Meta Monday

[sassy_cat]

As promised, a bit of meta for your Monday.

We all know that Severus Snape was a man who wanted respect and recognition, even an Order of Merlin. Within HP fandom, he's been both loathed and romanticized, but recently, there's been a strong resurgence of Snape hate.

How do you think Snape would react to fandom?

Comments

2/2

[vhizen]

So… Snape, who is actually human and not so entirely ‘’self-important’’ (as Voldemort or the random Death Eater would be) looked for a taste of love and recognition but only from a very few people - I would say from his parents, Lily, Voldemort and Dumbledore, and maybe from Harry in the end. There is a true question about that - did these few people deserve his desperate and ultimate request for attention? My personal answer is ‘’no’’ for his parents (both of them) and Voldemort (and he understood very early that they would never care for him). And ‘’Yes’’ for Lily and Dumbledore. This is not about who Lily and D. are in truth- they can be both flawed and take wrong decisions (which means they are human as well). I really like Lily and Dumbledore because they are like ‘’mirrors’’ and ‘’anchors’’; Lily is able to reveal the best of James or Snape, and Dumbledore is able to see the strength and weakness of everyone. If as a reader you start dismissing Lily and Dumbledore and consider they are only manipulating bitches, then IMO, you don’t understand at all what is going on with Snape and even Harry, and why they both had to understand what ‘’doing the right thing in the end’’ means and implies.

In my reading of the books and of the fandom, I see the gap between the vision of characters who change and static characters. For Rowling, all the positive characters (especially the male characters) have a development, their own maturation. Harry, Dumbledore, Snape, James, and others... they were once young, simple and wrong. Then, they changed and tried to get better and responsible - more or less easily. Only ‘’infant character’’ like Voldemort could not change. For some readers, the characters are stereotyped, good or evil. If I discuss about Snape with a young reader for example, very often I see how much they do not see the development of the character. ‘Snape is not clear: good or not good? I don’t understand him, he is mean and should have been kinder, and he is pathetic with Lily and weak with Dumbledore and just a pawn, and he just wanted revenge on Voldemort (and he is old and not interesting overall)’’. I read the final battle, the epilogue and the Prince’s Tale, and there Harry and Dumbledore explain their message about a complex world, and redemption and ultimate courage, and I wonder if we read the same lines. What was the point in ‘’doing the right thing in the end’’, really? If it should be all about ‘’doing the right thing from the start’’? Oh, I let them with their still mask of ‘’beautiful Snape’’ or ‘’ugly Snape’’ and keep my hidden beauty of an elusive Snape for myself…