some kind of snark faery (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
arcanetrivia) wrote2008-01-10 01:52 am
arcanetrivia) wrote2008-01-10 01:52 am
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Snapecast 26
I feel a little annoyed with what I hear as the opinions expressed in the "Snape &" segment in this last Snapecast.
I'm one of the people who didn't get really fanatic until Deathly Hallows, but it's not that I didn't like Severus before. I did, I really did. I always thought he was an awesome character, where "always" is defined as "since I picked up the series", which was probably between GoF and OotP since I remember thinking, "oh, there's a movie coming out, I should read at least the first book first." It's just that my "awesomeness!" was casual, as were my thoughts about the whole series.
After reading GoF, I had mostly put it out of my mind until OotP, and the same for HBP and DH. Not that I forgot the plot arc totally, but I wasn't spending time analyzing and fanficcing then, so as to keep it constantly in the forefront. (HBP, however, immediately became my favourite when I read it, and still is; I don't care what you may say about how it is part of the downward slide of which DH is the culminating sand-pit).
When I read DH, I experienced it at the time as "wait a minute; I think now I actually care enough to devote significant CPU cycles to all this mess *adds it to the list with MST3K and HHG* ", and then, around that seed of Severus Snape, it all crystallized backwards. My perception of him, even my memory of my perception of him, was altered (or should I say enriched), but that among many things. I found myself developing actual opinions about things for which I previously had only very casual "eh, ok / eh, not so great" feelings.
I still feel very dumb for not picking up on all the fandom theories before the big reveal, but then, until after said reveal, I didn't care enough to actually put my mind to it, anyway. (OTOH I am terrible at picking up on hints to adventure game puzzle solutions and on interpersonal subtext. So maybe I wouldn't have got it even if I had cared.)
But I digress. The point is this is making me feel like less of a proper Snape fan, as if my sheer n00bness wasn't enough by itself. I had no idea there was any series called Harry Potter and the Anything at All at the time that PS/SS was released.
I can only speculate, but to be a "DH convert" (even though that's not accurate, since I already liked him) almost seems more damning than if I were one of the people for whom it was Alan Rickman. (It took me forever to join up the dots on that one; I didn't go "oh yeah, him!" until the Hitchhiker's movie in 2005.)
I understand what they are saying about a division in fans (those who are happy through HBP, and those who weren't fans until DH and are generally more accepting of DH), but I feel uneasy being in an apparent middle ground. I wasn't fan enough to listen to something like Snapecast until DH, and what little we see in that book, I mostly do accept. Some of it I raise my eyebrow with "ehhhherrrm, there's got to be something more complex there; or have you forgotten this isn't a flat character?", but I've said before and will probably say again that the Severus-Lily dynamic appeals to me on such a deep level that I can't help but like it.
It seems like the "accepted" thing for the established fan to do is not to like it, or to accept it in terms of friendship only, and that wanting/liking anything more marks one out as "oh, you're one of THOSE".
I don't want to be one of "THOSE". Yanno?
I'm not really taking it all that personally (that would be silly, anyway -- it's not like they said "Esme is a fat alien slime and a pedophile and eats poopoo for dessert", to paraphrase an acquaintance of mine). I just wanted to get my thoughts out.
I do hopefully agree with the "final thought" that kids who later reread this series as adults might wonder how they could have been anything but Snape fans. ;)
ETA: Yes, issues with joining a group late and being valued less because of it. You guessed right; now here's Don Pardo to tell you what you've won!
I'm one of the people who didn't get really fanatic until Deathly Hallows, but it's not that I didn't like Severus before. I did, I really did. I always thought he was an awesome character, where "always" is defined as "since I picked up the series", which was probably between GoF and OotP since I remember thinking, "oh, there's a movie coming out, I should read at least the first book first." It's just that my "awesomeness!" was casual, as were my thoughts about the whole series.
After reading GoF, I had mostly put it out of my mind until OotP, and the same for HBP and DH. Not that I forgot the plot arc totally, but I wasn't spending time analyzing and fanficcing then, so as to keep it constantly in the forefront. (HBP, however, immediately became my favourite when I read it, and still is; I don't care what you may say about how it is part of the downward slide of which DH is the culminating sand-pit).
When I read DH, I experienced it at the time as "wait a minute; I think now I actually care enough to devote significant CPU cycles to all this mess *adds it to the list with MST3K and HHG* ", and then, around that seed of Severus Snape, it all crystallized backwards. My perception of him, even my memory of my perception of him, was altered (or should I say enriched), but that among many things. I found myself developing actual opinions about things for which I previously had only very casual "eh, ok / eh, not so great" feelings.
I still feel very dumb for not picking up on all the fandom theories before the big reveal, but then, until after said reveal, I didn't care enough to actually put my mind to it, anyway. (OTOH I am terrible at picking up on hints to adventure game puzzle solutions and on interpersonal subtext. So maybe I wouldn't have got it even if I had cared.)
But I digress. The point is this is making me feel like less of a proper Snape fan, as if my sheer n00bness wasn't enough by itself. I had no idea there was any series called Harry Potter and the Anything at All at the time that PS/SS was released.
I can only speculate, but to be a "DH convert" (even though that's not accurate, since I already liked him) almost seems more damning than if I were one of the people for whom it was Alan Rickman. (It took me forever to join up the dots on that one; I didn't go "oh yeah, him!" until the Hitchhiker's movie in 2005.)
I understand what they are saying about a division in fans (those who are happy through HBP, and those who weren't fans until DH and are generally more accepting of DH), but I feel uneasy being in an apparent middle ground. I wasn't fan enough to listen to something like Snapecast until DH, and what little we see in that book, I mostly do accept. Some of it I raise my eyebrow with "ehhhherrrm, there's got to be something more complex there; or have you forgotten this isn't a flat character?", but I've said before and will probably say again that the Severus-Lily dynamic appeals to me on such a deep level that I can't help but like it.
It seems like the "accepted" thing for the established fan to do is not to like it, or to accept it in terms of friendship only, and that wanting/liking anything more marks one out as "oh, you're one of THOSE".
I don't want to be one of "THOSE". Yanno?
I'm not really taking it all that personally (that would be silly, anyway -- it's not like they said "Esme is a fat alien slime and a pedophile and eats poopoo for dessert", to paraphrase an acquaintance of mine). I just wanted to get my thoughts out.
I do hopefully agree with the "final thought" that kids who later reread this series as adults might wonder how they could have been anything but Snape fans. ;)
ETA: Yes, issues with joining a group late and being valued less because of it. You guessed right; now here's Don Pardo to tell you what you've won!