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

[igenlode]

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 :-(

[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*