me: there's a stretch at the end where there's no dialogue at all
me: just like harry running, and sirius in danger, and dementors
me: and three minutes of score telling us what's happening in the cartoon
me: and we already had the big dementors music like twice before, so we know their motif
me: and the patronus music which is like "hey harry you have adult friends it's cool"
me: they are even wearing white and black respectively
me: and then it's the motif about "you have a past and parents who loved you" and it applies to bein good to sirius right now!
been listening to that soundtrack for a couple days. it's not painful like it has been at times; like, my senses are maybe turned down a little, my heart doesn't break, I don't need to cry all the time.
but like I texted D right after the movie, I did still cry when Sirius flew away on Buckbeak at the end. ... I mean. if I'm not going to exercise my crying muscles for that, then what is even the point of my mood disorder.
(no subject)
okay but @prongsyouignoramus and i really neeed to know. where did the sexy severus snape come from. why. he’s actually described as this in the wiki -
Severus Snape was a thin man with sallow skin, a large, hooked nose and yellow, uneven teeth. He usually dressed in flowing black robes which made him resemble “an overgrown bat”. He had shoulder-length, greasy black hair which framed his face in curtains, curling lips and dark, penetrating eyes that resembled tunnels. As a Death Eater, he bears the Dark Mark on his left inner forearm.
The younger Snape had a “stringy, pallid look”, being “round-shouldered yet angular” and with a “twitchy walk that recalled a spider”, as well as “long oily hair that jumped about his face.”
how is this?? attractive?? why is there so much fic about it???? who decided that was a good idea?? i dont undersTAND can someone who was around when that started pls explain im begging u
I’m going to… jump on this, here. I cannot explain anything to you about Harry Potter fandom since about 2008, but I can tell you about what it was like when the books were still being published, and why the openness of canon left a lot of room for being interested in Snape.
After GoF (2000) left us with that cliffhanger where Snape swept out of the hospital wing on Dumbledore’s “if you are prepared…” and nothing more; and before The Prince’s Tale (*spits on ground*) and that Lily backstory (*spit*spit*) happened in 2007, there were two widespread, fairly equally canonically supported theories about Snape’s primary motivations:
- Snape was working for Voldemort. Motivations for him doing so would include all sorts of shit supported by his nasty behavior at Hogwarts: he believed in the cause of blood purity, he enjoyed torturing people, he got off on being more powerful than other people. Before 2005 (HBP), you also saw a lot of Lord Snape of Snape Manor fanon in this version of characterization: old wizarding family, hobnobbed with the Malfoys, blind ambition/thirst for power and influence, etc etc (BUT WHAT ABOUT MY ORDER OF MERLIN).
This characterization also includes a strong component of Snape being ballsy and clever as hell to be double-double crossing Dumbledore, who he had made believe he was “reformed” or “safe” at the close of the first war. He would need to be very cunning indeed to be running this game from inside Hogwarts. - Snape was a spy for Dumbledore. Motivations for him usually included him realizing the violence he had been doing as a Death Eater was wrong and seeking redemption (perhaps after a single event against A Friend); or maybe just realizing that Team Dumbledore would be harder but safer for him personally in the long run. Importantly, even in versions of the story where he’s secretly noble and penitent, none of this made him a nice guy. This supposes he was all these things and a complete bastard to Harry and co. in class and in life all day every day. There’s a duality here (unless you were a Snapewife. then, you know, he suffers so beautifully, he’s probably a demigod).
This scenario also requires a lot of cleverness, as well as bravery, to be running this against Violent Madman Voldemort and turning against the friends of his youth, “a crowd of Slytherins who nearly all turned out to be Death Eaters.”
So, okay. In either situation mentioned above,
- Snape is up against a whole bunch of push-back as he stands his moral ground in one direction or another (or, if he’s only looking out for himself, kind of selfishly guarding himself against anyone else’s judgement)
- He’s a genius for duping practically omniscient characters
- Day-to-day he’s either being purely, delightfully evil to children or struggling with his Evil Impulses and silently suffering while being evil to children
- Either way he’s definitely Seen Things and Been Places that most people don’t get to go, even the other wizards who inhabit his fictional world.
You can definitely primarily characterize Snape as a Tortured Soul, before (*spit*) That Backstory (*spit*spit*) is revealed. And he wears a lot of black; and lives in a dungeon; and likes careful, fiddly magic best, quietly and intensely carrying out subtle operations under everybody’s noses.
He’s Byronic. He’s like 3000% Byronic. It doesn’t actually matter what the textual description of his appearance is, because this is fandom, and we ignore shit we don’t like all the time (*spits on that chapter one more time*) – and Harry P is one Unreliable Narrator in other regards, amirite? When you don’t know Snape’s backstory is (*spit*spit*) it doubles how Mysterious and Secretly Badass he could be. Both on a textual level – He’s The Spy – and on a metatextual level – This Character Is Contentious And Hotly Contested, I Better Double Down On My Theory – he is Mysterious and so, Powerful As Fuck.
There’s also of course, how Alan Rickman Is Hot.
I can’t tell you what’s happened in the last ten years. But my guess is that people who love that (*spit*) backstory (*spit*spit*) take our second “spy for Dumbledore” theory and just woobie it up to like 13 or so, our poor misunderstood LOVESTRUCK antihero. And everybody else who doesn’t love it still acknowledges The Chapter (*spit*) exists, and are left having to react to how textually gross and frankly boring that canonical backstory left Severus Snape.
(no subject)
@byelawliet: you n a i l e d it in your comment and now i'm reeling and i need more critical discussion gsjkgnk
SURE YEAH I PASSINGLY LIKE TALKING ABOUT PRISONER OF AZKABAN
- Sirius and Lupin have almost exactly opposite introductions: Sirius is, off-screen, the most monstrous human that you could possibly imagine. What we know to be evil by this point in the series (dark wizardry, ruthlessness, lack of compassion), he takes one step further (personal face-to-face murder of thirteen people, so little remorse that he in fact just laughs afterwards). Lupin, on the other hand, shows up in person and protects Harry and, even rarer, is kind to him.
- Sirius hovers on the periphery of the narrative: he’s definitely around Hogwarts, but he rarely shows up, except when he bursts in, violently, to do Harry harm. (it transpires this is actually a steadfast and loyal act.) Lupin, in contrast, is a constant in Harry’s life, a figure he can depend on – except when he disappears. (it transpires that this is violent.)
- Sirius, a man, is the most inhuman man. Lupin, a man, is the most human man, but it turns out he is a beast. But the beast is human. Sirius is a beast, but not in the way you think. His beast is also human.
- they meet in the middle at the Shrieking Shack, both figuratively (human/beast) and literally, in the narrative. Neither of them is wholly man nor beast.
- The Shrieking Shack is the turning point, and like, the most liminal setting to exist. Here are the reversals and the reveals: Lupin says with an odd shiver passing over his face that he is a werewolf. Sirius appears in person and speaks for himself and all the terrible things he’s done mean something fairly human and noble. Lupin owns up to being selfish and not as morally correct as Harry has been thinking. Sirius turns out to be almost entirely selfless and way, way more morally correct than you could have hoped. Both of them are still intense and kind of Wrong in the ways that they do the things they do.
- it makes 100% sense to me that people misremember Sirius as having hidden in the Shack all year as opposed to the Forest where he actually hid! but here are the facts: Sirius lives away from society, in the wild. Lupin lives in the center of society, in the castle. The Shack is both inside society, a dwelling in Hogsmeade; plus entirely outside, on the periphery of the village and spoken of by the villagers as this Other thing full of screaming non-people and echoes of unquiet souls. The Shack is the place that belongs to both of them.
- they’re both mandog dogmen ok
obligatory follow-up
why on earth do you call your organization "death eaters" if you yourselves have nothing to do with immortality in your doctrine
it's 100% voldemort's thing and not yours
and actually, a skull with a snake coming out of its mouth just a shitty tattoo someone who thinks they're hardcore but actually didn't put much thought into it beyond "oh, yeah, those two things are SO SCARY" would get
(1) the symbolism's moderately better if, instead of every book illustration/fanart/WB movie CG that i've seen, your skull is sitting like it's resting on a table or something and the snake is forcing its way between and under and out and tugging the jaw open way wider than it was meant to be tugged. then the skull is just this thing, and the snake (your organization) is insinuating its way around and through and completely disregarding it (death) in a visual that's deeply unsettling for not respecting the humanity or organic properties inherent in the skull. add points for the eye socket having cracked so that it's distended and huge and garish, etc.
a. problems with this imagining: it's not a fucking logo, which is why you get the cartoonish skulls in book illustrations/fanarts/shitty CGs; you can't reproduce it in actor-character tattoos or chapter headings.
b. of course, if you're producing the movie, you have three dimensions to work in when it comes time to do the symbol in the sky because it's fucking magic and your budget is five kajillion dollars wouldn't it be great to have an arresting, actually terrifying visual to kick off your Darker And Scarier movie4? (seriously, you could animate the snake just completely demolishing the skull, slowly and carefully and deliberately.)
(2) so you might could kick up the symbolism by having the snake be big enough to be desecrating the skull in some other way, by wrapping itself around and crushing it. "death eaters" though you may be, i can't imagine a snake going to swallow the skull could be anything but silly-looking. or just entwine the fucking snake around and through the skull for maximum disrespecting effect, just draped across the lower jaw from cheek to cheek and twisted around back to enter one eye and slither out the other, so that the effect of being "consuming" is visually and emotionally the same.
C. jesus fuck do i have to think of everything around here!
back to A. death eaters do not, in fact, eat death or seek immortality in any explicit or even really thematic way
they're genocidal, and powerful, and their propaganda is uncohesive and unimpressive
all you have to do is restructure the organization a little bit, jo rowling. muggles live limited, tiny, unfulfilling lives, because they are missing out on The Glorious Bloodline and Magical Ability which make you virile* (*optionally gendered; maybe just 'potent') and strong and hearty and long-lived. it is our right as the powerful, thick snakes (all right lol i totally want this to be a horrible masculine insecurities thing) to consume these lesser individuals, as morbidly weak and brittle and temporary as they are when they do not have The Gift and wither and die so quickly.
and as proof of our superiority, we have at the head of our organization a wizard who has literally accomplished supremacy over mere humanity and in fact mastered the greatest secret of wizardry which is eternal life
that wasn't even a little hard, jo. jo's editors, i'm looking at you.
THANK YOU BLOGOSPHERE! GOOD NIGHT!
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Funny story: I've now had two hilariously stupid nightmares not about picking up the book itself, but picking up that ticket to reserve places in line. In the first one I couldn't find parking and had to drive round and round Downtown Suburbia long enough to lose my spot as first in line to a pack of competent people who had successfully parked; then, when I got to the front to pick up my and
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Last night I got into a dream-fight with the employees working behind the counter after they screwed up and gave me an invalid ticket my first trip through the line. I doubled back to politely inform them of their error and ask them to exchange my dud ticket (which had a barcode which wouldn't scan-- like these tickets are going to be anything but pieces of paper with a number printed on them and maybe a logo) for a functioning one of the same number. They took my ticket, hid it, then asked me what my number had been to make sure I wasn't trying to cheat my way into a better place in line. "Sixty?" I answered. The teenage guy smirked and informed me that it was sixty five and handed me ticket no. 100 as punishment for trying to cheat. Sensing I wasn't going to win an argument with him and his older female manager, who were obviously harried from dealing with all these crazy fans, I said something loudly sarcastic and purposely got into a shouting match with the two of them. Whereupon they took my #100 ticket away entirely, threw me out, and told me not to bother showing up at midnight for my book.
Maybe I need to calm down. =P
In other disproportionately distressing news,
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Time to get back to work, though.
[5 days] Sorcerer's Stone re-read.
For posterity's sake, I'm going to go ahead and stick the lj entry/book review I started writing last fall with this newer one.
November 2006
A little more than halfway through Sorcerer's Stone again-- it makes wonderfully calming bedtime reading. Passing thoughts:
July 2007:
- ( Horcruxes in book 1. )
- ( Unicorn blood and other magic to cheat death. )
- ( Miscellaneous character notes. )
- ( A reminder of why I don't want to see OotP. )
Stray thought not strictly related to book discussion: The answer to "what was this character like at fifteen" seems to provide a good indicator of fundamental personality and moral character. Nnnnot sure how I'd stand up to such a test. :)
Stay tuned for (possible) rehashing of 2-6, a little bit considering the relationship between Harry and Voldemort, and Deathly Hallow predictions for the record. It appears I am bored or maybe searching for meaning in this stupid series I spent most of the last eight years thinking about.