hmpf | Regarding Sirius Black

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Regarding Sirius Black

"A man's got to be given a chance to turn himself around. Problem is... how do you get a man to look at himself? Especially a man who's lived like an island, like he's the only man on Earth, for so long?"
(Carla Speed McNeil: Finder pt.1: Sin-Eater)

Welcome to NiSAP.

We are the Non-idealising Sirius Apologist Party. We think Sirius Black (of Harry Potter fame, or infamy, depending on your position towards the books, I suppose) needs defending both from his fans and from his detractors. He needs defending from his fans because, more often than not, they idealise him beyond recognition. He needs defending from his detractors because they exaggerate his flaws and fail to see extenuating circumstances. Unfortunately we have only one member, so we will stop using the plural now.

- What the heck are you smoking, Hmpf?

Nothing. I'm just suffering from severe sleep deprivation, and a lot of stress. Who are you and what are you doing in my LJ?

- I'm you. I'm just using the second person to express your idea of potential reader's concerns.

Oh great. More pronoun confusion. Well, let's get on with this, then.

Sirius Black. Asshole, near-psychopath, or Count of Monte Christo of the wizarding world?

ballyharnon yesterday posted a very astute analysis here. One of the points she made was that Sirius is fascinating as a character, but would be someone she'd hate to meet in Real Life. Bally's analysis is pretty spot-on, and she's entitled to disliking-Sirius-as-a-person-while-finding-him-fascinating-as-a-character, of course – especially since she writes a wonderful Sirius. *g* However, I still think Sirius deserves a little bit more credit than he gets there.

So, what can we say against Sirius?

He is arrogant and cruel. Yes, but not indiscriminately so. We have no evidence of him being horrible on a regular basis to anyone but Snape and Kreecher (or whatever his name was), really. They may not deserve it (although we still do not really know what happened between Snape and Sirius – I'm not saying that Sirius' behaviour was *right*, but it may have been a bit better motivated than we know so far), but at least Sirius concentrates his nastiness on one person (well, or two) instead of being nasty to everybody. Not that that makes it *okay*, mind you – but it shows that he is not really, well, indiscriminately a jerk, you know.

He's reckless. Oh yes, definitely – to the point of plain stupidity. I can't argue with that. (And this is where I would put the so-called 'Prank' – I do not really believe it was a premeditated murder attempt; not that I believe Sirius incapable of that, but I think that if he had really intended to get Snape killed, he would'nt have used Remus as the murder weapon.) It's reckless stupidity that got him killed, as well.

He is self-centered. This one is hard to debate, because we really do not know much about him in relation to other people other than the Marauders and Snape before Azkaban. I think it's safe to assume that if his behaviour in the Snape pensieve scene was truly representative of his entire younger years, he would not have become a member of the Order. He must have been capable of better behaviour and 'nobler' feelings. So, I prefer to think that he wasn't always as incapable of 'seeing' other people as he is now. If he was, it's hard to see how he could make friends at all.

Lastly, he fails to see Harry as Harry and desperately wants to see him as James, to the point of endangering Harry by suggesting James-like behaviour to him. Well, he's spent twelve years under the most awful conditions obsessing about James's death – what would you expect him to feel when suddenly being confronted with the spitting image of his friend? I do believe that he cares about Harry, and I do not think that he consciously tries to model Harry on James. It's an unconscious reaction he can't help. I think that if he had had a chance to spend more time with Harry, under better conditions, he would probably, after a while, have corrected his image of him.

So, yes, Sirius is a jerk pretty often. However, blaming him for being a jerk in volumes 3 through 5 (and he's more of a jerk in #5 than in the previous ones, really – and for fairly understandable reasons) is a bit like blaming an autist for being bad with people. He's had a frelling horrible life, and he's nowhere *near* a normal mental state.

We don't know what growing up in the Black family was like, but I'd be willing to bet it wasn't a very loving environment. I'd be willing to bet he was pretty messed up already when he came to Hogwarts. People who aren't messed up usually don't turn into bullies. That does not absolve him, of course, but it makes him understandable, to a degree. Maybe he got straightened out a bit under the influence of Dumbledore and co, eventually, maybe not.

Anyway, he was apparently thought 'good' enough for the Order – I'd say that goes a long way to indicate that he probably had a few positive character traits besides all the awful ones, even as a young man. One of them was certainly loyalty to those he loved. Also, he chose the 'right' side in the conflict, something that his brother who presumably had a pretty similar background, didn't. That means that even if he has catastrophic lapses of reason, he does, theoretically, have a pretty good idea of 'good' and 'evil'. What he's not so good with is realising that there are infinite nuances in that spectrum.

We don't know what the years immediately after school did to him; what we do know is that pretty soon, he lost his best friend through the betrayal of one of his other two 'best' friends. And then, of course, Azkaban 'happened'. And that's one Hell of a thing, in quite a literal sense, to happen to anybody. Especially to someone who was probably far from done growing up.

But, but, but, you say, he was a total jerk as a boy, already! Yes, I say, he was. Many people are horrible in their teens. Again, that does not absolve him – I was a mobbing victim in school, so my sympathies are firmly with Snape in all the Marauders incidents. However, very often, bullies do grow up into nice people. You have to give them the benefit of the doubt until they're grown up. Don't ask me why or how, but many people who were absolutely horrible to me in school grew up into nice, responsible adults. Some even apologised. Very few people are ever completely lost, I think. And certainly being a bully at school does not make you a psychopath. Not even being a bully who almost accidentally murdered a class mate does that. Some kids do terrible things in school, but grow out of it. Sirius might have grown out of it, eventually. Maybe he even did, to some degree, we don't really know.

But he got sent to Azkaban, and Azkaban is not an environment that is conducive to healthy psychological development. Azkaban pretty much froze him in a late-adolescent state, psychologically. The thing he hung onto, the only thing he *could* hang onto, was his hatred and thirst for revenge. Which is, I suppose, psychologically sound, in a way, because in a situation like Azkaban you would need something pretty solid to ground you, so as not to go mad completely. (Of course, you go mad anyway, but maybe a little less. Or maybe you just stay a bit more functional.) This is of course only speculation, as a situation like Azkaban is not really comparable with anything in this world. In that respect, I guess, it's a lot like trying to understand what Frodo went through bearing the Ring. Or John, having to deal with Harvey. Frodo has his love for the Shire to sustain him (and is broken anyway), and John anchors himself with his love for Aeryn and his wormhole obsession (and is very nearly broken. Or maybe *is* broken. Haven't quite made my mind up on that, yet.) Unfortunately, Sirius doesn't have any positive emotion that is stronger than his hatred of Peter. Which is the nature of Azkaban, really – even if he had, say, love that was strong enough, or any other positive emotion, it would be drained away by the Dementors. (Ugh. Azkaban is a truly nasty concept. It's emotional sadism times ten. JKR scares me a bit. Well, actually, she scares me a lot. *g*)

So, anyway, Sirius has to focus on this one strong emotion to sustain himself, and his mind structures itself accordingly, to the point where it becomes impossible for him to see anything in a more differentiated way. Compassion, understanding for other people, other viewpoints, all the 'softer' feelings become luxuries he can't afford (if he ever had them to any noticeable degree at all. As I said, he wasn't done growing up, and some of those only come with age to some people.) Again, I think that is actually not a psychologically 'sick' way of reacting, at all. It's normal human behaviour under extreme duress. In situations of existential threat, stopping to care about anything and anyone else is a survival trait. It is, maybe, even more normal for a man who is also a dog – extreme duress can reduce us to a very basic state; how much easier would it be to reduce a man who already has a 'doggish side' to that? A dog has no use for ambiguity. It has two categories to understand the world – friend, and foe. Well, three categories, I guess, if you include packmate, which is a more extreme form of friend. It either likes you – and if you're a packmate it will love you unconditionally and protect you - or it hates you. If it hates you, it growls; if you annoy – or frighten - it too much, it bites.

I think that Sirius is, despite the Shrieking Shack Incident, despite his continued hatred of Snape, basically, a Good Person. (Or maybe more appropriately, a Good Dog. *g*) A good person with an extremely bad temper; reckless, shortsighted, and stubborn. Tragically unable to see other viewpoints. None of these characteristics, annoying as they are, make him a bad person. Flawed, yes, but not bad. And, to me, they don't even make him unlikeable. He is very much a tragic character in the traditional sense. Compelled by his own idiosyncratic system of beliefs to act in highly idiosyncratic ways that will seem stupid to most everyone else. Most truly tragic characters have that ability to make you want to scream at them 'But why are you behaving so stupidly, you idiot?!' most of the time. Ever read a classic tragedy? Don't, if you're easily annoyed. *g*

I would probably be scared to meet him in RL. I wouldn't know what to *do* with him, how to treat him. He is so messed up, I would feel like walking on eggs around him. But I don't think I would hate or dislike him. I would, maybe, have disliked him if I had met him in his younger years, because having a terrible childhood does not really give you the right to go around bullying people. However, as an adult, I would pity him, because he never got a chance to go beyond all that shit. I think I would have a lot of pity for a real Sirius Black. I certainly have a lot of pity for him as a fictitious character.

And, well, maybe I'm in denial, but I don't think – in a psychological sense, that is – that he was completely lost. Oh, I do believe he's dead/gone, and I don't really want him brought back. But I believe that, had he lived, he might, just *might* have changed. Healed. Looked at himself, to quote Jaeger from 'Finder', and recognised what he had become... It would probably have taken a long time – significant psychological change for the better always does - but I really don't think that he was beyond, err, redemption. Or whatever you want to call it. We only got to see him shell shocked, pretty much. But people do recover from that, sometimes.

I think what I really like about reading and writing angst fic is not so much the angst itself but the idea that you can work through it. Come out the other side, alive and... well, maybe not well, but at least *better*. I think there's something of myself in there. I was never traumatized as badly as most of my 'heroes', but I did have to struggle, and I came out the other side, alive and... better. And I know that the 'scars' don't really go away, but you get better at living with them. And now I come off sounding all melodramatic when really I had a pretty average childhood. I mean, who in fandom wasn't mobbed in school? It wasn't as terrible as I just made it sound. But it doesn't really *have* to be very terrible to mess you up. Kids are messed up easily. Being mobbed for only a few years can make you believe you're a terrible person, deep down, for a long time. - Or maybe growing up simply is traumatic to everyone. Either way, that feeling of realising that, yeah, you *are* pretty messed up, but it's still better to just *deal* with it than simply to give up, that is something that is pretty central for me. And I hate that Sirius never got the chance to get to the point where he could even *start* to deal with 'it'. And I guess that's why I'm now writing an AU - 'cause, even if it's only in a fic, I want to give him that chance. Mind you, don't expect a happy ending from me – that's not the way my mind works. But I'd like to end on a tentative note of hope that there may be healing.

BTW: nice, appropriate quote above, isn't it? Although Jaeger is speaking about a *real* psychopath there – Brigham Grosvenor has a real history of years of terrorising his wife and three kids that goes way beyond anything Sirius ever did – and he shows every sign of doing it again, when confronted with his family after a few years in prison. I'd argue that Brigham probably *is* beyond saving.

Go read 'Finder', everybody. Loads of fascinatingly cracked and semi-cracked characters.

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Very interesting and comprehensive analysis - I've always felt (especially after OotP) that Sirius is a tragic character in the classic sense. He fascinates me.

And I love 'Finder' (assume you mean the book by Emma Bull?)- it's marvelous.

LOL, no. Actually, though, there's a dedication to Emma Bull in the latest Finder collection, so maybe there *is* a connection.
But what I was speaking about was the amazing comic series by Carla Speed McNeil. Check it out here: http://www.lightspeedpress.com/legends.php

The guy in my icon is the hero, Jaeger Ayers. *g*

Thanks! Love comics and graphic novels - they're some of the best literature out there. Off to read...

Hi, uhm, randomness from a foaf.

Ever read From Hell? The film of the same name starring Johnny Depp was based on it. I'm halfway through it, and it's the most literate, most intriguing, and most absorbing graphic novel I've ever read... There's a passage where Jack The Ripper is talking about the history of London that I've reread several times, and each time, literally every bubble coming out of his mouth makes me stop and go on a tangential little ramble in my head. Alan Moore (the writer) is one of those scary-geniuses.

Ever read From Hell?

It's on my stack to be read. Love Alan Moore, just finished his "V for Vendetta". He's second on my list only to Neil Gaiman. I've also recently been reading Garth Ennis' Preacher series - very dark and graphic. I'm always up for good comic recs.

Oh, <3 Niel Gaiman.

And Preacher is firmly on my to-read list! I'm really looking forward to getting caught up on Hellblazer so I can start it!

And I'm reading Hellblazer. We obviously have similar tastes. Excellent. May I friend you?

Well, of course you may. *friends back*

(Hope you don't mind me randomly commenting!)

Oh "V For Vendetta" was brilliant! Have you read "Watchmen"? That's pretty nifty, too, and it's another Alan Moore.

I need to read more stuff by him, so any recs are welcomed.

:)

I haven't read Watchmen, but will go and look for it. I'm still new at the whole comic/graphic novel thing (discounting a childhood spent reading Justice League etc.). I picked up the first Sandman a few months back and have spent literally all my discretionary money on graphic novels ever since.

Alan Moore is just an amazing author - very creative and lyrical and just neat. Nice to meet somebody else who agrees!

>I'm still new at the whole comic/graphic novel thing

Me too! My first real comic - I mean, apart from stuff that I read as a child when I happened to come across it, mostly European comics like Tintin and Asterix - was Sandman, two or three years ago. Finder is only the second series I've become really interested in, but it has realerted me to the fact that there is lots of interesting stuff in comics, and now I'm actively seeking to expand my comics horizon. And Alan Moore has been very high on my To Read list for a while... Watchmen is in fact one of the next two comics I plan to buy. (The other is something French recommended to me by a French housemate, Fée et tendres automates.)

Bought Watchmen last night and plan on starting it today. I'll let you know how it goes. May I friend you?

>May I friend you?

Sure! We can exchange our comic newbie squees of discovery! ;-)

Hey... I've read all of Finder now - well, all but the latest, running story arc because I want to wait for the trade paperback of that, which I hope will be out sometime later this year - and I can now speak about the whole series (before, my raves were based only on about half of it)... And it's frelling great. I'll probably do a detailed post about it once my self-imposed radio silence is over. (Technically, I shouldn't be posting this, but it would have been a bit impolite not to reply to your friending question, methinks!)

Whoa....

*is speechless*

That was amazing! You are one incredible writer (I'm gonna have to try some of your fanfic sometime). Sirius sounds like an amazing character, I have to say (yes, I'm one of those people who hasn't read HP, and isn't going to anytime soon).

I think I know what you mean about wanting to 'fix' broken people. I know you didn't say that in so many words, but I do know what you mean. I think sometimes, my fondness for Logan is borne out of wanting to make it all better ;)

Just one thing: "John...is very nearly broken. Or maybe *is* broken. Haven't quite made my mind up on that, yet."

I would say John is broken. Definitely. While he has moments of lucidity, there are more times when he's not thinking right. I've tried writing about it a couple of times - one time even trying to point out the similarities between JC and Stark (and that nearly ended up as my media analysis essay last year!), but alas nothing has ever come of it...

Maybe you might manage to twist my arm to get me to read HP, but I doubt it ;)

but it's so much fun, and who needs sleep, anyway?

>That was amazing! You are one incredible writer

Ah, come on. I mean, thanks, yeah, but... hey. It's just an LJ post.

>(I'm gonna have to try some of your fanfic sometime).

Please do! *g* I do write Farscape, you know... ;-)

>I would say John is broken. Definitely. While he has moments of lucidity, there are more times when he's not thinking right.

Well, but that is not really what being broken means, to me. I mean, yeah, John *is* insane. No doubt about that. He's functioning - indeed, in an Uncharted Territories context, he is probably only functioning so well *because* he is a bit mad - but he's *not* 'normal' anymore. (Which reminds me of my ailing John fic, 'Normal', which I have vowed to finish sometime soon, preferably in the holidays. Gotta give the lazy Farscape muses a kick in the ass...)
Being broken is more something like... losing the will to live and the ability to change, maybe. Although, no, that is not quite right, either.
Actually, most of the time I favour a theory that John was broken in Season 2, but has since been sort of glued back together. ;-)

>Maybe you might manage to twist my arm to get me to read HP, but I doubt it ;)

Why the frell would I do that? I only proselytise when I'm truly obsessed with something. If you feel inclined to read the books, go for it. They do make good reading (but number 5 is frelling frustrating if you happen to have developed a liking for Sirius by then, as you seem likely to do...) But if you are not interested in them, frell, I certainly won't force you. (I'll only force you by use of my subliminal mind control beam to buy Finder... buy Finder... buy Finder... buy Finder... *g*)

Actually... and I'm probably going to be lynched by a mob of angry HP fans for saying this... but I think that if you're into characters like Sirius, you could probably easily just read Sirius and Sirius/Remus fic without ever having read the books. They *are* important characters in the books, but they are also marginal characters, i.e. there isn't a whole lot of actual *text* about them. The basics would be easy to summarise, and apart from those basics, the two of them only really came alive for me in their myriad of incarnations in fanfic. In the books, they are archetypes for a long time, and even when they become more fleshed out, they still stay very much on the sidelines of the story. (Although in emotional terms they are pretty central.)

You can find some recs in the puppyshipping section of my website, if you're curious. Seriously, check some of them out. The background really isn't that difficult to get the hang of.

In that case then, I might give the fanfic a go! I mean, I know basically who people are, and so on and so forth, because my mum and my best mate are HP fans, and also, you kind of can't avoid it (which, to someone like me, is intensely annoying).

And how could I *not* be a Sirius fan?? He's a were-dog(?) (I have this 'thing' about werewolves...), so sounds all good to me!

now go to sleep!

*Ack* I went to post my comment, and the post disappeared on me, which made me afraid you had deleted this post. I'm glad you didn't! What a great post! :)

I agree with you completely about everything you said about Sirius. He's not perfect by any means, but I don't believe he's irredeemable, either. He needed a chance to grow into himself, and he was denied that chance.

It's interesting -- a lot of the things you mentioned made me think of D'Argo and the way he was in Season 1 of Farscape. Impulsive and hot-tempered in the extreme. Quick to jump to conclusions and eager for revenge. Self-centered a lot of the time. And yet, deeply loyal to his friends and allies. Still dealing with the death of the people he loved and eight years of torture and trying desperately to make sense of a Universe that had changed so much while he wasn't looking. Doesn't that sound a lot like Sirius? *g*

And look at how much D'Argo had changed in just a few years, when given a chance. I think you are right. Given the chance, I think Sirius would have grown, as well.

>It's interesting -- a lot of the things you mentioned made me think of D'Argo and the way he was in Season 1 of Farscape. Impulsive and hot-tempered in the extreme. Quick to jump to conclusions and eager for revenge. Self-centered a lot of the time. And yet, deeply loyal to his friends and allies. Still dealing with the death of the people he loved and eight years of torture and trying desperately to make sense of a Universe that had changed so much while he wasn't looking. Doesn't that sound a lot like Sirius? *g*

1.) You know you're making me want to write D'Argo fic, do you? But D'Argo also happens to be the only character whose voice I am extremely uncomfortable with. Writing his part for 'Rise and Shine' took me months.

2.) Yes, the similarities are striking, in a way. (Would that make D'Argo the Count of Monte Farscape, then? *g*) But there are also some pretty big differences. One of them is that I get no 'insane' or 'cracked' vibes off D'Argo, really. Yeah, he's had a shitty life, as well, but he is a lot better at dealing with it than Sirius, from what we can see. (His rages, after all, are partly simply a function of Luxan physiology.) D'Argo is angsty in his own way, but it's a way that has little to do with his mental state. He is sort of constructively angsty - he mostly angsts about his family, his innocence, his revenge, a possible return to his homeworld, stuff like that. With Sirius I get the impression that he is much more deeply screwed up. D'Argo, on the other hand, I think could be reasonably happy pretty soon, despite the occasional bout of melancholia when thinking about his wife, if his other problems - being hunted, being innocently accused of murder, finding and possibly reconciling with Jothee etc. - were solved.

I came here through

quickquote, and just had to comment. This essay is wonderful.

Unfortunately, Sirius doesn't have any positive emotion that is stronger than his hatred of Peter. Which is the nature of Azkaban, really – even if he had, say, love that was strong enough, or any other positive emotion, it would be drained away by the Dementors.

You know that Sirius says that he kept his sanity because he knew he wasn't quilty, and maybe that was part of the reason, but I doubt it was strong enought emotion to keep him sane, so your explanation is much better. (And I agree, he wasn't completely sane after 12 years in Azkaban.)

And if Sirius kept his sanity because he knew he wasn't quilty, then why didn't people like Bellatrix Lestrange or Augustus Rookwood become completely insane? They certainly were quilty, but still they are comparatively functioning, even though at least Bellatrix can't be called sane. Did they believe they were doing the right thing when they followed Voldemort? Perhaps, but that doesn't sound a convincing explanation.

Your theory would explain this too. I think it's much more likely that they had their own strong emotions that enable them to survive. We don't know much about Rookwood or many other Death Eaters who went to Azkaban, but we know that Bellatrix was full of hatred and that she was obsessed with Voldemort. They sound like pretty strong, non-positive emotions to me.

>You know that Sirius says that he kept his sanity because he knew he wasn't quilty, and maybe that was part of the reason, but I doubt it was strong enought emotion to keep him sane, so your explanation is much better.

Actually, knowing that he was not guilty was also a pretty damn good reason to develop a really good hatred of Peter...

>(And I agree, he wasn't completely sane after 12 years in Azkaban.)

That is probably the understatement of the year. ;-)

>then why didn't people like Bellatrix Lestrange or Augustus Rookwood become completely insane?

I must admit to not being entirely sure how the whole Dementor deal *really* works. I mean, if they sort of paralyse you (mentally) by draining you of all positive emotions and trapping you in your worst memories/emotions, as seems indicated in the books - at least that's what seems to happen to Harry when he comes near a Dementor - then what do they do when faced with, either, exceptionally happy people or exceptionally unhappy people? I suppose the former wouldn't be so much of a problem - there's probably always a way to make someone unhappy, even if they have no previous memory of exceptional unhappiness. But what could a Dementor possibly do against someone who's just been very, very unhappy all their life, anyway? They wouldn't find any good feelings to feed on with such a person, and as for reinforcing bad feelings, well, how much worse can you make a person feel who's been down all life? So maybe, to survive Azkaban and stay sane, what you need to be is extremely unhappy from the outset? Just an idea...

Au contraire, ma cherie, I friends-lock many posts to avoid wank, but that one was not locked.

You've got some damn good insights here... Especially about him possibly getting better. *tucks that safely away in the Of Linen section of her brain*

Oh, and it's not 'spitting image'. It's 'spit and image'. Like 'for all intensive purposes' is really 'for all intents and purposes'. Because I know useless trivia. ^_^

Je pensais que ton journal était totalement inaccessible par le public. Je vais ajouter un liens immédiatement.

Ah frell, that is too exhausting. ;-)

>'spitting image'

My dictionary says it exists!

>'for all intensive purposes'

What? ROFLOL. People really say that?

Your dictionary is not wrong, but perhaps slightly misinformed. 'Spitting image' has come into parlance, but it is an alteration of 'spit and image'. And, being something of a liguistic purist, it's a pet peeve... But then 'bling-bling' and 'gaydar' are listed in the most recent edition of the OED. *weeps*

And yes. Stupid people do say 'for all intensive purposes', and it makes me want to smack them.

as I have somewhat the same attitude to several forms of misuse of German; however, I have also grown a bit more relaxed about it over the years. One thing that one just has to accept about language is that it's always changing, and most words actually meant something else, earlier, or are corruptions of something else. Also, grammar changes - that is even more painful to notice than words that change meaning, for me - for examples, languages seem to lose cases as they develop. German still has a few more than English does, I think, but some of them are beginning to go out of use, which is really odd to notice if you are still using them.

Well, anyway, the only thing that really drives me nuts is people purposely trying to change language, to introduce new rules that make no sense - a few years ago Germany got a 'spelling reform' which I choose to ignore, most of the time, because many of the changes actually distort the meaning of words, and anyway, I don't see the necessity for it. It's supposed to make it easier to spell right, but the real effect is only that *everybody* is now insecure about spelling. Which is actually not all that tragic in my book 'cause, much as I am a proponent of correct use of language, I am relatively tolerant of spelling. The idea of standardised spelling is relatively new, anyway - all the great authors of a few hundred years ago had their own ways of spelling, and their writing did not suffer from it. I think it's more important to know how to use words in the right context than to know whether it's 'Stengel' or 'Stängel'. (It's 'Stengel' according to old German spelling and 'Stängel' according to new. *g*)

I'm actually pretty good at correct spelling (in whatever language - if I know a word, I usually know how to spell it), so I'm not tolerant here out of wishful thinking. I just really think it does not matter all that much. The only real reason for strictly standardised spelling that I can see is that it makes computerised communication possible. Computers don't have the same tolerance for alternative spelling that humans do...

I still think we should strive to spell correctly. I just don't see the necessity of introducing a reform of a few dozen words that a certain percentage of the population spells wrong. About most words there is a pretty broad consensus regarding how they're spelled. So what if a few people routinely spell a few dozen words more or less consistently wrong? Who cares? Why not just accept that some people prefer to write 'Stängel', without making a rule that says that from now on, everybody has to write 'Stängel'?

Of course, what you initially corrected me on was not spelling but an actual 'wrong' word, so forgive my going on a tangent here. And I really am off to bed now... ;-)

Hi, got here through

quickquote. Just want to say... can I join NiSAP, please? :O I have a special fondness for flawed characters, especially flawed good guys, because they're just so interesting. Reading OoTP, I alternately wanted to smack him upside the head, and take him home and mother him. Although I have a fairly limited tolerance for tragedies (Romeo and Juliet, oh. my. ARGH), Sirius really appealed to me because he was a jerk and an idiot for most of the book and I wanted to dislike him, but I couldn't because I felt so sorry for him. The fact that he created such mental turmoil in me made me love him as a character (as a person... I don't know. I'd really, really want to mother him, but would be way too scared).

Consequently, his death hit me hard because I didn't feel like he had had a fair go (us Aussies are very big on 'fair go'. lol.) and he hadn't had a chance to fix any of his fuck ups, as it were.

So yes. Want to join NiSAP. :B

The only requirement is holding up the cause of NiSAP in public. ;-)

Oh, and yay for 'fair go' loving Aussies. I'm a Farscape fan. Lots of Aussie actors, directors, and crew on that! I also love - dating myself, here, I'm afraid - Midnight Oil (Diesel and Dust helped me survive various bouts of teenage angst). So, yay for Australia. *g*

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Whooo! Replies! Frell, I have no time for replies,

Oh, and...

Re: Oh, and...

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Hi there!

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Welcome, visitor.

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Alors, je suis désolée...

Re: Alors, je suis désolée...

I understand where you're coming from...

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Consider yourself a member...