Umbridge ruined that one for me. When you design a character by just stringing together hate-triggers without a single instant of sympathy (which even Voldemort has!), the result is worse than bad writing—it’ll break my suspension of disbelief and make me start flipping pages. Something as simple as a pet would have made her fly under the “WARNING: YOU’RE READING A KIDS BOOK” radar.
It’s not the cat itself that I feel is needed; it’s a quick scene of her petting a cat (warning: TVtropes). (And it ought to not be an evil Persian, obviously).
Umbridge ruined that one for me. When you design a character by just stringing together hate-triggers without a single instant of sympathy (which even Voldemort has!), the result is worse than bad writing—it’ll break my suspension of disbelief and make me start flipping pages. Something as simple as a pet would have made her fly under the “WARNING: YOU’RE READING A KIDS BOOK” radar.
She has a lot of kitten paraphernalia. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if she kept an actual cat that simply never made it into a scene of the book.
It’s not the cat itself that I feel is needed; it’s a quick scene of her petting a cat (warning: TVtropes). (And it ought to not be an evil Persian, obviously).