It's all spoilers ... some is replies

[nrenka]

--- In the_old_crowd at yahoogroups.com, "Catlady (Rita Prince Winston)"
<catlady at ...> wrote:

<snip>

How I hate to cut
the spoiler space
discussing the Choephori
I wish I'd read it in the original
Back when I was in college
But we did the Antigone instead
And that's easier Greek
Leaving aside the choruses, which always hurt
I knew for sure we were in for a bloodbath
When I saw that quote
And JKR didn't fail to provide
Although it would be totally wrong
To give any spoilers in the spoiler space
The interpretation of the piece is pretty complicated
And hinges on some ideas about divinity that we don't share
In fact, it's very possible to argue
That Athena's assertion isn't meant to be taken as doctrine
And there's something synthetic going on
I'm rather rusty in that area, though
There's too much else out there to read
And I don't even want to think
About how many texts were lost in transmission
We're lucky to have Harry Potter so intact
I think this is probably enough space,
Am I right?
I hope so, and if not
And I have spoiled something for you
Then you can make me iron my hands.



> Snape: "I thought ... you were going ... to keep her ... safe ..."
> 
> "She and James put their faith in the wrong person', said 
> Dumbledore. "Rather like you, Severus. Weren't you hoping that Lord 
> Voldemort would spare her?"

I have to be smug here and say that I didn't call this one 100%, but I
got pretty damn close: this is almost (almost!) the wonderful old
TEWWW EWWW TO BE TREWWW theory, which was not of my origin but seemed
to be, post-HBP, to be a definite possibility:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/132993

is the resurrection.

Certainly more thematically on than any sappy take on it. :)

> But the Pensieve memories don't look like Love to me -- more like
> Obsession. He looked at her 'greedily' and had very little interest 
> in her happiness. 'Loving' a Mudblood didn't make him reconsider his
> bloodist and anti-Muggle views. I was *shocked*; I'd believed that
> Snape never was really a bloodist, because it's so stupid and
> illogical and in contradiction to empirical evidence, and one thing 
> he is is intelligent! 'Loving' her didn't make him reconsider his 
> cruel sense of humor (about whatever it was that Mulciber did to 
> Macdonald).  Now I believe Snape joined the Death Eaters because 
> they were his kind of people, not just in an anti-Gryffindor snit or 
> having been seduced into it by persuasive brainy evil friends. 
> Elkins was right.

I leave this unsnipped because...yeah.

I'll admit that I was hoping for an overt ESE/OFH!Snape because it
would have necessarily gone along with something we *didn't* get,
which was a full-blown deconstruction of Dumbledore as authority.  I
mean, despite all his flaws and manipulations, he basically knows what
needs to be done and Harry's role is to realize that; it's not that
Dumbledore doesn't know what to do, it's that he's flawed and marked
and unable to do it himself.  That's the plotline, and I don't see any
way to fundamentally read it differently.

I was hoping for the trope of "younger generation figures out a
different way from the older generation and thus asserts
independence," which is not an uncommon idea, but JKR went for
"Dumbledore's man" instead.  I never doubted that could happen, but I
guess I wanted the other.

-Nora gets back to non-Aeschylean takes on the Iphigenie story