the pranks... well, aside from the fact that Lily only placed guilt on Snape by negligence and never specifically mentioned Snape's active participation according to DH, I can't deny you've got a point. But then again, that's another one of Snape's massive character flaws: he will compromise his beliefs if he feels that he's going to be abandoned. Really, we can't get a clear picture of what Snape's moral compass actually is (and that could be a plus or a minus, depending on the way you look at things). Same thing with the whole comment about his 'happiness' as a Death Eater - really, we don't have a lot of evidence one way or another on it. I contend he was doing it more out of hatred of James and Sirius than any actual belief in Voldemort's ideology, and that makes a degree of sense considering his rhetoric on the matter.

Finally, your last point. Yeah, he's angry, he's petty, he's unbelievably bitter, and frankly, he could have turned out a fuck-load better. But considering the shit he dealt with and the fact he remained in possession of his sanity, I would consider that awesome, but in a different sense of the word. He's awesome because he's powerful, and while his personality is just as defective as so many other characters I consider awesome in fiction (I'm thinking of Zaknafien Do'Urden, Raistlin Majere, Nicci from the Sword of Truth series, and so on), he's awesome because he inspires awe. He fought against some pretty huge odds, he survived (mostly), and that's worthy of some respect.

 

I choose Dumbledore
It almost feels like I'm cheating cause he's so awesome, but here we go.
Firstly, Dumbledore is considered the brightest student(with Riddle in the running) in Hogwart's history. At the age that most wizards are off thinking about doinking witches, he's writing articles for a Transfiguration magazine, dazzling examiners with his talent("did things with his wand I'd never seen"), and inventing spells, potions(the 12 uses of dragon's blood), all the while dealing with an annoying brother and a sick sister. He also contributes to the store of Alchemy(his work is called ground-breaking), he gets every single award offered to anyone his age, gets to work with probably the most knowledgeable person in his world(Flamel) as an equal, becomes the representative of Britain to the Wizengamot, and wins all these as a half-blood in a world that is at least a bit prejudiced against them.

After school he meets the only person that people thought was his intellectual equal: Grindelwald. They get along great, but then a fight between him, his brother, and Gellert get out of hand and Arian dies.

Fast-forward and Gellert is a dark wizard, who's considered the second greatest Dark Lord of all time, and who's gotten just about every award his school had to offer(just like Dumbledore). Gellert avoids Dumbledore even though he's got an army of followers and Dumbledore doesn't. Dumbledore eventually defeats him, who's got the ELder Wand, a wand said to be unbeatable. The duel is said to be greatest ever.

Then he's offered the post of Minister of Magic but turns it down because he thinks he can't handle the power.

I'd go on, but there's just so much...

TLDR: Dumbledore is basically the greatest wizard ever.

 

Accepted. The rest of it I'm just going to ignore because it had nothing to do with awesomizing him and much to do with explaining your interpretation of his actions and moments in Canon.

 

Person: Rowling

Reason: Every post in this thread, bar Admonkeystrators :awesome

 

Fix'd that for you.

 

Mine was the best

 

The best at being a Perfect Lionheart wannabe, perhaps. :awesome

 

Be fair.. Partially Kissed Hero started out well....

 

A simple change, I think it's for the better.

Edit, I've decided to give this an attempt, I'm probably going to do Narcissa Malfoy.

 

Nothing that bigot ever wrote was in any form of the definition, well.

 

Well, since we're at it.

Ginny Potter nee Weasley nee Ginslut.

Yes, Ginny. All of you sit down and stfu.

The youngest and only girl in a fucking huge family. She had to live with Percy shitbag Weasley as a brother as well as Fred and George who no doubt were a pain in the ass to live with. Not only that, she spent a whole year alone in the house with her parents, one of them being Molly. That's what I call nerves of fucking steel.

In her first year she was a lonely little kid and she was posessed by a horcrux. Granted, not her finest moment but look at it this way. Her brothers pretty much ignored her for the year and she didn't have too many friends. As far as she knew, she was just using a diary. But it was a Horcrux, one of the most powerful and foul creations in the world.

Not only did she bounce back after that experience, an experience that would have driven most people to near insanity, she came out of her shell. She's hot too, if you believe canon.

In her fourth year she broke into the Department of mysteries and fought fully grown and educated murderers, making her ballsy as fuck imo. She kicked ass in the battle of Hogwarts too.

She's tough, brave, smart, beautiful, pretty funny at times and she bagged Harry fucking Potter.

Oh, and let's not forget that she's Bill Weasley's sister. She doesn't need to be awesomized. She's awesome enough.

 

Percy who?

 

Let`s have it for...

Gellert Grindelwald!

When he started his schooling in Durmstrang, Grindelwald showed great natural talent for magic, but he had also a brilliant mind and enough discipline to learn fast and efficiently. In fact, his genius enabled him to use some obscure, fictionalized hints to come to the conclusion that the Deathly Hallows were real and potential tools for his ambition- to rise to power. In his years in Durmstrang, young Gellert displayed an exeptional interest in -and control over- the dark arts. He wasn't just a powerful duelist- his experiments were exploring many fields of the dark arts in depth. In fact, his practices were such that even the Durmstrang institute -known for it`s open mindedness regarding "unconventional" magic- was forced to expel Grindelwald before he could finish his NEWT equivalent.

His search for power led him to Britain, where he lived with his aunt in Godrics Hollow, while he tried to follow up some information over the Pewerell brothers. There he met Albus Dumbledore, and realized quickly what a potential a partnership with this powerful young man would bring him. Gellert was so silver tongued that he could easily manipulate Dumbledore, convincing him that wizards should rule over the muggle world for the "Greater Good". In short order, Grindelwald had sucked the other man into his plans and they were sheming to acquire the Hallows together. We can be pretty sure that Gellert would've eventually disposed of his "friend" Dumbledore when they had the Hallows in their hands, but fate intervened against him in the person of Alberforth Dumbledore, who forced Grindelwalds hand and destroyed every chance of a further relationship between the two.

Far from being rattled by this setback, Gellert redoubled his affords to win the Hallows for himself, finally succeeding when he tracked down the elder wand and stole it from the wandmaker Gregorovitch in a daredevil raid. And this was just the beginning of Grindelwalds "great but terrible" deeds!
Over the next years, he used every skill in his arsenal, from his charisma, over his immense magical power to his absolute ruthlessness, to gain influence in the wizarding communities of central europe. His slogan "For the Greater Good" and the ideology it stood for brought him many friends and followers. When WWI showed everyone who would look how stupid and irresponsible the majority of muggles still behaved, Grindelwalds influence surged. He began to act openly against his enemies, recruiting an army of loyal witches and wizards and attacking adversaries with deadly force.

Canon doesn't tell us much about Grindelwalds reign of terror, but it seems reasonable to postulate that he achieved control over some continental ministries of magic. After all, he was able to erect his own magical prison -Nurmengard- and imprisoned many of his enemies therein. On the height of his power, Grindelwald still searched for the two other hallows, but they were in Britain and outside his sphere of influence. Everyone feared Grindelwald as the most powerful dark wizard of his age, and his sudden downfall at the hands of his former friend Albus Dumbledore must've surprised many.

Nothing is known about the particulars of the famous duel between the two, but there must've been a personal element in the fight for Gellert. Why else would he, who controlled great parts of europe and had his own army, have consented to a one on one duel?

The next five decades of Gellert Grindelwalds life are obscured by his incarceration in Nurmengard, but in the confrontation with Tom Riddle, he showed himself a last time as a man of steel. Although he was an old, wandless prisoner, he was totally uncowed by the abomination that was Voldemort, unbeaten by the so called "Dark Lords" attempts at Legilimency against him, and unafraid of death. He died as he had lived, with courage and determination to spare.

 

I was very close to posting one for Grindelwald last night for my 300th post, but I decided it might hint at a bit too much in my story, so I nixed the idea. Glad somebody wrote him though, he's an incredibly interesting character and I'd like to see more people use him in fanfiction.

Grindelwald has a certain unknown quality about him that intrigues me, and I really wish JK would have given more information about HIS rise to power. For some reason, and maybe this is just me, I see Grindelwald and Voldemort as two very different people, at least in terms of how they went about gaining power --and no, I don't mean Grindelwald stormed some ministry with an Army or something like that.

Also, I don't think Grindelwald was German, which seems to be where most people place his nationality.

 

One could attribute it to chance. Give enough monkeys enough typewriters...

However, you've missed the key point here:

He sired Bill Weasley, despite said son having a 50% genetic handicap :awesome

 

Grindelwald is a mountain in Switzerland, so I would bet a good amount that he's at least descended from the Swiss, and considering how isolationist the wizarding world seems to be I'd say there's a high chance he was actually Swiss himself.

 

Posted as counterpoint to the Pet Peeves thread v.6 Molly-hate (starts here)


Molly Weasley (nee Prewett)

This is the witch who raised seven kids who later became important figures in the war against Voldemort. She joined the Order of the Phoenix with her husband Arthur, even after she had lost two brothers in the previous conflict due to their membership in the Order.

As Arthur was a busy Ministry employee, Molly ran the farm (vegetable garden, livestock and an orchard- not just a couple tomato plants) and had a wide repertoire of quality meals produced from her mad cooking skills. She took command of the Order's Headquarters, making it habitable and able to provide secure respite for all those who were sworn to their cause. Even Snape and Mundungus.

She was a good wife and a competent mother who kept (relative) control over a very active set of children- twice as many as any other magical family mentioned in the whole series, by the by. She and Arthur were still very much in love throughout the books, 20-30 years after they started dating while in school.

She sent one Howler in canon- on the occasion that her youngest son, when stuck behind the barrier that she and her husband had just crossed, instead of sitting tight until they returned, stole the car, flew it in broad daylight over London and then crashed it into a tree at Hogwarts. You don't think Ron was better off that she didn't take him out of Hogwarts, and instead chose to punish Ron in a way that might truly make him think twice before doing anything that stupid ever again?

If she acted on the press disinformation about Hermione, it might have something to do with her not getting any letters from the trio or her (other) children to counter that propaganda. The sum total of her vindictiveness in this instance was to make Hermione's Easter egg gift much smaller than the ones for Harry and Ron. It wasn't poisoned, charmed to explode or include any instance of her screaming that Hermione was a tart, scarlet woman or muggleborn trash. It was a subtle expression of disapproval.

She didn't support Fleur's relationship with Bill because she only saw the girl as a ditzy beauty-queen who had dissed her domestic skills. She used a love potion on Arthur to get him over his anxiety to ask her out, and he was fully aware that it had happened later on- it didn't do more harm than getting him sloshed on quality wine, and she told the story to Ginny and Hermione no doubt because the targets of their affections were acting equally oblivious/reticent.

And yes- she had the skills and courage to face off against Voldemort's most dangerous lieutenant and put her in a well-earned grave.

Stuff your fanon crap in a sack and honour Molly Weasley- if only there were MORE witches like her. If Narcissa had been like Molly, Draco wouldn't have followed his father or been such a shit. Neville in Molly's care would have been raised to have confidence. Harry would have had more fighting spirit (and probably better study skills).

And no dessert for you until you apologize.

 

I just want to add a bit more about Molly's duel with Bellatrix - yes, yes, the one that everyone hates and cites as an example of how stupid canon can be.

I think some people have the impression that she had no skill at all with Defense Against the Dark Arts, because she couldn't even handle a Boggart in Grimmauld Place without cracking up. But if we look at the Bellatrix duel, there seems to be good evidence that this isn't the case - even if you consider the final result to be a fluke of luck.

She was fighting to kill. She was using lethal curses. Think about that: in between changing diapers, making sandwiches for Arthur, and whatnot, she found the time to learn how to kill with magic. In a nation where even some Ministry employees can't cast a simple Shield Charm, Molly Weasley put in the required effort to learn how to put bitches in graves.

Now look at the last line of my canon quote. She was yelling at Bellatrix while engaged in combat with her. And the way Rowling wrote it, i.e. with those dashes between each word, provides circumstantial evidence that she was casting spells while talking to Bellatrix. Which would mean that Molly is fully capable of casting dueling spells - maybe even lethal spells - nonverbally.

Incompetent fat housewife? Get that shit outta here. Well, except for the fat part.