Dark Magic and Snape

[Sydney]

No: HPFGUIDX 161451


> Sidney:
> 
> 
> > I don't quite know where JKR is going with Snape and the pure-blood
> > thing.  I think Harry was right the first time in thinking a Death
> > Eater  would hardly be bragging about being a Half-Blood, so 
> > there's something quite weird with the whole HBP moniker. 

> Leslie:
> 
> Oh, I think the HBP thing is Snape all over! What Snape has done 
> reminds me of what gays have done with the word "Queer".  He's 
> reclaimed a derisive moniker and in doing so has empowered himself and 
> rendered that word less capable of hurting him. 

Sydney:

Yes, but we're talking about a guy who joined a violent anti-gay
organization calling himself 'the Queer'.  I think JKR has something
up her sleeve with that, I just don't know what.  Snape's descent and
return function pretty much require him to have bought into the DE
ideology.  But the HPB thing complicates everything.  Not so much the
fact that he IS a half-blood, which plays into Snape's duality and
self-loathing in a very cool way, but the fact that he has this
bizarre nickname that JKR thought was so amazing that she called the
whole book after it.  She flags the oddity of it with "if he'd been a
budding Death Eater he wouldn't have been boasting about being
"Half-Blood", would he?"

I'm dying to know who the Princes were... did Snape give himself the
nick-name, or did other people call him the half-blood Prince to
distinguish him from the pure-blood Princes?  

Sydney