Countdown to small gifts 1/7: Introductions!

[smallgiftsmods]

Welcome, folks! Every year at small gifts, we start off the holiday season with a week's worth of discussion posts. It's a chance to get to know other participants (or say hi again), meet our readers (hi, readers! we love you!), and while away the hours before December 1. We'll have one topic per day until November 30.

Today: introductions!

1) Leave a comment letting us know who you are as a fan. (Leave your Tumblr name/AO3 name as well as your DW name, if they're different.) How long have you shipped R/S? Are you a reader? Writer? Artist? Crafter? Do you participate in any other parts of Harry Potter fandom? Are you active in any other fandoms right now?

2) Say hi to someone else!

Comments

[necessarian]

sorry in advance for the essay! i'm always happy to give an introduction to minor character hell :)

the basis of my fascination is this: zacharias is treated pretty much as a mouthpiece for "generic not-a-bad-guy character who disagrees with harry" which would be fine, given he's such a minor character, except that (a) we already have seamus and his disagreement carries a lot more narrative weight, and (b) all of zacharias' disagreements end in him getting humiliated either verbally or physically. i could pretty much list them all but i think the most pertinent example is in the sixth book, when he's doing the whole highly biased quidditch commentary shtick (pretty much lee jordan but not in gryffindor) and it's presented as a perfectly reasonable course of action for ginny to fly into the commentator's stand after the match and knock him down into a pile of rubble. excuse me?! that's so incredibly out of line; he could've been seriously injured. i hate how we're meant to laugh at this. it's not nice! it's bullying!

this got me looking more at zacharias' motivations. he's a chaser on the hufflepuff quidditch team. harry notes this in OotP, which means that zacharias must have been on the team at least since PoA, since there was no quidditch in GoF. which means that zacharias 100% knew cedric well, and perhaps even saw him as a mentor figure, being an older player on the team? hermione points out to harry that nobody has anything other than harry's word for what happened to cedric. it seems to me that someone who knew cedric personally has more reason than most to be questioning harry. the fact that zacharias was on the hufflepuff quidditch team in PoA also means that he was playing in the quidditch match where the dementors came onto the pitch. it's not like he's unfamiliar with dark magic! when you put all of this together, everything seems pretty clear-cut: his motivations for joining the DA, asking all those questions, and continuing to hold a grudge against harry.

sadly, i don't think jkr ever thought this deeply about his character. i think she just wanted someone to question harry and get put off in increasingly violent ways as a bit of comic relief. we're supposed to think it's funny because the good guys are doing it! ugh. i'm even more on zacharias' side because of this.

(side note: i'm by no means a "hater" of any characters in hp, least of all harry & co... i just think a little perspective is in order!)

[coffeeincosmos]

THANK YOU for the essay! :)

Especially because the entire Quidditch commentary situation has always bothered me. As a football fan I know how much an even slightly biased commentator can ruin a match for you, and I never understood why they even allowed Lee Jordan to be commentator for Gryffindor matches when he was obviously not able to give an at least more or less unbiased commentary. And yeah, what Zacharias did was pretty much exactly the same, but it’s only now that everyone is allowed to be angry about it? How unfair is that?

I'm totally with you on a bit more perspective being in order! The whole “nobody has anything other than harry's word for what happened to cedric” thing in particular isn’t given nearly enough attention imo. I get that we’re supposed to be on Harry’s side, and we know what really happened, but when you look at the whole mess from an outsider’s point of view it’s completely understandable that people are doubting him? As much as it sucks for Harry, "the cup turned out to be a portkey that took us to a graveyard where Voldemort got kind of resurrected and told his servant to kill Cedric" does sound at least slightly mad. But the people who are actually questioning him are immediately pushed aside as fools who will (or actually do) learn in the end - or villains, on whatever small level.

I’ve never even thought about Zacharias probably knowing Cedric pretty well, but that makes a lot of sense, and now I’m starting to feel really sorry for him. The whole situation is bad and probably confusing enough as it is, but having to deal with the death of a close friend/mentor at the same time? Poor guy! D:

[necessarian]

glad you're with me on this! i agree re: the commentary; it'd be well and good if lee was commentating on ravenclaw vs slytherin, or something, but letting him influence the outcome of a gryffindor match... it's just plain unfair.