I tried to write a free-style essay and not a rant, but maybe I didn't quite succeed... Sorry for my tone, and also for my bias against the story making this text less intelligible than it could have been, for people who feel the story is fine.
This is partly my response to the Snapedom February challenge: The Slytherin Sex God. The other part of it is sort of a continuation of the morality discussions I've been reading/joining on-and-off since last year (Cf. some thoughts on physical aggression, detached cruelty, bloodism-as-racism, and playing the race card or axis-of-evil card) and it's my attempt to, once again, tackle the question of why Snape (amongst some other characters) should be a Bad Apple no matter what he does, while James, Harry, Dumbledore etc. are Good Saviors of the World despite the things they do.
So. Why does Severus the Slytherin Sex God pose such a scary mental picture in some POVs?
And what's so wrong with him being mistaken for a "big man" of any sort?
Here, with a respectful nod to![[info]](http://www.insanejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif)
mary_j_59, I want to propose an alternative way of examining the relationship between this character and his author. My main thesis is that we can look at these two entities as just that -- an author and her creation, nothing more, no biographical backstory invoked whatsoever -- and know enough to understand what's possibly going on in the Potterian fairyland. Why such a strong reaction by its author to this particular piece of fanon? He's just a character; why should anyone care? What is, in the end, the story that this author is telling, setting aside for a moment the question of whether or not she has accomplished that job in the text of her story?
Let's start by looking at HP's overarching structure.
This series may fail to be a few things we expected it to be when we first held PS/SS in our hands (such as a growth story, or a quest-for-equality story; YMMV). But whatever else it is or isn't, it's still clearly a redemption tale, in that it's a story where some evil things happen, and then some other things happen to set things right (or, at least, as right as things will ever get, a state of affairs good enough to merit the proclamation "all is well"). Now, we have entered the series fully expecting it to be a saga of Harry battling against Voldemort and eventually winning. And sure enough, on the surface level, that's exactly what happens. But the thing of it is, both Harry and Voldemort are so strongly fated to be what they are -- Harry is so Good™ that every single path into Evilness™ that he could possibly choose is made naturally inconceivable for him by a set of lucky circumstances (such as his family having been murdered by said Evilness), and Voldemort so Unsalvageably Evil that, even when given a chance to redeem himself, he is fated to throw it away as a matter of course -- that the tale ceases to be the tale of Harry and Voldemort, at some point, and ends up being more of a tale about Lily and Merope. By simple virtue of the fact that that's where things happen, by a character's "choice" rather than by some fated inner nature of theirs (which get "shown" in their choices -- there's a story-internal difference). So one mother who decided to die to protect her son gave us a world savior through this act. Another mother chose death "in spite of a son who needed her (HBP)" and this turned the son in question into a psychopath that's driven to humanitarian destruction.
And what's most unique about the HP adventure is that these contrastive stories of the two mothers and their fates are visibly linked to the romantic subplots involving each mommy-and-daddy pair, in the textual, causal domain of the story:
Merope fell in love with a rich, beautiful man who was horrible in character and didn't love her back at all. She drug-raped a false love out of him (or so we are instructed to infer without proof, because our hero and his mentor both agree that a rich, beautiful and arrogant man like him couldn't possibly impregnate a poor, ugly, desolate woman like her voluntarily), which was her first mistake, and then she was too smitten with him to keep on living after he came to his senses and dumped her, which is textually described as her second sin (Harry exclaims in disbelief, and then Dumbledore chastises him not to "judge her too harshly" as she was "greatly weakened" and "didn't have [Lily]'s courage" (ibid.) ).
Lily, OTOH, was a popular girl, and was romantically rather cold to both of her known suitors, Severus and James. Despite the fact that, according to JKR at least, she secretly had the hots for the boy hanging Severus upside down in the air for the crime of existing, as far as we can see in the text there is zero reference made by Lily to the effect of James' desirability. On the contrary, she states in front of our eyes (and, significantly, Severus') that she would rather go out with the giant squid in the pond than date James, even if taking his proffered hand came with the added bonus of him leaving one of her "best friends" alone... And that's the last we see of this couple-to-be interacting on screen. Next thing we know, they're happily married with baby Harry zooming around on a toy and shattering a gift from Lily's sister to her joy, because James' head has magically deflated and Lily has told him she's in love with him after all. And then, of course, we are told of Lily's sacrifice (which, truth be told, was something any decent mother would do, as JKR tells us and then in DH Narcissa forcibly reminds us), and how it mattered so much that her power of love instantly vaporized the heretofore undefeatable Dark Lord, and rendered an infant boy untouchable for this Evil superpower. Why? Well, seeing as James also died in a near-identical manner trying to stand between Voldemort and his wife and child, and this did no good for the wife whatsoever, it can only be because Lily was given the choice of stepping aside and out-surviving Harry, an option she willfully decided not to take. That choice was only hers to make because Severus had begged Voldemort to spare her life (DH), which request, on some unfathomable whim or another, Voldemort seriously considered granting for one fatal -- for him -- moment. (Cf. "The good and virtuous: Severus Snape and Cedric Diggory")
So that's what decided the destiny of the world, in each of the two crucial moments in the Potterian history. That Merope loved one man desperately and he didn't love her back. And then, that Lily was loved by two men (also quite unrelentingly) and she never definitively convinced either of them to stop loving her by letting him know he never stood a chance with her to begin with. So then, just as Lily's sacrifice is the antidote to Merope's Original Sin, so must James and Snape be the antidote to Tom Sr., functionally speaking. To be more precise, it was Lily ultimately marrying OotP-fighter James and not marrying Severus, the would-be Death Eater who was eventually to deliver a certain prophecy pertaining to two babies, that fated her to right the wrong of Merope having created Voldemort with her two sins. And this is not just some random parallel drawn on the character relationship diagram -- it's a causal relation straightforwardly narrated by the tale: it's only because the suitor that Lily didn't marry ended up having a boss who would hunt her family down and try to kill her baby, that Harry ended up getting the Love Protection that he got and was fated to save the world. Coincidence, yes. But a fortunate coincidence, definitely. And fairytales are largely made of fortunate coincidences.
So Lily's choice luckily happened to bring salvation to the world. Now, in your traditional fairytale-verse, you'd expect there to be some kind of a moral message here, like "Lily virtuously chose to love the ugly, awkward kid with the heart of gold, who desperately loved her yet still valued her free will more than his own desire, and she wasn't led astray by the image of a cute boy in shiny armor who'd easily be anybody's favorite (The Beauty and the Beast)," or "Lily decided against marrying a very rich man, because she had tender sensibilities and couldn't fail to notice how cruel he was towards those he considered below himself (Thumbelina)." But in the Potterverse, Lily chooses the extremely rich boy with nice ruffled hair and near-unanimous popularity, ditching the ugly misfit whose poor family background is specifically noted by the narrative on more than three separate occasions. Oh, but not because of those material or sexual disparities, of course! She made her romantic choice solely based on their difference in Moral Status™. I mean, it's obviously so: one was headed for Evil and the other was vehemently anti-Evil. The story says so, and thus it does claim to be a morality tale of some sort. Just, you know, not one that deals with any kind of morality we've ever heard of.
It's mystifying. This is some magical sort of morality, then, in essence. The two boys are each wearing a sign that says "Dark Arts" or "White Light," which are words denoting a new pair of concepts divorced from our ordinary notions of tolerance, equality, fair play, courage, resourcefulness, or thirst for peace. And Lily's job was to figure out which one was wearing which sign, and she picked the correct answer and saved the world. Hooray, Lily! But when her wifehood and consequential motherhood is such a crux of the entire story, you can't really keep from wondering what might have happened if she had somehow made the wrong choice. And you can't help but be thankful, I think, that her choice was such a no-brainer... The Evil Prince is the one that's sallow-skinned or pointy-faced, disliked by most, kind of pathetic, and (wow) wearing a bright green tie! Unlike most of the traditional fairytales, which tend to make us worry whether we can correctly kiss the frog, weep for the beast, etc., when we are put in the princesses' shoes IRL, the romantic heroine-driven adventure tale of HP is fundamentally soothing to our ears. It's a story of our Mother Love curing the world of scary evil things as a matter of course -- it's not so much a parable as it's feel-good food for the soul. That's why all the odds (factors irrelevant to the suitors' moral goodness, such as their wealth, popularity and physical looks) are stacked in favor of Lily making the right choice, as opposed to her having to correct the errors of Merope (who stole the beautiful, wealthy man-about-town that she didn't deserve) by being faced with the same trappings as she was and overcoming those temptations. The Potterian fairytale is giving us a free ride.
Of course, this whole thing -- the soothing power of the feel-good story -- can only work its wonders if we can take for granted the fact that James is obviously more desirable than miserable Snivellus. And that's where JKR the author clashes loudly with some of her most avid readers... To her mind, it seems, what she textually describes in the books should be enough to convince any sane reader that Snape as a romantic prospect would obviously be "a very horrible idea." Whether she's referring to the man's greasy hair, too-long nose, and tasteless/classless perpetual wardrobe by that statement, or she means the tempers and merciless tongue-lashings that the Vengeful Git™ is prone to dishing out on innocent students, she clearly seems to see her depiction of Snape as a less palatable picture, romantically-speaking, than her later depiction of James in OotP... And it seems as though this difference is important to her, judging by what happens to the two men in the books as well as what she says in interviews.
And really, that's no surprise when you think about it. Because while Sirius being seen as sexually desirable doesn't do anything to destabilize JKR's beautiful story structure, a significant contingent of her hardcore fans (most of this subgroup perceived to be female and heterosexual, some of them undoubtedly young girls like the pre-marital Lily) preferring Severus to James as a romantic prospect is a direct threat to the foundation of this soothing story. Sev the Snivelly was supposed to be the very antithesis of flashy Tom Sr.; he was created specifically to become the romantic trap (the boy with the Evil™ leaning) that no girl would be at risk of falling for, while James was created to be the morally Good™ husband-material that safely attracts all women without confusion. And this nice black-and-white distinction was supposed to save the world -- did save the world -- in the HP fairyland. When we start doubting those very premises of the story, it threatens to cause the whole Potterian lullaby to come crashing down on itself... You don't have to know anything about JKR the person to understand that this has to be an extremely scary thing indeed.
And so it's no wonder that HP's author becomes quite vehement in defending, both narratively and meta-narratively, not only the heroicness and desirability of James, but also the terrible, horrible, no good, very bad nature of Snape. The poor guy has to be both unambiguously undesirable (or, failing that, there needs to be something wrong with the psychological make-up of all women who love him, or else it has to be that they're just blinded by Alan Rickman's physical allure) and morally quite Bad™ in an unequivocal manner. And that latter part is also important to be tagged on there because, I mean, if he's materialistically undesirable and of sound(er) moral nature, then Lily will have saved the world by going for the superficial catch (wealthy, not ugly, appetizingly hygienic), and not by choosing the morally good guy over the bad one in any sense whatsoever. Which we really can't have, now, can we? Nor can we have Lily being in any danger of actually falling for Snape, and sending us into fear about our own romantic judgments. Or, maybe we can, as we fans of HP don't need this story to be either utopian or soothing (those of us who needed it to be those things haven't lasted past Cedric's, Sirius' and then Collin-Fred-Tonks-and-Lupin's bleak, gratuitous deaths). But apparently the author of these books can't live with a Snape that is either more desirable than James, or comparably virtuous/deserving-of-happiness in any shape or form except in his act of loving Lily.
Which... You know, she did write the story, and if that's the way she feels about her characters then she has every right to say as much, in the books or out of them... But unfortunately, the more she insists that that's the way she wants her characters to come across, the more she emphasizes her failure in making that happen in the actual depictive domain of her writing. I mean, because, it's not like she couldn't have written a story in which James is more rich and handsome than Snape and clearly shown (rather than just told, by use of the arbitrary words "Dark Arts" and "purebloodist racism") to be the less morally problematic of the two in anybody's eyes. She could have given us a Snape that's as undesirable to us as to JKR, just as she gave us an unambiguous Umbridge that inspires no Umbridgedom. Yet somehow, for whatever reason, she didn't write her story in that way. Or at least, to me it doesn't feel like she did, because every description of James we ever get reveals him to be so morally repugnant that I can't find him sexually the more attractive despite his charms (and I do generally prefer his physical appearance to Snape's, except for the parts of him that are supposed to look ugly just because they look too foreign for HP's national audience). So from my reader-POV this whole redemption tale is twisted like a pretzel... Which is fine by me, actually. Like I said, I don't need the Lily story arc to be the soothing tale of her Virtuous Choice redeeming the mistakes of Merope the Unenlightened Wretch (nihilistic cacophony rocks). But if JKR so strongly wants her story to have that specific effect, and if she so confidently believes to have succeeded in giving it that effect, then... I can only say she and I must have very different ideas about what constitutes desirable characteristics in men, both morally and sexually/romantically.
[NOTE] I hope I'm not out of line in requesting this: Let's please just talk about HP and JKR-the-author for the moment. Let's not talk about JKR the person, as her private life is not nearly as interesting to us fans of Snape or HP as the realm of her story-telling is.
[REFERENCES]
People quotes
Hover on a link to see the relevant quote and its timeframe. The words belong to JKR unless otherwise specified. Interviewers' words are marked by ( ).
Book quotes
HBP, Ch.13 / (ibid.) : "But she could do magic!" said Harry impatiently. "She could have got food and everything for herself by magic, couldn't she?" / "Ah," said Dumbledore, "perhaps she could. But it is my belief -- I am guessing again, but I am sure I am right -- that when her husband abandoned her, Merope stopped using magic. I do not think that she wanted to be a witch any longer. Of course, it is also possible that her unrequited love and the attendant despair sapped her of her powers; that can happen. In any case, as you are about to see, Merope refused to raise her wand even to save her own life." / "She wouldn't even stay alive for her son?" / Dumbledore raised his eyebrows. "Could you possibly be feeling sorry for Lord Voldemort?" / "No," said Harry quickly, "but she had a choice, didn't she, not like my mother --" / "Your mother had a choice too," said Dumbledore gently. "Yes, Merope Riddle chose death in spite of a son who needed her, but do not judge her too harshly, Harry. She was greatly weakened by long suffering and she never had your mother's courage. [...]"
...This is by far the most abundant use of the word "choose" in reference to important actions that we have encountered in all seven books. And it's interesting that Dumbledore says Merope might have become unable, rather than unwilling, to keep using magic to survive, but then turns right around and intimates, almost in the same breath, that she was culpable for her own death in any case. That it was her choice. Our hero agrees with this view, and this perception is never contested, to the end of DH.
Interesting, also, that when Ron feels too starved to keep following Harry in DH, this isn't Harry's fault at all; it's because of Gamp's Law of whatsis -- it's the universe's fault. Yet, in telling Harry about the plight of Merope, Dumbledore (who is extremely knowledgeable about how magic works) never refers to that little piece of information ("Ah, perhaps she could"), and instead frames the whole thing as Merope's refusal to raise her wand. The narrative agrees with this framing of that episode, because it doesn't make Harry recall Merope in sympathy, not once, over his long hungry exile in the cold, lonely countrysides.
DH, Ch.33 : "If she means so much to you," said Dumbledore, "surely Lord Voldemort will spare her? Could you not ask for mercy for the mother, in exchange for the son?" / "I have -- I have asked him --"
And then we have, in the next scene:
"She and James put their faith in the wrong person," said Dumbledore. "Rather like you, Severus. Weren't you hoping that Lord Voldemort would spare her?"
Er, he wasn't, no. That's why he was hoping Dumbledore would respond to his trust instead. Actually, Lily and James did put their faith in the wrong person, namely Dumbledore, back when they got recruited. If they hadn't defied Voldemort thrice in support of Dumbledore's war efforts, they would never have gotten their child hunted down to begin with. It was wrong of them to assume that Dumbledore would then feel responsible for their fate, and be devastated by their demise just as Snape would be, instead of being able to nonchalantly blame it on their own foolish misjudgments. Snape OTOH did not put his faith in his own previous master; that was precisely why he came running to Dumbledore, promising him "anything" in return for keeping the Potter family safe -- including his complete betrayal of Voldemort.
It's fascinating to note that Voldemort, in the meantime, was actually acting slightly more trustworthily than Snape had given him credit for. He went and proposed, to a Mudblood who had dared fornicate with a pureblood and produce a miscegenated child now threatening to vanquish him, that her life could be spared, unlike her pureblooded husband's. And he actually meant this choice he gave her -- that's how it counted as a genuine choice and could trigger Lily's Awesome Love Protection. If that's the way Voldemort ultimately tends to treat his pawns' most heartfelt wishes (see Pettigrew, see Bellatrix, see even the Malfoy family, of which not a single member did he kill), I have a hard time understanding how Dumbledore could possibly be a better human being than him, never mind "innately" better and allowed to be in the position of sagely instructing Harry to ignore the flayed baby crying for help.
Apologies
You can probably tell I appropriated an existing draft on my harddrive to fit the new challenge, and tacked on a new title. In other words I cheated. If things sound forced that could be why, I'm sorry. I don't have the energy to go back and fix it. Also, I wrote most of this before I read Mary's response, and my generalization about fans who appreciate Snape doesn't take into account the kind of complexity she talks about. For the record, I don't mean to say all Snapedom people find the man sexually desirable. (Though I do!! :P)
This is partly my response to the Snapedom February challenge: The Slytherin Sex God. The other part of it is sort of a continuation of the morality discussions I've been reading/joining on-and-off since last year (Cf. some thoughts on physical aggression, detached cruelty, bloodism-as-racism, and playing the race card or axis-of-evil card) and it's my attempt to, once again, tackle the question of why Snape (amongst some other characters) should be a Bad Apple no matter what he does, while James, Harry, Dumbledore etc. are Good Saviors of the World despite the things they do.
So. Why does Severus the Slytherin Sex God pose such a scary mental picture in some POVs?
And what's so wrong with him being mistaken for a "big man" of any sort?
a.k.a. Why, exactly, does Snape's creator hate him so much? - Take Two
Here, with a respectful nod to
mary_j_59, I want to propose an alternative way of examining the relationship between this character and his author. My main thesis is that we can look at these two entities as just that -- an author and her creation, nothing more, no biographical backstory invoked whatsoever -- and know enough to understand what's possibly going on in the Potterian fairyland. Why such a strong reaction by its author to this particular piece of fanon? He's just a character; why should anyone care? What is, in the end, the story that this author is telling, setting aside for a moment the question of whether or not she has accomplished that job in the text of her story?Let's start by looking at HP's overarching structure.
This series may fail to be a few things we expected it to be when we first held PS/SS in our hands (such as a growth story, or a quest-for-equality story; YMMV). But whatever else it is or isn't, it's still clearly a redemption tale, in that it's a story where some evil things happen, and then some other things happen to set things right (or, at least, as right as things will ever get, a state of affairs good enough to merit the proclamation "all is well"). Now, we have entered the series fully expecting it to be a saga of Harry battling against Voldemort and eventually winning. And sure enough, on the surface level, that's exactly what happens. But the thing of it is, both Harry and Voldemort are so strongly fated to be what they are -- Harry is so Good™ that every single path into Evilness™ that he could possibly choose is made naturally inconceivable for him by a set of lucky circumstances (such as his family having been murdered by said Evilness), and Voldemort so Unsalvageably Evil that, even when given a chance to redeem himself, he is fated to throw it away as a matter of course -- that the tale ceases to be the tale of Harry and Voldemort, at some point, and ends up being more of a tale about Lily and Merope. By simple virtue of the fact that that's where things happen, by a character's "choice" rather than by some fated inner nature of theirs (which get "shown" in their choices -- there's a story-internal difference). So one mother who decided to die to protect her son gave us a world savior through this act. Another mother chose death "in spite of a son who needed her (HBP)" and this turned the son in question into a psychopath that's driven to humanitarian destruction.
And what's most unique about the HP adventure is that these contrastive stories of the two mothers and their fates are visibly linked to the romantic subplots involving each mommy-and-daddy pair, in the textual, causal domain of the story:
Merope fell in love with a rich, beautiful man who was horrible in character and didn't love her back at all. She drug-raped a false love out of him (or so we are instructed to infer without proof, because our hero and his mentor both agree that a rich, beautiful and arrogant man like him couldn't possibly impregnate a poor, ugly, desolate woman like her voluntarily), which was her first mistake, and then she was too smitten with him to keep on living after he came to his senses and dumped her, which is textually described as her second sin (Harry exclaims in disbelief, and then Dumbledore chastises him not to "judge her too harshly" as she was "greatly weakened" and "didn't have [Lily]'s courage" (ibid.) ).
Lily, OTOH, was a popular girl, and was romantically rather cold to both of her known suitors, Severus and James. Despite the fact that, according to JKR at least, she secretly had the hots for the boy hanging Severus upside down in the air for the crime of existing, as far as we can see in the text there is zero reference made by Lily to the effect of James' desirability. On the contrary, she states in front of our eyes (and, significantly, Severus') that she would rather go out with the giant squid in the pond than date James, even if taking his proffered hand came with the added bonus of him leaving one of her "best friends" alone... And that's the last we see of this couple-to-be interacting on screen. Next thing we know, they're happily married with baby Harry zooming around on a toy and shattering a gift from Lily's sister to her joy, because James' head has magically deflated and Lily has told him she's in love with him after all. And then, of course, we are told of Lily's sacrifice (which, truth be told, was something any decent mother would do, as JKR tells us and then in DH Narcissa forcibly reminds us), and how it mattered so much that her power of love instantly vaporized the heretofore undefeatable Dark Lord, and rendered an infant boy untouchable for this Evil superpower. Why? Well, seeing as James also died in a near-identical manner trying to stand between Voldemort and his wife and child, and this did no good for the wife whatsoever, it can only be because Lily was given the choice of stepping aside and out-surviving Harry, an option she willfully decided not to take. That choice was only hers to make because Severus had begged Voldemort to spare her life (DH), which request, on some unfathomable whim or another, Voldemort seriously considered granting for one fatal -- for him -- moment. (Cf. "The good and virtuous: Severus Snape and Cedric Diggory")
So that's what decided the destiny of the world, in each of the two crucial moments in the Potterian history. That Merope loved one man desperately and he didn't love her back. And then, that Lily was loved by two men (also quite unrelentingly) and she never definitively convinced either of them to stop loving her by letting him know he never stood a chance with her to begin with. So then, just as Lily's sacrifice is the antidote to Merope's Original Sin, so must James and Snape be the antidote to Tom Sr., functionally speaking. To be more precise, it was Lily ultimately marrying OotP-fighter James and not marrying Severus, the would-be Death Eater who was eventually to deliver a certain prophecy pertaining to two babies, that fated her to right the wrong of Merope having created Voldemort with her two sins. And this is not just some random parallel drawn on the character relationship diagram -- it's a causal relation straightforwardly narrated by the tale: it's only because the suitor that Lily didn't marry ended up having a boss who would hunt her family down and try to kill her baby, that Harry ended up getting the Love Protection that he got and was fated to save the world. Coincidence, yes. But a fortunate coincidence, definitely. And fairytales are largely made of fortunate coincidences.
So Lily's choice luckily happened to bring salvation to the world. Now, in your traditional fairytale-verse, you'd expect there to be some kind of a moral message here, like "Lily virtuously chose to love the ugly, awkward kid with the heart of gold, who desperately loved her yet still valued her free will more than his own desire, and she wasn't led astray by the image of a cute boy in shiny armor who'd easily be anybody's favorite (The Beauty and the Beast)," or "Lily decided against marrying a very rich man, because she had tender sensibilities and couldn't fail to notice how cruel he was towards those he considered below himself (Thumbelina)." But in the Potterverse, Lily chooses the extremely rich boy with nice ruffled hair and near-unanimous popularity, ditching the ugly misfit whose poor family background is specifically noted by the narrative on more than three separate occasions. Oh, but not because of those material or sexual disparities, of course! She made her romantic choice solely based on their difference in Moral Status™. I mean, it's obviously so: one was headed for Evil and the other was vehemently anti-Evil. The story says so, and thus it does claim to be a morality tale of some sort. Just, you know, not one that deals with any kind of morality we've ever heard of.
It's mystifying. This is some magical sort of morality, then, in essence. The two boys are each wearing a sign that says "Dark Arts" or "White Light," which are words denoting a new pair of concepts divorced from our ordinary notions of tolerance, equality, fair play, courage, resourcefulness, or thirst for peace. And Lily's job was to figure out which one was wearing which sign, and she picked the correct answer and saved the world. Hooray, Lily! But when her wifehood and consequential motherhood is such a crux of the entire story, you can't really keep from wondering what might have happened if she had somehow made the wrong choice. And you can't help but be thankful, I think, that her choice was such a no-brainer... The Evil Prince is the one that's sallow-skinned or pointy-faced, disliked by most, kind of pathetic, and (wow) wearing a bright green tie! Unlike most of the traditional fairytales, which tend to make us worry whether we can correctly kiss the frog, weep for the beast, etc., when we are put in the princesses' shoes IRL, the romantic heroine-driven adventure tale of HP is fundamentally soothing to our ears. It's a story of our Mother Love curing the world of scary evil things as a matter of course -- it's not so much a parable as it's feel-good food for the soul. That's why all the odds (factors irrelevant to the suitors' moral goodness, such as their wealth, popularity and physical looks) are stacked in favor of Lily making the right choice, as opposed to her having to correct the errors of Merope (who stole the beautiful, wealthy man-about-town that she didn't deserve) by being faced with the same trappings as she was and overcoming those temptations. The Potterian fairytale is giving us a free ride.
Of course, this whole thing -- the soothing power of the feel-good story -- can only work its wonders if we can take for granted the fact that James is obviously more desirable than miserable Snivellus. And that's where JKR the author clashes loudly with some of her most avid readers... To her mind, it seems, what she textually describes in the books should be enough to convince any sane reader that Snape as a romantic prospect would obviously be "a very horrible idea." Whether she's referring to the man's greasy hair, too-long nose, and tasteless/classless perpetual wardrobe by that statement, or she means the tempers and merciless tongue-lashings that the Vengeful Git™ is prone to dishing out on innocent students, she clearly seems to see her depiction of Snape as a less palatable picture, romantically-speaking, than her later depiction of James in OotP... And it seems as though this difference is important to her, judging by what happens to the two men in the books as well as what she says in interviews.
And really, that's no surprise when you think about it. Because while Sirius being seen as sexually desirable doesn't do anything to destabilize JKR's beautiful story structure, a significant contingent of her hardcore fans (most of this subgroup perceived to be female and heterosexual, some of them undoubtedly young girls like the pre-marital Lily) preferring Severus to James as a romantic prospect is a direct threat to the foundation of this soothing story. Sev the Snivelly was supposed to be the very antithesis of flashy Tom Sr.; he was created specifically to become the romantic trap (the boy with the Evil™ leaning) that no girl would be at risk of falling for, while James was created to be the morally Good™ husband-material that safely attracts all women without confusion. And this nice black-and-white distinction was supposed to save the world -- did save the world -- in the HP fairyland. When we start doubting those very premises of the story, it threatens to cause the whole Potterian lullaby to come crashing down on itself... You don't have to know anything about JKR the person to understand that this has to be an extremely scary thing indeed.
And so it's no wonder that HP's author becomes quite vehement in defending, both narratively and meta-narratively, not only the heroicness and desirability of James, but also the terrible, horrible, no good, very bad nature of Snape. The poor guy has to be both unambiguously undesirable (or, failing that, there needs to be something wrong with the psychological make-up of all women who love him, or else it has to be that they're just blinded by Alan Rickman's physical allure) and morally quite Bad™ in an unequivocal manner. And that latter part is also important to be tagged on there because, I mean, if he's materialistically undesirable and of sound(er) moral nature, then Lily will have saved the world by going for the superficial catch (wealthy, not ugly, appetizingly hygienic), and not by choosing the morally good guy over the bad one in any sense whatsoever. Which we really can't have, now, can we? Nor can we have Lily being in any danger of actually falling for Snape, and sending us into fear about our own romantic judgments. Or, maybe we can, as we fans of HP don't need this story to be either utopian or soothing (those of us who needed it to be those things haven't lasted past Cedric's, Sirius' and then Collin-Fred-Tonks-and-Lupin's bleak, gratuitous deaths). But apparently the author of these books can't live with a Snape that is either more desirable than James, or comparably virtuous/deserving-of-happiness in any shape or form except in his act of loving Lily.
Which... You know, she did write the story, and if that's the way she feels about her characters then she has every right to say as much, in the books or out of them... But unfortunately, the more she insists that that's the way she wants her characters to come across, the more she emphasizes her failure in making that happen in the actual depictive domain of her writing. I mean, because, it's not like she couldn't have written a story in which James is more rich and handsome than Snape and clearly shown (rather than just told, by use of the arbitrary words "Dark Arts" and "purebloodist racism") to be the less morally problematic of the two in anybody's eyes. She could have given us a Snape that's as undesirable to us as to JKR, just as she gave us an unambiguous Umbridge that inspires no Umbridgedom. Yet somehow, for whatever reason, she didn't write her story in that way. Or at least, to me it doesn't feel like she did, because every description of James we ever get reveals him to be so morally repugnant that I can't find him sexually the more attractive despite his charms (and I do generally prefer his physical appearance to Snape's, except for the parts of him that are supposed to look ugly just because they look too foreign for HP's national audience). So from my reader-POV this whole redemption tale is twisted like a pretzel... Which is fine by me, actually. Like I said, I don't need the Lily story arc to be the soothing tale of her Virtuous Choice redeeming the mistakes of Merope the Unenlightened Wretch (nihilistic cacophony rocks). But if JKR so strongly wants her story to have that specific effect, and if she so confidently believes to have succeeded in giving it that effect, then... I can only say she and I must have very different ideas about what constitutes desirable characteristics in men, both morally and sexually/romantically.
[NOTE] I hope I'm not out of line in requesting this: Let's please just talk about HP and JKR-the-author for the moment. Let's not talk about JKR the person, as her private life is not nearly as interesting to us fans of Snape or HP as the realm of her story-telling is.
[REFERENCES]
People quotes
Hover on a link to see the relevant quote and its timeframe. The words belong to JKR unless otherwise specified. Interviewers' words are marked by ( ).
Book quotes
HBP, Ch.13 / (ibid.) : "But she could do magic!" said Harry impatiently. "She could have got food and everything for herself by magic, couldn't she?" / "Ah," said Dumbledore, "perhaps she could. But it is my belief -- I am guessing again, but I am sure I am right -- that when her husband abandoned her, Merope stopped using magic. I do not think that she wanted to be a witch any longer. Of course, it is also possible that her unrequited love and the attendant despair sapped her of her powers; that can happen. In any case, as you are about to see, Merope refused to raise her wand even to save her own life." / "She wouldn't even stay alive for her son?" / Dumbledore raised his eyebrows. "Could you possibly be feeling sorry for Lord Voldemort?" / "No," said Harry quickly, "but she had a choice, didn't she, not like my mother --" / "Your mother had a choice too," said Dumbledore gently. "Yes, Merope Riddle chose death in spite of a son who needed her, but do not judge her too harshly, Harry. She was greatly weakened by long suffering and she never had your mother's courage. [...]"
...This is by far the most abundant use of the word "choose" in reference to important actions that we have encountered in all seven books. And it's interesting that Dumbledore says Merope might have become unable, rather than unwilling, to keep using magic to survive, but then turns right around and intimates, almost in the same breath, that she was culpable for her own death in any case. That it was her choice. Our hero agrees with this view, and this perception is never contested, to the end of DH.
Interesting, also, that when Ron feels too starved to keep following Harry in DH, this isn't Harry's fault at all; it's because of Gamp's Law of whatsis -- it's the universe's fault. Yet, in telling Harry about the plight of Merope, Dumbledore (who is extremely knowledgeable about how magic works) never refers to that little piece of information ("Ah, perhaps she could"), and instead frames the whole thing as Merope's refusal to raise her wand. The narrative agrees with this framing of that episode, because it doesn't make Harry recall Merope in sympathy, not once, over his long hungry exile in the cold, lonely countrysides.
DH, Ch.33 : "If she means so much to you," said Dumbledore, "surely Lord Voldemort will spare her? Could you not ask for mercy for the mother, in exchange for the son?" / "I have -- I have asked him --"
And then we have, in the next scene:
"She and James put their faith in the wrong person," said Dumbledore. "Rather like you, Severus. Weren't you hoping that Lord Voldemort would spare her?"
Er, he wasn't, no. That's why he was hoping Dumbledore would respond to his trust instead. Actually, Lily and James did put their faith in the wrong person, namely Dumbledore, back when they got recruited. If they hadn't defied Voldemort thrice in support of Dumbledore's war efforts, they would never have gotten their child hunted down to begin with. It was wrong of them to assume that Dumbledore would then feel responsible for their fate, and be devastated by their demise just as Snape would be, instead of being able to nonchalantly blame it on their own foolish misjudgments. Snape OTOH did not put his faith in his own previous master; that was precisely why he came running to Dumbledore, promising him "anything" in return for keeping the Potter family safe -- including his complete betrayal of Voldemort.
It's fascinating to note that Voldemort, in the meantime, was actually acting slightly more trustworthily than Snape had given him credit for. He went and proposed, to a Mudblood who had dared fornicate with a pureblood and produce a miscegenated child now threatening to vanquish him, that her life could be spared, unlike her pureblooded husband's. And he actually meant this choice he gave her -- that's how it counted as a genuine choice and could trigger Lily's Awesome Love Protection. If that's the way Voldemort ultimately tends to treat his pawns' most heartfelt wishes (see Pettigrew, see Bellatrix, see even the Malfoy family, of which not a single member did he kill), I have a hard time understanding how Dumbledore could possibly be a better human being than him, never mind "innately" better and allowed to be in the position of sagely instructing Harry to ignore the flayed baby crying for help.
Apologies
You can probably tell I appropriated an existing draft on my harddrive to fit the new challenge, and tacked on a new title. In other words I cheated. If things sound forced that could be why, I'm sorry. I don't have the energy to go back and fix it. Also, I wrote most of this before I read Mary's response, and my generalization about fans who appreciate Snape doesn't take into account the kind of complexity she talks about. For the record, I don't mean to say all Snapedom people find the man sexually desirable. (Though I do!! :P)