All shall love me and despair...

[rj_anderson]

This is an interesting review of my HP fic(s). lizbee has already made a couple of comments on one remark she felt was misleading; but it was another part of the review that particularly baffled me.

Here's the remark in question:

I was really hoping that Maud would redeem her MS qualities or something... but no-- she's the tortured girl that everyone can't help but love.

This is the second negative LJ review to make this accusation, and I am sincerely perplexed by it. "Everyone" loves Maud? I stated quite plainly in the story that she had few friends at Durmstrang and even fewer at Hogwarts, and the only students who even attempt to befriend her are the Weasley twins. Her roommate Muriel beats her up and her other roommates spread malicious gossip about her. Draco regards her with supercilious contempt. Even in the later fics, Maud's dealings with other students are merely civil at best (as when she meets Hermione in the library in PR), and at worst downright adversarial. She doesn't acquire a single friend apart from George Weasley until she leaves Hogwarts. So who is this mysterious "everyone"?

Maybe the reviewer really means that all the adults in the fic love Maud. Well, there are only four of those in TPMA. Mad-Eye raised Maud and she's his niece, so I guess he has to like her. (I should mention, for those thinking of writing fic, that heaven forbid your OC should be related to any canon character, even a lesser canon character; that automatically makes her Special, and therefore a Mary Sue. And here I just thought it would be a good excuse for having lots of Mad-Eye Moody in the story.)

Moody's got a reasonable excuse, that leaves Snape, Dumbledore and McGonagall. I think my logic behind having Snape treat Maud with considerably more decency and respect than he does Harry & co. is explained in the fic. Obviously the reviewer doesn't agree that Snape could or would treat anyone with civility or respect, much less love or be loved by anyone, so that aspect of the trilogy doesn't work for her. Fine, I can live with that. Personally I don't think even JKR takes that extreme a view of Snape's character, for all that she enjoys playing up his negative qualities through Harry's eyes. But I guess only time and canon will tell.

So back to the supposed Maud Moody love-in. McGonagall, for her part, does nothing but politely guide Maud to a meeting with the Headmaster. Unless that counts as "love" in some strange subtextual way, we're left with only Dumbledore. Who, as we know from canon, is kind and generous and benignly meddling with all his students, so... where is this "loved by all" stuff coming from again?

I don't mind having my work reviewed critically. Some of my favorite reviewers have been quite direct in pointing out flaws, as well as being honest about things they personally don't like to see in stories (Oi! for instance, never gave a fig for Snape and didn't particularly warm to Maud either, and I still loved her reviews). I can even think of some pretty severe criticisms myself (for the record, those include wobbly characterization of Maud in the first story; a number of embarrassing continuity gaffes involving numbers, dates, and architectural layouts; a really cringe-worthy bit of dialogue in the first chapter of IWS; and too much schmoop in Snape's letters, among others).

But I do object to the reviewer misrepresenting the content of my fics and disparaging faults of which they are not in fact guilty. As lizbee pointed out, that's not a valid form of criticism.

Comments

Re:

[rj-anderson.livejournal.com]

understandable as his resentment of Sirius is, he is effectively trying to kill a surrendered prisoner who's offered to go quietly in Prisoner of Azkaban

I really need to dig up Amanda Lewanski's old (but excellent) HP4GU post about the Shrieking Shack. She makes the point that if you look at what point Snape actually came in, and what he would have heard Sirius and Lupin say from that point on, he had no reason to believe that Sirius was anything but an escaped and very dangerous criminal, or that the Trio had not been somehow Confunded by him. And Sirius was not exactly acting like a sober, rational, self-controlled individual at the time either. Though even at that, I admit that all the spitting and yelling on Snape's part was a bit much. :)

You're right about Hermione and Neville, though. I have not yet come up with a theory that adequately explains Snape's persecution of Neville, or that is sufficient to cover the cruelty in "I see no difference." I have a few conjectures on both points, but I think JKR will have to supply more data before I can feel confidence in any one of those theories.

And even if I should turn out to be right in thinking that Snape's remark to Hermione was made primarily for Lucius Malfoy's benefit (via Draco, who was of course a witness to the scene), it still doesn't excuse the cruelty of the remark -- IMO there should have been another way for Snape to strengthen his DE "cover". Nor does the possibility that Snape thinks he can terrify Neville into some kind of magical breakthrough justify the harshness of his technique.

In short, I would certainly agree that in terms of becoming a decent human being, Snape has a long way to go and a lot to learn. No, he is not a nice man. But I think he is, slowly, heading in the right direction, and the potential for him to prove himself, to be redeemed, interests me.

[ex-ajhalluk585.livejournal.com]

And even if I should turn out to be right in thinking that Snape's remark to Hermione was made primarily for Lucius Malfoy's benefit (via Draco, who was of course a witness to the scene), it still doesn't excuse the cruelty of the remark -- IMO there should have been another way for Snape to strengthen his DE "cover".

Until the end of Goblet of Fire Snape, in my view, doesn't have any interest in maintaining a Death Eater cover (and in any event, the events shown in the Pensieve suggest that he's blown any cover he once had). I think that remark is wholly in character with him being a bully, and it really is almost impossible to think of a decent justification for it. But I've had teachers exactly like that, and so far as I was aware they weren't doing it because they had present a cover story for a magical conspiracy, but because they were horrible inadequate people who found it easier to be take out their inadequacies towards kids who had no way of fighting back. So I'm probably temperamentally less adapted to start looking for excuses for people like that than I am for terminally socially inept kids whose parents' utterly wrongheaded political notions have given them serious problems in their ability to bond with their peer group, and who have never actually been taught that certain anti-socially behavioural traits are in fact both wrong and likely to maximise the sense of social exclusion that lead to them being displayed in the first place.

[rj-anderson.livejournal.com]

Until the end of Goblet of Fire Snape, in my view, doesn't have any interest in maintaining a Death Eater cover

Not a proven interest, no. But if you buy into the theory that Dumbledore strongly suspected that Voldemort would return, and believed that he and his allies should be prepared for such an event, it's conceivable that Snape might have kept up some semblance of a DE cover in case it should be needed again. Not that I expect to convince anybody with that -- I'm just submitting it as a fairly reasonable possibility.

As for the idea of trying to justify Snape's actions, particularly toward Neville -- I don't think they are justifiable, frankly. Even if his motives are more complex than, "This kid is incompetent, incompetence irritates me, therefore I shall bully him mercilessly to vent my own frustrations because I am a petty individual", even if somewhere in the back of his mind he has a nebulous idea that he's acting for Neville's own good (and I wouldn't put money on that), it doesn't in the least excuse the misery he's caused Neville. (Which is part of the reason that in the Margot fic I have deliberately afflicted Snape with a third-born son who looks like Harry and makes potions like Neville. What goes around, comes around, and this time Snape had better learn to Deal With It.)

No, the chief reason that I feel there has to be more to Snape's behaviour than mere petty viciousness actually has very little to do with my confidence in Snape, and a great deal more to do with my confidence in Dumbledore. Not that I think Dumbledore is infallible or impeccable, but he has been presented to us so far as a wise, compassionate, generous Headmaster with a sincere interest in the welfare of all his students. As such, it's hard for me to imagine that Dumbledore would knowingly allow Snape to persecute the Gryffindor students for no good reason whatsoever.

I'm not saying I think Snape's attitude to Harry and Neville is all or even mostly an act -- in fact I think his dislike is quite real. But I honestly find it difficult to believe that Snape's only reason for giving his inner b-word (yes, I am overly socialized) free rein in the classroom is because he doesn't know how (or can't be bothered) to control himself. I find it hard to imagine that Dumbledore would keep Snape on at Hogwarts, much less put him in a position of evident trust and confidence (indeed, Dumbledore, Snape and McGonagall appear to function as a kind of administrative triumvirate at times), if that were the case.

It's not the only Snape theory out there, or even necessarily the most credible one, but it's the one that works for me. At least until OotP comes out and knocks my fanon into a cocked hat. :)

[ex-ajhalluk585.livejournal.com]

No, the chief reason that I feel there has to be more to Snape's behaviour than mere petty viciousness actually has very little to do with my confidence in Snape, and a great deal more to do with my confidence in Dumbledore. Not that I think Dumbledore is infallible or impeccable, but he has been presented to us so far as a wise, compassionate, generous Headmaster with a sincere interest in the welfare of all his students

But also one whose staffing decisions waver from the bizarre to the peverse. If, as I believe you have to, one accepts your earlier point that he has foreseen Voldemort's return as at least likely if not inevitable, Defence against the Dark Arts is one of the most important courses on the schedule. And look who he's hired for the job! One person who spends an entire year with Voldemort actually welded to the back of his head, one poseur and con-man, one decent and acceptably qualified individual who is unacceptable to the majority of parents and a traitorous lunatic. And it isn't as if a strong suspicion that Quirrell was up to no good, and an absolute knowledge that Lockhart was useless (I also really resent the way poorer students had to shell out on all Lockhart's expensive textbooks - I had some university tutors who made you do that, and it really got on my nerves then, too) were things he couldn't have been unaware of. In fact, after the Quirrell fiasco I'd have made Veritaserum testing part of the interview process("And one last thing - do you happen to have an ultimately evil wizard concealed anywhere about your person?"). Trelawney he hired (or, at least, hasn't fired) despite knowing she's a fraud; Binns is too boring to convey anything useful (and I'm surprised the teacher's union hasn't complained); Hagrid is well-meaning but potentially lethal (I'm referring to Blast-Ended Skrewts here, you understand) as well as being totally unqualified - the one thing we know about Snape is that he is a highly competent teacher who can keep order, and, compared to the rest of Dumbledore's hiring decisions, that alone makes him worth his weight in Dragon liver. But it really doesn't mean he's not capable or likely to cause physical or psychological harm to the students - that doesn't seem to be a factor in hiring decisions at Hogwarts.

Re:

[rj-anderson.livejournal.com]

Agreed that Dumbledore's hiring practices are eccentric and his reasons for retaining certain teachers (such as Trelawney and Binns) are obscure at best. But Snape appears to be in a different category from any of the one-year DADA hires, or even most of the other long-term staff -- he's part of Dumbledore's inner circle, an administrative triumvirate of which McGonagall and the Headmaster himself are the only other members. Even Flitwick -- a perfectly competent, proven, amiable teacher and Head of House -- doesn't have the same status as Snape does, in that respect.

So we're stuck with a nasty, verbally abusive Potions professor with (apparently) very few redeeming qualities or attractive features, who has been at the school for years and whose personality and habits are well known (especially to Dumbledore), yet who holds an position of unusual trust and responsibility at the school in spite of all that. Why? Why Snape, and not some other, much more amiable and ordinarily competent professor like Sprout or Vector or Sinistra? I'm not saying I know the answer, but I keep thinking there must be an answer, somewhere down the line...