Case (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
case) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
fandomsecrets2013-05-19 03:32 pm
case) wrote in fandomsecrets2013-05-19 03:32 pm
[ SECRET POST #2329 ]
⌈ Secret Post #2329 ⌋
Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.
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Notes:
Secrets Left to Post: 04 pages, 083 secrets from Secret Submission Post #333.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.
no subject
The Prince's Tale is a whirlwind of snippets, all witnessed in external snatches (a concept I still find baffling, since memories ought to give you an insider's view), and since they're meant to motivate Harry, we can only infer what Snape would have thought of anything by that point. But I'm sure death was much on his mind. It's not openly addressed in their discussions, but the subtext is that Snape signs his death warrant by agreeing to kill Dumbledore, even if he didn't have the Unbreakable Vow hanging over him. So he's staring mortality in the face; I imagine the nearness of death and his time back in the Dark Lord's fold would give him a revulsion against the pervasive contempt for human life. After all, Snape is no longer the ambitious, unsocialized, selfish youth who took the Mark. He's had years of living with himself and his grief, and he's old enough now to find the deaths of innocents unjust and personally harrowing.
But yes, he's totally Dumbledore's man, even when he rails against Dumbledore's tactics. He shows very little initiative of his own. He could have refused to help carry out the plan that dooms Harry, but where would that have left him? He has no scheme to put in its place, and no one would believe him over Dumbledore or rally to his cause.
The Lily reveal was a huge disappointment to me, precisely because it diminished Snape's ambiguity and reduced his reasons for turning against the DEs to a creepy romance cliché. But "only those whom I could not save" and his cry of "And my soul, Dumbledore? Mine?" allow something more complex to bleed through the cracks (and his agonized concern for his soul suggests to me he hasn't killed before).
I think Snape watching Nagini swallow Charity (she was fortunately already dead via merciful AK by then) is definitely foreshadowing, but I don't feel the poetic justice of it, so to speak. I read it as Snape being tested and unable to do a thing by virtue of his role as double agent; to me it's the most terrible scene in any of the books because of Charity's helplessness and her begging and Snape having to sit unmoved. Risking exposure at that point in the plan would have jeopardized everything, and anyway, after fulfilling his promise to kill Dumbledore, he would probably have felt there was no turning back, no matter how much horror he was forced to condone.
Hmm, I don't agree that JKR loved Snape. Fans' reactions to him took her completely off guard, and she had to be persuaded that he had achieved something of a hero's - or at least an anti-hero's - status. And it wasn't surprising that he had to die, because the morality of the series was fairly simplistic, despite fandom theories that wildly overanalyzed the books in search of hints and symbols that presumed a more sophisticated outcome. Snape would have been a bleak, messy, difficult, unassimilated sort of moral pariah to allow into the postwar world - which is why I wish she would have let him survive. He'd have represented the unresolved, the unfixable mistake, the incurable outsider. It might also have quashed the impulse to give Snape a nobility makeover. But his fate was pretty much determined by the nature of his sin (betraying his only love), long before he acquired the burden of Dumbledore's death and guilt by association with torture, murder, and child abuse.
(Also, sorry about the treatise. I get longwinded sometimes.)
no subject
Talking about faulty memories - the Pensieve is one of those many incredibly powerful devices whose mechanism doesn't make much sense except MAGIC!. JKR created so many of these and then failed to meaningfully integrate them into her world - and then moved onto the next flashy thing. The Prince's Tale is a wetdream for every Snape fan, but it's also one of the most contrived, convenient and lazy chapters I've read. JKR traps herself in Harry's POV and for some reason, she needs to have him witness, solve and decide absolutely everything. The "some reason" is of course the fact that he's the protagonist, but I think she's taking it to a point where she does a disservice to her own story (the Order becoming passive and stupid, the McGonagall issue, Voldemort waiting around all the time, inexplicable break in culminating action with flashbacks, all so that Harry can take time and absorb it all.)
And I think it's this exclusive focus on Harry that prevents JKR from exploring any sort of aftermath of the Second War. She gives her hero what she always imagined as his happy ending and just ignores everything else - because it was never significant. All the themes and theories that the readers inserted into the books are revealed as non-existent, which makes sense in retrospect because - as you say - they were never really there (or were there as a superficial note, rather than a deep concern that would need to be addressed). JKR is great at decorating her world with quirky and interesting stuff, but she fails at world-building. So no post-war Snape for us because JKR brought the story to a complete full circle (boy without family gets family) and Snape would be an unnecessary disruptive element, "the incurable outsider" as you put it. I agree that it would be awesome to have him survive, though.
I stopped following JKR's interviews after the Dumbledore is gay, wait, you didn't know? fiasco, and it honestly doesn't concern me much what she says about Snape that's not in the books (maybe she just wants to keep the debate going - or wanted to, five years ago when this was still a thing ;) ). But I think that someone who gave Snape, a secondary character that could've stayed in the more caricature-like phase, some of the best lines in the books, fleshed-out background and believable motivation and who had her golden boy Harry assert him as brave in the wish-fulfillment fantasy called the Epilogue -- well, that someone must like Snape a lot. JKR was deliberately misleading before DH (for some reason she thought she had to keep the Snape as red herring trope going throughout every book) and basically, she said a lot of bullshit after DH. I think the books would've been a lot better if she wrote the entire septalogy before publishing it (no interaction with fan theories etc.), but that's just crazy.
Yeah, the only person Snape personally killed was Dumbledore, everything points in that direction.
And about Snape's lack of options - Like Aberforth in DH, I'm just exasperated with Dumbledore's "all for the Greater Good" motto and while this is what the books are based around and Aberforth's way is discredited by the extremely unlikely occurrences that lead to Harry winning and living in the end, I'm a sucker for "fuck your grand plan, you omniscient manipulator" kind of scenario. So I suppose I'm going to be forever disappointed with Snape's "You used me! But Lily! Ok, you're the boss" reaction.* The ability to let go of saving Lily's son for the sake of others shows growth on Snape's part, but also meek submission to one's fate that needs to be fulfilled (it's the same with Harry at the end). I'm not a fan of meek submission.
*I'm now thinking of an AU scenario where Snape takes the "fuck you" path and kidnaps Harry so he can keep him safe from the impending slaughter :D
(Ok, this comment is a monster and I think I've had my Snape fix now ;)