Since around Chapter 20 this is actually my guess for the entire basis of magic that Eliezer is working from. That is… there’s a jumble of ideas and tropes that are invented and sequentially stolen by one author after another. Someone tells stories of Vlad Tepis, Bram Stoker comes along… and N iterations later you’ve got Twilight with vampires having extra chromosomes and clairvoyance.
To understand a magical universe at the deepest level is to see the hands of previous authors influencing your physics and history (and possibly your future if you are in a prequel) plus a “current author” who has a measure of finer grained control over things like plotting and characterization—limited by the audience’s willingness to play along.
If this theory of magic is right, rationality in a magical universe should lead you to to become genre-aware, and then the next obvious(?) thing is to go meta genre-aware and start trying to “genre hack” your universe and see if you can “tunnel” into the derivative works (or maybe just get the author to fall in love with you or something).
My current working theory is that Dumbledore as figured out a rough outline of these “magical physics” and has been actively manipulating his reality for decades, with the goal of setting up pre-conditions that could create “authorial change” and/or to make a certain story easy to tell given the facts. The more pointed goal is to cause his universe would branch at a “point of interest” in a direction that, according to fictional tropes, is more likely to be to his own liking.
Based on his revelation about pranking Harry’s mother, I’ve got a (totally unnecessarily detailed) hypothesis about what he may have done to create initial conditions for Harry Potter something like 20 or 30 years before the present story (including setting up an abusive adoptive environment) that got Rowling to pick up the canon universe and give him a victory there.
In the meantime, if the theory is true, the deeper question is whether Voldemort has the same insight, and if he (in keeping with the “bad guys are better leaders” trope) he actually told some of his henchmen about his plan for the world. I think Snape might be genre aware? And the Malfoy’s are even better candidates because they could be trying to hack the universe such that Draco is the main character in a fairly standard “magical prince from fallen but ancient family, rising to up to a historically and morally appropriate place in the world”. Setting Harry up as Draco’s evil arch-nemesis would be a good move in this vein… Harry falls into the Lex Luthor trope and eventually loses because “that’s how those stories work”.
The only trick is that they are actually in a fanfic about rationality!! I’m not sure if anyone realizes that yet. Maybe Dumbledore does now? Eliezer was more obvious about the story with this bit:
“Indeed,” said Dumbledore. “But Harry is the hero, so he may be able to do things that are logically impossible.”
Which confirmed my hypothesis some. But my plotting hypothesis will not be supported if Dumbledore doesn’t start seriously updating on the “science is starting to apply to magic” facts. I’m kind of curious why he didn’t notice that Transfiguration was retconned in the first place. In the face of so much else magical chaos that Eliezer left in place that adjustment is sort of glaring. Noticing possible retcons is one of the nearly necessary skills you’d want to cultivate if you were going to genre hack.
I really hope my hypothesis bears out. I’m aware of no previous work of fiction that jootzed all the way to being genre-aware of its genre-awareness and I think it would be it would be hilarious to read one :-)
I’m aware of no previous work of fiction that jootzed all the way to being genre-aware of its genre-awareness and I think it would be it would be hilarious to read one :-)
Yes, well, you may have to write yourself the work you always wanted to read.
Is that a denial plus an exhortation to write it myself? Or is it a smug admission that you’re writing what you wanted to read which is something in the ballpark of my guess?
I’m also curious if you have plans to bootstrap out of our present situation? I’ve run some minor “metaphysical experiments” in the past to see if the world is as strictly “object level” as it seems to be, and I’ve recently tried a couple micro tests inspired by your HP story to see if “this world’s story has started yet” with me as a character who can break the fourth wall and get feedback, and so far they’ve all come back with boring results.
I’m aware of no previous work of fiction that jootzed all the way to being genre-aware of its genre-awareness and I think it would be it would be hilarious to read one :-)
You’d probably enjoy “Sophie’s World” and “Godel, Escher, Bach” if you haven’t already read them. (One of the dialogues in GEB features pushing-potion and popping-tonic; pushing-potion moves you down a level into a work of fiction or art, and popping-tonic takes you back up a level.)
If you have not read The Ultimate Meta Mega Crossover, you probably should, because it is genre-aware of its genre awareness, maybe a few more levels of meta-ness, or that kind of infinitely recursive meta-ness of this kind of selfawareness taken to the insane logical conclusions.
The spoilers for Permutation City are total—Meta Mega Crossover contains an explanation of the ending of Permutation City. The Fire Upon the Deep spoilers aren’t nearly as complete.
Yes.. I’m still looking for a nonfiction explanation of the concepts in the Crossover. Given the size of the archive here, it wouldn’t surprise me if Eliezer already wrote one, but I’d never be able to find it.
It was strongly implied that Snape is familiar with Lord of the Rings to the point where he recognizes what the word “Nazgul” means. And it also is implied that Snape finds Harry comparing him to a Nazgul to be amusing. If Snape knew he was in a fictional work I doubt he’d find this as funny.
Wait, how? I didn’t fully understand the implications of the end of chapter 28 and aftermath 2, but it seems that Harry’s discussion with Snape has changed Snape in some strange way (hence his comment to Dumbledore), and the aftermath was evidence of this change, the new Snape now turning down students going after him.
My hypothesis is that thus far he’s considered poor Alissa to be the most inconsequential thing ever to intrude on his thoughts; and having thought more deeply about what happened with him, Lily, and James when he was a kid, he now decides he ought to her to nip her affections in the bud for clearly stated reasons, rather than letting them fester without suitable closure for, perhaps, an unduly long time as his have. His only closure was that he insulted Lily and felt guilty about it forever (as apparently, from his perspective, this was the only thing standing between him and getting to be with Lily); Alissa’s could be the end of school, without the issue ever being directly addressed.
The problem with this hypothesis is that it has Snape thinking that student crushes on teachers are persistent sorts of things, and this isn’t typically the case.
The problem with this hypothesis is that it has Snape thinking that student crushes on teachers are persistent sorts of things, and this isn’t typically the case.
Part of her wanted to stand there meekly with her face abashed and her hands clasped penitently behind her back, just in case, but some quiet instinct told her this might be a bad idea.
How do you interpret emphasis on “bad idea” here? It doesn’t seem to fit in “more care from prof. Snape” hypothesis.
The part of her that wants to do that is the part that’s fantasizing about special detentions; the instinct that says “bad idea” is the part that doesn’t think this is one of those.
That seems a little too compassionate for any version of Snape
My own take is that he’s finally realised what an idiot he was for crushing so hard on Lily despite her lack of reciprocation. He’s now being extra harsh on Alissa as a kind of substitute for going back in time and telling his younger self to get over it.
Okay, if no one on LW got Aftermath 2, even after working out that the aftermath was supposed to display a change in Snape, then it was too subtle.
Yes, but what part was the change? That he dislikes student affections? That he tells them about it? That they have affections? That he’s previously been taking advantage of students in slashy ways?
If anything, I would’ve expected it to be him actually taking advantage, if he were taking Harry’s advice to… oh. Wait. Maybe he is taking Harry’s advice and has started looking for deep instead of pretty?
I’m getting a pretty sharp lesson in unintended ambiguity here. Although some of your suggestions are not compatible with a straight reading of the text.
Given the number of theories so far, I’m surprised no one has suggested this one: Aftermath 2 is in fact meant to demonstrate that Snape’s behavior has not changed, by displaying behavior that is entirely typical and expected of him; but now that Harry, Minerva, Dumbledore and the readers are all primed to look for changes, they will find them even where they shouldn’t.
He may have had his mental discipline upset by the events of the previous chapter, causing him to be less in control of his Legilimency in some fashion. I did note the significance of the command to “restrain your eyes henceforth”.
But yeah, even if I’m on the right track I don’t feel confident of it. Too subtle for this reader.
Harry told Snape that Lily only liked James because of his money and looks. So is it that Snape now thinks his students only like him because of his position and power, whereas before he thought they liked him for who he was? Has he become even more cynical? More inclined to reject people?
ETA: Some reviewers thought it was a reference to Snape performing Legilimency, but of course it doesn’t take a mind reader to notice a dreamy-eyed girl.
Harry told Snape that Lily only liked James because of his money and looks. So is it that Snape now thinks his students only like him because of his position and power, whereas before he thought they liked him for who he was? Has he become even more cynical? More inclined to reject people?
This is what I figured. And there was the comment by Dumbledore (or Minerva?) that Snape wouldn’t hurt Harry because Snape loves Harry’s mother. So I’m now assuming that Harry managed to convince Snape that Harry’s mother is not love-worthy, which means that Harry is now stripped of that protection.
ETA: Some reviewers thought it was a reference to Snape performing Legilimency, but of course it doesn’t take a mind reader to notice a dreamy-eyed girl.
He tells her to stop staring at him, and doesn’t look at her when she comes to see him after class. Perhaps this was because he no longer needs to read her mind, because he’s decided to stop reading students’ minds, because he was doing so at the headmaster’s bidding and he’s broken with Dumbledore.
Wildly conjunctive and supported by a hair’s breadth of evidence, but I don’t have a better guess. Nothing else seems likely to have a dramatic effect on Harry’s story.
Hrm… So far best I can come up with are two possibilities, one more charitable and one less charitable toward Snape:
First: From his conversation with Harry, he perhaps concludes that making one’s feelings (or lack theirof) to someone that may have feelings for you absolutely clear rather than leaving it ambiguous may be a good idea. (ie, in his own way, he wanted to protect his student from ending up in a situation similar to himself)
Second: He was sufficiently POed at Harry that he’s no longer keeping his agreement to not legilimens the students.
I’m not really assigning all that high credence to either of those hypotheses, but they’re more or less all I could come up with so far. So… give us a hint? :)
Analysis of Harry’s conversation with Snape in ch. 27.
“If he were a friend,” Harry said, “all the more reason to forgive him.”
Possible Snape thoughts: “He implies that I wasn’t even a friend of She. How dare he!?” … consideration of different ways of mutilation … then “Oh! He can’t possibly be like his mother. She had a very high standards for Her friends. Maybe his stepparents taught him this indiscrimination of friends.”
“She was shallow”
“SHE was shallow!? … But She married that brat Potter. Was Her standards high after all? Maybe not. And I gave all the power I could have for her...”
So I think Snape became misogynous. Thus Alissa’s affection became irritating for him. I don’t know what implications it will have for storyline however.
Edit: Analysis is done by Type 1 processing with Type 2 postselection, so no justification is given. :)
Edit: This hypothesis seems to be insufficient for explanation of emphasis on “wrong” in Aftermath 2, maybe there’s something more.
Edit:
“Wrong” can mean, that she was aware, that Snape isn’t kind of person young woman is supposed to crush on. I’m not sure that this is true for Slytherin. Anyway Snape isn’t handsome guy, it’s not deserve emphasis to hint that.
“Wrong” can mean, that she feels it’s bad for her to show affection now. Fits my hypothesis, but not wording “There was probably something really wrong with her...”, which imply that she knew it all the way.
This hypothesis seems to be insufficient for explanation of emphasis on “wrong” in Aftermath 2, maybe there’s something more.
The “wrong” is presumably that the wizarding world isn’t much familiar with, or accepting of, urges tending towards BDSM. A student of her age would be unlikely to be familiar with the idea of such a thing not being “wrong”, given their lack of internet access. ;-)
My interpretation was that he gets a kick out of giving students love potions, reading their minds for kinky thoughts, and then refusing them in a humiliating way. It’s a sort of safe sex. Obviously, this is not what you had in mind, as this has nothing to do with changing.
It seems like both you and Gabriel (below) have constructed hypotheses which make sense in isolation from certain relevant facts. In particular, there’s a large fraction of the HP fanfic world consisting of females who write things with BDSM aspects and a dominant professor Snape. For example a dominant Snape with submissive Hermione pairing is not uncommon. Presumably whatever is going on here is in part making fun of that segment of fandom.
(I dated a girl at one point who’s very much involved in the HP fanfic community and might not have picked up on this point otherwise. )
If not for Eliezer’s remarks that there was something serious in this section I’d think that that was all that was going on this section- just a Take-That! to the fanbase. Given Eliezer’s remarks I think he intended it to be both a Take That and also something else possibly along the lines of Alicorn’s hypothesis.
I actually took it for Snape venting and doing a little dogkicking; so yes, I guess it was too subtle. (It seemed too abrupt and cruel to reflect any good change in Snape.)
In absolute terms, it was abrupt and cruel. But by Snape’s standards, it was remarkably civilized. He didn’t humiliate her in front of the whole class, and he ended it quickly.
That makes sense, I suppose (although I must have too high standards—it would never have occurred to me that this was a step up). I wish we had more background on how Snape treated student crushes.
Given that it was called ‘Aftermath’, I knew it signified some change, but in what direction I don’t know. My best guess is that he’s not romanticising crushes anymore. So in other words, this is actually a positive change for him.
I don’t know about subtle. I noticed it on my second read.
Why call it Aftermath 2? Why not just a nameless block? How is it the result of anything?
I guess I didn’t fail to notice my confusion.
Dumbledore messed with the girl’s mind to test if Snape was still in love with Lilly.
What I’m a bit uncertain about is the ‘Ever since the start of this year’ part. Has he been setting something like this up every year to have something ready when needed? More like, was that an intended implication?
Mind, the second part only occured to me after I read the reviews re Ch29 Notes.
Hm, he did take sexual advantage of the student and then, being far above the 11-year-old-Draco-Malfoy lower bound on villain cunning, altered her memory?
Since around Chapter 20 this is actually my guess for the entire basis of magic that Eliezer is working from. That is… there’s a jumble of ideas and tropes that are invented and sequentially stolen by one author after another. Someone tells stories of Vlad Tepis, Bram Stoker comes along… and N iterations later you’ve got Twilight with vampires having extra chromosomes and clairvoyance.
To understand a magical universe at the deepest level is to see the hands of previous authors influencing your physics and history (and possibly your future if you are in a prequel) plus a “current author” who has a measure of finer grained control over things like plotting and characterization—limited by the audience’s willingness to play along.
If this theory of magic is right, rationality in a magical universe should lead you to to become genre-aware, and then the next obvious(?) thing is to go meta genre-aware and start trying to “genre hack” your universe and see if you can “tunnel” into the derivative works (or maybe just get the author to fall in love with you or something).
My current working theory is that Dumbledore as figured out a rough outline of these “magical physics” and has been actively manipulating his reality for decades, with the goal of setting up pre-conditions that could create “authorial change” and/or to make a certain story easy to tell given the facts. The more pointed goal is to cause his universe would branch at a “point of interest” in a direction that, according to fictional tropes, is more likely to be to his own liking.
Based on his revelation about pranking Harry’s mother, I’ve got a (totally unnecessarily detailed) hypothesis about what he may have done to create initial conditions for Harry Potter something like 20 or 30 years before the present story (including setting up an abusive adoptive environment) that got Rowling to pick up the canon universe and give him a victory there.
In the meantime, if the theory is true, the deeper question is whether Voldemort has the same insight, and if he (in keeping with the “bad guys are better leaders” trope) he actually told some of his henchmen about his plan for the world. I think Snape might be genre aware? And the Malfoy’s are even better candidates because they could be trying to hack the universe such that Draco is the main character in a fairly standard “magical prince from fallen but ancient family, rising to up to a historically and morally appropriate place in the world”. Setting Harry up as Draco’s evil arch-nemesis would be a good move in this vein… Harry falls into the Lex Luthor trope and eventually loses because “that’s how those stories work”.
The only trick is that they are actually in a fanfic about rationality!! I’m not sure if anyone realizes that yet. Maybe Dumbledore does now? Eliezer was more obvious about the story with this bit:
Which confirmed my hypothesis some. But my plotting hypothesis will not be supported if Dumbledore doesn’t start seriously updating on the “science is starting to apply to magic” facts. I’m kind of curious why he didn’t notice that Transfiguration was retconned in the first place. In the face of so much else magical chaos that Eliezer left in place that adjustment is sort of glaring. Noticing possible retcons is one of the nearly necessary skills you’d want to cultivate if you were going to genre hack.
I really hope my hypothesis bears out. I’m aware of no previous work of fiction that jootzed all the way to being genre-aware of its genre-awareness and I think it would be it would be hilarious to read one :-)
Yes, well, you may have to write yourself the work you always wanted to read.
Cryptic, with a dash of sass :-)
Is that a denial plus an exhortation to write it myself? Or is it a smug admission that you’re writing what you wanted to read which is something in the ballpark of my guess?
I’m also curious if you have plans to bootstrap out of our present situation? I’ve run some minor “metaphysical experiments” in the past to see if the world is as strictly “object level” as it seems to be, and I’ve recently tried a couple micro tests inspired by your HP story to see if “this world’s story has started yet” with me as a character who can break the fourth wall and get feedback, and so far they’ve all come back with boring results.
You’d probably enjoy “Sophie’s World” and “Godel, Escher, Bach” if you haven’t already read them. (One of the dialogues in GEB features pushing-potion and popping-tonic; pushing-potion moves you down a level into a work of fiction or art, and popping-tonic takes you back up a level.)
I like your explanation, because it seems that the logical endpoint of your hypothesis would be my prediction that rationalist!Harry becomes Harry in the universe of the The Finale of the Ultimate Meta Mega Crossover .
If you have not read The Ultimate Meta Mega Crossover, you probably should, because it is genre-aware of its genre awareness, maybe a few more levels of meta-ness, or that kind of infinitely recursive meta-ness of this kind of selfawareness taken to the insane logical conclusions.
The spoilers for Permutation City are total—Meta Mega Crossover contains an explanation of the ending of Permutation City. The Fire Upon the Deep spoilers aren’t nearly as complete.
A link to a link to download Permutation City: http://www.imminst.org/forum/index.php?act=ST&f=13&t=15223&s=.
Yes.. I’m still looking for a nonfiction explanation of the concepts in the Crossover. Given the size of the archive here, it wouldn’t surprise me if Eliezer already wrote one, but I’d never be able to find it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Number_of_the_Beast_%28novel%29
Heinlein’s concept of “fictons” does exactly this.
It was strongly implied that Snape is familiar with Lord of the Rings to the point where he recognizes what the word “Nazgul” means. And it also is implied that Snape finds Harry comparing him to a Nazgul to be amusing. If Snape knew he was in a fictional work I doubt he’d find this as funny.
Wouldn’t he just be amused that Harry’s got it wrong?
Chapter 28 aftermath 2 could be considered evidence in support of that hypothesis.
Wait, how? I didn’t fully understand the implications of the end of chapter 28 and aftermath 2, but it seems that Harry’s discussion with Snape has changed Snape in some strange way (hence his comment to Dumbledore), and the aftermath was evidence of this change, the new Snape now turning down students going after him.
Okay, if no one on LW got Aftermath 2, even after working out that the aftermath was supposed to display a change in Snape, then it was too subtle.
My hypothesis is that thus far he’s considered poor Alissa to be the most inconsequential thing ever to intrude on his thoughts; and having thought more deeply about what happened with him, Lily, and James when he was a kid, he now decides he ought to her to nip her affections in the bud for clearly stated reasons, rather than letting them fester without suitable closure for, perhaps, an unduly long time as his have. His only closure was that he insulted Lily and felt guilty about it forever (as apparently, from his perspective, this was the only thing standing between him and getting to be with Lily); Alissa’s could be the end of school, without the issue ever being directly addressed.
The problem with this hypothesis is that it has Snape thinking that student crushes on teachers are persistent sorts of things, and this isn’t typically the case.
Well, he could well be generalizing from one example...
How do you interpret emphasis on “bad idea” here? It doesn’t seem to fit in “more care from prof. Snape” hypothesis.
The part of her that wants to do that is the part that’s fantasizing about special detentions; the instinct that says “bad idea” is the part that doesn’t think this is one of those.
Ok. I should think about it.
No, I had it mixed up before. It is fixed now.
That seems a little too compassionate for any version of Snape
My own take is that he’s finally realised what an idiot he was for crushing so hard on Lily despite her lack of reciprocation. He’s now being extra harsh on Alissa as a kind of substitute for going back in time and telling his younger self to get over it.
Will we get a hint?
Well… we don’t have much of a baseline to compare this version of Snape to.
Yes, but what part was the change? That he dislikes student affections? That he tells them about it? That they have affections? That he’s previously been taking advantage of students in slashy ways?
If anything, I would’ve expected it to be him actually taking advantage, if he were taking Harry’s advice to… oh. Wait. Maybe he is taking Harry’s advice and has started looking for deep instead of pretty?
If so, it was definitely too subtle. ;-)
I’m getting a pretty sharp lesson in unintended ambiguity here. Although some of your suggestions are not compatible with a straight reading of the text.
Given the number of theories so far, I’m surprised no one has suggested this one: Aftermath 2 is in fact meant to demonstrate that Snape’s behavior has not changed, by displaying behavior that is entirely typical and expected of him; but now that Harry, Minerva, Dumbledore and the readers are all primed to look for changes, they will find them even where they shouldn’t.
Whatever it is, it must have something to do with this:
He may have had his mental discipline upset by the events of the previous chapter, causing him to be less in control of his Legilimency in some fashion. I did note the significance of the command to “restrain your eyes henceforth”.
But yeah, even if I’m on the right track I don’t feel confident of it. Too subtle for this reader.
Harry told Snape that Lily only liked James because of his money and looks. So is it that Snape now thinks his students only like him because of his position and power, whereas before he thought they liked him for who he was? Has he become even more cynical? More inclined to reject people?
ETA: Some reviewers thought it was a reference to Snape performing Legilimency, but of course it doesn’t take a mind reader to notice a dreamy-eyed girl.
This is what I figured. And there was the comment by Dumbledore (or Minerva?) that Snape wouldn’t hurt Harry because Snape loves Harry’s mother. So I’m now assuming that Harry managed to convince Snape that Harry’s mother is not love-worthy, which means that Harry is now stripped of that protection.
He tells her to stop staring at him, and doesn’t look at her when she comes to see him after class. Perhaps this was because he no longer needs to read her mind, because he’s decided to stop reading students’ minds, because he was doing so at the headmaster’s bidding and he’s broken with Dumbledore.
Wildly conjunctive and supported by a hair’s breadth of evidence, but I don’t have a better guess. Nothing else seems likely to have a dramatic effect on Harry’s story.
Hrm… So far best I can come up with are two possibilities, one more charitable and one less charitable toward Snape:
First: From his conversation with Harry, he perhaps concludes that making one’s feelings (or lack theirof) to someone that may have feelings for you absolutely clear rather than leaving it ambiguous may be a good idea. (ie, in his own way, he wanted to protect his student from ending up in a situation similar to himself)
Second: He was sufficiently POed at Harry that he’s no longer keeping his agreement to not legilimens the students.
I’m not really assigning all that high credence to either of those hypotheses, but they’re more or less all I could come up with so far. So… give us a hint? :)
Analysis of Harry’s conversation with Snape in ch. 27.
Possible Snape thoughts: “He implies that I wasn’t even a friend of She. How dare he!?” … consideration of different ways of mutilation … then “Oh! He can’t possibly be like his mother. She had a very high standards for Her friends. Maybe his stepparents taught him this indiscrimination of friends.”
“SHE was shallow!? … But She married that brat Potter. Was Her standards high after all? Maybe not. And I gave all the power I could have for her...”
So I think Snape became misogynous. Thus Alissa’s affection became irritating for him. I don’t know what implications it will have for storyline however.
Edit: Analysis is done by Type 1 processing with Type 2 postselection, so no justification is given. :)
Edit: This hypothesis seems to be insufficient for explanation of emphasis on “wrong” in Aftermath 2, maybe there’s something more.
Edit:
“Wrong” can mean, that she was aware, that Snape isn’t kind of person young woman is supposed to crush on. I’m not sure that this is true for Slytherin. Anyway Snape isn’t handsome guy, it’s not deserve emphasis to hint that.
“Wrong” can mean, that she feels it’s bad for her to show affection now. Fits my hypothesis, but not wording “There was probably something really wrong with her...”, which imply that she knew it all the way.
Some part of puzzle seems to be missing.
The “wrong” is presumably that the wizarding world isn’t much familiar with, or accepting of, urges tending towards BDSM. A student of her age would be unlikely to be familiar with the idea of such a thing not being “wrong”, given their lack of internet access. ;-)
Um, yes, I find out what special detentions mean after I wrote last part.
My interpretation was that he gets a kick out of giving students love potions, reading their minds for kinky thoughts, and then refusing them in a humiliating way. It’s a sort of safe sex. Obviously, this is not what you had in mind, as this has nothing to do with changing.
It seems like both you and Gabriel (below) have constructed hypotheses which make sense in isolation from certain relevant facts. In particular, there’s a large fraction of the HP fanfic world consisting of females who write things with BDSM aspects and a dominant professor Snape. For example a dominant Snape with submissive Hermione pairing is not uncommon. Presumably whatever is going on here is in part making fun of that segment of fandom.
(I dated a girl at one point who’s very much involved in the HP fanfic community and might not have picked up on this point otherwise. )
If not for Eliezer’s remarks that there was something serious in this section I’d think that that was all that was going on this section- just a Take-That! to the fanbase. Given Eliezer’s remarks I think he intended it to be both a Take That and also something else possibly along the lines of Alicorn’s hypothesis.
Yes, I too thought it was just a cheap joke at the expense of Snape/student fanfiction...
I actually took it for Snape venting and doing a little dogkicking; so yes, I guess it was too subtle. (It seemed too abrupt and cruel to reflect any good change in Snape.)
In absolute terms, it was abrupt and cruel. But by Snape’s standards, it was remarkably civilized. He didn’t humiliate her in front of the whole class, and he ended it quickly.
That makes sense, I suppose (although I must have too high standards—it would never have occurred to me that this was a step up). I wish we had more background on how Snape treated student crushes.
Given that it was called ‘Aftermath’, I knew it signified some change, but in what direction I don’t know. My best guess is that he’s not romanticising crushes anymore. So in other words, this is actually a positive change for him.
My actual interpretation was that he’d let his shields down enough that someone could find him attractive.
This don’t mix very well with your hypothesis.
Good point.
Or, disillusionment with the one girl he found attractive has finally pushed him out of the closet.
I don’t know about subtle. I noticed it on my second read.
Why call it Aftermath 2? Why not just a nameless block? How is it the result of anything?
I guess I didn’t fail to notice my confusion.
Dumbledore messed with the girl’s mind to test if Snape was still in love with Lilly.
What I’m a bit uncertain about is the ‘Ever since the start of this year’ part. Has he been setting something like this up every year to have something ready when needed? More like, was that an intended implication?
Mind, the second part only occured to me after I read the reviews re Ch29 Notes.
Hm, he did take sexual advantage of the student and then, being far above the 11-year-old-Draco-Malfoy lower bound on villain cunning, altered her memory?
Or just that astute, moderately evil but just not a pervert.
Or likes hurting students’ feelings more than he likes sex.
!!!
Wow. That’s a whole order of evil beyond what I could conceive. Brilliant.
Now I get it.