High Noon for OFH!Snape

[nrenka]

No: HPFGUIDX 149430

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "pippin_999" <foxmoth at ...> 
wrote:

> Pippin:
> Maybe in RL, but it's generally the author's responsibility to know 
> what makes the character happy and to demonstrate this to the 
> reader. A universe where love is the most potent power and the 
> future of mankind is written in the stars is not the sort of 
> existentialist place where you can't really understand why anyone 
> else acts the way they do.

True, but we are all speculating at the moment, and we may well be 
*wrong* given future revelations.  I've just been thinking about all 
the arguments that go "Snape couldn't possibly want to give up his 
job, the esteem of the WW, etc., he wouldn't be happy and thus 
couldn't have done these actions except as ordered and under 
duress".  Those tend to be centered around each person's perceptions 
of what would make Snape happy, and those may not be the 'actual' 
ones.  There's also to point out that we may have been given some 
mildly discomforting reasons for acting as he does, as you admit 
below. :)

> I don't doubt it does make Snape happy to be a jerk to Harry, but 
> you'd have to ignore canon, specifically the jerk of Snape's hand, 
> to say it made him happy to take the vow. And you'd have to ignore 
> canon again, specifically the look of hatred and revulsion, to say 
> it made Snape happy to fulfill it.

There's a little bit of a gap here.  Happiness may not be the 
immediate and most proximate result of the action, but the action may 
well be geared towards some perception of future benefit.  I don't 
know anyone who is constantly happy at everything they do in order to 
further their own interests, but those ultimate goals are generally 
things that make them happy, for their own definition of happy.

As for the look of hatred and revulsion, it's your interpretation 
that those are self-directed emotions, but that's not the only one: 
they may well be directed at Dumbledore.  One can thus not rule out 
some kind of gratification at disposing of someone who is hated.  
Again, it's one possible read, but not one which can be excluded at 
present.

> Pippin:
> On the contrary, Snape's gratification is not sketchily drawn at 
> all. We have copious descriptions of what makes him happy, and we 
> also see him failing to conceal happiness.
> 
> "Snape loomed behind them, half in shadow, wearing a most
> peculiar expression: It was as though he was trying hard not to 
> smile." -CoS ch 9
> 
> What we don't know is where Snape's loyalties lie. OFH! basically
> says he hasn't got any, which would make him redundant, just a
> lesser copy of Voldemort, incapable of allegiance. 

I guess it boils down to me being skeptical of this claim that 
Snape's happiness is centered in one area (as you mention, we find 
him continually gratified at trying to catch others, etc.) but his 
loyalties are unrelated to this, a completely independent variable.

It's interesting that you bring up the parallelism to Voldemort.  
Maybe it's just too damn obvious and Harry is Wrong Yet Again by 
picking up on it, but it is striking, no?  One can argue that he's 
thus going to be a contrary mirror, a different path, but that's also 
not quite guaranteed.

> Pippin:
> In a way I think you're right. IMO the plot's going to twist like a 
> pretzel, but the motives will be simple enough for a ten year old to
> understand. That's another reason why I don't like OFH as I keep 
> saying -- if Snape sometimes favors Dumbledore and sometimes 
> Voldemort, then for every situation you'll have to explain which 
> side Snape thought he was helping and why...

'Cui bono?' is always an excellent question.  I don't see that it has 
to be exceptionally complicated.  I have my own mental division into 
periods marked by a dominant concern; it's only come both OotP and 
HBP that things get genuinely messy (and maybe the backstory around 
the time period we're all curious about), and frankly, it's going to 
take a decent amount of explanation to pull off DDM! for that either.

Oh, wait--ESE!Lupin is going to make it all so easy and tie it up in 
one package.  How could I forget. :)

-Nora has absolutely no faith in the "It's too obvious so it couldn't 
be right" school of reading these books, anymore