Snape and Sirius (was: An inside to Snape's resentment)

[kiricat2001]

No: HPFGUIDX 94113

, "Silverthorne" wrote:
<massive snip> 

Marianne: 

I'm responding to Silverthorne's excellent post as a whole. She has 
expressed a feeling I've experience a lot. She wrote a whole lot of 
stuff regarding Snape and Sirius and how people who bash Snape may 
ignore the same character traits in Sirius.  Or may see those traits 
but are apparently willing to cut Sirius some slack.  I got the 
feeling that Silverthorne thinks that Sirius has legions of people 
who stick up for him no matter what, while there is a preponderance 
of Snape-bashing going on.

I fully appreciate the points made in that post, although my feeling 
is that most of the bashing since OoP has been of Sirius, while the 
sympathy quotient for Snape has sky-rocketed.  Either way, it's 
always struck me as odd when people can see a life-changing event as 
*exactly* that for one characer, and brush off a life-changing event 
for another character as simply something that was merely a temporary 
bad experience that that character should have gotten over by now.  

The curiously parallel lives of Snape and Sirius seem to cause that 
precise reaction in a lot of readers.  And then we start wrangling as 
to which character had it worse and analyzing individual sentences to 
prove our point as to which one is more worthy of sympathy or 
admiration or which one should be roundly condemned.  I don't think 
there is any other pairing in the Potter universe that gets this 
response.  Although I suppose the H/Hr vs R/Hr shippers can go a bit 
over the top when they take aim at each other ;-). But, so often, 
these two are weighed and measured against each other, as if the 
negative aspects of one have a direct correlation to the positive 
aspects of the other.

On the other hand, with 11,000+ members on the list, we're bound to 
get every opinion under the sun.  And if someone's opinion is that 
Sirius (or Snape) is just a total waste of space, with no redeeming 
qualities whatever, while Snape (or Sirius) is a damaged person with 
his heart in the right place even if he doesn't always exhibit the 
best behavior, well, they're entitled to it, although it does pretty 
much shut down any basis for a discussion.  I'm firmly with 
Silverthorne in preferring to read commentaries that recognize the 
good and bad qualities in both characters. 

Marianne, who's very first post years ago suggested, tongue in cheek, 
that Severus and Sirius were fraternal twins separated at birth