i'm a suspect. i'm a traitor.

In the spirit of procrastination, I dedicate this post to Severus Snape, who in my opinion is one of the best characters ever written. if not the best. and no, i'm not talking about his character itself, i'm talking about the way it was written. hate him or love him you can't deny the fact that JK Rowling did an amazing job on him.

from the first moment we see him, we are not sure if he is good or bad. he seems to hate harry, but he's a hogwarts teacher so he couldn't be a really bad guy. could he? he looks like he's trying to curse harry but is actually saving his life. he's head of slytherin. he was a death eater. he told voldemort about the prophesy. but dubledore trusts him with his life. on the other hand, so does voldemort.

throughout the entire series you are left guessing, especially at the end of the sixth book. is snape good or bad? and when you seem completely convinced of one side, there are those little pricks of suspicion that send your confidence crumbling. you end up right back where you started.

and then, finally, we find out that he really was good. he wasn't a "good guy" necessarily, but he was fighting on the right side. and only Rowling could make that so believable. She didn't make him pure evil the entire way through and then suddenly change her mind and say oh by the way he really was good. but she didn't make him transparent. he was not a really nice guy that was drastically misunderstood. he is perhaps the only good guy that could be considered evil without becoming really far-fetched. the way she wrote his character is pure art.

i can't help but compare him to a character that was supposed to have pulled off the same thing in another big franchise book, Alice in Breaking Dawn. Meyer has Alice disappear one night and we are supposed to be left guessing if she did it out of complete selfishness or for some greater good. it might have just been me, but i thought it was completely obvious that she hadn't really deserted them. and not only because Stephenie Meyer has an issue with writing any kind of darkness into her books. i mean, even her bad guys are just "misunderstood." back to the point, when alice shows up at the end, there was no suspense. no feeling of omg she's back! no excitement at her return because it was so expected.

with snape, the revelation about which side he was really on actually meant something. i wanted to know. i believed it. i was impressed.

like i said, greatest character ever written.

*Chase This Light - Jimmy Eat World