(Discussion moved from HP Memes thread III- Drome)

 

To be fair to Draco, that was a dick move by Dumbledore.

 

Correcting Snape's douchebaggery is not being a dick

 

Aren't there more reasonable ways of correcting Snape's unfairness? Like walking up to him and saying 'straighten up or you're out of here'?

 

I never really got why Dumbledore is considered a dick for this scene.

I mean Harry, Ron and Hermione just helped to save the world, without them Voldemort the most powerful dark wizard of all time would have come back. Students get points for doing their homework or all other kinds of inane shit so doing something major like that and getting 50 points seems more than fair.

I mean I kind of get the criticism of the points given, being just enough to beat Sytherin especially with Nevilles last minute addition and about the drama of him giving the points at the last second but if anything they deserve 500 points.

But imo that is more about the first two HP books being far more aimed for young children instead of young adult crowd in the later books i think JK really just wanted to make it more satisyfing for the heroes to pull a last minute victory against the scumbag Slytherins.

 

It's a bit of a dick move to weight a system of academic success amongst children with extra curricular heroism. Sure, it's absolutely a commendable act worthy of praise, but it's irrelevant to the actual thing house points are supposed to measure. It makes it a slap in the face to the hard work of all the students actually earning house points for a hook work.

On the other hand, Snape has been very obviously putting a hand on the scales in favour of Slytherin. With his chronic dislike of Harry (and Hermione) and the frivolous excuses to dock points, perhaps this year is when his bias got severe enough to the point where Dumbledore decided to step in and adjust the balance a little.

But this is definitely retroactive justification, and the feelgood moment of a last minute victory for narrative purposes is undoubtedly JKR's real motivation in writing it this way.

 

Nah fuck that, Draco deserved every bit of that disappointment, the little shit. I hope Dumbledore looked him in the eye as he did it.

 

Honestly, I feel like the biggest slap in the face to Draco would be him going to talk to Dumbledore about the points...and Dumbledore looks at him and says "I'm sorry, who are you again?"

 

For me the issue is twofolk. First is that Dumbledore gave only just enough to beat Slytherin, that was clearly a deliberate choice. Second is that he decided to do it at literally the last second, when all of Slytherin thought they'd won. Thats like handing someone a chocolate bar, letting them unwrap it before snatching it out of their hands and eating it for yourself. If he'd given those points the night before the Feast, when he was speaking to Harry in the Hospital wing - or even better over the THREE days before that when Harry was unconscious - it would have been far more reasonable.

He could have called each of the kids to his office one by one, congratulated them and awarded them their points personally. Do that over the course of 3 days, ending with giving Harry his points whilst he's in the hospital wing, and its far more reasonable than waiting 4 days until everyone is sure the competition is over and upending the result.

 

I suppose my biggest problem with this scene wasn't that Dumbledore decided to add these points. They were somehow deserved. It's just it appeared that he played favourites just like Snape does, teaching all the students that it's something to be accepted. I would expect the Headmaster to be a little better with educating the next generations.

 

I mean I get that in real life terms this is a pretty shitty thing to do at the last moment but imo it's pretty clear that JK did pull stuff like this for narrative purposes and that scenes like this should not be a reflection of the characters personality.

I think scenes like this are the reason why there is some much Dumbledore bashing ,the books are brimming with scenes where irl Dumbledore would be incredibly irresponsible like putting Harry only with a letter on the Dursleys doostep, hiring Lockhart or not using the timeturner in POS to save Sirius himself instead of letting two teenagers do the dirty work etc. but they are only their because JK wanted her heroes to do the work, have some tension or have a incompetent fun teacher and Dumbledore usually appears in a very unflattering light because he is the ultimate authority on the good guys side.

I definetely think JK could have done a much better job to create situations or tweak scenes to not make the adults seem so irresponsible.

But personally I am not really bothered by it seems far to much like a boring rationalist approach like the MOR fic instead of looking at it narratively.

It's like critizing Batman for being fucked up because he has trained a teenage sidekick with robin to fight Supervillains and murderers instead of accepting that Robin only exist so Batman can play the mentor role and to attract young readers.

 

The distinction here is the difference between an in-universe explanation and an out-universe explanation, the former being preferable in terms of the story being coherent. If I think to myself 'oh, the author's doing this because of the moral argument presented', it totally breaks the immersion and effectively ruins the moral argument at the same time. It's not as if I'm required to not see the moral argument coming, it's just that characters have to behave like real people and the universe has to work like a real universe in order for the simulation to be applicable to real life, and if I see Rowling's motivation in Dumbledore's actions as opposed to his own, that doesn't work, because people don't actually act like that. The fans criticizing Dumbledore have assumed that the work is supposed to mean something, and that the characters are supposed to be real, so he has to have some motivation for his actions.

 

Silirt kinda nailed it. RE The batman example....Batman -is- fucked up in the head. This is an in-character real motivation and his character is written as such in many stories. And in many stories he gets called out on it. But it works because it's consistent with his internal motivations.

Dumbledore acting in such a manner either implies that he is unaware of the effect his actions would have (unlikely) or he intentionally did it to make a point.

 

From an education standpoint (as in - looking at it critically as a teacher) the house systemis poorly designed. Point systems can be good extrinisic motivators if designed well, but this one is set up in ways which produce not just losers, but losers in 75 percent of the student population. This is exacerbated by the group dynamic of the houses which means that "point failures" are punished by bullying and ostricization. Points are not assigned with any sort of consistency or with adherence to a rubric, so students will feel that points are frequently arbitrary. Teachers give out points with different standards and with different inherent biases so that it is systematically unfair. The system is not good.

That's just the system itself, not even getting to Dumbledore who literally let them put up all the celebratory trappings in the Great Hall just so he could reverse everything literally mid celebration. Real shit teacher moves.

 

This is exactly what I was getting at. Doing it absolutely last minute, while Slytherin was in the middle of celebrating their victory, is the dick move. If he had given them only 150 points, negating the loss they incurred from their Norbert(a) trip, and that was enough to let them win, then that would be one thing. But giving them the exact number to tie with Slytherin, then giving Neville the winning 10 points for something that had nothing to do with academics or saving the school, just so they can win, isn't that.

 

All I have to offer to this conversation is this absolute classic which has probably been posted before but deserves a revisit.

 

Yes, as we can all see, Slytherin is way ahead. Congratulations Slytherin, you won the house cup ... NOT!

In the books, it's the cheery on top, our protagonists victory celebration and vindication for all the bullying and the struggles before. Everyone knows Harry's a hero - instead of an outcast.

But for Slytherin, Dumbledore just took away their victory, while they were already celebrating it, after they'd been anticipating it for days because of something basically nobody had seen. Just Dumbledore's word that Potters crew did something cool.

Edit: Days not years

 

Anticipating what for years? Slytherin had swept the house cup 7 years straight.

 

*Stole the House Cup for seven years straight. You know Snape was pulling his shit for years before Harry arrived, trying to make up for the years Slytherin lost when he was a student.

 

Snape's a dick.

If Dumbledore had given Gryffindor 200 points for thwarting Voldemort at any time before the closing remarks, you know that Snape would have found a way to deduct them somehow. But with a "161 points to Gryffindor, and now the competition is over!" there's no way for him to change the results.

That said, winning the house cup doesn't seem to do anything, except give a sense of pride and accomplisment. There's no reward for winning it, no penalty for losing it, just the winner's cup in the Head of House's office. Maybe there's secondary benefits, where McGonagall would be more lenient on them in future, but that's probably paid back by Snape being harsher.

We tracked something similar in High School (merits, which were earned pretty much on the discretion of each teacher). At the end of the year, the team (there were three) with the most merits was announced in a year-wide assembly, and then they got a single celebration piece each. So less than 10 grams of chocolate.

Looking at it as an adult, it was (and I sound like such a tinfoil hat conspiracy theorist) a way of peer pressuring kids into behaving well, in the hope that the kids around them would care about winning. And it worked.