first rant!
Jan. 25th, 2005 02:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gmonkey42Vampire!Snape. Ahh, good one. OK. First of all, as usual, JKR carefully phrases the answer so it's not a definitive 'yes' or 'no.' The question was also unfortunately worded such that it left room for ambiguity. Here's the actual quote:
Megan: Is there a link between Snape and vampires?
JK Rowling replies -> Erm... I don't think so.
But what's meant by a link? One could argue that Hagrid had no "links" with giants during the 40-odd years between his mother leaving and his meeting Mme. Maxime, right? Snape could be related to vampires himself but refuse to have anything to do with his relatives and could therefore be said not to have any links with vampires at the present time.
...this is insufficiently ranty. It's more like quibbling than actually ranting. I'll have another go: JKR gives us all these hints that Snape's got something to do with vampires. They're mentioned but no vampire characters actually appear. There are the bat comparisons, the prowling around the castle at night, the interest in the Dark Arts, the fact that he looks EXACTLY like how everyone pictures vampires. And then, just as with Mark Evans, she's all "oh, sorry, you got 'vampire' from that?" Prior to OotP, I thought JKR wouldn't jerk her audience around like that. Prior to hearing that Mark Evans is nobody, I thought she'd give us clues and the always-mentioned red herrings but that she wouldn't lead us off in entirely the wrong direction like that. I used to believe in something, man.
Vampires are awesome. There's so much she could do with it: how vampires and werewolves are natural enemies, how Snape's got his own dark (or Dark) secret that could jeopardize his job, perhaps even his freedom, how there's another group of sentient beings that are persecuted. But she's all "nope, he's just a boring old human. I'm not even going to let him teach DADA because I pathologically hate him." The Occlumency bit made him more sympathetic and I liked how he was still a bastard at the end of OotP but I wonder whether the point of that was to show that he's still himself or to remind us that we're not supposed to like him.
Even that asshole Sirius gets to turn into a dog, at least.
Megan: Is there a link between Snape and vampires?
JK Rowling replies -> Erm... I don't think so.
But what's meant by a link? One could argue that Hagrid had no "links" with giants during the 40-odd years between his mother leaving and his meeting Mme. Maxime, right? Snape could be related to vampires himself but refuse to have anything to do with his relatives and could therefore be said not to have any links with vampires at the present time.
...this is insufficiently ranty. It's more like quibbling than actually ranting. I'll have another go: JKR gives us all these hints that Snape's got something to do with vampires. They're mentioned but no vampire characters actually appear. There are the bat comparisons, the prowling around the castle at night, the interest in the Dark Arts, the fact that he looks EXACTLY like how everyone pictures vampires. And then, just as with Mark Evans, she's all "oh, sorry, you got 'vampire' from that?" Prior to OotP, I thought JKR wouldn't jerk her audience around like that. Prior to hearing that Mark Evans is nobody, I thought she'd give us clues and the always-mentioned red herrings but that she wouldn't lead us off in entirely the wrong direction like that. I used to believe in something, man.
Vampires are awesome. There's so much she could do with it: how vampires and werewolves are natural enemies, how Snape's got his own dark (or Dark) secret that could jeopardize his job, perhaps even his freedom, how there's another group of sentient beings that are persecuted. But she's all "nope, he's just a boring old human. I'm not even going to let him teach DADA because I pathologically hate him." The Occlumency bit made him more sympathetic and I liked how he was still a bastard at the end of OotP but I wonder whether the point of that was to show that he's still himself or to remind us that we're not supposed to like him.
Even that asshole Sirius gets to turn into a dog, at least.
