fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #270 ]

[ SECRET POST #270 ]

⌈ Secret Post #270 ⌋

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

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Notes:

-The F!S Friending Meme! Go do it moar!
- NAME THAT FANDOM, FIRST COMMENT. Modly-lady is in school :3

Secrets Left to Post: 06 pages, 130 secrets from Secret Submission Post #039.
Secrets Not Posted: 0 broken link, 0 not!fandom, [1] repeat.
Next Secret Post: Tomorrow, Wednesday, October 3rd, 2007.
Current Secret Submission Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

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Did everyone miss the bit about Snape's life as a child. It would be completely normal for a child who is abused and who has no personal possessions to be possessive of a person that shows them attention, affection, or friendship. Snape was damaged from the beginning. He had no contact with a healthy relationship, even as a baby and child. Therefore, you cannot blame him for wanting to perpetuate unhealthy relationships as a teenager or adult. He had no idea what normal and loving were. I think it is a shame that some people don't see the tragedy of that. When you are constantly put down and picked on and have no reprieve from that in your home life, you cannot be a functioning adult with the ability to decipher right from wrong.

When you are constantly put down and picked on and have no reprieve from that in your home life, you cannot be a functioning adult with the ability to decipher right from wrong.

I think Harry Potter would disagree- having grown up in with a seemingly worse background- abuse, neglect, not a single bit of love. Except there's no evidence Snape grew up in a necessarily abusive house, just that he seemed to have issues with his father which could mean a lot of things. Oh and he was poor, but once again Harry the same. Oh it's true Harry ended up with mentors and the like and actual friends, but that's because from the beginning he made good choices. From the beginning Snape made bad ones.

Harry had friends. He had Dumbledore. He had the teachers and many adults in the Wizarding World who looked up to him. Snape had no one. It is made quite clear in the novels (not just DH) that when Snape was a student, the teachers didn't particularly like him, including Dumbledore. He also didn't have friends other than Lily or the random DE that used him. As for affection, Harry received affection from both parents as a baby. And though he may not remember it, it still had an impact on him. He knew he *had* been loved greatly. Snape never had that sense.

As I said- Oh it's true Harry ended up with mentors and the like and actual friends, but that's because from the beginning he made good choices. From the beginning Snape made bad ones.

Harry had friends and mentors because he made good choices on his own from the beginning. He accepted those people and their friendship, he actively disapproved of Draco in Diagon Alley before he ever met Ron (who he later chose over Draco again). Before Hogwarts, he showed no signs of being a poorly adjusted kid who doesn't know what's right and wrong, despite his abusive upbringing. Harry made the choice himself to fall in with the right crowd, and that was before he got close to anyone.

The teachers didn't like him much because he was a Proto Death Eater. Can you blame them? I don't think they disliked him because he was anti-social and homely.

As for affection as a baby. How do you know Snape didn't? I don't recall Snape having much of anything against his mother. He even took his personal nickname from her. Do you think she ignored him as a baby? I don't buy that and I think it's drawing a lot of conclusions based on assumption. Harry didn't at all know he had been loved greatly for the first eleven years of his life, which goes back to my first italicized statement.

I think that JKR frequently chose to emphasize that it was the choices you made rather than anything else that made you who you were. This is most prominently embodied in the Sorting Hat, of course.

But look at the characters who didn't exactly grow up in the best of environments. Voldemort and Snape succumbed to their darker desires... but then you have characters like Harry and Sirius (and Regulus, if a bit later in life) who made choices that led their paths away from where their upbringing might have led them.

Yes, you nailed it. In JKR's universe she really focuses on choice. She gives us characters with similar upbringings, and shows us how it is their personal choices and not their environment that matters. It doesn't matter what you are born, it's the choices you make. Whether this is consistent with real psychology is not really relevant, I think. It's the message within her fictional universe. Although Tom and Harry really embody this a lot better than Snape and Harry, I think.

Snape's tragedy isn't his upbringing (in fact we know next to nothing about it), it's the poor choices he made and not realizing what they were soon enough.

I love you so hardcore, like it's not even funny. Every time I had a thought pop into my head in response to anogete, you said the same thing right away.

I fear you may have stolen my brain :(

Adding to the love for your responses in this thread. :) I've been nodding my way through it and wishing that I could write with your clarity. Also, since reading DH, I'd agree that while Snape sort of is situated between Harry and Voldemort on the scale of the different choices orphans with bad pasts can make, I'm more and more inclined to see parallels between Dumbledore and Snape. While Harry and Voldemort embody a straight trajectory in the kind of polar opposite lifestyles they choose, Dumbly and Snape serve as a reminder that we are not the people we were at the age of 18 and that growth and a sharp change in the kind of outlook we have is always possible. The difference being that while their motivations both stem from the traumatic death of a loved one, Dumbledore channelled that change and epiphany outwards to reach as many aspects of his life that he could whereas Snape constantly seemed to internalise it, couldn't move beyond it and saw his own good work in protecting Harry as further reminder of his failure to do the same with Lily. Which made him a bitter bitter old man.

OR maybe I'm just babbling. I think my friend put it best after we both read it when she said that Harry Potter characters really don't know how to let anything go, do they? =D

The main point is that Harry had the belief that he HAD been loved. He knew he had parents, and even if those who raised him didn't tell him his parents loved he, he thought that they probably did. This is canon. I believe Harry mused over his parents' love for him several times. Snape knew for a fact that he wasn't loved or cared for by his parents. There is a big difference between holding out hope that someone has loved you and knowing that no one ever has. And that's a difference big enough to account for the behavior difference in Harry and Snape.

I don't remember it being mentioned anywhere that Snape's mother gave him the nickname Prince. It was simply her maiden name. I think it comes across quite clearly from the early memories that he received little to no affection as a child, especially in his reaction to Lily and Petunia.

At any rate, I don't see either of us changing our minds about this. Snape is doomed to be considered an asshole by many, and a romantic hero by many more. I'm somewhere in the middle. I appreciate him a character. I still like him a great deal, even with the flaws. However, I don't deny that those flaws exist. I just seem to have a bit more sympathy for him than the haters and a bit more realism than the lovers.

I'm sure this debate could go on for ages, but I'm going to end my part in it right here. Ta ta!

Quick clarification though- I don't remember it being mentioned anywhere that Snape's mother gave him the nickname Prince.

I didn't mean that she gave him the nickname, but that he took the nickname from her- as it was her maiden name. Why would he make a personal nickname of the maiden name of someone he resented for mistreating him? He clearly held his mother in some kind of positive regard.

I just believe there's no real evidence that Snape had a bad relationship with his mother. Someone can receive love from their mother and still have a not so great upbringing. They were poor and something was up with dad, but I don't see where we get the idea there were severe mother issues.

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[ SECRET POST #270 ]

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