ACID POPS and Teenager Draco

[Sydney]

No: HPFGUIDX 157466

Neri:
> Also, while many of us did predict that Dumbledore will die in HBP,
> how many of us even considered seriously that Snape will AK him off
> the highest tower in Hogwarts? If someone had predicted that before
> HBP, would you not have told him that he had read too many anti-Snape
> fanfics? 

Sydney:

-*raises hand*- I did.  Well, I didn't predict he'd blast him off the
tower, but was certain that Snape would be heavily implicated in
D-dore's death in some way, and blamed for it by Harry.  Because I
knew whatever happened Snape had to finish Book VI in a state of
maximum suspicion.  I confess Dumbledore having to beg Snape to kill
him never entered my head, and was waaaay cooler than anything I could
have come up with myself.

Neri:
> Not often, but from time to
> time JKR beats the fanfiction writers in their own game.

Sydney:

This is a bit beside your point, but I would just like to revel in the
fact that HBP was a *bonanza* for every Snape fan and Draco fan I used
to think were a bit over the top.  Snape for instance was so much
cooler than I ever had any idea JKR would let him be-- he's a crazy
potions genius!  he invents dozens of spells!  werewolves cower before
him!  He sits in a book-lined study sipping red wine and being
enigmatic!  And Draco got angst up the wazoo, which is what all Draco
fans seem to crave for him, so there you go.  I for one foresee the
last book as one big Snape fan candy shop.


Neri:
> However, here I'll have to dissapoint Sydney and Dungrollin: I'm
> afraid that I don't predict many sizzling ACID POPS moments in Book 7.
> Simply put, Snape and Narcissa aren't that important to JKR, and their
> romance must not distract us from the main storyline.

Sydney:

-*dryly*-  I'll try to endure my disappointment.  I could have told
you Snape and Narcissa weren't important to the main storyline myself,
obviously. Snape and Harry though are the central characters of the
whole shebang, at least theirs is the central relationship.  It's
absolutely amazing to me that you don't see that this is where the
whole potential energy of the story is balanced.  Everything that is
left about Snape has to be about Harry, tie back into Harry, affect
Harry emotionally in some major way, force some movement out of Harry.
 The two characters are tied togther. 

Neri:

>If, as I suspect, the main melodrama between
> Snape and Harry will be about James (tons of foreshadowing and buildup
> throughout the series) then either LOLLIPOPS or ACID POPS would be
> redundant as melodrama generators. In that case ACID POPS would have
> the advantage over LOLLIPOPS that she's much more compact and modular,
> easy to fit into any kind of plot. If JKR merely requires a thematic
> tragic flaw to trigger Snape's tragic fall, then ACID POPS is perfect,
> and it can also be made to generate almost any Malfoy family subplot
> that JKR might need to serve the main plot of Book 7. 

Sydney:

I honestly have no idea how you comprehend story.  Snape has millions
of flaws.  It's a character we already know quite well.  His downfall
already seems assured from every possible angle (though the birthday
cake suggests he'll live, I have no idea how JKR intends to dig him
out of this hole).  Introducing some overwhelming passion for Narcissa
at this stage-- a hitherto unsuspected character flaw--  would be
beyond weird.  It's not 'more compact' than Snape/Lily-- it's
extraneous to the main action of the books, so it's all dangly and
appendix-y.  And it's something she didn't even make explicit when she
could have, so as to provide the 'tragic flaw catalyst' for the reader
that you mention.  Now it would just be one more piece of exposition
that Harry couldn't give a rat's ass about.  

Surely what we don't know about Snape is something Harry should *care*
about?  


> > Magpie:
> > <snip> When this subject comes up in canon Draco 
> > says "nobody can help me," not "Snape and Narcissa could help me, if 
> > only there wasn't sexual tension between them that makes me angry at 
> > them."  
> > 
> 
> Neri:
> Yes, well, that would kind of give things away, don't you think?

Sydney:

Yes, but why *wouldn't* JKR give things away if there was a
Snape/Narcissa thing going on?  It would be one more for the
'Spinner's End Exposition Party'-- reasons for the reader to
understand how evil!Snape would theoretically work.  'Ah', they would
say to themselves, 'this is how the downfall of Snape starts.  He's in
love with Narcissa'.  Then when JKR pulls out the lifedebt thing or
whatever you think is going on, they can go, 'Ah!  He was in love with
Narcissa, BUT there's this other mystery factor!'.  I don't understand
what is to be gained from making this one more Mystery about Snape
when the big chance to make it explicit was there.  The only reason to
make a Snape thing mysterious is so that Harry can find out and go
"What?!?"  Telling something in a story is always better than not
telling something, unless it can work for suspense, which
Snape/Narcissa doesn't.

Neri:

 But
> you have to see that "nobody can help me" is totally OOC for Draco.
> This is the kid who is used to get everything he wants and needs from
> his parents and Snape. 

Sydney:

Yeah but that's the *whole point of the storyline*. It's Draco's
coming-of-age, for crying out loud.  Magpie puts it so much better
than me:

> > Magpie:
> > The character starts out feeling that it's important 
> > for him to do this and prove himself, and winds up paranoid and 
> > isolated with two almost-murders on his conscience.  Neither of 
> > those attitudes lend themselves to him going to Narcissa or Snape to 
> > make things right.  The almost-murders themselves, imo, have far 
> > more power to make him turn away from these two than any vague 
> > problems connected to Snape/Narcissa I can imagine.


> Neri:
> Not from Draco's PoV. From Draco's PoV Snape is a DE who would have no
> qualms about killing Dumbledore to "steal Draco's glory", and Narcissa
> is the one who told Harry in public that he doesn't have much time
> left. It is also quite possible that Draco had heard something about
> his mother's part in the Kreacher plot and death of Sirius. Draco has
> no reason to be ashamed of Snape or his mother that he had almost
> killed a blood-traitor like Ron Weasley and a Gryffindor girl like
> Katie Bell. At most he should be ashamed that he had botched the
killings.

Sydney:

But this about Draco realizing that he's *not* a killer.  That he's
horrified by it.  That it leaves him a nervous wreck crying in the
bathrooms.  He's trying to be a stone-cold killer and instead he's
just a normal kid.  Of course he's going to be ambivalent about going
up to the guy who *is* a stone-cold killer and going, 'hey, maybe I'm
not emotinallly cut out for this outfit, could you kill him for me?'.
 Draco going to Snape would not just be admitting that he's having a
hard time with the practicalities, it's owning up to the fact that
he's going to fail ahead of time, because he doesn't have it in him--
so Voldemort might as well just go ahead and kill him right then. Is
that not what Snape meant by, "What thoughts are you trying to hide
from your Master?" 

Draco's coming of age is his separating himself from the Death Eater
fantasy he had.  Snape has been his Death Eater role model.  It would
be like a kid who was realizing he didn't really want to be a Nazi
going to his SS officer and saying he wasn't sure about this whole
killing thing.  What Draco is trying to do is to suck it up, let no
one see that he's actually this creampuff, and become the DE his dad
always wanted him to be.  

And, I hate to cast aspersions on teenagers, but Draco's behaviour is
entirely normal, as you would see if you opened the newspaper any day
of the week.  How many parents with perfectly healthy relationships
with their kids only find out something is wrong when the police show
up?  I never found anything strange with Draco's behaviour under the
circumstances.  I thought it was an incredibly compelling plot (that I
rather wish we could have broken the Harry PoV for). Neither did any
Draco fan I know, who have made a protracted study of the subject. 
Neither has anybody on this or any other list.  It's the "missing five
hours" of Draco theories-- another one of yours, I think-- something
that doesn't bother anybody in the universe of readers but you.  

-- Sydney, realizing that none of this will convince Neri but feeling
it ought to be put down anyways.