Snapedom

Today we're looking back to July of 2008 when snapedom was posting solely on IJ. We'll have the opportunity to read or reread what people were thinking about Severus, his parents, and the Evans family. There's even a bit of talk about social classes, religion and ethnicity, but it all leads back to this question: Did Severus attend Muggle school?

After reading, you'll no doubt have thoughts about what was written (Tobias and the books!). You're welcome to renew or continue the discussion here, and I hope you enjoy today's memory from snapedom's Pensieve as much as I did. :)




*Posting early -for my timezone- to give more continents a chance to enjoy TBT on Thursday.

Hi, everyone! It's been a long time, I know, but I've just come across something I wanted to respond to, and this seemed like an appropriate place. Here it is.

The other day, while looking for sporking, I glanced at some reviews of DH on amazon. In a comment to a negative review, someone said, quite innocently, "Why is Severus brave? I know Harry says he's the bravest man he ever knew, but why? He doesn't do anything brave."

As I say, this was a completely sincere and innocent remark. I did not respond, because a person who cannot actually see Severus's bravery in canon certainly won't be persuaded of it in an amazon conversation.

To me, there is no question that Severus is not only a hero, but one of only two or three real heroes in the books. This is because he has courage enough to change direction, no matter how haltingly. He has courage enough to apologize when he's wrong. The only other people I can remember showing this sort of heroism - personal and moral growth - are Neville Longbottom and, interestingly enough, Ron.

That he has great physical courage is also obvious. For years, he faces down Voldemort and lies to him, knowing that he will be killed if he makes even a slight mistake.

Finally, as Terri_Testing points out, this young man, who seems to long for validation and love, has courage enough to make himself an outcast repeatedly, in order to protect Harry and his mission.

So that's what I think, very briefly. What do you think? I'd guess most of us do see Severus as a hero. If you do, why? And if not, why not? Finally, do you think there is any chance of persuading someone who doesn't see it of this character's essential bravery? (Because I'd think even those - like his creator - who don't see him as a hero, can still see that he's very brave. Being brave and being heroic are two different things, after all.)

Author mary-j-59
Genre informal essay, probably about 500 words long.
warnings none

We've been having a fairly heated discussion about Severus and Remus - and it struck me just now that no one has mentioned the trait these young men have in common. It's a lot more obvious in Severus, at least to me, but Remus shows signs of it, too, if you look carefully.

They are both depressed.

I've gone into detail, in an earlier essay (February 09, on Snapedom) about Severus and his grief. Jodel from aol was perhaps the first to spot Remus and his. He looks worn, tired, and shabby; he suffers from a chronic illness that isolates him - what could be a clearer metaphor for depression? Jodel remarks that In fact there was a curious lack of enthusiasm about Remus John Lupin altogether. There was no “fire” there. She also remarks that, in spite of his strengths, Like both Severus Snape, and Sirius Black, Remus Lupin was a profoundly damaged man

As I've said, one of the things that Severus Snape struggles with is depression - he is a man in mourning. Jodel points out that Sirius, too, is depressed, at least in OOTP, when he is trapped in his parents' house and sliding into alcoholism. And Remus Lupin is like them!

Tonks, too, becomes depressed when Remus rejects her - or so we are told. And what happens to her? She and Remus are both killed. Sirius, too, is killed, and so is Severus. In all four cases, we never see anyone mourn for the dead - not really - and there is no funeral described.
Isn't that odd?

But that is how mourning is treated in the Potterverse. Albus Dumbledore praises Harry when - just about a month after his beloved godfather's death - Harry puts all thought of Sirius aside. It is wrong to mourn, it seems, and if you do, you will be punished. The hero is a person who is able to put aside his grief at will.

So there you have it. Much as they dislike each other, Remus Lupin and Severus Snape do have something in common. They are depressed. And, in the Potterverse, depression is a weakness for which you will be punished. The punishment is death.

As I said, this is just an informal essay, and I may be overstating my case. But I really don't like the way Rowling approaches grief and mourning in these books. What do you think?

It really ought to have hit me sooner, in light of a certain fairy tale by one Hans Christian Andersen (at least, things ought to have ended up as they do in the fable...JKR did a number on the poor fellow). So, quiz time. I'll give you a hint: it's a bird (he does have a rather impressive beak, one must admit). :)

What bird...

... is often a symbol of love or fidelity because of its long-lasting monogamous relationships (should one die, the other will usually live out the remainder of its life alone) [need I say more? this is canon-Sev we are talking about]
...is revered in Hinduism and compared to saintly persons whose chief characteristic is to be in the world without getting attached to it, just as a ___'s feather does not get wet although it is in water [he doesn't seem particularly...attached to much, does he?]
...has a name derived from the same root as the Latin 'sonus' (sound) [that famous voice]
...is known for its coloration and sometimes "aggressive behaviour towards students" (there are five of these birds at the University of York)

Click for a photo of Sev transformed.

You can watch it being painted brush-by-brush HERE

Sev has used his potions to make his special polishing materials for his precious beloved wand. And there he is, cradling itin his Slytherin-decorated room. In love.

Thanks to tudorpot for the heads up.

A resource for canon references to Snape.

http://www.snapecanonsite.com/snape.htm

Having been the instigator of so much controversy lately (unwitting, I swear! No Slytherin plots afoot! ;-) ), I thought it was high time for me to post something a bit sillier. Namely, an invitation to discuss what kind of playlists you think Severus might set up on his iPod (assuming he owned such a device). What artists, what albums, what specific songs even? Would he have a playlist for gloomy days, a get-in-the-mood-to-torture-students playlist, a my-life-as-a-DE playlist? A playlist for good days, or an F-U-Voldemort one? One full of songs to memorize and annoy McGonagall (or Dumbledore) with? One to brood to?

Related questions: what were young Sev's music tastes, and how have they changed (or not)? What do you think the actual wizarding equivalent of a stereo or iPod IS? Does he have one?

Go crazy! ;-)

*inspired by the latest addition to the SNARC challenge. Lovely pic!*

Sorry if I'm hogging space on the board, but for some reason my brain is on a Sevvie-meta kick and won't be stopped. ;) I was thinking about the infamous Prank a little while ago, and a couple of things occurred to me, or at least became clearer. Sorry (again!) for the length. Perhaps I overanalyze these things....but then again, that's what fandom's for, isn't it?

(You know, for the first five books I actually liked Sirius as a character  - I thought he was something of a jerk and a hothead, but he was interesting, and I was praying he wasn't on the chopping block all through OotP. I was hoping for something really juicy in his backstory to explain his hatred of Severus - who at that time I was only vaguely interested in as a character. Now, after seven books, a few more years of experience, and a great deal of thought, I much, much prefer Severus. At least he seems capable of growth. A shame that JKR wasted good characters by rendering them so much flatter than they originally seemed. Anyway.)

All right, since it’s the end of March and I apparently have time to write insanely long responses to other people’s challenge entries, I might as well go ahead and attempt to put my thoughts on Sev and Voldie into some kind of order. J Be warned that this is not a proper essay arguing a point, but merely a long (very long!) ramble about my thoughts on different aspects of Sev and Voldemort’s relationship. Tangents, long detours, etc. may be ahead.

 

Sorry to make a separate post for this, but for some reason the site won't recognize my attempts to comment on the original post at any length (it keeps giving me an error message). However, I found the essay interesting and thought-provoking, and wanted to respond somehow. So I'm writing a separate post - I hope this is ok.

Janus:

As I said in my short comment to your post, this is a very interesting essay, with a perspective I haven't come across before. On a number of points I agree with you, particularly about using real emotions as a method of occluding, creating a 'face' for the legilimens to see. It accords pretty closely with my understanding of Sev's Occlumency. And yes, he is a complex man full of contradictions - verbally brutal to his students, yet willing to charge into danger when he thinks they're hurt, full of resentment and hate but also deeply loving, a DE and a member of the Order, etc.

However, I do have real questions/confusion on some points. Please don't feel attacked - I agree with you on some things, and for the rest I honestly am interested in hearing your response. I guess I'm trying to get a better understanding of your Sev's psychology. Please correct me where I misinterpret things!

This might be pretty long.

All right, I hope no-one minds if I borrow a bit of space here for a question I have about what we're actually shown in the text regarding Young Sev's supposed rejection of an ultimatum by Lily ('me or the DE's'). I only ask because I don't have access to the actual book at the moment, I can't remember everything precisely, and I can't find the relevant section/s of text quoted online.

My question is this: in the text, are we actually shown (or told by a reliable source) that Lily ever gave Sev a clear either/or ultimatum to pick the junior-DE-group OR her, BEFORE the actual scene by the Fat Lady's portrait in which she tell's him that he's 'chosen his way' over hers? That is, did she make clear to Sev that she expected him to make a choice between them, and give him some space of time in which to make it, or did she (in the portrait scene) tell him he'd made a choice without having earlier made it unambiguously clear that such a choice was expected of him? (Remember that Sev was not exactly a genius at correctly interpreting and acting on more subtle social clues, and that therefore her unhappiness at his friendship with Avery and Mulciber would not necessarily have appeared to him to be a clear call for such a choice.)

I honestly can't remember any scene prior to the portrait scene in which she makes any kind of clear ultimatum, and yet in discussions and meta I read I keep coming across the notion that Sev rejected some such defined "ultimatum" from Lily made prior to the infamous scene itself. Do I just have a bad recall of the text, or is the "ultimatum" in actuality a persistent piece of fanon rather than a textual fact? Or is the fact that he ("speechless") doesn't deny her assertions in the portrait scene itself taken as his rejecting/failing some sort of last-minute ultimatum? I'd appreciate it very much if someone could please, please give me the relevant textual information! Thanks.

This isn't really a response to the March challenge, since I'm not going to touch on Voldemort in any depth. Hopefully I'll get my planned challenge response done in time (as usual I'm probably trying to cover too much in it). In the meantime, though, I thought I'd post some musings on a somewhat related topic - Severus, Hogwarts and the DE's - which came to me the other day when I was reading the cover story of the latest issue of the German newsmagazine Der Spiegel. I'll have to take a quick detour through the article and some related stuff before I get to Sev directly.



ETA: the links I originally had to the Wikipedia articles in question apparently didn't work, so here they are: (1): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/School_shooting (2): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbine_High_School_massacre Bath: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bath_School_disaster UT at Austin: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Whitman

In the process of working out some plot ideas for a new fic, a question suddenly occurred to me, one with important consequences for any real appraisal of Severus' moral/ethical position in the books. Don't get me wrong - I love Severus and think he's gotten a bad rap from a lot of people. Considering what he's had to work with, his moral growth is striking. However, there's a point where I have to wonder if his submission to Dumbledore kept him from making a moral step he really should have made after the revelation of the Harrycrux. The question, namely, is this:

Was it truly necessary for Voldemort to be KILLED? Not just defeated, not just prevented from murdering and wreaking havoc, but actually killed. Or in the words of the prophecy, destroyed.

I ask because the answer to this question is also the answer to the question of whether or not HARRY had to die (or sort-of-die, but Severus didn't know that), and therefore has real implications when we try to judge not only Dumbledore's, but also Severus', moral status after Dumbledore's coming-clean about the Harrycrux. Severus was suitably shocked and horrified at the realization that Dumbledore had used him and had set up Harry to die, yes.

However, after that moment of horror had passed, he went along with the plan. Apparently (from what we're shown in canon) without much of a complaint or attempt to find another way of resolving the whole mess. Granted, I'm assuming here that, outside the boundaries of JKR's rather...strange moral world, the idea of actually sending a boy off to commit suicide for the Greater Good (TM), without telling him until the last minute that this is what he is doing, is going to be viewed as at least as questionable as secretly raising the boy for this purpose all along was. Considering his horror at Dumbledore's deception, I do believe that Severus could reasonably be expected to infer this. And yet this is precisely what he ultimately does. Which, in my reading of the situation, leaves us with two distinct options (please correct me if you see any other way out), one of which has almost no actual support in canon that I can think of at the moment. These options are:

1. It is truly necessary for Voldemort to DIE, and therefore for Harry to die. For some reason it is pretty much impossible - not simply very, very difficult, but actually  impossible (or so close to impossible that the difference is negligible) - to simply imprison Voldie or otherwise render him harmless once the other Horcruxes are destroyed. Best-case scenario for Severus, though totally unsupported by canon, is that Dumbledore knew this and at some point explained to Severus exactly why this was, indeed, the situation. Very little in canon to suggest this, beyond the fact that the idea of capturing Voldemort rather than killing him simply never comes up. If this is indeed the case, I'd like some details as to why, please, and not just 'he's so POWERFUL.' We haven't really been given anything solid to suggest that his powers of of such a magnitude as to make his death the only viable option in the war, whereas in Grindelwald we HAVE been given an example of a powerful, formerly terrifying Dark Lord being defeated and locked up. By Dumbledore himself.

2. It is not, in fact, truly necessary for Voldemort (and therefore Harry) to die. He could theoretically, given enough time and manpower, be captured, rendered unable to do magic (there has to be a way, considering the existence of Azkaban in conjunction with the existence of wandless magic) and imprisoned. Dumbledore's and Severus' failure to thoroughly investigate this option (we are not shown that it is ever an issue for them) before sending Harry off on his death march then, in my book at least, counts as a moral failing for both of them.

I don't much like the implications of 2 for Severus, particularly considering how I stood up an applauded him with his "You have used me!" speech. But in light of what we are given in canon to go on, I find myself leaning towards this interpretation of events nonetheless. So I'm interested in how other people read the situation - and also your thoughts on why JKR doesn't seem at all concerned with this angle, and what that says about her and her creation in turn. What do you think? Am I missing something, or mis-reading something? Or has JKR for whatever reason slipped up and given us a big, glaring moral hole in her story? (And one more crack in the already-shaky foundation for her claims that Dumbles is ultimately really good)?

Anyway, thanks for listening to me rant. ;)

I was browsing through some old DH rants and reviews a while back and rediscovered Dan Hemmens' excellent essay, "Harry Potter and the Doctrine of the Calvinists" posted over at Ferretbrain. Hemmens, IMHO, does a fantastic job in putting together a coherent, workable theory of just what on god's green earth is going on in the Potterverse and how it can so blatantly propose a clear double standard on just about every major moral issue it touches. My question, after rereading the article, was: what about the characters' own worldviews, within the books? Particularly Severus', considering how he fought so hard, for so long, out of an apparent belief that he could in this way somehow make up for his earlier failing/s and thereby earn something - praise, respect, or even just a respite. A change in category, if you like. Redemption. But where does he get this idea, if the world is so clearly and definitively Sorted into the Elect and the Not? You'd think seven years of Hogwarts under the Marauders would have given him a clue, but apparently not. So what gives? What IS his world-view, in comparison with his contemporaries'? Well, I've got a theory. More behind the cut.

This is, I warn you, not an actual essay with a proper argument, just some ranting thoughts about how Severus fits into the Potterverse in light of Hemmens' theory. I intend to come back later and post a proper essay on the subject sometime, with more coverage given to just why the notion of Severus as a Catholic (in the character of his world-view, not necessarily in formal practice) makes a lot of sense to me. In the meantime: I do hope no-one takes offense at anything I say here - I'm not attempting any kind of judgment of any religious tradition, merely examining how the implications of Hemmens' theory work out on the level of the characters themselves and their world-outlooks. That is: how a Potterverse character's view of the world can clash, or not, with the view of the world the books themselves lay out, and what this can mean for the characters, including - of course - our poor dear Sev.

Link to Hemmens' article, a definite read if you haven't already: http://www.ferretbrain.com/articles/article-161.html

A very quick picture to celebrate *g* (pencils on the train, speed-inking at home). This was ready ten minutes before midnight on the 9th, but sadly the scanning and posting took until the 10th ;_;.

Title: For your birthday, I got you me
Artist: sigune
Media: Staedtler pens on (thin) paper
Rating: G
Characters: Severus Snape, Brynhild Bromley (OFC)
Warnings: Ever seen Sigune art with warnings, then, have you? ;P

( For your birthday, I got you me )

Title: The Prince's Birthday
Author: torino10154
Rating: PG
Word Count: ~300
Genre: Gen
Disclaimer: Not mine. They belong to JKR.
A/N: Written in honor of our favorite Potion's Master's birthday, January 9. Thanks to drachenmina for the beta. *hugs* Any mistakes that remain are my own.