Severus Snape and Marc Remillard
Oct. 11th, 2007 06:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lesyeuxvertsSo. It's been a gazillion years since I wrote an lit-type essay, and I don't write meta, and I don't promise that this is going to be coherently organized or interesting or anything, but ...
And for some reason or another, I started thinking about the similarities between Snape and another fictional character I've always liked -- Marc Remillard (from Julian May's books, the Galactic Milieu series and the Pleistocene Exile series). I've absolutely no idea if any of you have read these books, so I'll try to explain and make things coherent ... but well, I'm not promising anything. If you haven't read these books, you should. :)
Super-brief background story: it's a fantasy/science fiction universe, where certain gifted persons have metapsychic powers and, ultimately, a race with enough maturity and enough metapsychics, can attain the ultimate goal of Unity ... humanity has screwed things up badly, aliens come along to help us attain Unity and there are some humans who object to Unity and rebel against the galactic order. They're defeated and escape 6 million years into the past through a time travel apparatus (going to the Pleiocene era). In the past, they meet up with other intelligent beings (who are somehow the basis of some Celtic mythology ... it's not as nutty and vonDanicken as it sounds, I swear).
Marc's family is chock-full of powerful metapsychics - his grandfather started a lot of the empirical work on metaphysics, his aunts and uncles and father are all involved in galactic government, and he's some sort of prodigy, both intellectually and metapsychically. (His family is also chock-full of nutcases, but that's more or less another story.) Marc is young and idealistic, and perhaps more importantly, he's spurned by the galactic government, which puts a stop to his pet research project ... so he gets involved in the Rebellion. When they're defeated, he leads the survivors into the Pleiocene.
Marc and Snape are both the sort of romantic anti-hero archetype: dark, brooding, moody, sarcastic, extremely intelligent (and impatient with people who aren't as quick on the uptake as they are), powerful ... if I was wondering why I like Snape, maybe I could have just stopped with that list!
They have wretched pasts, both of them: we know enough from canon to know that Snape's family life wasn't happy, and Marc's was no better emotionally, though his family had wealth and power. His mother was neurotic and preoccupied with her singing career, and his father was emotionally distant, sleeping around with every willing woman, and the closest mentoring figure Marc had was his Uncle Rogi (who is sort of like Dumbledore, in a way, now that I think of it. Unless perhaps the older Marc (the six million year old version of him) isn't more like Dumbledore.) And Marc, for all his power and his brilliance, was completely overshadowed by his younger brother ... intellectually, metapsychically, and spiritually ... so that, I imagine, alienated him from his family even further.
Furthermore, they also share the common theme of redemption: Snape, for what he did to Lily, feels that he needs to atone, and Marc committed immense sins in the name of the Rebellion (Herod's sin, sacrificing the innocent babies. I don't use the term sin lightly - there's a strong Catholic thread running through the books, and Marc and all his family were Catholics, so I imagine he'd have used it as well).
Snape spends his life watching over Harry and working for Voldemort's defeat; Marc, after going 6 million years into the past, realizes the enormity of his crime and works for the next 6 million years to expiate his guilt, guiding the five sentient races to Unity and doing his best to fix things without creating a paradox. (He makes mistakes, of course -- he's still only human! but he's wracked with guilt for each and every one of them and he's working alone for such a long time, doing everything that he can ... I find it rather heartbreaking, actually. That sort of pain ... It's really highlighted for me in this moment where he hovers near the homeworld of the woman he had loved, and his thoughts take on this reverie-like quality as he brings forth memories that are buried so deeply, so deeply cherished, and this is the only sort of love and companionship that he has to really sustain him, and it is, as May describes, a state of mind almost like a prayer. Six million years.)
So. I'm not sure if I've really gotten anywhere with this (other than establishing that I like Snape and Marc and all sorts of sexy romantic anti-heroes who suffer and are redeemed ... and that I shouldn't look at everything through an HP lens ... and that I should never try to write essays again) ... but I think I've successfully convinced myself that I need to reread Julian May's books again. I'm sure there's a lot that I've forgotten and anyhow, they're just fun stories. :)
And for some reason or another, I started thinking about the similarities between Snape and another fictional character I've always liked -- Marc Remillard (from Julian May's books, the Galactic Milieu series and the Pleistocene Exile series). I've absolutely no idea if any of you have read these books, so I'll try to explain and make things coherent ... but well, I'm not promising anything. If you haven't read these books, you should. :)
Super-brief background story: it's a fantasy/science fiction universe, where certain gifted persons have metapsychic powers and, ultimately, a race with enough maturity and enough metapsychics, can attain the ultimate goal of Unity ... humanity has screwed things up badly, aliens come along to help us attain Unity and there are some humans who object to Unity and rebel against the galactic order. They're defeated and escape 6 million years into the past through a time travel apparatus (going to the Pleiocene era). In the past, they meet up with other intelligent beings (who are somehow the basis of some Celtic mythology ... it's not as nutty and vonDanicken as it sounds, I swear).
Marc's family is chock-full of powerful metapsychics - his grandfather started a lot of the empirical work on metaphysics, his aunts and uncles and father are all involved in galactic government, and he's some sort of prodigy, both intellectually and metapsychically. (His family is also chock-full of nutcases, but that's more or less another story.) Marc is young and idealistic, and perhaps more importantly, he's spurned by the galactic government, which puts a stop to his pet research project ... so he gets involved in the Rebellion. When they're defeated, he leads the survivors into the Pleiocene.
Marc and Snape are both the sort of romantic anti-hero archetype: dark, brooding, moody, sarcastic, extremely intelligent (and impatient with people who aren't as quick on the uptake as they are), powerful ... if I was wondering why I like Snape, maybe I could have just stopped with that list!
They have wretched pasts, both of them: we know enough from canon to know that Snape's family life wasn't happy, and Marc's was no better emotionally, though his family had wealth and power. His mother was neurotic and preoccupied with her singing career, and his father was emotionally distant, sleeping around with every willing woman, and the closest mentoring figure Marc had was his Uncle Rogi (who is sort of like Dumbledore, in a way, now that I think of it. Unless perhaps the older Marc (the six million year old version of him) isn't more like Dumbledore.) And Marc, for all his power and his brilliance, was completely overshadowed by his younger brother ... intellectually, metapsychically, and spiritually ... so that, I imagine, alienated him from his family even further.
Furthermore, they also share the common theme of redemption: Snape, for what he did to Lily, feels that he needs to atone, and Marc committed immense sins in the name of the Rebellion (Herod's sin, sacrificing the innocent babies. I don't use the term sin lightly - there's a strong Catholic thread running through the books, and Marc and all his family were Catholics, so I imagine he'd have used it as well).
Snape spends his life watching over Harry and working for Voldemort's defeat; Marc, after going 6 million years into the past, realizes the enormity of his crime and works for the next 6 million years to expiate his guilt, guiding the five sentient races to Unity and doing his best to fix things without creating a paradox. (He makes mistakes, of course -- he's still only human! but he's wracked with guilt for each and every one of them and he's working alone for such a long time, doing everything that he can ... I find it rather heartbreaking, actually. That sort of pain ... It's really highlighted for me in this moment where he hovers near the homeworld of the woman he had loved, and his thoughts take on this reverie-like quality as he brings forth memories that are buried so deeply, so deeply cherished, and this is the only sort of love and companionship that he has to really sustain him, and it is, as May describes, a state of mind almost like a prayer. Six million years.)
So. I'm not sure if I've really gotten anywhere with this (other than establishing that I like Snape and Marc and all sorts of sexy romantic anti-heroes who suffer and are redeemed ... and that I shouldn't look at everything through an HP lens ... and that I should never try to write essays again) ... but I think I've successfully convinced myself that I need to reread Julian May's books again. I'm sure there's a lot that I've forgotten and anyhow, they're just fun stories. :)
