I like Snape's sarcasm, and his skills can't be disputed.

But I've not been able to buy his redemption ever since the last few books came out. All stories that suddenly feature Snape being a pleasant person start to lose me at that point.

 

Or a book where incidentaly the headmaster of the school could be gay. I'm just saying, and since the-books-that-must-not-be-named came out you can ignore that kind of thing in favor of (finally) finding a quality story. That is why I don't read romance centered fics. And really that was not the purpose of the book (for me).

Snape is/was an interesting character and a competent wizard, even if he is/was a bastard.

 

@Taure: Soul Play is also available, in what I assume is its entire form since the last line is "Finita Incatatem" written in bold, in the newsgroup alt.binaries.harry-potter.

The DLP Archive has only 32 chapters v. the 34 that version has.

 

Hmmm...Snape is a fun character to read about. If you met him in real life, you'd hate him, but I really enjoyed him in the first few books. Someone who was technically on Harry's side, part of his support structure, but loathed the scar-faced bespectacled little git (as Snape might say). I think Rowling did a poor job of weaving in his backstory with Lily Evans, but she did badly with all her romantic subplots, so meh.

Good character, detestable man, when written well can be both horrifying and darkly amusing.

 

Whoever called Snape a Magnificent Bastard is an idiot, and needs to read their tropes better. Just because you can't help liking him despite his evil doesn't mean the rest of us can't. Most people, myself included, fucking hated Snape, which automatically makes him ineligible for MB-status.

If the child-abuse wasn't reason enough to disqualify him already.

 

Oh god yes!

I get to post another link to the world's most inescapable mousetra- I mean, best website, tvtropes.org.

Spend less than an hour there, I dare you! Even if you manage to leave (just to be an obstinate twat), you'll wish you had stayed.

 

Typed about fifteen seconds before I had the idea to link to the 'Harry Potter' page to trap more people. Trapped again. FUCK YOU TVTROPES.

 

For truth.

 

My method to keeping TV Tropes from stealing the remainder of my evening is pretty simple: do not ever click any links on a TV Tropes page. No matter how tempted you are, do not click it. Just read the article you are on and go on your way.

 

That kind of willpower is admirable... and totally overrated.

 

Snape had a lot of potential as a character, but at the end of the day, he turned out to be a pathetic, bitter, pussy-whipped son of a bitch who takes his resentment out on little kids and is jerked around by Dumbledore like a puppet. Bastard? Yes. Magnificent? Hell, no. The fact that so many people actually admire him makes him all the more annoying to me.

 

Snape's a competent asshole, that was used by Dumbledore and for this took out his anger on others.

 

Hey, I waste enough time on the internet as it is. I don't need TV Tropes making it worse.

 

I hate Snape as a character. Despite this, his portrayal by Alan Rickman in the film adaptation makes him one of my favorite characters on screen. Then again, I think Dumbledore should have been played by Christoper Walken.

 

Ian McKellen if he hadn't been busy being Gandalf at the time.

Even Count Dooku would have been interesting, but he was Saruman. The best wizards were already taken, and Harris simply died too soon.

Also, am I alone in thinking Ewan McGregor would have been perfect for Lupin?

But yes, Rickman makes Snape palatable, if not downright hilarious. Seeing him pick on Harry and Ron is actually funny. But that also might have been bad for the true essence of the character.

 

Tim Roth was originally approached about playing Snape but was unavailable. *That* guy could've made Snape the bastard he ought to be. Rickman is great, but too likeable to hate in anything but the original Die Hard.

 

summabitch you got me

 

Alan Rickman's portrayal of Snape is top notch. More the fact that Alan Rickman is the bad guy from Die Hard 1 makes him all the more epic. Lupin's actor failed hardcore, makes him look like a 70's porn star.

Snape in the books did his job well up to the point where JKR completely ruined everything anyway. I find a lot of characters actions OoC past OotP.

Snape was the good bad guy and when his role isn't taken so vastly exaggerated like people do on here his character was interesting in the series. Sure he was a cockhead, but still interesting.

 

Yes.
Anything that would make that useless wimp of a character more likable is strictly verboten.

He's already portrayed far too favorably in the fandom. If fuckin' Obi Wan played him, we'd have to endure fics where he's flinging death eaters left and right using Force Push, while leaping acrobatically two stories in the air, with a magic sword in hand... in 'Lycan' form.

Fuck fans.

Unavailable because he was working on the poorly received Planet of The Apes remake. Don't worry, there's no need to kick his ass, since I'm sure he kicks it himself every time they start quoting the box office stats of the latest Harry Potter movie.

I agree, though, he probably would have pushed the rat bastard angle harder. Maybe, MAYBE, he wouldn't have inspired the same pants-wetting fervor in the fanbase.

But I doubt it. Women like Snape for the same reason they like wife-beaters: They will be hopelessly infatuated with any guy, no matter how cruel, ugly, and worthless he may be, as long as he isn't 'you'.

Count on it.

His Sheriff of Nottingham is often said to be the only redeeming feature of Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (I also liked the music).

I still can't believe he played Metatron in Dogma. Coincidentally, it ties in with his role as Snape, as both characters are completely dickless.

I blame Rickman for the explosion of Snape-centered stories, 99.999% of which are thinly-veiled masturbatory fantasies.

Sticky Keys: It's not just a function of Windows, it's an epidemic among fangirls and their misaimed fandom.

(Oh look, the Draco in Leather Pants trope is on that page. BTW: Fuck you, you've been trope-trapped.)

Snape, no matter how skilled with magic he may be, is a failure as a teacher, and as a human being. We're talking about someone who directly caused the death of the person he was obsessed with (sorry, punks, that ain't 'love'), tried to negotiate so that she'd be the only one in her family left alive, and then when that gambit failed, spent the rest of his life treating her son like shit because he was butthurt that life didn't hand him the prime piece of ginger-tufted ass he had picked out.

When Snape looked in the mirror, he failed to see that he was a hook-nosed prick with poor hygiene and yellow teeth, who barely had a chance of remaining Lily's platonic-shoulder-rub friend, when he blew it by espousing a racist philosophy.

When Snape looked at Harry, he saw a spoiled, arrogant fame-seeker who was too dull-witted to succeed in class, while in reality Harry hated celebrity, didn't have the luxury of growing up with at least one parent who cared, like Snape did, and in fact did really well in most classes, even netting the second best possible grade in Potions despite Snape's constant browbeating and destruction of Harry's classwork... if sabotage by the Slytherins didn't destroy it first.

Snape had to have known that Harry wasn't anything like he insisted, because he dug through the boy's mind looking for every horrible memory he could toss off to. Despite this, he continued to shit all over Harry.

Which means he's either a complete asshole in denial, or just a complete asshole.

Snape is a twat, and any skill he may have had didn't stop him from being a complete and total loser who spent his entire life being miserable because of his own poorly thought out actions.

First he lost his friend and (in his fevered masturbation fantasies) possible love interest, then enslaved himself to a madman and fellow charter member of the 'my childhood chafed my nuts so I'm making it everyone's problem' club, only to compound that by enslaving himself to a pacifist control freak who ignored, then killed his own sister (call it negligent homicide) and plotted to subjugate the muggles with the previous dark lord (and was also a closeted poof... not that there's anything wrong with that )... who completely fucked over the war effort by hastily attempting to use an artifact that MAYBE would have allowed him to contact his dead sister and say, "Hey, sorry I neglected you and then got you killed, but now that a century has passed, I figured I had the time to apologize. Some people just say this shit graveside, but I'm an important motherfucker and nothing if not fabulously flamboyant."

Snape's two masters were, frankly, perfect for him, one being a completely psychotic bastard who displayed a near total disregard for his followers and spent every day plotting Harry Potter's death.

The other was Voldemort.

Snape was in dire need of a double dose of 'get the fuck over yourself' and, instead, seemed to be running on an IV drip of 'cry moar', up until the day he received two big fangs in the neck.

 

Okay seriously, you rock for this one comment. And I do agree with everything that you said. But I like Snape because, as a character, he had so much potential for growth and I just feel that Rowling fucked that over especially in books 5-7.