Wow.

[betweensunandmoon]

The post itself is not so bad. The comments are the scary part.

Apparently, Snape was only mean to his students because he cared about them, and Lily was a bitch for being upset that her best friend called her a racial slur.

I've seen this a hundred times while browsing old posts on various sites (and scarring myself for life), but foolishly believed it was a thing of the past.

I think I need a hug.

Comments

[betweensunandmoon]

I thought it was established in Chamber of Secrets that Mudblood was the worst thing you could call a Muggle-born witch or wizard...?

Actually, you know what? Let's not even have this conversation. Suffice to say there are people out there who refuse to admit Snape has ever done anything wrong and try to make excuses for his bad behavior, even if it means victim-blaming the shit out of the other characters. They make my skin crawl, and not in a good way. Makes me feel sorry for sane Snape fans.

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.

Exactly! Which was, last time I checked, the very definition of a bully. But try telling the Slytherin apologists that.

[igenlode]

Suffice to say there are people out there who refuse to admit Snape has ever done anything wrong and try to make excuses for his bad behavior, even if it means victim-blaming the shit out of the other characters.

Those exist in every fandom, alas (I'm thinking of the crowd that advocates "the Phantom was a poor persecuted innocent, and we will prove this by explaining how everyone he threatened or murdered was evil and perverted"). When people become passionate advocates for a given character, they have a tendency to try to put them on the right side of every argument... even if this results in a version of the character that's totally unrecognisable from the canon that supposedly made them fans in the first place.

Snape is not a nice man -- it's more or less his defining characteristic. His reflex reaction to just about anything is unpleasant.

On the other hand, like anyone else, he doesn't see *himself* as the villain and probably finds his own actions entirely justified, so the challenge in fan-fiction is to show the gap between self-perception and reality without simply cheating and writing a saintly misunderstood Snape...

[betweensunandmoon]

Those exist in every fandom, alas (I'm thinking of the crowd that advocates "the Phantom was a poor persecuted innocent, and we will prove this by explaining how everyone he threatened or murdered was evil and perverted"). When people become passionate advocates for a given character, they have a tendency to try to put them on the right side of every argument... even if this results in a version of the character that's totally unrecognisable from the canon that supposedly made them fans in the first place.

So true. Though I honestly would rather deal with crazy Erik fangirls than crazy Snape fangirls.

On the other hand, like anyone else, he doesn't see *himself* as the villain and probably finds his own actions entirely justified, so the challenge in fan-fiction is to show the gap between self-perception and reality without simply cheating and writing a saintly misunderstood Snape...

*nods*