High Noon for OFH!Snape

[nrenka]

No: HPFGUIDX 149440

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "Sydney" <sydpad at ...> wrote:

BTW, as a general reminder, labeling posts 'Me' is about as confusing 
as it gets.  Yeah, it may look ugly to refer to yourself in the third 
person, but it's helpful.  Excuse me while I put my tea cozy back in 
the linen chest.

> Sydney:
>
> *furrows brow*  Sorry, I must have missed the part where you explain
> why he took the Vow in the first place. That was my point.  He
> wouldn't have taken the Vow unless he was willing to die.

I don't know; I know full well that I could die every time I go 
skiing in the woods, but I don't intend to, trusting in my abilities 
to keep me afloat for the reward of extreme sore knees and the thrill 
of the sheer insanity.  There seems the potential for a similar high-
risk game with the Vow: what's open are his reasons for taking it.  
ACID POPS certainly provides one explanation, as do some other 
explanations involving his valuation of Draco over Dumbledore.  I was 
more interested in generalities than speculation, at that moment.

> Is this arrogant!Snape or idiot!Snape?  When people argue things 
> like this, which was done with the DADA curse, I'm always a bit 
> stymied. Because I don't think, pardon me, that you're really 
> making any attempt to make sense of Snape here.  You're fine with 
> him taking Vows that he's not even sure what they're going to 
> contain, that he dies automatically if he fails them, because 
> he's 'arrogant'. 

I think he is arrogant, yes.  But I also think (and have elaborated 
on it in the past) that he's trying to play both sides and he's 
serving two masters.  What happens in Spinner's End is that he's 
doing a very nice job of that.  He's busy explaining away all sorts 
of pesky behavior which seems pro-Dumbledore, just as he could be 
envisioned explaining away all sorts of pesky behavior which seemed 
pro-Voldemort--listies generally do that for him very well.  And then 
he gets caught in a situation he probably would have wanted to avoid, 
cornered by Narcissa into a moment of commitment.  And I am also 
probably more fine with a streak of irrationality in the character 
than most people; there's been a tendency for years to make Snape 
into the calculating Ice King, regardless of his canonical CAPSLOCK 
tendencies.

> And here's the classic problem with OFH!Snape posts-- to a large
> extent it seems to be all about saying, "I'm not even going to try 
> to get into this person's head, because obviously he's nothing like 
> a normal human being, or certainly nothing like ME, so he doesn't 
> have to make any sense.

No, he just doesn't have to be what any of us *want* him to be.  So 
many of the arguments do have a layer of "This doesn't make sense to 
me, therefore it can't be what JKR is writing."  If you want an 
illustration of the dangers of that, look at everyone who got 
poleaxed by Ron and Hermione hooking up, because they totally thought 
there was nothing there or it would be an abusive relationship, ad 
nauseam.  I am totally cool, I admit, with embracing things that 
don't conform to my worldview on personal motivations and 
relationships.  Hell, none of the teenage romance made sense to my 
personal sense of how things like that go, but it made sense in terms 
of their characters and what they wanted from each other.

<snip>

> Teachers who are 'out for themselves' don't ride their students and 
> give them long essays and work above their level;  they give them 
> stupid, simple work that they can't go far wrong on and is easy to 
> grade. 

But if that's something gratifying to someone out for himself, why 
not?  I've stated *again and again* that how I see Snape is not 
always the 'Path of Least Resistance', which is what you want to 
reduce everything OFH into.  It's the Path of Gratification, which 
can produce results which seem so contrary to common sense that 
there's always a rush to retcon them, to smooth out the rough edges.  
I don't doubt that Snape rather enjoys running his class at a high 
level.  Less frustating than trying to be accomodating of everyone's 
skills and natures (for one thing), far more opportunities to crush 
the egos and wishes of his students, far more opportunities to 
exercise his very particular reading of fairness and the like.

> Why is 'out-for-himself' Snape teaching at all for that matter?  

Because it keeps him in a position which he likes?  Dumbledore trusts 
him, he's protected from the Ministry underneath Dumbledore's aegis.  
We shouldn't forget that the reign of Crouch was much more 
persecutorial than the comparatively benign bumbling of Fudge.  And 
when we go in for personal preference, I find that 'cui bono' 
tradeoff much more convincing than "Snape who hates teaching and 
students but stays out of the depth of his loyalty to Dumbledore, 
just ready to take action again when he's needed, willing to 
subjugate his own desires".

> -- Sydney, who can well understand why people who don't like Snape
> keep falling back on the "nothing to see here folks" write-off for 
> all the many dramatic, mysterious, and emotional scenes JKR 
> lavishes on him, seeing as they can't really seem to explain it any 
> other way.

It's more that mystery is in the eye of the beholder than anything 
else.  Maybe I've just become a jaded old listie after all of this 
time, but I've seen far, far more complicated and involved (and 
dramatic and mysterious) theories and explanations than this fall by 
the wayside or be crushed in one fell swoop of a book.  (OotP was 
heavy enough to do a lot of that).  I don't think there's nothing to 
see there.  I just think there is for SURE far less than the 
accumulated amount of electronic ink and time would indicate, and 
because I'm a bad person, it all amuses me quite a bit to watch 
theories end up on the GARBAGE SCOW.

-Nora would provide, on request, her list of favorite dramatic 
scenes/moments or character tidbits which proved not to be much of 
anything complex or deep in the long run (yet)