~~ a fan in spite of, because of.

Thinking about posts like this one sporking fanon!Lucius, I started to wonder just how much one could trust a canon interpretation that's based on a purely positive or negative reaction to a character to start with.
    What I mean is, I could see people justify a Lucius that's really a concerned parent, a little overly-zealous and conservative, more than a little ruthless, dedicated and affectionate to his family, blahblah-- and I could definitely see people justify a Lucius who's a bumbling, sleazy politician, someone who works hard at manipulating people and isn't always successful, someone who has a nasty temper which he can't always control when he should and throws around his power and influence for whatever will get him or his family ahead fastest. The point isn't which Lucius is more 'real', but rather the difficulty I have in reconciling them, because both seem to have their true roots as much in the reader's gut response to the character as whatever one might term 'canon'.

I suppose what I'm trying to get at is the idea of what's 'sympathetic' about a characterization; it seems to me that it's a quality of good, successful writing when you somehow draw a character so 'real' that even if the authorial voice clearly has bias one way or the other, lots of people judge the character according to their own moral code, even if it's at odds with how the pov characters react. Just like in real life, if you're someone's friend, you'll probably view the same actions that get other people to roll their eyes and sneer with tolerance or even affection, and you'll probably have an explanation handy as to why they're like that and what they're thinking that will make them sound much more sympathetic than whatever the strangers think is motivating them.

In the end, I'm not sure whether to privilege the opinion of people (readers) who understand someone because they like them or identify with them positively or because they dislike them or identify with them negatively (that is, they hate those traits about themselves).
    In the past, I've always said that to understand someone truly you must care about them; but the sheer unilateral bias I see in people, the way they skew their views of a character in either a likable & forgivable or pathetic asshole light-- it makes me reconsider believing anyone's judgment sometimes.

It's not that I think one could escape bias, but I grow weary of never seeing people who like a character (or person) and yet admit their faults freely without always having to justify them or cast them into a sympathetic light. Sometimes lovable, good people aren't sympathetic. And sometimes we care about people who aren't really good, and they're understandable because of course everyone is, but that doesn't make them right.
    And sometimes I wish people who were skewering characters also left room for their inner justifications, their humanity, their intrinsic goodness and the reasons why the people who care about them do so.

I wish as an H/D writer, most of all, that I myself could manage to portray them both as human, if not necessarily always sympathetic, because I don't insist or even fully believe they -are-, either of them. I think Draco's a pathetic twirp and Harry's an overblown self-blinded creep sometimes. I love them anyway. I don't want to be a fan, if being a fan blinds me to the full spectrum of someone's character and its range of implications; I don't want to ever become so blinded with love or pride or even simple dislike that I forget that we are all of us hinging on the often undeserved forgiveness of those that love us in spite and because of ourselves.