Reader response to various scenes of violence: the ferret-bouncing scene, Hagrid's slamming Karkaroff against a tree, and Arthur Weasley and Lucius Malfoy's fist fight at the beginning of CoS
Humor in the series, and the possibility of another volume not ending on a direct confrontation between Harry and Voldemort
Preferences in humor, humor in the series
The "train stomp" at the end of GoF and my dislike of the Twins. Examples of farcical humor in the books. Affection for Crouch Jr. and a brief analysis of his father's behavior towards him.
Objection to the prevalence of "my instinctive reading is spontaneous and natural ...but *your* instinctive reading is over-analyzing the text!" sentiment floating about on the Twins thread. Emphasis on the subjectivity of humour and a challenge to the notion that comedic or "toonish" scenes do not reveal character or have deeper significance, using as an example GoF's Ton Tongue Toffee scene and its role as a precursor to both the QWC and Pensieve scenes.
More on the extent to which characters' canonical behavior is revelatory of character, regardless of whether or not they are portrayed as "Toons," and a disussion of the thematic significance of the Ton Tongue Toffee scene.
A bit more on the Twins as bullies and the Twins' relationship to Percy, followed by a discussion of humor and its relationship to character analysis: aren't the characters' actions revelatory of their character regardless of whether or not said actions are *funny?* And why on earth would someone cease to find something funny merely because they have come to believe that it is cruel? Have none of these people ever heard of black humour?!
A rather complicated TBAY post, mainly about the Wizarding World under Crouch and the extent to which it might have resembled Stalinist Soviet Russia, but also touching on the debate over whether or not the Twins are bullies, on the issues of netiquette, reader response and humour that had been raised in the course of that debate, on the various ad hominem arguments that had been circulating nastily around the list that entire summer, on an old SYCOPHANTS/Evil Overlords discussion, and--oh yes--incorporating a tiny bit from the Snape's Grudge thread as well. Apparently it was a bit *too* complicated for HPfGU, though, as very few people seemed to get the subsidiary points I was trying to make with it at all.
