Brr, and meme

[pendrecarc]

After a nasty heat wave followed by some perfect days with highs in the seventies, the temperature is hovering in the mid-fifties this afternoon. I had an outdoor gig with my jazz band (I laugh a little every time I say that because it sounds so official; we've been doing it for years but it's so laid back and only a few of us are serious musicians

Comments

[pendrecarc]

Buffy/Spike:

It was never a ship I sought out for fic, but while I haven't rewatched in ages, I do think there was something terribly sweet and fragile about them by the end of S7. They were each able to be something the other needed in that moment, and there was a surprising grace to it.

That said, I don't think they'd have outlasted the apocalypse for long if he'd survived the finale. Maybe I'm wrong? Neither of them, Spike in particular, had really been able to work out who they were in a good relationship or what they wanted from one another. It's possible they'd have been able to work through that together.

Snape/Lily:

Oh, wow. I certainly don't ship it in the sense of wanting them together, for reasons I expect are fairly obvious, but I feel like I'd have a better sense of how I felt about it if I was clearer on how canon felt about it. Or maybe that is clear--Rowling has said on multiple occasions that Snape isn't a terribly good person--but fandom has confused the issue? I really don't think it's much of a redemption arc if the sole motivation for good is tragic romantic love for someone you were horrible to, and I think the end of Deathly Hallows could be read that way, but I think at times the book wants us to see Snape's change of heart as something more profound than that. I'd rather go with the latter reading, but I'm actually not sure how much the evidence is in favor of that.

[rachelindeed]

I so enjoyed hearing your thoughts on these! I think you're very insightful about Buffy and Spike; I agree that what they had was beautiful, but more like a moment of grace than a foundation for a long-term relationship; who knows what it might have developed into in time, but time is something they simply ran out of (I think Spike's last words to Buffy were pretty self-aware, actually; he knew she didn't "love" him in that way, but that was OK and he was grateful to her anyway). I think you're especially right that neither had good relationship experience to bring to the table and both needed time to figure out themselves as individuals.

With Snape and Lily, I never rooted for them to actually get together, obviously, but I do tend to interpret Snape's change of heart as starting with frustrated love and guilt, but building eventually into a life-long commitment to protect Harry and defeat Voldemort. In the end he believed that he couldn't save Lily's son, and yet he still stuck to Dumbledore's plan and played a key role in helping to defeat Voldemort (and there were small things, too, like telling a subordinate, in private, never to use the word "Mudblood"). And the thing that ultimately got him killed (the business with the Elder Wand and Dumbledore) had nothing to do with Lily at all. As a young man he joined a reprehensible terror organization, and as a grown man even when renouncing that allegiance he remained a bully. But the few people who knew his whole story - Harry and Dumbledore - both said they considered his defining characteristic to be courage. I find him very fascinating, and perversely sympathetic, though always very flawed. I've written a fair amount about him, actually. I wonder if you might enjoy a character study I wrote about him once, structured entirely around ACD Holmes quotations. It's called Severe Reasoning, if you're ever in the mood.

Thanks for chatting! Great fun to hear your thoughts :)