fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #3328 ]

[ SECRET POST #3328 ]

⌈ Secret Post #3328 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 03 pages, 069 secrets from Secret Submission Post #476.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

I spy a Snapewife here. Go on, tell us how your abusive bully is really a misunderstood victim. We're listening.

I am not a Snapewife.

Snape's a bully and a nasty person who is unjustifiably cruel to children. He also has sympathetic qualities and is a complex character in the narrative. The two aren't mutually exclusive.

Lol sympathetic. Tell me how someone who literally scared an eleven year old child into having his teacher be his worst nightmare is sympathetic? Go on, Mrs Snape, justify that.

The strawman isn't really appreciated.

Snape does have some sympathetic elements, judging from my hazy memory of the book - he had a harsh background, he was severely bullied, at one point almost put in a situation by Sirius which would have led to him being killed, and to a degree he wants to make up for how his bad choices led to Lilly's death. He is a very angry person, and very bitter, and made and makes a lot of very bad choices. His background explains why that is, and puts Snape's behavior in a narrative context.

This DOES NOT justify his treatment of Neville, Harry, or anyone else in any way. It also doesn't justify what he did to Lily. His treatment of Neville was abusive, cruel, a gross misuse of authority, and unjustifiable. What he did to Lily was his choice and he is held accountable for it.

Snape's actions were horrible, but his behavior is given narrative context to explain why he behaves the way he does. It doesn't justify it, but it does explain it to a degree and allow some narrative sympathy, as it is shown that he wasn't always like that.

Sympathizing and understanding is not the same as justifying a character's actions.

Snape gave as good as he got, he wasn't bullied he fought with the Marauders who were just fighting back after Snape got snippy on the Express when he butted into their conversation. He was only at risk from Remus because he was trying to get them into trouble, Sirius didn't arrange anything. You keep trying to deflect attention from him being a child's living nightmare. Do you think it is acceptable or common for any real teacher to be a child's worst nightmare? Keep on justifying your Snape love, tell me about your Snape wedding.

DA. Just so you know, the person coming across as a bit unhinged here? Is you.

So you can't really defend your Snape love and Neville hate, and are just going to start slinging mud then?

I explicitly said multiple times that Snape's bullying and terrorizing of Neville was completely unjustified and NOT OKAY. I do not hate Neville - he's one of my favorite characters, more than Snape, actually.

I'm not the one slinging mud here. You were calling me a Snapewife and Ms. Snape and mocking my arguments right off the bat.

Dear Snape hater,

Your attempts to create wank about Snape are getting more and more obvious, but also so nonsensical that I don't even feel like taking the bait.

Try something better next time :)

Sympathizing and understanding is not the same as justifying a character's actions.

I was actually going to post this in reply to the subthread OP but this is like, the perfect opening sentence for what I want to discuss so I'll post it here instead. Because I get that villain fans want to discuss and gush over the character's positive qualities without having to qualify that they know he's "bad" or whatever, and I (and in my experience, most people) generally won't butt into such positive discussions with "friendly reminder that..."

What I see way more of is the opposite: villain fans injecting themselves into discussions where the character's more awful actions are being discussed with a clearly-non-sympathetic leaning, and providing these explanations for their actions with that same "I'm just sympathizing and understanding here, NOT excusing, NOT justifying" line, which...well okay, but why bring it up in such a particular discussion if it's not supposed to serve as some kind of justification for the behaviour being criticized? I think that's why people get so suspicious and tend to jump to "you're justifying them!" in these specific cases.

I mean it's really rare that the people who started the discussion are under the impression that the character popped into existence just to commit the act that's pissed them off so much, for no reason whatsoever. More likely, they're just annoyed at the behaviour and want a good vent. They're usually aware that there's a narrative explanation for it, they don't need to be reminded of that, but sympathy is an entirely subjective emotion. It sure as hell doesn't stay static for all characters across the board, there is plenty that people (including villain fans) will excuse in their favourites that they don't excuse in other characters. That's normal. But there's an annoying tendency from fans to demand sympathy for the villain from said villain's detractors, just because the explanation met their own personal bar for sympathy. Whereas maybe it didn't meet the bar for the detractors, and they just want to talk about the awful actions, they're tired of said actions being swept under the rug, whatever.

Sympathizing and understanding is not the same as justifying, no, but I don't think you're required to have sympathy for a villain in order to understand them. Sympathy is not obligatory. It is possible to grasp the explanation for why they turned out the way the did and still not see it as enough to outweigh the gravity of their actions.

I usually see the opposite. I hang in a lot of villain-friendly spaces and it's gotten to where you can't begin to discuss Mad Hatter's TAS backstory without people dropping out of the ceiling and popping up from manholes to scream "OMG HE IS LITERALLY A PEDOPHILE MONSTER!!!!!"

So on the topic of why The Dark Knight was a bad portrayal of Joker and Nolan in general prefers to downplay the villains psychological flaws in favor of a more generic evildoer... "JOKER IS A TERRORIST! HE LITERALLY KILLS PEOPLE! You just want to fuck him. You're sick."

lets discuss Phasma and Hux's potentially diverging goals and if we think that will lead to future conflict between the two or if they'll both stay loyal to Snokes... "THEY ARE LITERALLY MASS MURDERERS! They have killed BILLIONS of people! They are NAZIS! IN SPACE! STOP TALKING ABOUT THEM LIKE THEY'RE COMPLEX CHARACTERS!"

I don't think Odin's entirely blameless and an excellent father in the MCU, both Thor and Loki thought the best way to win his approval was genocide. "OMG LOKI-WIFE DETECTED! YOU'RE SICK! He wanted to rape Jane! He wanted to commit genocide! HE'S EVIL!"

"why bring it up in such a particular discussion if it's not supposed to serve as some kind of justification for the behaviour being criticized?"

Because talking about the character's motivation is relevant to the discussion and it's not the same thing as justifying anything?
And the "I'm just sympathizing" is just a subjective opinion, not asking everyone else to do the same.

But if villain's detractors want to vent instead of discuss something, then the best thing they can do is do it on their own space, instead of doing it on a public space like FS.

Because talking about the character's motivation is relevant to the discussion and it's not the same thing as justifying anything?

By the same token, reminders that the character committed evil acts are also relevant to most positive discussions about them (i.e., if someone's going to argue that Loki could've turned out alright if Odin had been a better father, it seems relevant to add that Loki planned and nearly carried out two genocides, which isn't the typical response to shitty fathers, in order to estimate how much Odin actually influenced his behaviour).

But you see how it can get annoying when people constantly pop into the discussion to remind you to do that. It cuts both ways.

I would disagree that there isn't a demand for detractors to sympathize with the villain. I see this all the time, in all but one of my fandoms: complaints that people "talk too much" about all the bad stuff the character did and demands that they stop doing that, insistence that if you can't sympathize with X villain, you don't understand the character and you've missed the whole point of the story being told, etc, etc.

Though on Loki wanting to commit genocide, it's worth mentioning that Thor originally wanted the same thing and it was his time on Earth that convinced him otherwise.

It may or may not have been Odin's influence, but the fact both brothers were convinced that genocide of the Jotunn was a good thing means there was some common factor.

ayrt

Late response is late, sorry -- I may be misremembering, but wasn't the whole reason Odin exiled Thor to Earth in the first place because he tried to carry out that genocide of Jotunn?

I mean I don't disagree that the idea came from somewhere in Thor and Loki's society, but Odin seemed fairly consistent in maintaining that genocide was a bad idea, and it's not necessarily his fault if his kids refuse to listen to him, that doesn't make him a bad father in and of itself.

ayrt/
Except a reminder is unnecessary when people are talking about why they did that exact thing in the first place and that's the context where most of those "friendly reminders" happen.

OTOH most of those "let's talk about their motivations" (which is what I mentioned) are mostly an attempt of nuanced discussion instead of just bashing a character.

Those "if you can't sympathize with X villain, you don't understand the character " are something completely different.

ayrt

Late response is late, but this whole thread started out of a post that people are tired of having to qualify that they know a character is "bad" every time they want to discuss him/her in a positive way. I can understand that in a self-started positive discussion about the character, but when someone's injecting themselves into a non-positive discussion about the character's actions, where it's kind of a given that most people involved are aware of the character's motivations but don't feel those motives are enough of a mitigating factor to outweigh the bad deeds themselves -- and that someone is presenting those motives as if they ARE, or should be enough of a mitigating factor...you don't see why the qualifier might be necessary?

Maybe it's unfair, but that sort of thing doesn't happen in a vacuum. You might feel it's unnecessary to remind people in a positive discussion about the character's motives that the character has committed terrible acts, but I've seen enough of those positive discussions go on and on about the mitigating and/or woobie (sorry, I don't know how else to put it) factors involved that the acts themselves are either all but forgotten or treated as a "quirky" side-effect of the character's pain.

They certainly don't carry nearly the weight they do in negative discussions about those acts. There's not a whole lot more nuance than there is in negative discussion. Which is cool, that's the point of positive discussions - you know the character's not perfect, but you're not there to dwell on the things you disapprove of in them, you're there for the positivity. Great. But surely you can appreciate that those who aren't nearly as sympathetic to the character are going to wonder if that's the contextual outlook you're bringing into the negative discussion, and be suspicious.

Okay, don't be a dick. I detest Snapewives and the OMG Snape was totes a victim mentality but Snape was genuinely a complex, fucked up, conflicted good AND bad character and person. AS WELL AS a shit bully to his students.

Wow, what a weird and obsessive crusader against fictional characters you are. Whatever the mirror inversion of a Snapewife is, you're it.

If this were a contest, Snape and all his pettiness and moral discord would win hands down, because he is way, way more interesting than you. His role and his behavior exist partly to create sympathy for the Gryffindors; his spite puts us on Neville and Harry's side. He's also the intermediary link between Harry and Tom Riddle: three lost boys, three unwanted kids, three half-bloods (although Harry's mum is, as always, something of an exception). Riddle is the sociopathic product of rape incapable of love, Snape is the bullied and neglected loner who fails at love, Harry is the emotionally abused orphan who loves others enough to die for them. Snape is a necessary part of the spectrum, neither as horrible as Riddle nor as good as Harry.

Frankly, I'd rather read about cruel, conflicted, doomed characters like Snape, characters who serve multiple purposes in the stories they inhabit, than whatever it is you'd probably suggest. Snape is a fascinating and self-punishing asshole who was given one of the best narrative arcs in the series, and it's a character type plenty of people love to read about, me included.

Case in point: I like Neville, but I don't feel compelled to read fic about him. Except for - and God, the exceptions are so often the most memorable - things like this wonderful Snape/Neville fic (yes, ayrt, Snape/Neville fic exists, and all the pearl-clutching in the world will not change that): Night-blooming heartsease (http://archiveofourown.org/works/1104139). I highly recommend it to the more open-minded FS posters.

Thank you for proving AYRT's point.

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[ SECRET POST #3328 ]

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