[HPforGrownups] Re: ACID POPS and Teenager Draco

[Magpie]

No: HPFGUIDX 157492

> Mike:
> I'm not a SHIPper and therefore HBP was only half a book for me. I
> really don't care about who SHIPs with who. But even I could read
> the sensual tension in that scene between Snape and Narcissa. As
> Betsy noted, this is a children's series, JKR couldn't have written
> that scene any more lustily than she did without getting herself in
> trouble with her young audience (or more likely, their Parents).

Magpie:
The books are full of explicit romantic and sexual relationships. If we're 
supposed to see Snape and Narcissa having an affair in that scene I think 
JKR would have written something other than just a vague sense of sexual 
tension in the narrative description.  A line, a slip of the 
tongue--anything explicit.  Something a young audience could understand.

Mike:
> Still, I think you must be denying the obvious to not see the S&N
> undertone. Whether you want to classify it as romantic, idolization,
> or simple lust, well, I'll leave that to the SHIP-ers.

Magpie:
The scene has intense things going on between Snape and Narcissa.  That much 
is obvious.  But the stuff that's supposed to be so obviously sexual 
actually fits just as well with what we're told is going on in the scene--a 
desperate woman trying to save her only child going to a man who's 
emotionally involved with all of them but also must play the role of cold 
Death Eater.  I can't count how many times scenes in canon or the movies 
have been described to me as being "obviously" shippy, with no other 
explanation for them than shippiness, when they were, imo, nothing of the 
kind.

Mike:
Though,  ever
> since Snapes twitch in GoF I've wondered what's going on between
> Snape and the Malfoys and ACID POPS works as well as anything else,
> for me, for now.

Magpie:
I've wondered about the connection between them too.  But Snape/Narcissa 
working or not doesn't make it true, and canon seems to link Lucius to Snape 
far more than Narcissa.

> Mike:
> I do agree with Neri in as much as I see Draco acting ooc, but I
> think that was the whole point. We are suppose to notice the
> contrast between Harry and Draco. IOW, "you need your friends"
> vs. "nobody can help me".

Magpie:
Yes, though himself has gone through times when he hid things from 
others--in OotP, for instance, he hid the idea that he was possessed by 
Voldemort at first.  It's not Draco's character being different from Harry's 
that makes him isolated (you and Neri are both pointing out that Draco 
usually goes to others for help), it's the situation.  Sydney has explained 
this in more detail, but Draco is struggling with a fundamental problem with 
who he is.  His task, and the fears that his task has brought up, make it 
hard for him to go to the very people who have been his support system. 
It's a contrast between the life of a DE and life on the good side too.

Mike:
> So what is ooc for Draco? He may be a bungler but he's suppose to be
> smarter than what he's exhibiting. And he knows fixing the cabinets
> is NOT what's going to bring him glory, killing Dumbledore is.

Magpie:
That's your reasoned view of the situation but canonically it doesn't seem 
to be Draco's.  To him everything is wrapped up together.  And to be honest, 
I think it makes sense that Draco is more secretive about the cabinets than 
anything else. That really is the thing that he brings to the table and I 
can see why he wants to hand that over to Snape least of all. It's the thing 
he thinks he actually can do and does. Ultimately I think most of the 
decisions Draco made in HBP will be for the best.

> Mike:
> Yes, but you've only come to that conclusion because *you* don't see
> a good reason for it, not because it isn't plausible.

Magpie:
I've come to the conclusion because it's what written in the book, I think. 
JKR simply did not write HBP with Draco being motivated by feelings about 
Snape/Narcissa.  She wrote HBP with Draco driven by his desire to be a man 
like Lucius and Snape and the growing realization that he wasn't a killer. 
Snape/Narcissa is plausible in the sense that there's no proving a negative. 
They know each other and so could be fooling around off screen as much as 
Lupin/Tonks could have been, and we eventually find out were, in OotP.  But 
I don't see it as making much difference in HBP.

Mike:
And how is
> the 'minor love subplot' of Tonks-Lupin suppose to be helping Harry
> at this point in the story?

Magpie:
Yes, let's look at Lupin/Tonks in comparison to Snape/Narcissa.   First, 
it's explicit, both in there being a mystery to solve and in the solution to 
the mystery being Lupin/Tonks.  "What is wrong with Tonks?" is a question 
asked flat-out in HBP.  In the end Lupin/Tonks have a private scene (albeit 
in front of witnesses) where their affair is made clear.  This is all what 
is missing from Snape/Narcissa so far.

More importantly, Lupin/Tonks is just one of many side plots where the lives 
of people Harry knows are filled in.  He already cares about these people on 
that level.  Snape/Narcissa, by contrast, is being used in the theory I was 
arguing against to (paraphrasing Sydney's words about Snape/Harry here 
because I think the same impulse is often applied to Draco's story in HBP) 
"drain that character's story of its intensity and thematic importance." 
Rather than being a random side story of minor characters Harry likes like 
Lupin/Tonks, this theory is more like saying that there's Harry/Dumbledore 
in HBP and that explains Dumbledore's giving Harry private lessons and 
telling him about the Dark Lord etc.  Because Dumbledore's always kept Harry 
protected from this stuff in the past.  And it can't be because he's dying 
and Harry's old enough to take over because coming of age is a cliche.

Mike:
And since when has JKR limited the
> number of reasons for a character's actions, especially Snape's?

Magpie:
Snape's true motivations have been carefully hidden from us but I think 
ultimately he'll hang together in a pretty consistent way that ties together 
the things we've already seen.

Mike:
> I'm not saying that Draco is motivated by any suspicion of a Snape-
> Narcissa love affair, but that doesn't preclude it being a factor
> for Snape.

Magpie:
But to be clear, that was Neri's point and the point I was arguing against. 
I don't have a strong feeling on Snape/Narcissa one way or another--I agree 
with Sydney on its potential storywise and so lean towards Snape/Lily, but 
what I'm arguing against here is a theory of Snape/Narcissa that denies 
Draco's coming of age story in HBP.  That story, btw, will I think link to 
Harry in ways the Snape/Narcissa version doesn't.  (Really, one of the odd 
things about HBP is the way JKR doesn't allow it to start affecting Harry in 
that book, but I think she's saving all that type stuff for Book VII.)


> Mike:
> I'm betting that you wish you hadn't written these two lines. Since
> the rest of your argument is reasoned, why add these two silly
> sentences? Draco doesn't ask this 'brutal force' to "steal his
> glory", because this IS where he would get his glory, not fixing a
> cabinet, and you know that.

Magpie:
I'm not really regretting it, actually, because Neri's argument, to which I 
was responding, is different from yours.:-)  That argument claimed that 
Draco's wanting to do this himself for glory or any other reason, was 
irrational in the face of danger to his family.  You are suggesting a 
different idea, that help for the cabinet would not interfere with his glory 
the way help with the killing did.  I see the logic behind that thinking, 
but I think canon explicitly denies that Draco feels this way.  He's hiding 
from Snape, period.  Snape isn't on his side, because Draco's figuring out 
he doesn't have what it takes to be on what he thinks is Snape's side.

-m