darthdavid wrote:
That story sucks so hard the only way anything ever escapes it is as hawking radiation. Which seems to be a theme for ol' lionheart these days. Along with a bunch of petty revenge fantasies. I mean he spends like a whole chapter where he talks about how Snape was an irredeemable monster even as a kid so one of his characters who was time-traveling castrates him with a waffle iron, curses him with palsy (so he'd never be able to learn his only joy in life, potions) and basically did everything in their power to ruin his life. For things he hasn't done yet. This is presented as Good and Moral™.
That scene of the story is indeed disturbing, and mercifully short; barely a paragraph, IIRC. But I do disagree with you on the revenge-fic air you're trying to apply to
Partially Kissed. The author
doesn't spend a whole chapter, etc, etc, etc (I should know, I just finished reading it):
The start of the time travel arc has a severe change in Snape's background when he was a wee kid (his abusive father wound up killed by the time traveler, accidentally, no less, and his mom was compulsed to leave for France; that was a mistake in my opinion, but not shown as such in-story). Then you don't see him for several chapters, in which the story progresses by nearly a decade; he shows up again, in narration, and he's presented as having pretty much the same attitude as in canon. The major difference is that, not having his witch mum to teach him magic, he was far weaker.
The time traveler checks up on him before Snape goes to Hogwarts, sees basically no change, and her idea of damage control is the above-mentioned humiliation conga ('damage control' here explicitly defined as limiting his power so he won't be able to hurt as many people, not least of all other kids who were his students, in a story where original-timeline-Snape is shown performing experiments on Muggle-born students, experiments in which they often die). His palsy got cured in year 3, but by that time he missed his start. He never became a potions' master, but he STILL joined the Death Eaters and was a prick, just a far less damaging one.
The point wasn't that brewing potions was his only joy, the point was, and the author insists on this, that he was one of a small category of people (again he insists, SMALL category) for whom making others miserable is the only joy. A sociopathic little shit, in short. And this is all well presented in-story.
I will agree that the 'humiliation conga' paragraph was way over the top. I could have happily lived without ever reading it. It's most disturbing because, proven little sociopathic shit or not, it's still inflicted on a kid; Evil!Dumbledore has a worse death scene, and that didn't even made me blink. BUT, saying the whole story sucks, with that I can't agree;
Partially Kissed is
absolutely huge, and it won't get spoiled by one overly-disturbing detail found in a single paragraph.
Out-of-story, as stated in the author's notes at the end of the chapter, it was a massive author rant against idiotic fangirls (or boys, he didn't specify) who repeatedly pestered him in reviews that if Snape would have had an iddy bitty liddle thing changed in his history, he would turn all good. He then goes on to state that people have to choose to change and that while a harsh background can cause damage which others should pay attention to, that most definitely doesn't allow the victim to inflict misery on others. Snape did that, and that turned the author against Snape.
He also claims for himself a background similar to Snape's: very abusive father, mother who won't stand up, colleagues who are bullies, and such. The nail in Snape's coffin is that using his sob story of a background the way he did royally pissed on the author's own achievement of having risen above the mess in which he started.
To the rest of the board, I probably owe an apology; this post has nothing to do with revealing a new fanfic, mostly because this thread
is where I get my 'fic recommendations; those two above were accidents. On the other hand, arguments have happened before in here, and nobody complained.
Joke Edit: Incidentally, black holes don't suck; they attract.
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