Musings on the whole Harry/Snape thing...
Aug. 29th, 2003 09:17 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
amanuensis1I've been examining why I don't write more Harry/Snape, as a result of discussion with ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
fabularasa as to some of the difficulties that pairing has to surmount to be credible. I talk a lot about how a consensual, mutual Harry/Lucius should never be an easy pairing, but I'm starting to realize I have the same standards for Harry/Snape. The sheer volume of consensual Harry/Snape shouldn't be some kind of compensation. There's the teacher/student problem, the fact that canonically they hate each other, the age difference, the fact that neither is going to find the other devastatingly attractive. And Adult!Harry can be a problem for me, because my fanfiction preference is to use the characters as you find them, not needing a huge amount of background to explain who they are or what has shaped them. Once you start needing to do that, I think you've exited the need to make it fanfiction.
So I've realized that the version of that pairing that I like best is Contrivance Harry/Snape.
Some might say that all fanfiction involves contrivance by its very nature, or that every single F-Q-F plotchallenge is a contrivance. But contrivance is more than situation; it's scheme, it's artifice. A great number of plotchallenges (or just plots) make the assumption that there is at least attraction on one side and the conflict is in making the other character become attracted, or that both have an interest and it just needs to be made plain. That, I would say, is not contrivance so much as it is design, just to explain how I'm using the word.
Contrivance does not require an attraction; it merely asks that you force the characters together. It bypasses all other arguments as to why the characters couldn't fall for each other. And they can be as hackneyed as the dawn; the goal is to see how well you can write them so the initial response of "Oh, not that old thing," becomes "Hey, this one's good!"
My favorites include contrived weddings (one of my very first Potterverse fics was written because I couldn't wait any longer to write a "We have to get MARRIED?" story!), and contrived MPREGs. (There, there's another reason I write MPREGs.) And I especially like whatfabularasa calls, and for which I will have to make a freaking icon, it made me laugh so hard, the "Oh no, I have to rape you now!" stories. I eat those up like Cheez-Its. rushlight75's Through a Shattered Mirror got me SO hard that way. (And BTW, if nimori doesn't finish the one she started, I'm sending house-elves to her house armed with feather dusters and she's getting tickled until she finishes the thing. I mean it, Nim!)
This is also why humorous or parody Snarry works for me, because the focus is more on the humor than the logic of the relationship (see those written by Seeker orgmth; you're too busy laughing your tuchis off to ask yourself, "But do they respect each other as people?") and why I have such deep respect for cybele_san who really, really works at making romantic Snarry work. And note that she's not afraid to work with contrivance either, "If You Are Prepared" starts with one of the oldest: two characters forced to be in close proximity who do not particularly like each other. But it's so deftly done you'd think it had nothing whatsoever in common with all those "we're snowbound and must share body heat to survive" stories. (Okay, you got me--maybe some contrivances ARE too overdone for me! ^_^)
fabularasa as to some of the difficulties that pairing has to surmount to be credible. I talk a lot about how a consensual, mutual Harry/Lucius should never be an easy pairing, but I'm starting to realize I have the same standards for Harry/Snape. The sheer volume of consensual Harry/Snape shouldn't be some kind of compensation. There's the teacher/student problem, the fact that canonically they hate each other, the age difference, the fact that neither is going to find the other devastatingly attractive. And Adult!Harry can be a problem for me, because my fanfiction preference is to use the characters as you find them, not needing a huge amount of background to explain who they are or what has shaped them. Once you start needing to do that, I think you've exited the need to make it fanfiction.So I've realized that the version of that pairing that I like best is Contrivance Harry/Snape.
Some might say that all fanfiction involves contrivance by its very nature, or that every single F-Q-F plotchallenge is a contrivance. But contrivance is more than situation; it's scheme, it's artifice. A great number of plotchallenges (or just plots) make the assumption that there is at least attraction on one side and the conflict is in making the other character become attracted, or that both have an interest and it just needs to be made plain. That, I would say, is not contrivance so much as it is design, just to explain how I'm using the word.
Contrivance does not require an attraction; it merely asks that you force the characters together. It bypasses all other arguments as to why the characters couldn't fall for each other. And they can be as hackneyed as the dawn; the goal is to see how well you can write them so the initial response of "Oh, not that old thing," becomes "Hey, this one's good!"
My favorites include contrived weddings (one of my very first Potterverse fics was written because I couldn't wait any longer to write a "We have to get MARRIED?" story!), and contrived MPREGs. (There, there's another reason I write MPREGs.) And I especially like what
fabularasa calls, and for which I will have to make a freaking icon, it made me laugh so hard, the "Oh no, I have to rape you now!" stories. I eat those up like Cheez-Its. rushlight75's Through a Shattered Mirror got me SO hard that way. (And BTW, if nimori doesn't finish the one she started, I'm sending house-elves to her house armed with feather dusters and she's getting tickled until she finishes the thing. I mean it, Nim!)This is also why humorous or parody Snarry works for me, because the focus is more on the humor than the logic of the relationship (see those written by Seeker or
gmth; you're too busy laughing your tuchis off to ask yourself, "But do they respect each other as people?") and why I have such deep respect for cybele_san who really, really works at making romantic Snarry work. And note that she's not afraid to work with contrivance either, "If You Are Prepared" starts with one of the oldest: two characters forced to be in close proximity who do not particularly like each other. But it's so deftly done you'd think it had nothing whatsoever in common with all those "we're snowbound and must share body heat to survive" stories. (Okay, you got me--maybe some contrivances ARE too overdone for me! ^_^)![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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Date: 2003-08-29 07:09 am (UTC)And I agree that rushlight and Cybele are 2 of the best Snarry writers that'll make you fall in love with their stories whether you board the SHIP or not.
I am honestly *bored* with contrivance Harry!/Snape though, they're overdone and become cliche as time goes by. I am not closing the possibility there might be new good contrivance snarry in future, but now I am more enthusiastic with the 3 adults: REmus/Severus/Sirius, preferably if they're in bed together. :)
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Date: 2003-08-29 07:12 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-08-29 09:32 am (UTC)*looks at icon*
*adore you*
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Date: 2003-08-31 11:16 am (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2003-08-29 07:47 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-08-29 08:43 am (UTC)I've just got to jump in with my 2¢ here, because I always do: H/D is much more popular than HP/SS in the fandom at large. It took me quite awhile to find LJ to talk on, and before that I constantly had to deal with "Harry/Snape? Ewwww!" whenever I went looking for fics. It's just this particular sector of the fandom that has HP/SS more popular. Quite a few people are squicked by the idea of HP/SS in any form.
Of course, the rest of us have seen The Light. *g*
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Date: 2003-08-29 09:32 am (UTC)I completely agree.
I think that there are numerous reasons why HP/SS has gained a bit of popularity.
For one thing, lots of people kink on student/teacher and age-difference stories. You simply can't get that with HP/DM. I suspect that these kinks motivate quite a few of the the Snape/Hermione stories out there, too. You can get it in Lupin/Harry or McGonnagal/Hermione or Dumbledore/Snape stories but all of those are pretty darned rare and/or squicky to some people.
Then, there is the undeniable chemistry between Harry and Snape. However you want to interpret those feelings (hatred, unrequited twisted lust, whatever) it's difficult to imagine the two characters *ever* being indifferent to one another. (Same thing holds true between Sirirus and Snape.) In constrast, Canon!Harry spends very little time thinking about or interacting with Draco--if Draco weren't constantly making some effort to antagonize Harry and his friends, I suspect that Harry wouldn't given him a second though.
To bring things back around to amanuensis' point, while I don't find it impossible to imagine Canon!Harry and Canon!Snape resolving their differences and getting together consensually, I do agree that writing it in a plausible way is *hard.* And will likely involve many thousands of words worth of careful character development and evolution, and let's face it, how many of us have the time/energy/inclination to slam out 250,000 words worth of fanfiction that will convince the "non-believers" that such a relationship is actually possible? ;-) Snape/Sirius fiction suffers from the same plausibility barrier.
Hence, the prevalence of contrivance fic in HP/SS (in the HP/DM and SS/SB parts of the world too!) and the prevalence of "Oh, for godsake just follow along with me here and believe that it's true" sorts of HP/SS stories out there, where the character transformation is implied rather than made explicit.
Of course, YMMV!
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Date: 2003-08-29 10:48 am (UTC)That sums up something I hadn't really put together; I like pairs of characters who take up a great deal of room in one another's heads. All that effort concentrated on one another is slashy, IMO. SS/SB and SS/HP both fit that bill. *digs out the contrivance toybox from under the bed*
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Date: 2003-08-29 05:15 pm (UTC)A good writer can convince me of almost anything, and I don't believe s/he needs that many words to do it in. For example, I never envisaged Snape/Hagrid until "Care of Magical Creatures", and Bernice convinced me deft, beautiful language, and far fewer than 250k words.
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Date: 2003-08-29 07:31 pm (UTC)Yes, but...Snape and Hagrid have (virtually?) zero interaction in canon and a *whole* lot less emotional and textual baggage than Harry/Snape or Snape/Black, for instance.
And, I'm not truly saying that it *can't* be done in only a few thousand words--yes, color me exaggerating for effect here! ::g:: I"m just saying that it's really really *difficult* to do in a short amount of space. No doubt there a few authors who have pulled off a Harry/Snape that could convince "non-believers" in 500 words or less, but I'm betting that the majority of fanfic writers out there probably would have a very hard time pulling it off and would need a whole lot more space to do it in.
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Date: 2003-08-29 08:22 pm (UTC)Yes, yes and more yes. I can't help but think of the way Rowling describes what happens after the Order's first (to the reader, anyway) meeting in OotP ...it's as if the time/space continuum stops for a second in Harry's world as he hones in on Snape from above. The little guy certainly shows an interest!
warning: silly and pretentious canon evidence stuff ahead
Date: 2003-08-30 12:16 am (UTC)Actually, I don't think this is necessarily true. Draco actually features quite heavily on Harry's mind, whether he admits it to himself or not. In Book Five, he wonders if thinking he should be prefect "made him as arrogant as Draco Malfoy?" I think Draco what Harry fears becoming. And he is also the person Harry *hates* to look bad in front of. I don't think he's really indifferent to Draco's opinion of him.
(just some lines from the book)
'Just what I always wanted. To make a fool of myself on a broomstick in front of Draco Malfoy.' --Ch 9, PS/SS
"What does he need?" said Professor McGonagall crisply. "Bed rest?
Should he perhaps spend tonight in the hospital wing?"
"I'm fine!" said Harry, jumping up. The thought of what Draco Malfoy
would say if he had to go to the hospital wing was torture. --Ch 4, PoA
The last person in the world he wanted to see when he was lost, covered in soot and had broken glasses: Draco Malfoy -- Ch 3, CoS
Okay, I won't bombard you with quotes but instances such as this-- and the fact that Harry was so obsessed with Malfoy's "I'd want revenge" re: Sirius, or the fact that in GoF there's a place where he walks into the halls and notices two people at the tables, namely Cho and Draco -- make me think that Harry's not indifferent. He's quite obsessed with not looking bad in front of Malfoy. Which really does say a little something.
Sorry, I'm not trying to be an H/D fangirl and be all defensive! I was just thinking recently that many people have started thinking that Harry/Draco shippers were purely about the pretty aesthetics and not substantial canonical dynamics, which isn't the case at all-- well, not for all of us. And so I just wanted to say this, it's not even to you in particular, I'm just throwing it out there for discussion. :)
Then, there is the undeniable chemistry between Harry and Snape. However you want to interpret those feelings (hatred, unrequited twisted lust, whatever) it's difficult to imagine the two characters *ever* being indifferent to one another.
You know, for someone who doesn't ship Harry/Snape at all really, I read a helluva lot of it. The dynamics do do something for me. But lately I've become quite bored of it, and I think it's because of book five. I truly realised how much Snape really doesn't hate Harry. His hatred is really so focussed on James, Snape is *blind* to what Harry is. It's always clouded by his incensed hatred of James: I think every time he looks at Harry, he can never separate him from James. I feel like he hates Harry almost by default, and that doesn't sit too well in the form of dynamics with me, I think. I do think Harry/Snape could still be interesting in getting Snape to be rid of his shrouded vision, though.
Also, I think another reason Harry/Snape has become popular? Is that people have become desensitised to the idea of student/teacher relationships. There was once a day in this fandom when Harry/Draco was deemed "Ew! What! Harry hates Malfoy!", whereas now it's rather painfully mainstream. Harry/Snape was once hugely taboo in the mainstream fandom, but it's definitely, I think, much more prevalent now.
Er, I think I went off-topic a million times there! Haha. And yay for contrivance fics. I'll read contrivance fics even if they're not the best written, because there is some sort of glee that comes from reading about the characters put in such situations.
Re: warning: silly and pretentious canon evidence stuff ahead
Date: 2003-08-31 02:14 pm (UTC)Yes, there's a lot of canonical meat there. I hope that's where we start to see some of that backing off, next book. Not that I'm cheering for romance, but it would be nice to see the resolution starting to build.
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Date: 2003-08-31 02:10 pm (UTC)Well, at least Snape and Sirius are contemporaries. You don't have to worry about what they're going to talk about after the sex.
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Date: 2003-08-31 09:43 pm (UTC)Seriously though, you bring up the problem inherent in all age-difference fic, I think. The AD/MM and AD/SS fans have an even *harder* time with relevant post-coital chit chat I suspect. :-)
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Date: 2003-08-29 07:54 am (UTC)I'm a fan of contrivance fic in general, I suppose. Hackneyed almost never bothers me if it's done with flair, the characters thrown together in the contrivance are being properly irritable, depressed, charming, or however they normally act, and enough details of the contrivance plot are given that it takes care of basic suspension of disbelief. (Often a well-chosen, careful few details work better than too much explanation, so that one avoids getting mired in the improbability of it all. Especially if the fic is short.)
I think what I like best about contrivance is watching the characters fight themselves. I love it when they're made to do something they can't stand, then have to cope with both the fact that a) they did it and b) some of their dark psychological underbelly has been quite mercilessly exposed in the process.
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Date: 2003-08-29 08:39 am (UTC)My favorite sort of Snape/Harry is the morally-ambiguous!Snape, where one is never quite sure whether he's in it for the love or the sex or the power or what, until the end when his facade cracks and it's all Troo Luv from there on out. Um.
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Date: 2003-08-29 08:47 am (UTC)Oh, and you misspelled it. It's TWOO WUB, you silly. ^_^
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Date: 2003-08-29 08:46 am (UTC)Does lonely!amnesiac!Harry count as a contrivance? *eyes her WsiP*
(Sorry, shameless self-promotion. :) )
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Date: 2003-08-31 02:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-08-31 03:36 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-08-29 09:00 am (UTC)The kind of "contrived" situation you describe, where one or both of them are not really consenting to become involved, makes much more sense. I think that if more HP/SS were written like that, I'd have an easier time reading it -- not only because coercion pushes my buttons *g*, but because I wouldn't keep wondering who these people were and why they named after Harry Potter and Severus Snape.
Oh, and your HasHisOwnAgenda/SecretlyStillEvil!Snape? So lickable. Meow.
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Date: 2003-08-29 09:02 am (UTC)That should, of course, say "why they were named after..."
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Date: 2003-08-31 04:46 pm (UTC)Yeah, when I look at the story and have that "why is this fanfiction, again?" moment, which happens not infrequently, it gets me running along a whole meta-pathway I really didn't want, in a moment of reading fanfic...
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Date: 2003-08-29 11:17 am (UTC)The one thing I can't usually get behind is schmoopy!snape. I like my Snape with extra snark, and I honestly think that, when it comes down to it, Harry can snark right back, because he can be a real little bitch sometimes. =) I love that they have the power-dynamic problem (teacher/student, older/younger) but to me they connect on a lot of different levels as people, even though the react very differently as individuals.
For mine own purely selfish reasons, a lot of the Snape/Harry writers are among the older, more experienced writers of the fandom, many of whom have written in fandoms previous to this. Cuts down on the crap-factor a little.
Leaving behind my diatribe, you mentioned
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Date: 2003-08-31 04:52 pm (UTC)Believe me, that's a BIG deal, yes.
And Absolution still didn't do it for me like Through A Shattered Mirror did. There was just this flavor that TASM had that was remarkable.
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Date: 2003-08-31 06:02 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-08-31 06:20 pm (UTC)*melts*
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Date: 2003-08-31 06:35 pm (UTC)Evil wench. ;)
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Date: 2003-08-29 01:26 pm (UTC)I like Contrived!Snarry as well. It gives me a perverse sense of amusement to see two of my favorite characters thrown into a situation in which neither of them is comfortable and have to adjust themselves to the situation and to each other. (I have a secret delight in the much-maligned accidental bonding and MPREG fics that pop up here and there in the fandom. In fact, my very first HP fic was an accidental-on-purpose Snarry bonding fic. *grin*) It's just fun to see the two of them thrown together, even in a somewhat cliched way.
But I also adore the whole idea of Consensual!Snarry. I think, in the right writers' hands, these characters can be developed into a very intriguing, very captivating couple. (Of course, I might be a bit biased, since I am, both as a reader and a writer, firmly entrenched smack dab in the middle of the Snarry camp. *grin*) But it can be done...and done beautifully. (
Like
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Date: 2003-08-31 04:55 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-08-29 03:40 pm (UTC)The fact that constructing a proper relationship between them without circumstances pushing them together would take so damn long to write is because they would have to naturally independantly learn to see the other man without bias, and when dealing with characters as stubborn as these two that would take years. Many, many years. And we couldn't possibly wait that long for all the Snarry smut!
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Date: 2003-08-31 04:56 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-08-29 04:19 pm (UTC)Teacher/student relationships -- to varying degrees of cosummation -- happen a great deal, not because either is necessarily attractive to the other outside of that scenario but because of the relationship itself. I'd add to that the recognition that teenagers in particular use/understand sex as power very frequently and that Snape doesn't strike me, much of the time, as being particularly emotionally mature and Harry's relationship to intimacy is at the very least troubled and his attachment to anyone standing in place of a parent figure decidedly overwrought.
Ah, I could go on, but in fact I'd make claims for Snarry on the grounds of realism. Having said that, contrivance is often needed to fast forward through these processes or, in fact, to make a quite banal possibility more interesting.
On the subject of contrivances I note that
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Date: 2003-08-31 05:03 pm (UTC)This is a great point, yes! Thank you for putting that in that kind of perspective, because I think we all feel that sort of thing but forget to put it out there, because we either think it is so basic or don't know how to state it.
And I thought the clichefest thing was, specifically, to put them in a snowbound cabin, wasn't it? Eh, close enough.
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Date: 2003-08-31 05:07 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-09-02 11:28 pm (UTC)And yet, Harry/Snape is still one of my OTPs. But yes, I adore the contrivances. I adore them just as much in H/D though.... hell, I just like contrivances, when they're played out well. Nothing less satisfying than a FQF challenge piece that just goes through the motions.
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Date: 2003-09-03 05:51 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-09-06 10:45 pm (UTC)Hmmm, I just reread this and realized what I sounded like. To clarify, I haven't actually read your non-con fic, because, as I said, it bums me out. So I have no idea what your characterizations are like in that regard. I have however read your other fic and find it absolutely yummy, smashing and all shades of good. I wish I could cite specific titles but I've got a memory like a sieve.
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Date: 2003-09-07 02:38 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-09-07 09:27 am (UTC)A big part of it for me was that I just couldn't see "my characters" as truly evil, and so reading them as such changed the universe too much for me. That was, of course, just my interpretation of them, but I need my escapism.:)