LID!Snape rides again (was: High Noon for OFH!Snape)

[Sydney]

No: HPFGUIDX 149769

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Yikes, another delete and repost-- I forgot to attribute justCarol,
and I gave the impression that I thought she agreed with Neri! 
Corrected post:
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justCarol:

I'm
> not so sure that remorse is a selfless emotion. It's more like a deep,
> biting anguish resulting from guilt for a sin or crime that can't be
> undone, and IMO that remorse would certainly have intensified once the
> Potters were dead and all Snape's efforts to save them had come to
> nothing. <SNIP>
>
> Etymology: Middle English, from Middle French remors, from Medieval
> Latin remorsus, from Late Latin, act of biting again, from Latin
> remordEre to bite again, from re- + mordEre to bite -- more at MORDANT
> 1 : a gnawing distress arising from a sense of guilt for past wrongs :
> SELF-REPROACH
>
> Surely Snape, who is constantly reliving the past, would feel exactly
> this type of guilt rather than the kind that seeks forgiveness?

[this is more riffing of the Life Debt thing, but I'll leave it in,
because it goes to the remorse angle:]
Of course all moral feeling is felt internally, whether
warm-and-fuzzies from helping your friends or guilt from doing
something you realize is bad.  The ankle-monitor Life Debt would be a
poor symbol for remorse, though, because it's not tied into doing
wrong, it's tied into to making a stupid error.  It's as though there
was a spell whereby someone got a little drug thrill every time they
did something nice for a friend.  It would feel sinister and ugly and
selfish, not friendly.  You wouldn't refer to one character's feelings
for another that way as 'friendship'.  Likewise, giving someone an
electric shock when they hurt someone isn't 'remorse' or an
appropriate symbol for it.  I just don't see it as something JKR would
do-- she doesn't tend to magic away people's feelings.  It's just...
ugh.  It would be like having Sirius actually just haven taken an
overdose of Recklessness Potion, or Dumbledore hits himself with
cheering charms every morning, or Lupin's actually just on sedatives.
  Ankle-monitor remorse is fake, and seems rather to negate real
remorse than reinforce it.


>Snape in hell, a hell of his own making, a hell he
> cannot escape, except perhaps through Occlumency ("The mind is its
own place/And can make a hell of heaven or a heaven of hell.")

Yeah, Occlumency is much more how JKR uses magic to represent emotion,
because, well, Occlumency IS repression!  You try to make your mind
blank and calm and stuff the uncomfortable feelings into a closed part
of your mind.


>His next step, from this perspective, would
> be to admit them and humbly ask for mercy and forgiveness (Penitence),
> not from God or from Christ (this is the WW, after all), but from the
> person who has suffered most from his "misdoings": Harry.

Room of Love, anybody?  This is where I can see the anti-Snape
'humiliation' scene or the Snape-lover's catharsis scene.  Because
both Snape-lovers and haters, oddly enough, share the desire to see
him suffer!  It just seems necessary for him to break down, so he can
reform, or re-form himself.  He's got to let go of trying to 'fix'
things from the outside, and deal with things on an emotional level. 
I think it's so much more frightening to Snape to have to confront
himself, and move on to justCarol's forgiveness stage, than it is for
him just to hammer forward, just on the other side.  I think this
relates back to the stuff about the shadow-side that came up a few
weeks ago, that it has to be embraced, and accepted, not attacked and
repressed, because it just can't be got rid of.  Snape might think he
can get rid of his anguish by Occlumency, by Dark Magic, by destroying
Voldemort, but he can't-- his pain is going to stay inside him until
he faces it.  


-- Sydney

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Sydney, again, who will sleep for a couple of days before attempting
to post, or do anything requiring higher brain function