Why does Snape wants DADA job if it cursed? LONG

[Sydney]

No: HPFGUIDX 148983

Me:
>>it was lupinlore's 'denial what
 > > curse I don't see any curse I'm a pasteboard villain so I don't make
 > > sense but I'm so psychologically subtle at the same time that I also
 > > don't make sense' version that was causing me the whiplash.

 > Neri:
 > Well, this may have been Lupinlore's theory, although he may have
 > troubles recognizing it by now <g>

Me:
Oh, if Lupinlore has difficulty recognizing it, I would be MORE than
happy to provide the quotage <evil g>

Lupinlore:
>The kind of psychologically
>realistic take we are discussing might not be good on film, but at
>least some of us think that it is, at least occasionally, good in
>novels.  ...they just let irrationality be
>irrationality and self-destructive behavior be self-destructive
>behavior and they acknowledge that sometimes human motivation is
>neither logical nor meaningful for anyone other than the person being
>motivated.

and, also Lupinlore:

> Villains never really make sense, that's part
>of the reason they're villains.  Heroes or "good" characters,
>however, are supposed to make at least a surface kind of sense.

Just so you know, I'm going to cross-stitch that last one on a sampler
and hang it over my desk.

Neri:
> but it's certainly not my theory.

Sorry-- I'm assuming everyone is following the thread in general, not
conducting successive one-on-one conversations.  Am I mistaking the
etiquette?

 > Neri:
 > I'm sure Voldemort didn't object to his agent at Hogwarts taking the
 > DADA post (he already had two previous agents in this post, so why not
 > Snape?). Maybe he didn't plan on Snape holding it for more then a
 > year, or maybe he just left it as a challenge for Snape to break the
 > curse, or maybe he actually told Snape how to avoid it, or maybe he
 > only gave him some pointers.

If V-mort allowed the curse to destroy two of his other minions,
including 'his most loyal' Barty Jr., why on earth would he help Snape
with it?  Also a little tricky as he was Vapourmort for most of this
period?  And would Snape imagine that V-mort might get a kick out of
'challenging' his servants to defy him and break his spells?  This
just sounds vanishingly unlikely.

 >in any
 > case I don't think Snape was planning to make a public announcement
 > that he only succeeded in breaking the>
 > connections with the Dark Lord. If the whole WW continues to believe
 > that it's because Snape is a DADA genius, do you see Snape having any
 > problem with that?

It's VOLDEMORT'S problem with it that I was referring to.  Breaking
his curse would be an overt act of defiance and challenge to V-mort; 
and maybe Snape would enjoy that, but as he's making an effort to
remain undercover otherwise, I just can't see Snape thinking it would
be a bright idea for a fun summer project.

More objections to Curse-Breaking-Hubris-and-Fall Snape:

Me:
 > >it doesn't add anything to the Snape/Harry dynamic, it just goes
to the illustration
 > > of Snape's character, in which case I think JKR would have had a
scene
 > > where's Snape's attitude to the curse was made explicit, so we could
 > > watch him fall with that in mind.  Arrogant!Snape would work so much
 > > better that way, no?
 > > >
 > Neri:
 > It would, in a book named "Severus Snape and the DADA jinx". But in a
 > book named "Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince", arrogant!Snape
 > really doesn't require any more scenes to illustrate him.


I think you're confusing CLARITY in storytelling with INTEREST.  You
seem to think that by making the theoretical hubristic!Snape CLEAR,
JKR would be giving it more focus.  But I don't think this is true at
all-- if she had simply made it obvious that Snape thought he could
break the curse, it would pull LESS focus.  Why are half the threads
on this board about Snape?  Because he's ambiguous and therefore
interesting.  He's the half-hidden thing that we're all craning our
necks to get a better look at.  Rowling uses this all the time to keep
(or distract!) our attention-- we could have cleared up the Tonks
thing with one line of dialogue from Mrs. Weasley.  JKR could have
used the Umbrige scene in OoP to clear up the DADA job thing, instead
she used it to flag it and leave it open, with Snape's, "I suggest you
ask Dumbledore".  And, unlike the Tonks thing, it's NOT closed-- it's
more open than ever.  Why did Snape want so badly the thing that would
destroy him in such a dramatic fashion?

Motivations are really, REALLY important to JKR.  Look at Filch.  He
was working okay already as janitor-who-hates-troublemaking-kids
character, but she layered on the extra and more powerful motivation
of jealousy over their powers.  She didn't do it because Flich is a
fascinating guy who's going to take over the story.  She did because,
as a novelist, she's all about what makes people tick.

-- Sydney