I don't think you know what 'ad hominem' means. I never once said anything about you or your character.

I get it. You hate Snape. He's just the worst. He'd rape Lily given the opportunity, he'd lock her down in a basement for the rest of her life and have his wicker way with her. You've made your point. Now stop and let others make theirs.

 

This is ad hominem. Rather than address my arguments, you simply say I am bashing and using fanon with no explanation whatever.

Again, you say that all of the post is speculative and repeat the same argument from before, still with no explanation at all.

Again, trying to make the poster seem irrational or silly as opposed to addressing arguments.

You're the one who doesn't know what it means. And you're wrong, because you said several things about my character in assuming that I am simply a basher with no grip on canon.

You really don't get it. I don't have to stop doing anything just because you say so, and act like an asshole. I've made several points, while you have come in only to insult, with no substance to any argument.

You are the shitposter in this thread preventing people from speaking their minds, not me. I'm only addressing things said to me.

Fuck off.

 

Afrojack, mate, I respect you as a user. So please, take a break from the thread and let this cool down for day.

 

Snape had a loveboner for Lily because he was in love with her and a hateboner for Harry for various reasons that all stemmed from the fact that Harry was James Potter's son.

James was a relentless little shit in school (as far as we know), but still saved Snape's life when things got serious, which of course went against everything Snape believed about James and only fueled the hate. Moreover, Snape now owed over his life to the same relentless little shit who had made his school years, if not miserable, then at least significantly annoying.

On top of that, James was putting the moves on Lily, who resisted his advances. Then one day Snape had had too much and lashed out, calling his probably only genuine friend and crush a mudblood, which effectively ended their friendship. Time passes and that fucker James gets into Lily's pants and then they get married. Snape has all the fucks in the world to give and his Potter hateboner grows painfully harder and harder without release, so he does the extreme thing and joins a murderous band of batshit crazy degenerates.

Regardless of whether Snape knew it was about the Potters (Longbottoms) when he told Voldemort about the prophecy, he must have found out at some point, because we know Voldemort apparently tried to spare Lily (I mean, why would he do that, unless Snape asked this boon of him - unless there's word of god on this and I haven't read it). Plan backfires, Lily dies and Snape has no closure - yes, Potter is dead, but so is Lily, so he can't derive satisfaction from any of that.

Enter Harry Potter.

In the end, Snape's love for Lily could have still been genuine or been twisted into a long-running obsession that fueled the hateboner as well. I'm pretty sure Snape knew, deep down, that taking it out on a kid didn't really settle anything, which is why he remained forever cranky.

TLDR; Snape was a piece of shit person and his love or lack thereof for Lily should have no bearing on evaluating his conduct towards a kid who never did anything to him until he started openly antagonizing that kid like some manbaby who can't let go of a grudge. What's so hard to understand?

I can't believe this thread is still going, lol.

 

Republic and afrojack, step back and go to your corners. The rest, carry on.

 

I think Slughorn's statement in HBP was put there very deliberately: "never underestimate obsessive love". I largely agree with Afrojack on this topic: Snape didn't love Lily in the normal sense of love, but rather he wanted her as a possession. He loves her like a stalker loves their victim - obsessively.

Snape being okay with Lily's husband and son dying is the perfect example of this. Snape treating Harry like shit for his entire life just reinforced it. If he had truly loved Lily, could he have treated her son so badly?

Okay, so, he helps Harry win the war at Dumbledore's instructions. But this was never about Harry: the significance of his doe Patronus and "always" is that he's still doing everything out of his obsession with Lily, not out of any care for Harry. He doesn't care for Harry at all - seems to genuinely hate him, in fact - and this just shows how shallow and selfish his "love" for Lily remains, because he still cares nothing about the things Lily cared about. He doesn't respect her enough for that, or to genuinely seek her son's best interest.

He just does the bare minimum to satisfy the idea that he loves her. He's meeting an obligation he feels he has, and doing the minimum to meet that obligation, not acting out of genuine selfless love. No mother who loved their child enough to die for him would accept that you can love her and simultaneously treat said child like shit. Harry might think Snape loved Lily, but would Lily think Snape loved her? I doubt it.

Snape remains a nasty piece of work throughout all. The friends Snape made at school, his joining the Death Eaters, his targeting of Hermione later in life, his friendship with the Malfoy family... all these things point towards Snape being a genuine believer in pure-blood philosophy. He had a personal vendetta against Voldemort, but not an ideological one. The Death Eaters were, and remained until the end, Snape's natural home.

I'm not sure that Harry's opinion of Snape (and therefore presumably JKR's) matters much. JKR gets to dictate what the characters do and say, but she doesn't get to dictate how they're judged. It's perfectly possible for us as readers to disagree with Harry's assessment of Snape's actions, if (as we likely do) we have a different moral code to Harry--one that doesn't allow that love eliminates all evil.

 

Some Word of God quotes may be relevant here.

I'm sure that settles any questions about whether Snape loved Lily or not.

Some more Rowling quotes:

Those who question Snape's bravery or his love for Lily completely miss the point of his character.

 

Snape is what you call a grey character. He was a brave man, no doubt. But he was also what you'd call a shitty person. He had some justification toward his hatred for James Potter. James Potter made his life a living hell, and certainly was an arrogant bully in his teenager years. But Snape was probably just as nasty as a piece of work as he was. Snape would be the perfect example of two wrongs do not make a right.

 

I think it would be useful here to distinguish between love the emotion (aka infatuation) and love the state (i.e. a lasting and resilient relationship of affection, trust, respect, etc).

The former is subjective: anyone who says they feel like they're in love is in love. The latter is more objective: someone whose actions contradict their supposed love does not love you in this sense.

 

I have often had this thought. Also, in the case Neville had been the BWL, Snape would never have left the Death Eaters.

As someone said in this thread, Snape had taken the news of the prophecy to Voldemort knowing some anonymous child would die because of his revelation. So just that alone wasn't his motivation to leave LV.

 

That makes perfect sense, actually. Never thought of it like that before, but that's my new head-canon.

 

Now that is an interesting thought. Fascinating how something like that can be realized even all these years after the books.

 

It's way more likely that he treated Neville like shit because he was highly incompetent in potions class.

 

Yeah, but it's still an avenue of thought that I hadn't considered before, and that's what I'm saying is interesting, since we're debating aspects of Snape's character.

 

Snape loved Lily and he hated James. He went out of his way to make sure Harry lived out of his love for Lily but was also an insufferable cunt to him because of his hatred for James. There was a strange sort of balance to his character when you think about it.

Does that excuse his behaviour?

Definitely not.

But its understandable where he is coming from. My personal position is he did love Lily, way too much evidence in canon to say otherwise. The same evidence however could also be used to argue that he was obsessive.

What really clinches it for me though is Snape's patronus.

Enough said.

 

Snape's love for Lily does not make up for his bad deeds. He atoned for them for his continuous efforts in the Wizarding Wars.

He was still an asshole to so many people, but that was a separate issue.

 

After perusing the thread, I think there's a significant piece missing (and I know I've mentioned it in other threads, so bear with me if you remember it from before): Snape is, for all intents and purposes, the anti-Harry. In every sense of the idea, Snape knows the opposite of Harry. So, when it comes to love, Harry knows love as a sacrificial gift. Snape, by definition, knows love as a selfish want.

You can argue that selfish want does not equal love, and in the real world that may be true, but in JKR's storyworld, it absolutely does. In fact, it is the backdrop that throws Harry's love for his friends, his family, (and yes, even Ginny at the end of HBP) in such contrast, and allows it not to be swallowed up by the concept of his mother's sacrificial love. I believe that's why we get the scene of Snape longing to look into Harry's eyes as he's dying, just before Harry goes off to die. In two closely-related scenes, we see the conclusion of selfish love and unselfish love. The first ends in death without choice, the second, with life after choice.

 

Snape's love for Lily doesn't make up for anything, but Alan Rickman's dulcet tones sure do.