Why Severus Snape?

[Sionna Raven]

Owl post from the wizarding world

A few days ago I found an exhausted, slightly ruffled little screech owl on my window sill. I suspect it had an unfortunate encounter with my ginger cat Weasley, but ...innocent until proven guilty. The owl carried the following message:

Dear friends, fellow witches, Muggles, beings and beasts,

it’s been more than 11 years now that the Dark Wizard who called himself Lord Voldemort has finally been defeated. Last year on the 10th anniversary the press flooded us with interviews, specials and more or less in-depth reports on the events during his long rise to and short reign of terror. Star journalist Rita Skeeter surprised us with a revised edition of her famous autobiography of Professor Dumbledore and a brand new ‘Life and Deeds of the Chosen One’. Those of us who have teenage daughters surely enjoyed the Special Poster Edition of Witch Weekly....
Now we are thoroughly informed about the heroes who saved the world; we know everything one needs to know and a few things one never wanted to know. Or do we...?
Obviously not, because when our children and grandchildren started asking the inevitable questions. “Where were you when...?”, “What did you do....think...?”, “Which side were you on...?” , “How could you not have known....?”, “What did the Muggles do?” and the most uncomfortable question to those among us who have been in Slytherin “Have/has you/Dad/Grandpa/Uncle Heribert been a Death Eater?”
we tried to answer as best as we could, but soon realized that one witches personal memory only goes so far. We had the nearly the same questions as our children. “What did people from other houses, different blood status, Muggles, witches from the continent or from across the Atlantic and even werewolves, centaurs or house elves think?”
This is where you come into play, dear friends, the more personal accounts on what it was like for an ordinary person who was there between 1970 and 1998, witnessed some events from a distance, had thoughts and feelings about what she saw, heard or read, we get, the more complete and nearer to the truth will the picture become.
Tell us your story, short or long, but tell the truth as you know it. We’ve heard enough heroes’ stories.
We would love to compile all your personal stories, statements, short memories to a collection to be published on January 9th, 2010 as a tribute to the 50th birthday of Severus Snape, a man we know you admire as much as we do, a man who did the best he could at the place life has put him, a man we will never get a Special Poster Edition of ....
Will you help us? Any small contribution counts. Discretion granted.

Yours sincerely
Four Houses Witches Club

p. s.: We are not interested in romantic stories about your secret crushes on any of the well-known characters of the time. Please send those to Witch Weekly or publish them on the appropriate sites of the Muggle World Wide Webbing.

Well, will we as WhySnape forum help them with their ambitious task? I think we should.
So this is a kind of fan fiction/role-playing crossover challenge, WhySnape style.
Here’s the prompt:
- Imagine yourself as a member of the British or international wizarding world of any house affiliation or blood status, a Muggle in the know, i.e. relation of a witch or wizard, spouse, friend, neighbour, a beast or being, anyone who was old enough between the 70s and the late 90s to form an opinion on the ongoing events.
- Try to choose your character as close to your real age, personality and situation in life as possible and tell us what you, as you really are, might have thought and done in the fictional character’s position. Stay true to yourself.
- A warning to Mary Sue and her little sisters, you’re not welcome. Please do spare us the effort to throw you out.
- Take the request of the Witches Club seriously, they call for the ordinary people’s opinion, moral majority, innocent and probably helpless bystanders. You are not a heroic Member of the Order of the Phoenix nor are you a trusted Death Eater. You belong to the normal people on the street, which means your information is limited to what your chosen character has reasonably access to. You can’t possibly have overheard private conversations between main characters.
- Do not contradict canon. Timeline discrepancies due to different interpretations and flaws in the books will be treated as flints. Your character has the right to memory failures and casual treatment of dates. Sloppy treatment of dates and figures is common to human nature. I suggest staying vague about really controversial issues.
- Canon sources may include the seven books, two school books, Beedle, the Wombats, interviews as far as they present facts not interpretations.
- No sex, please! No sex, please! No sex, please!
- All entries should be in before Christmas to give us a chance to put the whole thing together for the great celebration.

These rules are open to discussion among those who join the project and may be extended.
You can subscribe to the project in this topic or via PM. A closed-user-group forum will be created to collect drafts, suggest scenarios and post questions on details or search for betas etc. Anyone is invited who submits to the rules and wants to help.The resulting fictitious documentary will be published in PDF-format for download. Artists who want to contribute illustrations or simply fitting decorations are very welcome.
There are several old friends who have been silent for a long time; I hope some of you will return for this, if only in memory of the good times we shared here and to honour Severus Snape. To new or younger members and nonnative speakers of English who may be shy about their language or literary skills or the canon expertise: this challenge does not require the talent of a poet laureate nor the knowledge of a canon guru; all it requires is determination, imagination and common sense. A short drabble is as welcome as a novel length entry; foreigners can choose their character to fit their language skills; nobody seriously expects an immigrant or a foreigner from the continent to write perfect Oxford English, some of our American friends surely won’t.
I stop here with my lengthy explanations. Feel free to ask for more information and details. Make suggestions.

Optimistically awaiting your replies
Sionna Raven
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[Katze]

If that wasn't Slytherin enough, try this!



Happy ficcing! I'm in!
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[Nancy]

Count me in.
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[Sapphira]

I'd love to give it a try. Its been so long
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There's nothing anyone can ever do to me, that I cannot do to myself."

[Sionna Raven]

Brilliant, every great project starts with the first volunteer. I'll give you access to the work shed. There isn't anything in there, but I promise to get it started at the weekend. It simply hasn't make sense for only the three of us.
ETA: Done!


Hey, we still need more people; it's the diversity which makes it interesting.
Get up and join, it isn't too hard to do and there will be a lot of fun.
Don't miss the opportunity to be a part of something unique.
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[Revenge]

count miie in too

[Sionna Raven]

Access to the work shed granted.
Still it would be nice, if you introduce yourself shortly to the public.
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[Lone_Samurai]

oooh...this sounds intresting, might not have time to do anything, I'm running FCs and clubs on Club Bleach
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[Sionna Raven]

Can anyone who has already enlisted please check whether she can see the group forum and has full reading and posting access?
Due to time difference issues it may take a few hours eventually.
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[Sionna Raven]

I was recently reminded by one of our new members that the prompts of our challenge are probably too strict or too demanding. I apologize that I haven't made myself clear enough. I thought I did, but then I had long-term WhySnape members in mind, when I wrote the introduction. I didn't give much detailed information about what I'm hoping to see, because I didn't want to influence people into my line of thinking. I wanted them to express their ideas, not satisfying my exspectations. Allright, my mistake.
You don't need to be an expert in British culture (I thought I have been clear enough about that?), politics, history or social science to write a piece!

So her are a few simple scenario suggestions:
From Muggles:
- as a relative, what did you think, when your 11 year old daughter/son, niece/nephew, sister/brother, grandchild disappeared to a school you couldn't even see?
- how did you feel about the growing distance (my assumption from canon) between you and your magic loved ones?
- what were you feelings, when he/she was injured/killed in a war you probably didn't know about?

From foreign witches and wizards:
- how much did you notice from the events in Britain? Do you think your press covered it suffiently? Do you know enough about Britain or Europe to understand?
- did you think it was a global threath or a regional oddity?
Spectators at the Quidditch World cup:
- tell us about your experiences, the organisation of the event, the competence of the ministry etc.
- did you recognize the Dark Mark? Were you scared or merely irritated about British traditions you don't understand? (Compare it to football/soccer hooligans in RL e.g.)
Durmstrang or Beauxbaton student during the Triwizard Tournament:
- did you feel welcome at Hogwarts? Was there interaction among the students? Did you encounter prejudices?
- what did you think about the magical education in Britain in comparison to the system you know?
- what were your feelings about the two Hogwarts champions? Did you feel cheated?
Hogwarts students:
Hufflepuff:
- your opinion about the other houses. Do you feel dicriminated or patronized?
- do you really hate Slytherin and always side with Gryffindor?
- what were your feelings at GoF? (I'm sure I remember that some Hufflepuffs wore Draco's bewitched badges)
- did you stay for the battle out of loyalty to Gryffindor/Harry or out of loyalty to Hogwarts?
- to the purebloods among you: can you imagine to be tempted by a cunning representation of Voldemort's ideas? e.g. you're talented witches and wizards from respectable families; you deserve to be treated with more respect than the Muggle(born) supporters give you --> if you can, can your loyalty have turned into a trap?
Ravenclaw:
- roughly the same as Hufflepuff from a more intellectual approach
Gryffindor: ?
Slytherin:
- what's it like to be a member of the most powerful and most hated house?
- why did you go along with blood prejudice? Did you share it?
- how did you feel at the end of PS/SS, when you lost the House Cup?
Parents:
- your reaction on canon events, when your children told you about it or you read it in the Prophet? Did it tell you?
- Werewolf teachers, three-headed dogs, dragons, half-giants, severely injured or dead students?
- accidents in CMC classes?
- how did you explain the House Cup decision in PS/SS to your crying Slytherin child?

Those are only a few things I can come up with. Leading question, I'm afraid, from my personal Slytherin POV. That's why I didn't post them earlier. I'm sure you can come up with better ones, but this should give you a hint. And you see it's not too difficult and can be done in short drabbles.
Imagine yourself in canon witnessing directly or indirectly the events described in the books and describe your reactions and feelings, if something similar happened to you in RL.
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[ericoides]

Sionna asked me to post the text of this email publicly; though it seems unnecessary, now that she's put up her excellent response. This correspondence started when I sent the utterly unsuitable `Memories of Mary McDonald's sister'. At that time I made the assumption one had to write a story showing how a non-canon's character's opinion of Severus Snape changed after his role as a spy was revealed. She wrote back, and after reading her email, as well as her original post on Loose Canon, I derived the following parameters:


I've reread the rules several times, and as far as I can tell they appear to be:

1. there should be a viewpoint character, preferably similar in experience and age to the author. IOW, not third person pseudo-scholarly narrative, ferex.

2. this viewpoint character can not be a canon character

3. Canon characters are not required to appear, and any interactions with canon characters must also work within canon.

4. Romantic or sexual interactions, even one-sided, with canon characters are prohibited.

5. The work must be set between 1975 (or so) and 1996; i.e. during Voldemort's public sway.

6. The setting should be one with which the author can show a convincing familiarity

Ok, so far so good. Now things get a bit murky. The zeroth precept (as it were) seems to be,

What was your politico-historical take on the wizarding world (whatever part of it to which you belonged) during this period? This would seem to indicate you want not a *story*, but a short-form memoir, overlain with a patina of the wizarding-world.

Well, frankly, whitehound, terri-testing, and red hen have/are continuing to do brilliant exegesis on canon. As I mentioned in a previous email, I could probably work something up about, say, the impoverished art scene in the British WW, 1970--95 ...but it would be boring as all hades to everyone but me, who is mostly thinking about this crap as a prelude to trying to build her own magical world. It also, I suspect, only relates to Voldie peripherally.

My life during the 1970s--90s was *boring*. (It's still frickin' boring.) I know *nothing* of the UK's (real) politics during that period, except that Maggie Thatcher was (probably) in power during that time, and conservative.

I can't imagine voldie war I or II would have (much) affected my life, were I an american witch. Oh, I might've noticed he was defeated, in much the way I noticed the Berlin wall came down---which basically resolved to `that's nice; i'm so happy for them'.

One popular suggestion seems to be writing from the point of view of an unnamed student, particularly slytherin house. However, I come of peasant stock of my father's side (army deserters from Germany in the mid 1800s) and hillbillies on my mother's. Writing from that point of view would rather violate #1. I was reared as a bourgeois, and have *no* experience of the sort of terror Voldie evidently precipitated, unless you count living in a neighborhood where gunshots at night were the norm and breakins were a fact of life. However, although we were always happy to come home to an unburnt house, we never worried about being dragged out of it and slaughtered.

So, frankly, I really don't know *how* to satisfy what is to me contradictory requirements: on the one hand, base the narrative on my experience; on the other, relate it to the terror the british wizarding world experienced.

Perhaps this is why you're having difficulties getting people to contribute?

ericoides

***

That said, I think, if I could hook up with someone living in the UK, I could probably write from the pov of the parent hearing about the three headed dogs, werewolf teachers, etc, since my own offspring spring stories of kids who've brought guns, drugs, fights, etc to their school far too often for my taste.

[Sionna Raven]

Important
The dead line for entries is extended to January. Anything within the rules and in a readable state which reaches me before the birthday will be accepted. Please, all of you, do try and find a bit of spare time to contribute.
I see that a lot of people are reading this topic. It's open for guest posts; why don't you ask, if anything is still unclear?
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[Sionna Raven]

Moved art entry to the Workshed

Thanks for contributing, Ericoides. html doesn't work, please use BBCode
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[Sionna Raven]

Last call for entries to the Birthday Project Collection. I'll be putting it together tonight, so send in whatever you have.

I don't expect much; I guess I have to accept that I'm faced with a bunch of apathetic fans who can't be bothered to add something to this forum which requires the use of more than three braincells and doesn't involve infantile squeaking about silk boxer shorts or billowing cloaks or slash fantasies.

No offence meant to those members who clearly moved on or have been busy with the much bigger and more popular Snapedom celebration, but this community has hundreds of members and only half a dozen could at least show so much interest as to ask a few questions.
I guess it's all my fault; I didn't tell you clearly enough what we intended. The rules seemed too complicated, too strict perhaps. I don't know, because you didn't tell me what was wrong for several months.

Thanks to all who tried. The poor result which IMO still shows the potential of what this might have been will be published tomorrow. It's not the number of screaming fans but the devotion of the few faithful which would have mattered to our Professor.

All the others who still read: the dancing house elf show will continue to your amusement. Don't expect to be taken seriously with your pathetic exclamations of devotion anymore.


I know I'm probably too hard, but I'm really frustrated and angry. Nancy, please edit the parts, where I go out off bounds.
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[Katze]

I can empathize with your frustration. I almost feel like it was pointless to write my story - almost. I wrote it for SEVERUS' birthday and I know that he knows what inane pointless prattle and apathy is.

Feel free to delete my viper's tongue. I can't help it.
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[Nancy]

done, Sionna
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[Sionna Raven]

I expected that my British English might need some Yankee picking. I simply wanted to say those two words just once.
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[mary]

Sionna, I want to apologize for not contributing anything. I had to revise my story for Snapedom just last week, and the last two months have been difficult for me. It's also true that the sorts of things I've been writing didn't seem as if they would fit into the fest. But I feel bad. I do hope you get some interesting entries -and I look forward to what you think of mine for Snapedom. If you wanted to cross post it here, I'd be happy for you to do so - only I just don't think it's the sort of thing you're looking for.

Best wishes, and Happy New Year.

[Sionna Raven]

Apologies from you are unnecessary, Mary. People who participated in the Severus Big Bang are certainly excused.
It's the general attitude of silent consumption that annoys me, because people are still reading and for reasons I cannot imagine registering here. This is a discussion forum. Guests have reading access to all sections, so why on earth do people who can't be bothered to post do feel the need to put their names on the members list?
The small package is nicely wrapped and ready for delivery. 'Using any means to reach our goals' sometimes is using the little you've got and in this sense we did better than expected.
Happy New Year to you and Happy Birthday To Severus!
Not even Snapedom was able to gather the 50 candles he deserves, but numbers don't matter, do they? It's important that the few candles burn brightly and will never fade....

The link to the project stories can be found here
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