It's okay--it's a good kind of tears--feeling for someone whose lot is largely to be reviled.
Okay. I'm glad.
Film-Snape is a less thorny character than book-Snape—less thin-skinned, less casually petty, and of course he's played by Alan Rickman, who I don't think was physically capable of not being attractive whether he'd washed his hair or not—but he shares the essential quality of heartbreaking heroism which has nothing to do with being a nice or even always a very good person. That's important. It's what I cared about most when I read the series for the first time and crossed my fingers that J.K. Rowling wouldn't screw up in the last book and she didn't and neither did the movie. So I end up still thinking about him, hours and years later. A character like that is worth seven books of which at least four badly needed editing.
(I took this part out, but I am putting it back in because it is one of the other crucial things about Snape: he doesn't know that I still think about him. He doesn't know that the grandson of the woman he loved is named after him. He doesn't even know, when he dies, that his story will survive him—but if it does, it will be because Harry Potter of all people knows everything about him now. No wonder Harry calls him "probably the bravest man I ever knew." And he doesn't know that, either.)
ETA: I thought a lot about Snape between 1999 and 2007 and I guess it didn't go anywhere.
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Okay. I'm glad.
Film-Snape is a less thorny character than book-Snape—less thin-skinned, less casually petty, and of course he's played by Alan Rickman, who I don't think was physically capable of not being attractive whether he'd washed his hair or not—but he shares the essential quality of heartbreaking heroism which has nothing to do with being a nice or even always a very good person. That's important. It's what I cared about most when I read the series for the first time and crossed my fingers that J.K. Rowling wouldn't screw up in the last book and she didn't and neither did the movie. So I end up still thinking about him, hours and years later. A character like that is worth seven books of which at least four badly needed editing.
(I took this part out, but I am putting it back in because it is one of the other crucial things about Snape: he doesn't know that I still think about him. He doesn't know that the grandson of the woman he loved is named after him. He doesn't even know, when he dies, that his story will survive him—but if it does, it will be because Harry Potter of all people knows everything about him now. No wonder Harry calls him "probably the bravest man I ever knew." And he doesn't know that, either.)
ETA: I thought a lot about Snape between 1999 and 2007 and I guess it didn't go anywhere.