My last (maybe) Half-Blood Prince meta.

[amanuensis1]

We're nearing the end of the time I can meta on this: I've said (oh, how I've said) that Snape's loyalty to Dumbledore isn't remotely in question because of the structure of Book 6 and the series as a whole, and that I dislike how Harry's been left in the dark at the end of Book 6, since it's unfair to make the answers plain to the reader but leave the protagonist unenlightened at the conclusion of a volume. (To clarify, this does not mean that Harry is stupid not to have seen it--Harry didn't get to read the Spinner's End chapter.) But here's another way that cheats us: do you realize, if Snape's motives had been revealed to Harry--if Snape or a glimpse into Dumbledore's pensieve or his will or what have you had communicated this to Harry at the end of Book 6, and Harry as well as the reader saw that Snape had gone into deep cover at Dumbledore's command--does everyone realize that that ending would actually have made Snape's ultimate loyalties ambiguous? That the "is Snape good or is Snape evil?" stickers and debates and contests would actually have had meat, if that had occurred?

Seriously, a third of us would be saying, "Snape killed Dumbledore at Dumbledore's command; we now know that the last book will be about Harry and Snape being on the same side, and if they will triumph over Voldemort and live." Another third would say, "Snape's pulled the wool over everyone's eyes--Dumbledore thought Snape was reluctant to kill him, but in reality Snape's been on Voldemort's side all the time, and just wait until Harry confronts Voldemort expecting Snape to have his back and Snape starts to laugh, 'What, you didn't believe that claptrap I told you, Potter? I've never been so delighted to cast a spell in my life as the day I killed that Slytherin-hating old fool.' It'll be amazing!" And the last third would still be insisting, "Snape is his own man, and his actions at the end will do what is best for Snape."

Another reason to resent the ending of Half-Blood Prince. I would have loved seeing all the sides of that debate.

Comments

[marginaliana]

I'm always so amazed when I come across entries that articulate exactly what I think in a much more succinct and elegant way than I ever could have. Consider me amazed! You've put your finger on exactly what I am frustrated about wrt both book 6 and the endless Snape debate. It seems so very obvious to me how that plot point is going to turn out that the debate leaves me tearing my hair out both at the readers who can't see it and at JKR for not being as subtle as she could have been. That said, given that there are so many readers who can't see it, I suspect that your and my idea of subtle would have whooshed over the heads of too many.

[amanuensis1.livejournal.com]

Heh, I think my favorite word in your complimentary feedback of this is "succinct"--thank you! I always fear the tl;dr monster may come to live in my journal. ^_^

And, yes, I was floored that readers were calling their read of HBP "ambiguous," even when I considered that many Potterfans are young readers, since Rowling does not write at her young readers. She may write for them, but she never panders to their naivete or lack of cleverness. But I can't deny that it is true, that many readers did not (and still do not) think the story structure dictates one path for Snape.

[sor-bet.livejournal.com]

Heh. I thought she'd written it very cleverly, so that the kids would think Snape is evil and the adults would think he's not. Until my boss (at the time) told me he thought Snape was evil. I loaned him book 6 so he could re-read it (and figure it out).

[amanuensis1.livejournal.com]

There are so many "boss (at the time)" adults out there. It hurts my brain.

[sor-bet.livejournal.com]

Ah, no, you see, *he* retired. I'm still working there. :-)

[amanuensis1.livejournal.com]

No, no, I meant, people who still think like your at-the-time boss! Who assumed Snape acted evilly.

oh, someone else thinks it's obvious

[http://users.livejournal.com/_inbetween_/]

The problem with your suggestion is that it's intelligent thinking a double-bluff, while most readers still fall for the single bluff.

Re: oh, someone else thinks it's obvious

[amanuensis1.livejournal.com]

Double-bluffs can work, but if Harry'd been told "Snape killed Dumbledore on Dumbledore's command" at the end of HBP (a single bluff), then Snape turning coat at end of Deathly Hallows would be another single bluff. Now the idea of double-bluffing in Deathly Hallows seems ludicrous, so, only the single bluff (Snape's one of the good guys) can be expected as an ending. If I said that in a way anyone can understand. ^_^

[http://users.livejournal.com/_inbetween_/]

I understood you, that was my point, too, but I guess I was too sarcastic when I agree(d) with you. I simply could not understand why only I (it seemed) saw that she's repeating book 3 on a grander scale. It cost me effort to try and read that killing scene in the way I knew it was intended to read, and not in the way it obviously really played out and is meant to be and will only be "revealed" in the last book.

Re: oh, someone else thinks it's obvious

[sor-bet.livejournal.com]

And I'm saving that icon for after the 6th movie comes out (because the spousal unit won't read the books and I won't spoil the story for him. Yes, I've been keeping the end of book 5 from him for four years now....).

[berseker.livejournal.com]

I don´t know... my problem is that, for some reason, I don´t have much faith in JKR. I could see her making Snape evil and ruining her own story (no, it´s not as crazy as it sounds, she did some stupid moves along the series).

So, when I think about the logic of the story, I expect Snape to be redeemed. But I keep thinking that everything is possible, because she hasn´t proved herself to me yet and I´m an arrogant bitch, yes, why?

[amanuensis1.livejournal.com]

There's a lot about HBP that shook my faith in her storytelling abilities, and not just concerning Snape. The exposition of the pensieve scenes (I was expecting them to mean something hidden, because those couldn't have just been exposition, right? :P ), the flatness of the romance. But I think it's clear where she plans to go with Snape. I have no arguments against those who say, as you do, "Maybe she fails to recognize her own story structure and will defy it," though, because if you're right there's nothing that can be done.

[melusinahp.livejournal.com]

I agree with what you said about that making the ending more interesting and ambiguous, but it would also be impossible.

The whole plan -- Harry witnessing Snape murdering Dumbledore -- was necessary so that when Voldemort reads Harry's mind, as he will, there will be no doubt whatsoever in Harry's mind as to Snape's loyalties. If Voldemort used Legilimency on Harry and discovered the tiniest doubt that Snape was loyal to Voldemort all Hell would break loose and Snape would be instantly killed.

Harry had to be completely convinced of Snape's false badness. That's what Snape and Dumbledore had been working on since Harry arrived at Hogwarts.

[midnitemaraud-r.livejournal.com]

I was thinking the same thing myself - particularly since Harry is so spectacularly bad at Occlumency, which of course Snape knows far too well. And I think that was part of "the key" - if Harry HAD mastered Occlumency, it might have gone differently, (as you suggest, Amy!) but also, Harry is young, and Occlumency is advanced magic. It was one thing for him to master the Patronus as he did, but because he's an average student, for him to be a whiz at everything advanced... Too neat and too Sueish. And not enough 'adolescent stubborn rebelliousness' - though I do admit he was highly motivated to learn the Patronus. But that ties in to the Occlumency as well - he was more motivated by his curiosity to NOT master it and eavesdrop on Voldemort than he was by the threat it posed to him at the time. If he'd known the consequences of his poor study would be Sirius' demise...

I think part of the problem is that we know more than Harry at this point, and so it frustrates us to see him so blinded and single-minded. But you also have to remember that many in this area of fandom are sympathetic to Snape. Step outside our LJ community and it's the exact opposite. Obviously, when you like a person or a character, you approach them very differently as opposed someone you feel only animosity towards. But also, the ending of HPB made a LOT of anti-Snape fans pause and ask themselves a few more questions instead of following the old blind-faith path.

Also, look at the debate that arose amongst fans and readers with regard to Snape's loyalties, and how passionate people have been over it. I think this way WE as readers become more personally involved and invested - it's our own beliefs and perspectives being challenged - as opposed to a more distancing character's (Harry's, et.al.) beliefs.

[melusinahp.livejournal.com]

And the reasons why Harry was so good at master the Patronus were the exact same reasons why he couldn't master Occlumency (and Draco could.) The Patronus comes from his heart, his emotions, which are right on the surface pretty much all the time. Occlumency is about totally repressing ones emotions and taking control of one's mind. Harry isn't capable yet. Maybe be will be by the end of HBP.

[melusinahp.livejournal.com]

Obviously, I meant the end of DH, lol.

[midnitemaraud-r.livejournal.com]

Excellent point, too! Have we ever seen Harry repress even a single emotion? Maybe with the Dursleys on occasion (to avoid punishment), but if so, it's pretty rare.

(And somehow my half-sentence about his curiosity about the mysterious door got deleted in my initial reply, but it was supposed to read curiosity about the mysterious hallway and door to not master it. Ah well. :-P)

It's so nice to see people metaing about HP again - I'm so excited about the book release! My biggest dilemma isn't even about worrying about avoiding spoilers - it's about worrying if I should read really quickly and zip through it to find out how it all ends because I'm dying of curiosity, or if I should read it more slowly and thoroughly and savour everything - the suspense and the fact that it's the last of the new canon. Such problems! :-P

[amanuensis1.livejournal.com]

Obviously, when you like a person or a character, you approach them very differently as opposed someone you feel only animosity towards.

Do you know--I hated Snape. I mean, when I came into fandom after GoF I saw Snape's fun fannish potential, but in all the books preceding, and then in OotP (even after I was in fandom and enjoying "Detention, Potter," smutfics like mad), I did feel animosity towards him. Really hated him for his cruelty and nastiness! And then at the conclusion of HBP, it was shocking--I gasped, "All this time I thought Snape was a nasty man who had his own agenda--now it turns out he's the second hero of the books!" So I was not looking at him as someone I liked when I read HBP--HBP is what turned me around to admiring the hell out of Snape.

[amanuensis1.livejournal.com]

I think this is a very possible read. Thing is, if book 7 does not even mention this--that Harry could not block the knowledge from Voldemort's Legilimency--I will not be shocked. I think it's one possible reason and one I like, but I'm not convinced it must be Rowling's reason.

[twigged.livejournal.com]

Interesting! And you're right, of course. I rather would have liked to see that second option play out.

[amanuensis1.livejournal.com]

I like it much better than me being in this cadre of sullen emo fans saying, "Dude. What the hell are you not getting?" Instead I might actually have been biting my nails in glee, wondering which way it was going to go!

[lady_songsmith]

We're going to have to disagree on this one -- I'm with berseker in my lack of faith in JKR. (I've been saying for ages that I want one of those "I trust Snape" icons with a second frame: JKR and the text "It's HER I don't trust!" Shame I'm too lazy to make one. :P) While I believe it's barely possible that Snape will turn out to be on his own side, I just don't think that Rowling has the craft skill to redeem him.

Is he redeemable? Yes, absolutely, and there's lovely fanfic to that end. Can JKR write it? I don't think so. She's an excellent world-builder, and she tells a good story, but she handles her characters very clumsily. She has yet to really move beyond the archetypes into true three-dimensional characters, and her attempts to do so have been rather poorly handled - thus giving us CAPSLOCK!Harry and Grey!Tonks and Surprise!Ginny.

This actually makes Good!Snape my worst nightmare for Deathly Hallows. If she tries to redeem him, I fully expect it to be another sudden revealation, probably in an action scene where, like Sirius in the DOM, you'll miss it if you blink.

Snape as morally ambiguous? Certainly. And actually I think I'd prefer Snape-for-Snape, were I directing the plot. It's very Slytherin. But Rowling hasn't handled ambiguity well in the past. She certainly seems to want to type all characters and innately "good" or "bad", even after all that nattering about "choices not birth" -- Riddle's backstory was the nail in that coffin, for me. We set up this huge parallel between Harry and Tom, with Dumbledore preaching the virtues of choice, and then when we see Young Tom? He's from a family that's nasty and twisted on both sides, and he's nasty himself from an extremely young age. Where's the choice in that?

And all the lovely ambiguity that we read into the last 6 books, HBP especially? I'm afraid I'm cynical enough to believe that it stems solely from Rowling not having decided yet whose side Snape is on. I can very much see her deciding that during the writing of Hallows, and then we'll either get "Of Course The Greasy Bastard Is Evil; Ugly is Always Evil and Vice-Versa" or we'll get "Snape Stabs Malfoy in the Back at a Crucial Moment and Announces He Loves Kittens and Rainbows." Either would be highly disappointing, but I'm bracing myself because I can't see it going any other way.

[amanuensis1.livejournal.com]

one of those "I trust Snape" icons with a second frame: JKR and the text "It's HER I don't trust!" --Oh, god, that's fabulous.

Yeah, HBP shook me quite a bit--I trusted Rowling to make me like whatever romance she planned for Harry (I had liked what she'd done with Harry/Cho; she really set that up and brought that down logically, engagingly, and well), trusted that the pensieve scenes weren't mere exposition. Disappointed, wow. I still think the best part of HBP is Fleur's "I am good-looking enough for both of us, I theenk!" --there's a take I've never seen! :D

[berseker.livejournal.com]

I think Fleur was pretty much the only clever thing in the HBP... and the funny thing is that myu surprise was due to my lack of faith in JKR. Of course she had to be nice, but the whole "Phleugm" stuff was so heavy-handed that I was thinking "oh, Rowlings, where are your brains??"

[imkalena.livejournal.com]

"Snape Stabs Malfoy in the Back at a Crucial Moment and Announces He Loves Kittens and Rainbows."

I wouldn't even mind this one so much if I didn't think it was going to be followed by, "Then He Dies To Save Harry's Life."

[arclevel.livejournal.com]

That's me, too. It just seems so likely that Snape is going to be "redeemed" by dying heroically to save one of the good guys or to be the ultimate key that will allow Harry to kill Voldemort. Then all the other good guys will go, "OMG, he was totally a good guy after all!!" and that will be his redemption. I always (well, usually) hate story arcs where the troubled character who's got it so hard dies heroically and everyone lauds their bravery posthumously. Because, as Buffy said (and she's the major exception to this), "The hardest thing in this world is to live in it." It's so much more daring and interesting and *hard* to force your characters to survive; death is the easy way out. In fiction, at least. ;-)

I, too, used to trust JKR, and I really, *really* hope she isn't going to go with the obvious cliche. But I'm not confident in that.

[imkalena.livejournal.com]

Yeah. Despite the last book being called "Harry Potter and Snape," Snape may very well not be important enough to her to give him anything but the easy way out.

[lady_songsmith]

See, I'd find that an improvement. But then, I'm rooting for an ending that includes one dead Harry, so...

[imkalena.livejournal.com]

I wouldn't give you heavy odds on that one. ;)

[ausmac.livejournal.com]

I'd love to the know the truth-not necessarily about Snape, but whether JK did indeed know the story from beginning to end. I don't know that I believe its possible to know every detail of a 7 book series from the moment you start writing book one. I'm not even sure I believe she originally intended to write 7 books. Did JK know that what started as a fairly light story with book 1 would end up a very dark story by book 7? Did she intend that Harry would be as wounded, both in body and mind, as he has been?

And I like to think that she never revealed the truth in regard to Snape, not necessarily to be secretive as part of the story, but because to do so would be to tie herself to a particular outcome - and I think she wanted to leave herself room to write with the last book. How Snape's and Voldemort's and Harry's story resolved would then be more fluid. Since she would be tying up all the storylines in the ultimate novel, by leaving certain things untold she would have room to manouver.

[amanuensis1.livejournal.com]

We know that she wanted to plant the Half-Blood Prince plot within Book 2, and I keep wondering how that particular reveal would have changed things that early on for Harry's perspective of Snape!

There are certainly a few things that are convincingly set up early on (Sirius Black's name appears in book one, but his story isn't told until book 3, and because of his name we know he was always meant to be a dog animagus) and a few that reek of "You just retconned that!" (Arabella Figg beginning as a nasty neighbor but later turning out to be Harry's protector and excusing the way she treated Harry with, "Well, the Dursleys wouldn't have let you come if they thought you liked being there"). But the retconning is not too overwhelmingly bald, I think.

[lady_songsmith]

As far as the overall planning of the story goes, the stuff that stands out tends to be magic inserted for the purpose in one book that could have been used to solve problems in an earlier book. Apparition and Veritaserum come to mind - they were pretty clearly invented late in the story, and they could have been used in the earlier books to clear matters up. Veritaserum, for instance, is introduced in Goblet -- had we known about it in Prisoner, the Sirius problem would have had an easier solution. Apparition could have had a whole host of uses in earlier books, although the "you can't apparate at Hogwarts" does provide an excuse.

[gmth.livejournal.com]

The debate seems to have worked among the books' real target audience, though. I've discussed the books with several kids and teens and as far as they were concerned the question of Snape's loyalties is way up in the air. I think as adults who are more familiar with the tropes, we're interrogating the text from the wrong (or right, I suppose) perspective.

[amanuensis1.livejournal.com]

I can't deny that. It makes me wonder if Rowling knew that adults would glean the obvious, and didn't mind because she was aiming at a younger audience, or if she honestly didn't think it was obvious. (I hate to use that word--it sounds so snobbish. My brain just keeps insisting that if I can see it from chapter two, everyone else must be able to as well, because I'm not that smart. I'm not a brilliant puzzle-solver or someone who gets the end of every mystery halfway through the novel/film. I'm just an average joe readin' a story, my brain reminds me.)

[ruthannereid.livejournal.com]

Hello! This has nothing to do with the post. I LOVE YOUR ICON. :D

[amanuensis1.livejournal.com]

Thankies! I had to make at least one cat icon. ^_^

[woman-ironing.livejournal.com]

Here from the Snitch, but, er, I'm completely lost!

[amanuensis1.livejournal.com]

*grin* I've been going on for so long about the unfulfilling ending of Half-Blood Prince, I just assume everyone reading my rants doesn't want everything repeated. It's my opinion that the text allows only one interpretation for Snape's loyalties--that Snape is loyal to Dumbledore and killed him on Dumbledore's orders, to solidify his apparent devotion to Voldemort--and, I wish for many reasons that that had been revealed to Harry at the end of HBP. Not least because it would have allowed for readers to wonder about the possibility of a double-cross! As it stands, though, Snape's loyalties are not in question, not ambiguous, and it chafes me to imagine that they're going to be treated like some big revelation in Deathly Hallows. Grr.

[ruthannereid.livejournal.com]

*giggling* I really won't be shocked no matter what Rowling does at this point. Also, I adore the Scoobydo/Snape icon. XD I will continue to love Snape, because no matter WHAT else he is, he's brilliant and twisted and severely effed up.

....there has got to be something wrong with me. XD

[amanuensis1.livejournal.com]

Yeah, all those people asking, "So, is Snape a nice man or a bad one?"--I have to answer, "Um, neither? He's on the side of good, but he's never NICE."

[berseker.livejournal.com]

This will look off-topic.

Well, it IS a little off-topic, but this thing reminds me of you and, hell, mine was "Severus Snape turns Hogwarts into a gingerbread castle with the Philosopher's Stone".

So check it out: http://www.masquerademaskarts.com/memes/harrypotterspoiler.php

[amanuensis1.livejournal.com]

Those are too goofy. Wouldn't it be cool if one turns out right! :D

[capri-chan.livejournal.com]

That will amuse me for hours. :D

So far, my favorite is "Voldemort kills Harry in a very sexy scene".