How can I resist sputtering on once again about my favorite character? I tried to keep this short, and I didn't touch on any of the fanfic I love, which almost feels like a crime because there are so many amazing variations on Snape to choose from.
(Warning: this is going to break comment boxes because links take up a lot of hidden characters!)
I see Snape a little differently than writcraft earlier in this thread – not the Byronic (anti)hero, but the fuck-up who paid the ultimate price for his mistakes, the boy who didn't belong anywhere and couldn't hide it (http://firefly-wp.deviantart.com/art/Bye-113783027). He's both horrible and heartbreaking, and he dies just at the point where he finally acquires the pieces that were missing in him as a child, empathy and a sense of moral imperative, the things he lacked and that disfigured him as a human being; the things that, had he lived, might have forced the wizarding world to respect him despite the terrible acts he had committed and the eternal shadow on his soul.
He was a half-Muggle who for reasons never explained in the text was willing to believe that purebloods were better; a working-class child from a loveless home (http://e-c-h.deviantart.com/art/Childhood-149746938), untended, unsupervised, dressed in hand-me-downs, isolated, funny-looking, small for his age (conditions he shared in some respects with Harry, although temperamentally they were very different (http://asylums.insanejournal.com/snarry_games/220290.html). He cared little for his appearance save for his clothes, and the second he was able to switch to wizarding robes, it appears he never wore anything else. His magic inclined toward darkness, and he seemed to believe that the Dark Arts would give him power. But then, magic was supposed to be his ticket out, his escape from poverty and hopelessness. It appears that no one in his childhood instilled in him a sense of right and wrong, nor did it come naturally; there are moments in canon when he seems genuinely confused by other people's (Lily's, Dumbledore's) reactions to his abhorrent behavior. He was all about survival, about climbing out of the gutter.
And he had a single friend who was as magical as he was, but who was clean and pretty and beloved and kind; in other words, everything he was not. She was his proof of another world, another way of life. She was perhaps the symbol of everything he longed for during his greedy, solitary, deprived youth. (http://irisclaymore.deviantart.com/art/The-Choices-We-Make-128009170)
Snape's experiences in school didn't improve him (http://www.deviantart.com/art/Snape-again-309619569) (yes, I know he's too attractive here – in fact, he looks remarkably like Loki. Do I care? No). I'd argue that what happened to him at Hogwarts propelled him straight into Voldemort's arms. Becoming a branded member of a terrorist group is horrific in itself. But in his eagerness to please his new master (http://deeply-horrible.livejournal.com/11879.html), he committed the sin that would destroy the friend who clearly meant more to him than all his dreams of success. By reporting the prophecy, Snape poisoned his soul, crashed his future into a dead-end street, and imprisoned himself for the rest of his life in a debt of grief, hatred, self-loathing, and bitter redemption. All by the time he was 21. Another student portrait that's too pretty, but hey, I can deal with it. (http://www.deviantart.com/art/Severus-Snape-149996364)
I sometimes wonder how he felt about Hogwarts. In a day-to-day sense, it was his home for longer than any other place he ever lived. But he must have hated it sometimes (http://ancatdubh.deviantart.com/art/What-the-hell-am-I-doing-here-160221589), just as he hated teaching, and himself, and Harry.
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timeasmymeasure
Why Snape?
Date: 2014-02-11 08:05 pm (UTC)How can I resist sputtering on once again about my favorite character? I tried to keep this short, and I didn't touch on any of the fanfic I love, which almost feels like a crime because there are so many amazing variations on Snape to choose from.
(Warning: this is going to break comment boxes because links take up a lot of hidden characters!)
I see Snape a little differently than
He was a half-Muggle who for reasons never explained in the text was willing to believe that purebloods were better; a working-class child from a loveless home (http://e-c-h.deviantart.com/art/Childhood-149746938), untended, unsupervised, dressed in hand-me-downs, isolated, funny-looking, small for his age (conditions he shared in some respects with Harry, although temperamentally they were very different (http://asylums.insanejournal.com/snarry_games/220290.html). He cared little for his appearance save for his clothes, and the second he was able to switch to wizarding robes, it appears he never wore anything else. His magic inclined toward darkness, and he seemed to believe that the Dark Arts would give him power. But then, magic was supposed to be his ticket out, his escape from poverty and hopelessness. It appears that no one in his childhood instilled in him a sense of right and wrong, nor did it come naturally; there are moments in canon when he seems genuinely confused by other people's (Lily's, Dumbledore's) reactions to his abhorrent behavior. He was all about survival, about climbing out of the gutter.
And he had a single friend who was as magical as he was, but who was clean and pretty and beloved and kind; in other words, everything he was not. She was his proof of another world, another way of life. She was perhaps the symbol of everything he longed for during his greedy, solitary, deprived youth. (http://irisclaymore.deviantart.com/art/The-Choices-We-Make-128009170)
Snape's experiences in school didn't improve him (http://www.deviantart.com/art/Snape-again-309619569) (yes, I know he's too attractive here – in fact, he looks remarkably like Loki. Do I care? No). I'd argue that what happened to him at Hogwarts propelled him straight into Voldemort's arms. Becoming a branded member of a terrorist group is horrific in itself. But in his eagerness to please his new master (http://deeply-horrible.livejournal.com/11879.html), he committed the sin that would destroy the friend who clearly meant more to him than all his dreams of success. By reporting the prophecy, Snape poisoned his soul, crashed his future into a dead-end street, and imprisoned himself for the rest of his life in a debt of grief, hatred, self-loathing, and bitter redemption. All by the time he was 21. Another student portrait that's too pretty, but hey, I can deal with it. (http://www.deviantart.com/art/Severus-Snape-149996364)
I sometimes wonder how he felt about Hogwarts. In a day-to-day sense, it was his home for longer than any other place he ever lived. But he must have hated it sometimes (http://ancatdubh.deviantart.com/art/What-the-hell-am-I-doing-here-160221589), just as he hated teaching, and himself, and Harry.