What Backstory Would You Have Wanted for Snape?

[reinalobelia.livejournal.com]

Hi, first time poster, long (long, long, long) time lurker. I almost want to apologize for making this post, as it's about one of the most (and yet not enough?!) oft-repeated complaints surrounding DH, namely the handling of the motivations behind one Severus Snape.

A tl;dr background of myself: I read the first six books some time in 2006-7 and become absolutely consumed by the series. And then DH broke my heart to pieces with its release. I spent the next 5 years recovering those pieces and healing, and thankfully I was still able to find fans whose opinions still jived with mine up until 2012, when I woke up one morning and finally threw the series away in disgust and through weariness. For reasons unknown to me, I've started dabbling with fandom again recently - I suspect I'm probably in that stage where I need a new hobby but have nothing new to fall back on so I'm nostalgic. Because I was a fan for so short a time before the series concluded, I've always almost felt like I was never a "true" fan since I wasn't part of most of the discourse pre-DH. And yet I consider myself as being from "that generation of HP fans", and not the newer generation made up of so many Snape-haters I see on more currently relevant social media platforms like Reddit and Tumblr. I hope that doesn't make me sound elitist but, well, fuck it, lol (we can swear, right??).

And that brings me to why I'm here: it's amazing how the general sentiment in fandom has shifted so drastically from the loudest voices pre-DH saying how much they love Snape to the present post-DH era, where he's reduced to a friend-zoned, incel, Nice Guy {insert whatever other labels anti-Snape fans attach to him}. The point I'm really trying to make is: I feel almost completely out of touch with most places discussing Snape on the Internet except for DTCL. I truly want to thank you all for still being around, from the bottom of my heart. I hope this is okay, but I particularly want to thank torchedsong for making her post also talking about how Snape was flattened as a character - it made me realize there are still people around in the fandom who remembered the potential he used to have.

And now to come to the title of the post. I want to wholeheartedly reject the "Lily as end-all, be-all" motivation. So I was wondering:

- What would YOU have liked for Snape's motivation to have been for becoming Dumbledore's man?
- What kind of scenario do you imagine led him to make the change?
- Prior to the release of DH, what were you /hoping/ for his motivation to be?

I have to admit that I struggle with these questions myself. For example, a number of slash fans played with with idea of Snape's motivation to have been Regulus Black. And honestly, while this would have been less of a character-destroying reveal (not that JKR would ever actually go down this route), it would make the matter of Snape's opinions regarding blood politics and his moral development more complicated. So an additional question:

- What kind of motivation/catalyst would you have liked for Snape to realize that not just violence but any kind of discrimination based on blood is wrong? (Unless you would have been fine for him to just have a personal, selfish motive behind betraying Voldemort, that's fine too).

Thank you ♡

Comments

[sunnyskywalker]

DH came across as ticking off items on a list, not a fully-formed novel. There are some dramatic scenes with (some) answers, and some bits connecting them, but it doesn't quite hang together, either with itself or the series as a whole. It's like each scene has barely enough explanation to support itself (if that), and is at least semi-isolated from the others.

It's a real shame, because it could have been so much better even holding to the same general outline. Awe and peace at seeing Snape's Patronus without knowing it's his? Harry getting incontrovertible evidence that his mentor was dodgy and maybe he should think for himself? The wizarding world finally having a smidgen of literary culture? So much potential! Even the ridiculous Seven Potters thing had some thematic meaning (instead of cutting himself into bits like Voldemort, Harry multiplies himself because he has friends); if it had made any plot sense, it could have been neat. If the pointless contradictions had been ironed out, the disconnected bits connected, and the character complexity not been squashed at the last minute, the book would have gotten a lot closer to being the book it wanted to be.

At least she didn't go so far as to put in some categorical statement that Snape didn't have other motives, or that he didn't have complicated feelings for Lily that were really hard to face after she died (plus Dumbledore manipulated them). Which doesn't help the book be better, but at least she didn't manage to write out all hope of the characters being fully human.

[mary-j-59.livejournal.com]

I wish I could like this response. That is all.