#and tbh my own personal perspective on these kinds of Snape haters is a whole lot of skepticism

[sideprince]

Snape is the only character in the series who crosses from one side to the other. I think some people might argue Pettigrew does too, but he was never really on the Marauders'/Dumbledore's side, he just hung out with them in school - he never fought alongside them as far as we know, he followed them around and then joined up with Voldemort.

But we know that Snape was a full-on Death Eater. We know he had enough of an allegiance to Voldemort to earn a Dark Mark. And that he then changed his allegiance to Dumbledore. He was committed to one cause at one point in his life, and then committed to its opposing cause. I think what some people can't deal with when it comes to him is that he did this through personal growth and hard learned lessons, and mostly on his own, because he didn't have any friends or a support network to help him.

Very few people have this capacity in real life. The ones who do, we often meet in a positive way. For example, the ex-white supremacist who now runs an anti-hate org and gives TED talks and speaks at high school assemblies: that guy may have been a literal neo-nazi, but when people meet him now, they do so in the context of him being an activist against hate and talking about his journey to becoming one. His audience starts off knowing he's on their side. He's framed as heroic and reformed when they meet him.

With Snape, the reader starts off with him presented as a villain. Throughout the series he continues to be presented as unlikeable, with a giant question mark over him. What people struggle with is that the way he's presented flips at the end from him being a villain to being a hero, and the reader has not had an active experience of seeing his transition (well, they would if they knew how to read subtext and foreshadowing). Readers who are mired in a mindset of judgment instead of justice have difficulty understanding and accepting this change.

And right now we're in a culture where the emergence of difficult social conversations around abuse, misogyny, and racism have been tackled by being oversimplified and responded to with judgment as a form of virtue signalling. In elevating the voice of victims, there has been no discernment made between asking what outcome seems fair or right from those who have processed their trauma and those who are still experiencing it, and there's often a significant difference in responses (and worth considering that while elevating such voices, most online conversations are dominated by American culture where, despite the prevalence of this kind of Calvinistic dogpiling, the law is that justice is decided by unbiased third parties, and with good reason).

Basically we ended up with the shortcut of "if person bad, reject them." This isn't justice, however, it's punishment, and an easy way to push the problem away, but not solve it. If you ask victims who have processed at least some of their trauma what they really want, however, they will often say it's to feel safe from the abuser/sexist/racist (or a whole society that enables it). And the safest thing possible is for that person to change completely - to see the error of their ways, feel guilt, and grow into someone who would be unable to perpetuate the kind of act that traumatized their victim in the first place. This happens very rarely, though, even more rarely without any kind of intervention from others (such as white supremacist deprogramming or rehabilitative justice measures).

Which is exactly what Snape did. And that's why some readers can't deal with him. Their understanding of "bad guy on bad side" is that people don't change, and that the way to deal with them is punishment through judgment, instead of rehabilitation through justice. To admit that Snape did all that work himself, and that there are people capable of this kind of personal growth, would mean expanding their black and white view of their society and giving up their own position as self-appointed judge, which in turn would mean compromising their view of themselves as being on the "right side" and having to contend with the idea that they, too are more complex than just "good" and "bad."

Some people will really be able to deduce from the text that Harry has trust issues from his abusive childhood. Or completely invent justifications like “Bellatrix’s parents used the cruciatus on her as a child and that’s why she’s insane”. But if you bring up how Severus’s behaviour points to him having trauma, suddenly they want in-text, page reference, “where does it implicitly state that he has trauma” proof. What is it about Severus that sets haters off? There are far worse, truly villainous characters in this story that are treated like little meow meows. But point out that Severus is a damaged, complicated but ultimately good person, and they lose their stuffings.