Snape: The Real Protagonist of the HP Series

[harmony_bites]

Found this article via sylvanawood's post in dh_oh_shit. It’s chock full of spoilers, so don’t read it unless you’ve finished Deathly Hallows, but it expresses eloquently and succinctly something I think a lot of us feel about Snape.

Missing from ‘Harry Potter’ - a real moral struggle

Oh, and how does Rowling feel about Snape now?

Comments

[harmony_bites]

A friend of mine from Trek days wanted to get into a pro anthology so we used to haunt the forum of the editor and learned a lot about writing that way. He spoke of writing as "coding." That basically you have something in your head, and the craft and skill comes in conveying it to the reader the way you want.

And that btw, is the number one reason another perspective, whether you call it that of a "first reader" or "beta" or in the pro world editors is needed--not really to proofread and find where you used "loose" when you should have had "lose" but to make sure you're getting across what you want.

So yes, at a certain point it's not yours anymore, because writing isn't just expression but communication--and as a creative endeavor your subconscious often adds layers you don't see until someone points them out to you.

But it's still stunning to me that Rowling could create the character she did over 7 books and millions of words and not see it--not see the ways in which Snape is appealing--and yes, heroic.

When it comes to fanfic though--the whole point is that it's about the road not traveled. If you got what you wanted from TPTB, there'd be little need for it. So forget canon. That's past, that's gone. Sure, it matters. Had Snape really turned out evil I doubt I'd still be interested in reading or writing in HP.

But it really is up to us now to fill in the lines the way we see them.