I've often felt that "Snape loved Lily" was a lazy motive for his actions that wasted the potential of a complex character (although I would say that, having come up with my own more personality-based theories for Snape's choice and the rejection of the 'dark side' back in the days before we had any idea of a connection between him and Harry's mother at all ;-p)
I think fans tend to blow the whole 'Mudblood' thing up into an idea that it's Racism and Racism is the Worst Thing in the World; it comes across to me as more akin to calling somebody a 'stupid fat hick'. It's a kneejerk insult. It's not a deadly offence against humanity.
Snape's crime, so far as I remember it, is disowning Lily when she is trying to help him -- and the reasons *why* he does that are unattractive but quite understandable. (He's been humiliated quite enough already.)
He does try to apologise, and I think the reason why she refuses to accept that is more complicated than "he called me an unacceptable name" (knowing Snape's acid tongue, it probably wasn't the first time he'd thrown insults around under stress); their friendship has been under strain for a while at that point.
I certainly don't think that Snape's behaviour towards his students has anything whatever to do with concern about their progress; I think he likes to make other people feel worse in order to make himself feel better. Thoroughly unpleasant people are often very unhappy, perhaps deservedly so, but that's a vicious circle. And it's pretty consistent with everything we see of Snape's past.
And I pretty much agree with this: "the lesson is that just because someone is unpleasant doesn't necessarily mean that they're an evil person. But now? No, the only reason that a harsh and nasty man could ever do the right thing is because he had an unrequited crush."
Snape is interesting *because* he does the right thing, sometimes at great risk to himself, without being an inherently nice person. Trivialising that by explaining it all as "Snape loved Lily" feels like primary-school level plot psychology to me :-(
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I think fans tend to blow the whole 'Mudblood' thing up into an idea that it's Racism and Racism is the Worst Thing in the World; it comes across to me as more akin to calling somebody a 'stupid fat hick'. It's a kneejerk insult. It's not a deadly offence against humanity.
Snape's crime, so far as I remember it, is disowning Lily when she is trying to help him -- and the reasons *why* he does that are unattractive but quite understandable. (He's been humiliated quite enough already.)
He does try to apologise, and I think the reason why she refuses to accept that is more complicated than "he called me an unacceptable name" (knowing Snape's acid tongue, it probably wasn't the first time he'd thrown insults around under stress); their friendship has been under strain for a while at that point.
I certainly don't think that Snape's behaviour towards his students has anything whatever to do with concern about their progress; I think he likes to make other people feel worse in order to make himself feel better. Thoroughly unpleasant people are often very unhappy, perhaps deservedly so, but that's a vicious circle. And it's pretty consistent with everything we see of Snape's past.
And I pretty much agree with this: "the lesson is that just because someone is unpleasant doesn't necessarily mean that they're an evil person. But now? No, the only reason that a harsh and nasty man could ever do the right thing is because he had an unrequited crush."
Snape is interesting *because* he does the right thing, sometimes at great risk to himself, without being an inherently nice person. Trivialising that by explaining it all as "Snape loved Lily" feels like primary-school level plot psychology to me :-(