fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #2394 ]

⌈ Secret Post #2394 ⌋

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Lots of people are kind of missing the point. I know people can have conflicting emotions when it comes to prejudice and love. That happens. It's a very messed up kind of love but there you go.

But there's a bit of a difference between that and actively trying to pretty much ruin that person's life. If you love someone, even in an unhealthy way, you don't do pretty much everything in your power to ruin their life. He joined in the genocide. He would've gladly seen her husband and son killed if she was alive (but you know, devastated and possibly suicidal). He didn't care when the people she loved and fought for were slaughtered. He didn't listen to her thoughts and feelings about her sister or what he was doing to other muggleborns, or basically anything else (like what she might've wanted for her son, who he abused liberally for his own amusement).

I would never consider that love. Obsession, sure. But if that's love then the word is kind of losing all meaning. He seemed to care about the fact that she was nice to him, but didn't care about all the things that made her who she was. Obsession perfectly explains his tenacity and his actions regarding fighting on Dumbledore's side while also explaining his other actions and disregard for basically everything that made Lily who she was.

I think it's that not everyone considers love, in some form, and obsession to be mutually exclusive. Also, not everyone defines love the same way. If love means, "I will do whatever it takes for you to be happy", then Snape did not love Lily. If love means, "I will do whatever it takes to be with you," then Snape did love Lily.

I think that what Snape felt for Lily was the closest he could come to love at the time. I'm not sure if it was love, but it was the best he could do.

This. A very common definition of love people have is "I will do whatever it takes to keep you safe" which sounds simplistic but has so much potential to go wrong.

I don't know if I could see "I will do whatever it takes to be with you" as describing Snape's mentality, though. The way I see it he basically did everything he could to create a miserable existence for her--one where she was considered subhuman, where everything she believed in was trod down on, where her loved ones were murdered in front of her. He probably didn't see it in that sense because I think he was far too wrapped up in his own feelings to realize the implications for Lily. But still...

I get differences in definition, but if that can be considered love, then love loses all meaning.

He might've believed that, as the Dark Lord was bound to win, being high in Voldemort's favor would put him in a position where he can extend protection to Lily. She wouldn't have been happy but in his view, she would've been "safe".

But isn't that part of it all? If he didn't give a shit about her happiness or her emotional well being so long as her body was technically not scarred, is that really love? If you don't care about everything that makes a person who they are, do you really love them?

Love is complex, but I dunno how THAT can be described as love.

You have to consider, with the way he grew up, if he even prioritized emotional well-being above the all-consuming importance of survival. Abused children often grow up thinking the abused state of being is normal, which in turns lead them to becoming abusers in a vicious cycle. So even when they have the same feeling as a healthy person, they can't express it the same way because their view of what's normal and accepted is so warped.

I don't think it loses all meaning at all. But, then, my working definition of love deals more with intensity of feeling, and at least one positive emotion or goodwill towards the person, not focusing on what it excludes. So obsession and abuse can be included, as long as there's something good as well.

You appear to define love as much by what it is not as by what it is. For you (correct me if I'm wrong), love must be at least mostly positive, and not purposefully negative. Which is fine, and I agree that it's much healthier. And I don't think you're definition is simplistic either.

If it's just intensity of emotion, couldn't love and hate be the same thing? To me that just seems like the words lose their meaning, I guess.

> For you (correct me if I'm wrong), love must be at least mostly positive, and not purposefully negative.

You hit it more on the "not purposefully negative". The way I define it, love can be negative, can hurt both people involved. But if it's purposefully negative, I think it loses all the qualities that make it love, and it becomes something altogether different, perhaps with the same intensity.

I think love and hate are different things. If I were to try to put it into words, hate doesn't need something positive, but love does need it. But they can cross over and even blend together.

You would consider it obsession, and I would consider it a jelly sandwich.

We'd both be wrong. Me because I'm insane, and you because you have a simplistic idea of what love is. Obsession is just one facet of love.

How is it simplistic? If love includes all those things I listed, it's not very different from abuse. If your definition of love includes abuse, I think it's disturbing and impractical. It's not simplistic to say that the term "love" maaaaybe shouldn't be applied to something like that.

They're not mutually exclusive at all, though. Children of abuse at times have to struggle to come to terms with the fact that their parents did love them, and yet somehow still behaved abusively toward them. Abuse would be so much easier to rationalize if you could remove love altogether, but sometimes you can't.

Well, abuse is a behavior and love is an emotion. Different people can have the same emotion that originates from the same place, but their expression of it depends on what skills they learned growing up. Some people learn it wrong.

I think you have a very modern day interpretation of what love is. That's not always been the case. Obsession and scorching the earth to obtain one's "love" was once considered gold standard. We are conditioned to think of love as a cute little thing, but it has led to atrocity and desolation in the long march of human history.

Not seeing Snape's obsessive feelings as love does not equate to seeing love as only the purest of things ever.

I will point you back to the comments about Nazi's who had Jewish wives and *didn't* divorce them despite incentives. They participated in a genocidal campaign against people like those they appear to have loved.

There was a debate on here awhile back surrounding the novel Wuthering Heights where some people were arguing that what Cathy and Heathcliff had going between them was mutual obsession, not love. Others expressed the opinion that, coming from an abusive background themselves, they could empathize with the characters and see that the obsessive, controlling behavior is the only way these deeply impaired individuals knew how to express their love. That view struck me as very insightful, and perhaps applicable to an examination of Snape's character. Whether you choose to see that love as romantic, however, is entirely subjective.

[ SECRET POST #2394 ]

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