shadowscast

Right, exactly. So what I'm saying is, there's no point in leaving that ambiguity if she's not going to use it in the next book.

I do not believe that the ambiguity was there to promote discussion and reader interest; if that were the case, I think she would have let at least one character keep faith in Snape, or in some other way kept the "Snape is not evil" possibility more explicitly open. As it is, with all evidence on the surface pointing to Snape being evil and all characters in the book being convinced that Snape is evil, if Snape really is evil there's no point in leaving the readers wondering if it's true or not; it only detracts from the impact of book 6's shocking climax.

I don't think that's necessarily true. I think it's likely, but not a truism. Sometimes unresolved ambiguities are excellent and will keep people interested. Permanently. :)

I am not convinced it detracts at all, because on the surface, it's "true". Only those who want to look will find it, thereby satisfying all kinds of camps. And it leaves all those paths for her to move Snape along in.

But we're not talking about some random person, we're talking about you! And you know me very well, which is why it bothers me that you seem to be conflating my playful fannish persona with my real life relationships.

Okay, really, what's going on here is that you struck a nerve. I really don't like the "women just go for the bad boys" generalization; it strikes me as a terribly mysogynistic stereotype. And I know you didn't mean it that way, but it seemed as though you were taking my (somewhat tongue-in-cheek) comment about having a kink for the "reformed bad-boy with a dark past" archetype way too, um, seriously.

And yeah, I know there are women who just want to date the bad boys. Just like there are men who just want to date the pretty girls with big breasts. But it's totally unfair to either gender to call that typical.

Yeah, sorry about that. I take the really large view sometimes. And maybe it's screwy enough to only makes sense in my head. At some point I started abstracting. Clearly this wasn't apparent.

Actually, I didn't say they only go for the bad boys, but that every one of them does in some fashion. Guess I wasn't clear enough in my effort not to go all tangenty and rambly. Even if I were saying that... I'm not sure how that statement is misogynistic in your eyes. Anyhow, I probably am taking it more seriously than I should. This is one thing that I do get ranty on, so it's one of my exposed nerves.

I think it's totally fair to call that typical behaviour of the gender if it's true of a significant enough portion of an appropriate sample. No hard facts or stats, but I think it's probably true of the majority of women and men to stereotype them as such in say, North America.

PS: Did you know that your quotes are coming out looking like regular text?

I use the quote button on the reply screen, and it seems to alternate quote methods. Sometimes it just puts those quotation marks...