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

[ginny_weasley31]

Snape is a hero. He may be a bit disturbed, but the problem is that JKR is seeing Snape through Harry's eyes, too. She just doesn't get it or him. An incredible accident that she created someone so deeply complex. A pity that she can't understand him.

When I was part of the sleuthing side of things we took everything she said and wrote to be canon. Then, when she opened her website, everything there was canon as well.

That is no longer my opinion.

Please tell me, why is it that Minerva is too old to be headmistress of Hogwarts 19 yrs after DH? JKR said she was 70 or so... and didn't she also say that DD was nearly 150?

Even if you outline and have an epilogue as a goal, plot and characters change under your fingertips--this is what I thought might have happened to JKR with Snape.

Hear! Hear!

I actually said this to someone else this morning. You may intend to write your characters one way, but over time, your character develops its own personality and they don't always follow the plan. THAT was part of the problem with the epilogue. She had a plan. She wanted her characters to 'follow the plan' and she forced them to. How many times have we writers of fanfic said: "My characters aren't cooperating." Sometimes they just don't. She argues that she knows her characters better than we do so what she says goes... that's fair, but even to THIS point she has had difficulty convincing people that her characters were going to follow the map she'd drawn for them.

UGH! I'm been positively fuming all day over this!

[harmony_bites]

Please tell me, why is it that Minerva is too old to be headmistress of Hogwarts 19 yrs after DH? JKR said she was 70 or so... and didn't she also say that DD was nearly 150?

Well, that's the other thing that leaves room for fanfic. The contradictions, the paradoxes, and the things that just don't make sense.

Funny, but in Trek my specialty was writing stories from the point of view of villains and making heroes of them. But that's the fun of fanfic so often. I have a lot of problems with HP culture and the moderated archives but in the end I think my problem comes down to people trying to exert far too much control.

Fanfic is not about control. It's about creativity. Its about using canon rather than following it.

Even if Rowling had said--"Yes, Snape is a hero", you know she would never have said:

Yes, well, Hermione was on that platform because she didn't trust Ron to drive the kids. They've actually long been divorced and she's married to Snape now. I wrote that death by Nagini scene so that you all could find ways he could have been saved.

Not going to happen. Never, ever, ever.

Well, so the hell what?