The Wizarding World of Harry Potter (a thread for Potterheads)

I...I ship Remus/James/Sirius in a triad, which is...well, James/Sirius is in there.

 

Snape has the same problem as Slytherin as a whole- an author who writes it as All Bad and swears she didn't. (I'm kind of unhappy that my Marauder hate is yet again getting turned into a discussion of how much their primary target sucks, but I'm not sure how much of that is reasonable vs. not...)

 

Sorry. :::PPP I totally sympathize with why people would really hate the Marauders, even if I don't, and I suspect that if Snape wasn't such a divisive character in himself (and so hated by so much of the fandom) there'd be a lot more negative attitudes in fandom towards them.

 

No, he's just watching her and Petunia in the park. And Petunia is angry at Lily at the time.
Also, I can't figure out a way of phrasing this that doesn't make it sound like I'm trying to be rude to you, so I'll just say up front that that's not my intention: I don't think he always supported genocide, like, from childhood. (This is the problem I was talking about, where people try to evaluate Snape as if his life is just one single phase.) From a very early age, however, he demonstrates that he doesn't care about Muggles' feelings, and as he gets older there's no indication that this changes.

I don't mean to say that there's no reason behind it - there are always reasons for people's behaviour. But on rereading The Prince's Tale in DH, I still don't get the impression that his alliance with the Death Eaters was as incidental as that. Maybe he didn't believe in Muggle genocide from the get-go, but his attitude to Muggles always seemed to be "apathy to the point of callousness". And yes, he did really try to be friends with her, but he did that in part by trying to hide the fact that he didn't give a shit about her family (as opposed to actually changing his opinions).

I don't think he's evil and I don't really think she paints him as a villain, but I do agree that her writing is sloppy in a lot of places - I just don't think that applies to Snape. My interpretation of the sinister side of his relationship with Lily is not actually how most people seem to read it; people talk about how it's this sad tale of unrequited love and that it somehow cancels out all the bad stuff Snape did. JKR herself follows that too, and she doesn't call him irredeemable. I personally would hesitate to use the word "irredeemable" for anybody, but I still don't think that his "love" for Lily is good. I have more to add to this paragraph, but I'm low on words for it.

I don't ship it, but please share!

Sorry about that - that was probably unfair of me. I want to make it clear that I didn't go off on that topic because I think it justifies Snape being bullied, I just got started on it because I usually see Marauder hate in the context of "they were just as bad as Snape, so don't judge Snape!" I know that's not what you were actually saying, though.
(I also have a lot of elaborate thoughts and feels about Remus and Peter's roles in the group, which I felt were too complex to get into while my brain was still locked on to a different train of thought.)

 

I still feel her writing is sloppy for the reason you gave. I mean, she literally writes him with no redeeming qualities, (he's greedy about Lily from the get-go, never expresses real empathy or compassion for anyone who's not a wizard and pureblood, he joins the Death Eaters, and goes on to help with genocide) and then tries to redeem him anyway. I think that's sloppy writing. I think he should've been written with a redeeming quality or two, and I still think his being bullied by the Marauders played a huge part in him joining the Death Eaters in the end. I also think that presumably his parent who was worse to him was a Muggle, and so he gained a bad opinion of them from a very young age. I'm not saying that his relationship with Lily is some tragic thing. I just think that it's not being fair to declare him totally evil, given the circumstances he grew up in, and I think it's sloppy of JK to write him that way and then claim that "oh well his unrequited love makes him a good person".

 

Fair enough - I agree with you on all of this, but I'd like to reiterate that I don't refer to him as evil. In my vocabulary, that word is reserved for a select few genuine piles of indigestible fuck, and Snape isn't one of them.

 

I mean, frankly, whether or not he supported genocide from the get-go doesn't matter? He still supported genocide. He actively participated in a genocidal group. When he started supporting it doesn't matter, it's /genocide/.

That being said, I don't think Snape is an evil evil man or anything. I think he's someone who ultimately did the right thing- but for the wrong reasons, and it just bothers me a lot when people use his feelings for Lily to excuse the shit he did, like JK herself seems to do.

Apologies to OnnaStick, though. Same as Elph, I usually see Marauders hate in the context of "they were just as bad as Snape!!" which I disagree with on a deep level, so I think that's where my brain went right away, and I'm sorry for that. You're allowed to hate characters!

I really love Remus Lupin. Also I really love Luna Lovegood and everyone should talk about Luna Lovegood more because she's incredible.

 

it just bothers me a lot when people are like "he was a bad seed from the beginning" because no. no one is a bad seed from the beginning. no one. like, yeah, he went wrong later in life, but it bugs me a lot that he's given no redeeming qualities and doesn't even do the good thing for good reasons. like, it's like she's trying to portray him as a bad seed from the start, which no one is, and then she goes and tries to redeem him anyway by saying "but he did good in the end" when it was for the totally wrong reasons! and the writing bothers me, along with the fact that people often paint Snape as "he was terrible from the very beginning!"

 

Well, she seems to think Voldy is because he "can't understand love." ::::::||||||

 

which is, in my opinion, really fucking shitty writing. no one's a bad seed from the beginning. everyone has their reasons for being the way they are, and the fact that she made Voldemort another character who's got no redeemable qualities and basically the wizard equivalent of a psychopath and says he "can't understand love" rather than something like "maybe he knew love once but now he's shut himself off to it" is very sloppy writing, to me. every villain should have reasons for being the way they are and acting how they do and being who they are, and to just shrug and go "well they were a bad seed from the start!" is super fucking sloppy writing.

edit: I don't mean to sound angry at you or anything, because I know you're not the one saying these things. this is just something I feel really strongly about.

 

Yeah, Voldy is very much a cartoon villain. His character has about as much depth as a wet pavement, and that's not great when he's supposed to be the big bad threat that carries the series.

 

yeah, and that's like....I dunno, I just hate that. like, give me a villain with character development! give me a villain with a background! please! don't just give me this one-sided villain who's supposed to be super terrifying for like...no reason except that he kills everyone in sight and has a bunch of unexplained prejudices.

 

I feel like Voldermort's even worse in that regard, because JKR tried to make a background for him and ended up taking it in a really shitty and bleak path? Like, it feels like she's trying to use the "Because he is the result of his mom roofieing a muggle man for several years only to fleee when he realized he had been drugged and raped, Voldermort never knew love and he was destined to becoming a villain for never having love for others in his life" Like, there's so much wrong with that, not even getting into Dumbledore knowing about this kid when he was very young and not doing anything to get him out of the cold and abusive orphanage he was put in, because a prophesy said he was going to be Wizard Hitler 2: Mugglemurder Boogaloo and goddamn Dumbledore was going to fight him.

 

Also the fucking prophecies. Fuck the "chosen one" bullshit always and forever.

 

AU where instead of "Lord Voldemort" Tom Riddle starts calling himself "Wizard Hitler 2: Mugglemurder Boogaloo."

 

I kind of appreciate the part where it's nebulous on if it's truly Harry or if Neville could do the same job? Like, having it a twist where there's a potential myriad of 'Chosen One's because there's several kids were born within the same period and lost their folks in tragic ways was kind of neat. Maybe if she had vagued it up more and either kept out Dumbledore exacerbating the issue or someone calling him out on the "You knew Voldermort as a sad orphan and you did nothing to fix that? Perhaps if... He had not been left as a sad orphan and treated like he'd be King Evil, he would have developed enough attachment to others where he wouldn't want to become King Evil? Seriously, you dropped the ball big time here", it would have worked out better though. Like it's just a very small half-twist on a really old and terrible plot point.

 

I will say that this instance of the trope bugged me a lot less than some because it actually mattered to the narrative on a number of levels. The prophecy was self-fulfilling in a really classic Greek tragedy sort of sense (Voldy finds out about the prophecy, tries to kill the one destined to kill him, in the process empowers this kid so they need to be involved in his final death), and Voldemort was explicitly the one who did the choosing, not some higher power. So way better than, say, the Chosen One prophecy in Star Wars, which could have been removed with zero effect on the plot.

 

ngl, after that spell turned out to be a thing I fully expected the Dursleys to be murdered... but yeah, if the castle is so safe, yeah?

Of course, the real reason was because someone didn't want his Chosen One growing up with things like "self-esteem" or "any pre-existing idea of how wizardy shit actually works". Actual supervillain Albus Dumbledore.

 

he is terrible
just
terrible

 

Actually, you know what? That's a textreplace now.