#Snape is a character who loves to victimize himself

[heartfeltletters-written]

my headcanon on the little incident with snape and remus and the whole werewolf thing is that Sirius didn't actually tell Snape how to get past the tree. As we know Snape was extremelly talented in legimency, so he was goating Sirius to tell him something and read his mind, Sirius was distracted so he had his defences down. When he tells James he claims it's his fault and that he told Snape because Sirius blames himself for letting Snape read his mind and not being cautious enough and protecting his mind, but he never says what really happened to anyone so Remus always thinks he willingly shared the secret when that is just not true.

James knows because he and Sirius share one brain even tho Sirius never told him, he just knows.

[licorice-and-rum]

Snape's Full Character Analysis

Okay, so I’ve already made this kind of post in my previous account (licorice-lips) but since it got deleted, here I go again because I think the world should hear more about this.

I do hate Severus Snape — and I have little to no patience for those who do and try to justify his actions with whatever. But unlike many people, my dislike for Snape doesn’t stem from “oh, he’s a child abuser” or “oh, he didn’t love Lily” but from a mix of many factors involving among other things, the way R*wling portrays supremacist ideology and its followers, the way the fandom often downplays supremacist ideology and its followers, and Snape as a character himself.

Now, I’m going to extend this essay into a full character analysis instead of just commenting on how Snape’s redemption arc sucks like I did previously because I’m feeling like it. To begin, I need you to understand how… biased R*wling’s portray of supremacist ideology really is:

J.K. Rowling is European and English (duh), which means she descends from a people who benefited (a lot and still do) from colonialism and imperialism, and both things are the basis for modern day fascism. As an author myself, it’s painfully clear to me how intrinsically close my characters and works are from myself and my own personal values. As such, it’s not such a hardship — especially if we remember how the elves and goblins are portrayed in HP — to understand how Rowling views political issues such as colonialism, imperialism and fascism.

She may not realize it but the way she does talk about the matter is such a right-wing way of tolerance to fascist thinking: as it’s very clear in Harry Potter just because of the story, the problem for the author isn’t a system of prejudice and bigotry, it’s those very few people who have become corrupted. Rowling does not identify the problem as the tree being bad when most apples — save one of two — have turn out bad. And that’s the core problem of so many things in Harry Potter but it also shows in the core problem I have with Snape’s portrayal: the way she absolutely downplays the fact that the man was a death eater for years of his life by pure and absolute conviction.

As someone who lived through a fascistic government, I’ll say it with all certainty: even the slightest support to fascistic views will propel further an agenda that will end up killing innocent people by the dozens. The truth is, even with all the undeniable good Snape did as he worked as a spy, he was a Death Eater for his conviction and at the end of the day it doesn’t matter why he chose to become one.

At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter that he was neglected and abused by his parents, or that he was bullied in school, or that his crush didn’t reciprocated his feelings: he still became a Death Eater, he chose to become one. And that is unforgivable. It unforgivable because it means he supported and actively worked for a system of thinking that ridiculed, persecuted, tortured and murdered hundreds, if not thousands, of innocent people. He advocated for a political view that has no regard for human life, that perpetuates the abuse he suffered firsthand — just in a slightly different direction. He didn’t just not break his cycle of abuse, he actively perpetuated it. Advocated for it.

And don’t get me wrong: I’m not saying here that the abuse Snape went through isn’t important at all: there is definitely something to be said about the preying of supremacist groups for young isolated men who feel left out and emasculated. But that doesn’t mean Snape gets to be absolved for his own choices because that’s what they were: his choices. He chose to become a Death Eater, he chose to uphold the cycles of abuse he had been a victim to not long before, he chose to protect it even in the face of people — good people — telling him that it wasn’t a good thing.

That’s my point, actually: Snape may have been preyed upon by the blood supremacy ideology as a teen but at some point, he chose to be influenced by it more than by millions of other influences around him. He wasn’t completely isolated or ignorant of the world to the point that the only influence he could possibly choose was the blood supremacy one, no: he had people telling him the contrary and still chose to follow blood supremacy. So, no, it’s not forgivable that he chose to become a Death Eater because he did know better than that, his very friendship with Lily proved it.

But because Rowling sees the system — a system whose very roots are prejudice and bigotry — as not actually the problem, we see these problems sliding down the hill of “oh, he was just a misguided boy” even if that’s not what she herself says: it’s what her work says.

The truth is, as much as some supremacist’s core reason for their beliefs are a deep feeling of inadequacy, that’s not enough simply because they’ll cause as much damage with their actions than any other supremacist that’ll become a supremacist for the hatred alone. Snape, who (for some) was propelled into supremacy for his isolation in his teenage years, persecuted and tortured and killed as many people as Lucius or Bellatrix did, the result is the same. And at the end of the day, the reason why you did something doesn’t matter as much as the fact that you did do something.

We can cry a river about how our intentions were good but that doesn’t mean that what we did was. Between our intentions and our actions, there’s an abyss, and it’s not until we crossed it that we can see whether or not they are alike. In Snape’s case, considering he genuinely believed the supremacist ideology he upheld would turn the wizarding world better, it doesn’t really matter: he still caused damage.

And he has never been redeemed because for a redemption arc to work properly, you need to

Acknowledge what happened — there’s not much Snape is liable to deny it happened because, of course, he’s always caught on the scenes we are privy to.

Take accountability for what you’ve done — which Snape doesn’t do, as it’s exemplified perfectly many times throughout The Prince’s Tale in Deathly Hollows. He deflects, he lies, he declares he had no intentions of doing what he did, but he never, not once, takes accountability for what he has done and what ended up hurting other people:

“There was a crack. A branch over Petunia’s head had fallen. Lily screamed. The branch caught Petunia on the shoulder, and she staggered backward and burst into tears.

“Tuney!” But Petunia was running away. Lily rounded on Snape. “Did you make that happen?” “No.” He looked both defiant and scared. “You did!” She was backing away from him. “You did! You hurt her!” “No – no, I didn’t!” But the lie did not convince Lily.”

““…thought we were supposed to be friends?” Snape was saying, “Best friends?” “We are, Sev, but I don’t like some of the people you’re hanging round with! I’m sorry, but I detest Avery and Mulciber! Mulciber! What do you see in him, Sev, he’s creepy! D’you know what he tried to do to Mary Macdonald the other day?” Lily had reached a pillar and leaned against it, looking up into the thin, sallow face. “That was nothing,” said Snape. “It was a laugh, that’s all –” “It was Dark Magic, and if you think that’s funny –” “What about the stuff Potter and his mates get up to?” demanded Snape.”

“It was nighttime. Lily, who was wearing a dressing gown, stood with her arms folded in front of the portrait of the Fat Lady, at the entrance to Gryffindor Tower. “I only came out because Mary told me you were threatening to sleep here.” “I was. I would have done. I never meant to call you Mudblood, it just –” “Slipped out?” There was no pity in Lily’s voice.”

To make amends for what you did — I’m not even going to deepen my argument on this one, it’s clear he didn’t. Not when he hurt Petunia, not when he hurt Lily, not when he hurt anyone really, the only exception being him protection Harry after telling Voldemort about the prophecy, but that’s not overcoming any patterns here, which brings me to my next point:

To accept the boundaries that you put in place as they’re on the path to earn forgiveness — which Snape also doesn’t, as exemplified in this excerpt of The Prince’s Tale:

The scene changed… “I’m sorry.” “I’m not interested.” “I’m sorry!” “Save your breath” It was nighttime. Lily, who was wearing a dressing gown, stood with her arms folded in front of the portrait of the Fat Lady, at the entrance to Gryffindor Tower. “I only came out because Mary told me you were threatening to sleep here.” “I was. I would have done. I never meant to call you Mudblood, it just –”

It’s very important to understand here that Snape doesn’t respect Lily’s boundaries of not wanting to talk to him after he called her a slur, which is also a sign of not being in a path to earn forgiveness. And forgiveness must be earned: no amount of trauma explaining our actions actually counts as an excuse for our behavior. It can explain it and thus, making forgiveness easier to achieve, but trauma doesn’t change the fact that we are responsible for our own choices and acts throughout our lives, and if we hurt someone, we have a responsibility to be accountable and make amends.

So okay, we’ve stablished that Snape has some heavy trauma to work through but that doesn’t mean he’s not liable for his own actions. Now, what we need to understand is his relationship with the Marauders. That’s a much more complicated theme, which will bring me back to Rowling and her point of view of things and how they impact her narrative and the way things are portrayed in the books.

The first thing we need to notice is that Rowling doesn’t seem much preoccupied with portraying bullying in a responsible way throughout the series. It’s clear that many of the comedic reliefs we have — especially in the form of Fred and George — are bullies in the modern, more “strict” way of seeing children’s behavior: their acts not only can be considered humiliating for some (such as Neville and other side characters in the books) but also downright cruel or dangerous. So it’s clear by her account on other similar relationships portrayed in the books that Rowling didn’t consider what Snape and the Marauders had as a bully/victim relationship.

That can be because of her age, or because of the character’s age even (they were in the 90s after all), or even a mix of both reasons, but the fact remains that she didn’t view it as bullying, so anything she writes about it will be a gross exaggeration of what she considers child rivalry. It’s one of the reasons I have the icks when anyone starts asking her for a book on the Marauders because I just know she’d butcher her way into their stories, to be completely honest.

Unfortunately, this also means it’s how Snape views it all — as something that happens between children (not saying that it didn’t cause trauma, just that he doesn’t see it as a trauma) which makes him even back up the people who do the same when he becomes a teacher, such as Malfoy and his friends. My point is that, in the building of Snape’s character, his problem with what the Marauders used to do to him wasn’t what they did but rather that they did it with him, someone Snape viewed as undeserving of it, as opposed to when someone who did deserve — such as muggleborns — were the target of said treatment:

“We are, Sev, but I don’t like some of the people you’re hanging round with! I’m sorry, but I detest Avery and Mulciber! Mulciber! What do you see in him, Sev, he’s creepy! D’you know what he tried to do to Mary Macdonald the other day?” Lily had reached a pillar and leaned against it, looking up into the thin, sallow face. “That was nothing,” said Snape. “It was a laugh, that’s all –” “It was Dark Magic, and if you think that’s funny –”

So the problem in the end wasn’t the Marauder’s behavior but their target — which, of course, was him.

But the origin of the Marauder’s dislike for Snape at that point ran deep and very intricately: there was a lot of reason why we could attribute to their hatred for each other, such as house rivalry, Snape’s fixation on Remus’ secret, James’ jealousy for Lily and Snape’s friendship, Snape’s inclination for dark magic and supremacist views, Sirius overcompensation for being raised in such a prejudiced environment and as such becoming a little too aggressive about it, and many other reasons. The point is, there was a meddle of everything by the time we reach SWM.

So their relationship is just as intricate and difficult to entangle. I’m not saying here that any of my analysis exempts the Marauders from what they did — it was serious and bad and something that shouldn’t have happened at all regardless of how I feel about Snape. But as I try to analyze Snape’s character in the books, I need to be very careful on how to approach this: my morals and interpretations of what happened shouldn’t come first to what Snape’s viewed at the moment and what he took from this. So at last, what I’m saying is: as much as I know that was some hard bullying going on there, Snape didn’t see it that way, either because Rowling herself couldn’t see it that way and because the time and the time’s belief’s system wouldn’t allow him to.

Anyway, if we take any only the facts, we have — James attacked Snape sometime after Snape tried to catch Remus in the Shrieking Shack, Snape also instigated fights with James, Snape and his friends also bullied muggleborns and blood traitor — it becomes very clear that we need to balance power relations very carefully here:

On the very top, we have supremacist purebloods, which are the most privileged social group at the time, which would include people like Lucius, Bellatrix, the Lestrange brothers, most of the Blacks, and others. Then, right below, we’d have purebloods who didn’t believe in blood purity, such as Sirius, the Potters (James specially), the Weasleys, the Prewetts, the Longbottoms and others. Plus, the more I consider the wizarding world of that time, the more I realize how close halfbloods who adhered to the purist cause had a place in society that rivaled the same importance with purebloods who were considered blood traitors, sometimes ranking even higher depending on the environment or situation.

Just to be entirely clear: when I say halfbloods, I’m not only talking about those whose heritage are certain (children of muggleborns or muggles with purebloods) but also to those whose heritage couldn’t be drawn back. For example, the Sacred Twenty-Eight, the account of all pureblooded families in Great Britain, is admittedly an incomplete and slightly biased and unreliable source. They didn’t list the Potters as purebloods, for example, solely on the account of, whilst the family didn’t have any muggle relatives, there were enough muggles with the last name Potter that they weren’t sure about the family’s heritage. So it’s fair to assume a lot of people we’d been presented to as halfbloods could be pureblood familys whose heritage was slightly questioned. So yes, I’d put halfbloods who stood with blood supremacy as just as privileged as a pureblood who sided against it because of all this background. Then, we have halfbloods who didn’t approve of pureblood supremacy, muggleborns, then muggles.

It’s quite understandable by the books that, while in SWM, Snape was in a clear place of power imbalance in relation to the Marauders, the truth wasn’t always this. Mulciber and Avery are quoted as the closest to Snape (and we know very well what they’ve become after school), and although I found nothing in regards to the Mulciber family, the Averys were purebloods, so I have to place Snape as being just as privileged as the Marauders within normal (normal, not exceptional) school social dynamics in relation to blood. Of course that wasn’t truth to every power dynamic presented within the Harry Potter world, such as the Slytherin conundrum for example.

Okay, I’ll be honest with you guys here: I feel like the imbalance people accuse the adults of Harry Potter of having is grossly exaggerated sometimes. Yes, Slytherin was in disadvantage in relation to other houses, and it was looked upon by them, but the point is: ancient pureblooded families, especially the ones who were knee deep in supremacist ideology, often favored Slytherin, that is a fact.

Regardless of it been productive or not, the most blood supremacists within the house, the more we’d get comments and actions against muggleborns within school grounds that would inevitably be punished by the taking of points (and by the way, Snape was not helping congratulating Draco for his own bigotry instead of rewarding Slytherins who were actually interested in studying and working hard on their grades).

Plus, Gryffindor is the house of the protagonist — of course it’ll gain some privileges for that. If it was Ravenclawn, we’d be discussing this issue with Slytherin versus Ravenclawn points. It makes no sense accusing other of having biases like that because it’s obvious we’d have this kind of biases exactly for the plain reason it’s the protagonist’s house.

Anyway, I digress: because of the points I just made about it, the Slytherin versus Gryffindor rivalry is not enough to grant James and the others such a significative upper hand on their privilege in relation to Snape, although I would argue that Snape’s pre-existing bigotry did him no favors in the adults’ eyes on that matter, so it may have.

Now, why am I focusing on that? Because it’s clear to me that, while James and the others had a clear upper hand on their treatment of Snape in Snape’s Worst Memory, it’s not so clear as people seem to believe what the picture looked like the rest of the time. And of course, I do understand that it seems very much cemented on everyone’s minds that the configuration of the Marauders and Snape relationship was always the one we see in Snape’s Worst Memory, but that’s not completely truth and there are hints of it since the fifth book:

When Sirius said James wasn’t the only one to initiate fights, when he said Snape was always trying to sneak up on James, when we learn of the spells Snape had invented as a teenager (we can half-confidently say they were for the Marauders considering Snape’s trying to use Sectumsempra on James, but not limited to them, of course), when we get to know that Snape was “always trying” to prove that Remus was a werewolf to get him expelled, among other moments.  The truth is, as much as I would like to point out the Marauders were not so bad, I can’t say this with certainty, but Snape apologists can’t say for certain they know fully the dynamics of their relationship either because even when the Marauders weren’t good people, they can’t say Snape was only a victim as well.

Or at least, they can’t say that he was the kind of victim who didn’t victimized people just like he was victimized too. And that’s probably even more reason why I dislike him, but I’ll get there. What I do know is that Snape, for his supremacist views alone, was doing a lot worse than what the Marauders were doing as teens. I’m sorry, it’s true: as much as I despise bullying, I can’t get over the fact that Snape was the equivalent of a Hitler youth child soldier in the wizarding world when he was a teenager. I’d punch him myself if I was his classmate, to be honest. Hatred aside, however, I do understand that what the Marauders did had little to nothing to do with supremacist views and all to do with being idiots, so yeah, fuck them. I’m not here to defend the Marauders anyway, just to condemn Snape (which, surprise, surprise, it’s actually possible).

Now, I dread having to go there, to be honest, but I want to talk to you guys about Snapes’ feelings for Lily. I’ve read the most grotesque and misogynistic things I’ve ever read in my life scrolling through Snape stans posts and let’s be honest here: Lily and Snape’s relationship was so toxic I would come back healthier if I went to Chernobyl than going anywhere near them together — because of Severus — and it’s actually appalling that some people doesn’t seem to think so. I’m sorry, but all the signs of classical emotional abuse signs are right there, just in the Prince’s Tale:

Belittling and constant criticism — I’m sorry, but his behavior alone says everything: you can’t treat muggleborns like they’re trash and then try to convince your muggleborn best-friend they she’s not. The belittling is in his actions. And then there’s the fact that Snape brings up accusations of Lily liking James more than once as a form of criticism as well (because neither have a good opinion of James, which is fair, but it’s still veiled criticism of Lily). Plus, his belittling of Lily’s feeling over Petunia’s hatred of her is obvious:

“I don’t want to talk to you,” she said in a constricted voice. “Why not?” “Tuney h-hates me. Because we saw that letter from Dumbledore.” “So what?” She threw him a look of deep dislike. “So she’s my sister!” “She’s only a – ” He caught himself quickly; Lily, too busy trying to wipe her eyes without being noticed, did not hear him.”

Gaslighting and controlling tendencies — when he tries to convince Lily he didn’t use magic to hurt Petunia with the tree branch, or when he questions their friendship because she’s trying to make a constructive critic of his life choices (“I thought we’re supposed to be friends?... Best friends?”), or when he tries to dictate who she’ll be friends with (when they’re discussing his own friends by the way). Even if Lily doesn’t let him, doesn’t mean it’s not abusive.

Isolation of loved ones — Constantly belittling Petunia, setting Lily and himself as above her because of their magic, convincing Lily to invade Petunia’s privacy thus isolating her further, causing rifts between Lily’s friends in Gryffindor and her because of his supremacist tendencies…

Jealousy and Possessiveness — I do think this one is self-explanatory.

Humiliation and Shaming — I also believe this one is also self-explanatory.

Unpredictable or Inconsistent Behavior — This is perfectly exemplified by their conversation when Lily is pointing out about his friends’ bad influence on him. We can see perfectly how inconsistent Snape’s behavior is, jumping from deflecting his accountability, downplaying his own bad deeds, to possessiveness and jealousy over absolutely nothing Lily has ever referenced to (try not to read what they’re saying but instead just concentrate at how abruptly Snape goes from one to the other):

“…thought we were supposed to be friends?” Snape was saying, “Best friends?” “We are, Sev, but I don’t like some of the people you’re hanging round with! I’m sorry, but I detest Avery and Mulciber! Mulciber! What do you see in him, Sev, ’s creepy! D’you know what he tried to do to Mary Macdonald the other day?” Lily had reached a pillar and leaned against it, looking up into the thin, sallow face. “That was nothing,” said Snape. “It was a laugh, that’s all – ” “It was Dark Magic, and if you think that’s funny – ” “What about the stuff Potter and his mates get up to?” demanded Snape. His color rose again as he said it, unable, it seemed, to hold in his resentment. “What’s Potter got to do with anything?” said Lily. “They sneak out at night. There’s something weird about that Lupin. Where does he keep going?” “He’s ill,” said Lily. “They say he’s ill – ” “Every month at the full moon?” said Snape. “I know your theory,” said Lily, and she sounded cold. “Why are you so obsessed with them anyway? Why do you care what they’re doing at night?” “I’m just trying to show you they’re not as wonderful as everyone seems to think they are.” The intensity of his gaze made her blush. “They don’t use Dark Magic, though.” She dropped her voice. “And you’re being really ungrateful. I heard what happened the other night. You went sneaking down that tunnel by the Whomping Willow, and James Potter saved you from whatever’s down there – ” Snape’s whole face contorted and he spluttered, “Saved? Saved? You think he was playing the hero? He was saving his neck and his friends’ too! You’re not going to – I won’t let you – ” “Let me? Let me?” Lily’s bright green eyes were slits. Snape backtracked at once. “I didn’t m ean – I just don’t want to see you made a fool of – He fancies you, James Potter fancies you!” The words seemed wrenched from him against his will. “And he’s not…everyone thinks…big Quidditch hero – ” Snape’s bitterness and dislike were rendering him incoherent, and Lily’s eyebrows were traveling farther and farther up her forehead. “I know James Potter’s an arrogant toerag,” she said, cutting across Snape. “I don’t need you to tell me that. But Mulciber’s and Avery’s idea of humor is just evil. Evil, Sev. I don’t understand how you can be friends with them.” Harry doubted that Snape had even heard her strictures on Mulciber and Avery. The moment she had insulted James Potter, his whole body had relaxed, and as they walked away there was a new spring in Snape’s step…

There’s also the fact that their friendship began in a relation of power that met its inevitable demise once those specific conditions tumbled down: when Snape met Lily, he was all the source she had about the wizarding world, he was her only link to that part of herself she felt was so different from anyone else. Once Lily arrived at Hogwarts, this dependance quickly came to an end with Lily spreading her wings, which probably also took a heavy tool on their relationship because its foundation was already fragile to begin with.

However, I’m not saying here that Snape was this evil mastermind at nine years old he managed to consciously ensnare Lily into this emotionally abusive relationship all by his astute manipulation. Snape was a child of abuse and neglect and, as such, he never learned how to properly bond and stablish healthy relationships. Much like the child starved by love he was, Snape probably saw every and any other relationship Lily had as a threat to their own relationship, because he doesn’t know love is not finite — he doesn’t know love stretches to accommodate other people with the time. It’s not unreasonable for me to read their relationship as such, although I’m sure that wasn’t JK Rowling’s intentions when she wrote HP, in fact it’s more than possible to admit their friendship sucked even when Snape remembered it so fondly.

As a person who actually went through an emotionally abusive relationship, I can tell how exhausting it is to carry this person along and make up excuses for everyone around you who can clearly see that this friendship sucks but doesn’t want to tell you because it might make things worse. Specially if I’m talking about someone who believes the way you were born makes you inferior in some way, that shit really hurts even when they say you’re different because deep down, you know you’re not. Deep down, you know that you’re the exception over some crooked perception you somehow beat the odds of an inferior condition and that’s what makes you “special”. And it’s gross just to think about it.

Okay, so now I think I analyzed everything about Snape I’ve wanted to analyze, so I’ll end here my enormous rant about him and if there’s anything else I want to talk about when this starts to get hate, I’ll probably post a part two.

Bye, guys!

[saintsenara]

You mentioned in your post about the war of the roses and the snape/marauder dynamics that James chose to wash snape’s mouth out for cursing because he found that behavior uncouth, but in your fic you have James and Sirius use more explicit language. Do you think that James just finds it uncouth coming from snape’s mouth? Is it a class thing? Or does he just not like swearing? Love that fic btw!

thank you very much for the ask, anon! and thank you for the shoutout to the war of the roses!

now, let's be frank, the reason why the fic contains more explicit language than the canon text is because i don't need to get it past the censors in a children's literature publishing house. order of the phoenix has to keep it vague - snape's "stream of mixed swear words and hexes" - in a way which allows there to be a bit of ambiguity about what exact language is being used to offend james so much. i - on the other hand - can have snape call a cunt a cunt.

but yes, it's also class-based hypocrisy.

which is to say, it's the result of classic in-group vs out-group stuff - in which a behaviour is fine when it's done within the group [when it's done by us], but unacceptable when it's done outside of the group [when it's done by them] or across group lines [when it's done to us by them].

a real-world example would be how men are generally happy to use cruder or less polite language when in an all-male group, without the use of this language being understood as indicating negative character traits like crudeness or rudeness on the part of any of the men within the group.

[what it indicates, instead, is masculinity.]

a woman who joins the group and uses the exact same language, on the other hand, is likely to be perceived as crude, rude, or coarse.

the tone and register of language - and accents, dialects, and so on, which fall under this umbrella - is a really key aspect of the maintenance of divisions between social classes in a hierarchical system. it's not that the language being used is unrecognisably distinct between different class-groups, it's that the class groups at the top of the pile are able to discriminate against those lower down by deciding to categorise their language as indicating something negative, while regarding their own as neutral/positive.

and so james and sirius can understand their use of vulgar language as only taking place within a set of parameters which make this language acceptable. in contrast, they see snape as always existing outside of these parameters. they are sophisticated, and their language simply adds colour to their witty conversation. he is ill-bred and worthy of censure.

[this - as an aside - is part of what lily's talking about when she says that james is "as bad as" snape is. she's not saying that james' bullying of snape is equal - or lesser - in severity than any attacks snape launches on james, nor is she saying that james messing up his hair etc. is equivalent in terms of offensiveness to snape calling her a mudblood, and nor is she saying that she thinks james needs to dispense with his hatred of snape. what she's saying is that james is a hypocrite - that he justifies his behaviour to himself with the idea that it's for some great, acceptable reason and castigates his victims' behaviour as unacceptable - and what she's asking him to do isn't to suddenly become sweetness and light, it's to - as sirius puts it - "deflate his head" and stop pretending he's some sort of righteous legend. she doesn't mind him being a prick, she just wants him to be an honest one.]

[atyd1960]

The more I think about it the more I'm confused about Snape's so called "redemption arc":

We don't know much about his years at Hogwarts outside of the time James hanged him from his underwear and he called Lily a Mudblood, but we know that:

1. He had a disdain for Muggles ever since he was born or at least ever since he was 10 y/o bc that's when he meets Lily and Petunia and treats the latter like garbage.

2. He was friends with Mulciber and Avery- known death eaters, especially Mulciber who we know was particularly close with Baldy due to the time he came to Hogsmede with him for his job interview with dummydore.

From that we can assume that he was a witness and a participant in A Lot of hate crimes against Muggle Borns ever since he was a minor. One of which was the time Mary was the victim.

3. We know HE invented the spell James used to hang him from his panties, which must mean that he used it against others, probably muggle borns, and his DE friends must've used it as well.

4. We know he invented the spell Sectumsempra to use against his enemies?? (Sorry it's been a while since I read the books I don't remember the exact quote.) and his enemies are almost certainly the Marauders. Also maybe his dad but that's a discussion for another day.

5. We know he was one of Baldy's dearest death eaters, even tho he was a Half-Blood with no status and no connections, which means he definitely did a lot of horrific things to Muggles and Muggle borns and the members of the Order of Phoenix.

6. We know he heard Trelawney's prophesy after eavesdropping in a bar, and immediately ran to Baldy with it. He knew that by telling Baldy about the prophecy an innocent baby will be killed, and he didn't give a shit. I cannot stress enough how much that information in vital for his character. Taking a baby's life so that Baldy might give him a sit closer to him by the table. And nothing would've happened to him if he shut his mouth and didn't go to Baldy. He didn't have his life or even his status\loyalty on the line. He just sacrificed this anonymous innocent baby for kicks and giggles.

7. The only point in which he cared about his actions was when Lily's life was on the line. This wanker really didn't care that he just gave Baldy (a man who made it his life' mission to kill Lily and the likes of her) a reason to kill Lily's son and husband, who were practically her only source of joy while she fought against his people in the war. He just wanted the girl he slurred and stalked and mistreated in high-school to live with all her friends and family dead. And thought he was doing something good. I don't even know how to begin to describe how fucked up that is.

8. He went to Dummydore and asked him to save her. After he got her, her husband and her kid to be under an even worse constant death threat than they were before because of Lily's blood status and their participant in the order. And after he spent the last 3-4 years killing Lily’s friends and the people who share her blood status.

9. That was also the point in which he offered himself to be a double spy right?? Again real heroic of him to risk his life after all the shit he did because he was in love with a girl whose life he ruined. He never cared about all the shit he did and all the people he murdered and he never actually wanted to help innocent people or do good by the world or even by Lily.

10. After Baldy died for the first time and the first war ended, Harry had nobody left, and Dummydore put him with Petunia and Vernon. Snape knew better than anyone else what the Dursleys will do to Harry. He knew everything, and he didn't do shit. Not only did he not do shit, but he also made things worse for Harry by bullying and harassing him since the moment he stepped foot in the castle.

11. Extending on the last point- Snape bullied, harassed, abused, mistreated and discriminated against students at Hogwarts ever since he started teaching there, I'm not gonna start elaborating on all the times he did those things because that would take a different essay of similar length.

12. If Voldemort chose to go after Neville instead of Harry, Snape would live and die as the most loyal Death Eater ever

So to conclude: am I really expected to forgive him because he loved Lily and had a hard time with James when they were 16 and he spied for Dummydore for a bit?? Being a loser in middle school and then becoming a double spy doesn’t make up for… anything. Especially since he never stopped being a terrible person.

[tiphprince]

I have never encountered a fandom, especially on Tumblr in the age of social justice awareness, so intent on denying a victim of sexual assault is in fact a victim of sexual assault (JKR using the fade to black in a children’s book and Snape’s trauma response to Harry using Levicorpus is more than enough evidence to infer that James did in fact go through with his threat to remove his underwear). I can’t fathom it. I distinctly remember when OOTP came out and readers were horrified because the implication of that chapter could not be misunderstood. What on earth has happened in the years since?!

Ah but you see, social justice awareness but only for those that are deemed to be deserving of it.

Tumblr is also right in the age of "everyone who isn't perfectly perfect deserves to die", so that's why we also see plenty of Marauders stans say that Snape deserved everything that happened to him.

The logic is that since Snape was a bully and an asshole in general as an adult, his 15 year old self deserved to be bullied, almost killed and assaulted.

Also, it ties right in to the idea that James Potter and his gang of merry dumb fucks are the social justice warriors. Since they're on the "right side", fighting against muggleborn prejudice, against Death Eaters, against the Dark Arts in general., then everyone who opposes them is not only wrong, but the most evil people to have ever existed.

Of course, we know that the Marauders didn't attack Snape out of some fucked up sense of justice (not that it'd be better if they did anyway), even James himself doesn't even try to defend what he's doing, but Marauders fans love their characters so much that they will also ignore what those characters themselves say.

[hbpseverus]

For the past day somebody has been in my TikTok comments arguing about Snapes Worst Memory and the definition of SA (mind you, under a post that was entirely unrelated to the topic!) and their replies are just... insane? I'm going to block this person and I would hope they are simply quite young and very biased towards their favorite character (being James), but I thought I'd share some of my... highlights here. For amusement but also for further discussion since TikTok replies are too restrictive for proper analysis. Obvious trigger warning for discussion of SA ahead.

- Let's start with this topic of pantsing. I do not think this term is appropriate for what happens in SWM because that scene goes beyond the usual understanding of what 'pantsing' is. Severus was simultaneously being choked and magically restrained upside down in the air in a position where he could not defend himself or simply pull down his trousers/robes again. Imagine a boy and his friends restraining a girl in the schoolyard, exposing her underwear for everyone to see and collectively laughing at her. Or a stranger pulling down a womans skirt on the train, for example. Surely both of these cases would be considered SA, right? These women could undoubtedly go to the police with this. So why is it different when it happens to Severus? To me it feels like it boils down to the 'boys will be boys' mindset. When a boy does this to a girl we all agree that it's SA, but when a boy does the same thing to a fellow boy it is 'not that deep' and just a prank. And this exact mindset is a serious issue, with male victims not being taken seriously, especially by fellow men.

- Well... this last reply I thought was absolutely insane so I'll let it speak for itself lol. Fact is, whatever James' intention, the act of exposing someones underwear and especially genitals against their will is always inherently sexual. For obvious reasons, this can not be compared to a parent changing their childs diaper.

- They then dropped this definition at some point. What bothers me the most about this is especially the second part. The intent of SA, even rape, is never truly simple sexual arousal or gratification. It is first and foremost about abusing power. James saw Severus as a love rival when it came to Lily. He did not threaten to undress Severus to gain sexual satisfaction, but to humiliate him and therefore gain power over him. That does not mean it was not SA. The attackers intention matters little to the victim. There are of course also so many forms of sexual assault that do not include physical touch, it can even happen online.

- Finally they tried to argue that James did not threaten to remove Severus' underwear at all, stating that 'pants' refers to trousers, not underwear. Now I am not a native english speaker, but it should be obvious to any literate person who reads the chapter that this cannot be the case. It is described that, as Severus is lifted upside down into the air, his robes fall over his head, immediately revealing his bare legs and underwear with no mention of trousers, followed by other characters explicitly seeing and mocking his underwear. He clearly was not wearing any trousers under his robes. I also argued that it was translated into 'underwear', not 'trousers', which they did not want to hear because JKR did not translate it herself. The movies can not be used as an accurate source here. The source material are the books. The movie was not written by JKR either. The movie scene as a whole was changed drastically. The movie could also most likely not display the full original scene as it's target audience were children and it would be considered too graphic. They then used quotes about other characters wearing trousers as 'proof' that Severus also had to have worn trousers under his robes. Do with that what you want. What I will say is that this conversation often shifts towards victim blaming, i.e. 'it is Snapes fault for not wearing trousers under his robes!'. I don't need to explain how dangerous and morally horrible this is.

Well. Honestly being a Snape stan can be exhauating sometimes. I'm honestly getting real tired of having this conversation so often, but as long as I wake up to my comments blowing up with people arguing about the fucking definition of SA I will keep talking about it because this clearly goes beyond simple arguments over fictional characters.

[forestdeath1]

I know we blame ATYD for the ruining for the marauders but I truly would like to know what fanfic these Snape Stans have read that have made them take away all the nuance that Severus has as a character. Why have they done my boy like this 😭

Snape stans are no better than the Marauders stans who ruin Sirius.

Snape stans know this character has done a lot of wrong and are trying to find justification for him. What if I say that it's actually his downfall that makes this character so interesting? And you can still love a character even if they're not perfect?

I just don't get why they make strong characters so weak. It's like we're not allowed to like those who make their own choices. Like we can't like those who made mistakes. We can only like victims of circumstances. (They’re just characters, folks. You’re even allowed to like the worst character in the world.)

The same goes for Regulus. They don't want to admit that he wanted to become a Death Eater himself. They want to see him as a little manipulated boy, not a blood purist.

Many will disagree with this, but this is my view: Snape is one of the four characters with the most impressive willpower and strength of character — along with Sirius, Harry, and Dumbledore (I know a lot of people don't like him, but it's not about liking him). I'd add Tom to this list, but he didn't pass the final test, so à la poubelle.

But they deprived their favourite character of his most important trait. 🙄

[lotus679]

“severus snape deserved the abuse and bullying he received from marauders!”

“it’s good that marauders bullied snape because later in life he bullied his students!!” 

and what do you think shaped him to be that way? snape was a victim of abuse for his whole childhood and teenage years, first daily receiving it from his own father. he was surely so excited to go to hogwarts, to finally escape from his father, only to receive even more abusing, this time from four people. 

“but he started that-“ 

he did not start that. james started making fun of him and being mean to him back in the train. for no reason at all. and either sirius or james stuck out their leg to make him fall. 

and from that moment, he was constantly bullied, mainly by james and sirius. having his pants removed while being stuck in the air unable to move which IS sexual assault (read more about sexual assault if you don’t agree. sexual assault comes in many different forms and it’s not only r@pe). we even see older snape disliking physical contact and covering himself with a large amount of clothes. he could also be a victim of sexual abuse by his father, as we know he was abusive and alcoholic, and it’s unfortunately not uncommon for children of people like that to receive this kind of abuse. 

but getting straight to the point, i think snape was influenced by his experiences with abuse and bullying, later becoming a bully himself. maybe he wanted to feel this sense of power, maybe he thought others deserved it if he got it (we see that he doesn’t bully slytherins as they are from his own house). 

nothing excuses him bullying children, but it still makes us see what happened into his life for him to become this way. we can see how his early life shaped him to be that way. it can also make us understand. 

i really need someone who studies psychology to analyze his character on deeper level, especially his childhood. i think that’s a key to understanding his character, as i also used to not like him before i did my research about him. 

and don’t get me wrong, i love marauders so much, but i just have to acknowledge their actions and see taht what they did was plain bullying. for no reason.

(i’m sorry if something is not understandable and grammatically incorrect, but english is not my first language)

[iamnmbr3]

i love your taste in hp fics. what have you been reading lately?

why thank you! :) here you go!

Heart of Emeralds by Phantomato (words: 10,200 | rating: T | Regulus Black/Tom Riddle | Major Character Death)

The locket horcrux has his own agenda: reunite the soul, rejoin the main body. When Regulus’ defection gives him an opportunity to set this in motion, he finds himself relying on Regulus’ questionable loyalty.

The customer is always right by Metalomagnetic (words: 7,200 | gen | unrated)

In the summer of 1945, Caractacus Burke hires a new assistant to help with the shop. His son doesn't know what to make of Tom Riddle, the young charismatic man that doesn't seem to mind working hard for just a handful of coins.

Inhuman Resources by Asenora (words: 4,210 | rating: G | gen)

Speaking from the fire in the Gryffindor Common Room, Sirius Black will assure his godson that Dolores Umbridge is definitely not a Death Eater. How does he know? Well, he's seen the paper trail...

of all my demon spirits by basketofnovas (slashmarks) (words: 1,730 | rating: T | Gen)

After the end of term, Ginny gets a new diary and struggles with the events of her first year.

The Shack at the End of the Lane by Asenora (words: 4,156 | rating: G | gen)

It was an unconventional choice, on the part of the universe, to make Tom Riddle's victims meet his mother the moment they arrived in the afterlife.

Gilderoy Lockhart: Dabbling with Dark Lords by Math_and_Lunacy (words: 1,826 | unrated | gen)

He didn’t know who this Harry Potter person was, but surely Potter wasn’t half as brave and heroic as Gilderoy. Where, after all, were the series of books detailing Harry Potter’s adventures? Where were Potter’s fans?

Amulette d'amour by The_Carnivorous_Muffin, Vinelle (words: 97,035 | Tom Riddle/Alphard Black | unrated)

Tom is commissioned to repair a magical amulet.

Escape by SofiaDragon (words: 50,231 | rating: M | Gen)

Harry Potter reacts much differently to the Dementor attack on his cousin and it causes a cascade of changes in the lives of everyone he knows. He runs away to France to escape the English Ministry's bias and gets a solicitor (lawyer) to deal with his legal issues. Part one of a book 5 and on re-write that can be read stand-alone. Featuring: Snape's POV. People making decisions for Harry without talking to him about it first. The Horcrux in his head influencing Harry's mind. Professional psychologists/mind healers doing good work. Snape using cannibus. He would not go back to Privet Drive without bringing the law. He’d lose his temper and end up in Azkaban. Even with aurors at his back, he was likely to hex dear old Tuney into next week if he had to interact with her again. The fines would be worth it.

[fanfic-lover-girl]

How James Potter's character discourse could have been easily solved by JKR

Now, I love redemption arcs. While I would probably never get with a guy in real life who hurt me in the past, I love seeing how a guy can atone and build a loving relationship with a girl who was hurt by him in the past and how the girl came to forgive him. I love seeing male characters become better men. Bonus if the men had to grovel to prove themselves hah.

So in theory, I should like James Potter and Jily. However, I don't. I used to like James when I first got into HP but the fan discourse really soured me on him, especially the victim blaming and glorification of bullying. I also did not like how James' bad side was usually swept under the rug in the fics I read.

The main problem with James Potter is the show vs tell with his redemption. On screen/on page, we see his awful moments first-hand or see his problematic behaviour justified or downplayed by the narrative. However, we only hear about his good moments second-hand. That's why James discourse is circular and tiring.

To make it worse, we hear about his good moments in arguably not objective contexts. Of course, Remus and Sirius will big up their mate to his son when he expresses doubt. Of course, Minerva and Dumbledore will speak highly of someone from their own house who was a good athlete and headboy. Of course, people usually don't speak ill of the dead - especially loving parents who died as martyrs protecting their son. Of course Snape can't be trusted because he is a mean, nasty teacher. So when we hear these things about James, there's always that lingering doubt about whether the claims are completely true.

Moreover, Sirius and Remus never tell us how James redeemed himself. Just that he deflated his head...what the hell does that mean?? Did James apologize or express regret about hurting people? I need more details.

Another problem is that James died young so we never got to really see him as a mature adult. So to estimate his behaviour, we have to look at his friends (birds of a feather flock together) but Sirius and Remus are...questionable. Still love you Sirius! Best marauder hands down buddy! I love your family :)

So! How could JKR fix this if she wanted to? Simple. Have Sirius or Remus show Harry a pensive memory of James post SWM.

It always bothered me how little Harry seemed to care about his parents. Remus and Sirius were right there - why not ask about all the marauder adventures? Hagrid composed that album for him in book 1 from people who were supposedly friends with the Potters - why not reach out to them? Harry comes to you accusing James of tricking Lily into being with him...why not help him out by showing James as a good boyfriend and person? Why not show him a pensieve memory of how he proved himself to Lily? Or a memory of James being a just headboy? I would have loved to see some heartwarming James moments. It would not erase what he did to Snape but at least James would be better portrayed as a good person who just hated that nobody Slytherin out of immaturity.

Anyway, I think how James was written makes for a richer narrative but a lot could have been solved in fandom if JKR showed us some good James moments free of bias. James Potter is a character I am partially primed to like! I just needed to see how he changed. Being a good parent and husband is not enough. Evil characters can be good family men too so that means nothing. Jily is not good enough evidence that James was a changed man.

[marauderseraconfessions]

Okay, I have thoughts on the debate around fanon's characterisation of Death Eaters, so hopefully I can say this right. I'm not wonderful with words, but I'll try.

Criticising them is absolutely okay, first of all. Please do that, we need more of it. When a fandom babygirls fascists to the point I've seen a ship fic set in a concentration camp between a Nazi and one of their victims, we have a problem. A rather fucking large one. So criticise all you want.

There is a part of me, however, that wants to use the potential we have in them being so young. They're in their formative years in a large majority of fics, and we can use that.

For example, Barty. Criticise him all you want, he was a terrible person. He bullied children, helped bring Voldemort back to life, and did any number of horrible things we should absolutely call attention to.

In the 70s, he got radicalised. His father showed hatred for what his son became, so we can easily assume he was not raised believing muggles were inferior (or at least not to the same degree as the Black Family, as the Crouches were still members of the Sacred 28). In my opinion, he could be used as a parallel to young men who go down the alt-right pipeline today. The narrative should criticise him— but I think a warning about radicalisation could be a fantastic theme in fics about him. And there can be a level of sympathy there, too— he was a child. He could have been good, and he didn't become that.

On the other end, we have Regulus. Being completely honest here, I may be slightly biased on his character. There are ways I will admit to relating to his life before I was able to go on the internet and find differing beliefs for myself. All the same, I'm going to try to keep this fair.

Regulus was also a bad person. He supported Voldemort. I don't care whether you like to think he directly hurt people or couldn't stomach doing so himself, he caused harm. Being a bystander (and that is the best possible descriptor you can give him with what we know) is not an action free of harm.

That being said, getting rid of beliefs your parents instilled in you is difficult when that's all you hear. Sirius was only a year older than him and figuring all this out for himself, I doubt he even knew how to conceptualise it for someone else in an effective way. (This is not me hating on Sirius btw, I love him. I'm just being realistic. My own brother followed a vaguely similar path, and he's one of the people I care about most in the world)

Regulus, at the same time he was a terrible person, was eighteen at most when he died. He did have room to become a better person had he lived. We don't know what he was thinking about when he was planning to go to the cave, we don't know if he started to question his beliefs or not. There's ways to write him, after finding the horcrux, as a more sympathetic character (albeit one in desperate need of a character arc).

I don't know. Hopefully this isn't just a bunch of rambles. I just think there's no way to write any of these people— when they're in school— as one-dimensional villains or undeserving of a chance to become a good person. This includes Snape, and Petunia, and any other kid in this era. We have the chance to explore what makes someone hate and what makes someone change for the better. Condemnation of babygirlifying characters is completely fair, at the same time that growth isn't altogether impossible.

But. Words. I'm not great, so tldr: we should absolutely criticise the way this fandom interacts with the Death Eaters, but I personally don't agree with calling children with the potential to change automatic monsters. There are ways to write about them that doesn't make light of what they've done while still retaining some sense that they're human.

ᯓ★

[tyrantisterror]

Besides Gernderf, oomlowt and alys and three of the meddlesome youths, there are harry Potter references on AAAM staff and students?

Again, not really, no, and even those examples don't really fit as references to Harry Potter.

Of the Meddlesome Youths, James Chaucer, Ivan Muromets, and Gretchen Pappenheimer only resemble the core trio of HP on a very surface level. One's a boy with dark hair and glasses who's the protagonist, one's an insecure boy from a poor family, and one's a nerdy girl with bushy hair. But that's literally where the similarities end, and as far as their personalities and roles in the story go, they're quite different - hell, they don't even end up in the same dormitory, each getting split into a different one than the other two.

Oomlowt is a breath of fresh air in the first book as the sole competent teacher we meet in that book, which makes him similar to Remus Lupin, the only competent Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher (and from an education perspective, really the only competent Hogwarts teacher period) in the series, but again, that's it as far as similarities go. Oomlowt's a tiny little dragon man in a fancy suit who teaches about creatures from another dimension, while Lupin is a werewolf who was best friends with the hero's dad and also is kind of a messy allegory for gay people that the author never fully commits to.

Alys and Gernderf are in part satires of education problems that are present - but never once truly addressed - in the Harry Potter books (problems which also exist in many real life education institutions, unfortunately), and there are two characters in the books who are more or less the source of those problems. But, like, again, I don't really think the characters in question resemble each other very much outside of the problems they cause.

Like, I don't think anyone would look at the above character and think, "Oh yeah, that's obviously this book's take on Severus Snape!" And while Alys bullies a student in her class without consequence (at first) like Snape does, even her methodology is different. Snape was a dick to every single student, not just his specific least-favorite ones. Alys, on the other hand, is kind to almost all of her class, which makes her singling out of one student for verbal abuse all the more uncomfortable, as it isolates that student from help and support (why would the others risk getting the same treatment when they're on the teacher's good side, after all)/ Alys's "reason" for bullying her victim, i.e. her prejudice, is something she tries to justify from an educational standpoint - that her victim is a "bad student" who wants special treatment and isn't meeting her standards, rather than someone with a disability that needs accomodations. Snape's "reason" for bullying is this weird sexual obsession he has with the victim's dead mother that also involves hatred for the victim's dead dad, and the author eventually wants us to... like Snape for it, or at least portray him as pitiable for never making that love connection work - because the writer of Harry Potter can't understand the idea of prejudice being based on systems of inequality and has to make it stem from personal grudges instead, I guess.

Gernderf Dermberder probably has the strongest case for "being a reference" - I mean, his last name is specifically a jokey worse-sounding version of "Dumbledore," I can't deny that, and there are a lot of similarities between the two. But a lot of that is because Dumbledore himself is a very by the numbers take on the Wise Wizard Mentor archetype - he's Merlin in all but name - and Dermberder is in turn a critique of that archetype, and the many very poorly written versions of it I've encountered in fantasy media, of which Dumbledore is only one example of. Some aspects of Dermberder's character are specifically focused on the traits of Dumbledore that specifically irk me - namely, the fact that Dumbledore is one of the worst school administrators in all of fiction, and there is stiff competition for that dubious crown. Like, if you were a student who wasn't named Harry Potter, the list of horrible decisions that Dumbledore made that directly made your education at Hogwarts worse would be miles long. Hell, even if your name was Harry Potter, every choice Dumbledore made was all with the design of getting to you willingly choose to die at the hands of Wizard Hitler. He's great at raising child soldiers, I'll give him that, but terrible at making a school work like a school should.

And so is Dermberder, for some of the same reasons, but also some different ones. There's a pettiness and petulance to Dermberder that Dumbledore doesn't have, and Dermberder is a lot less skilled at hiding how careless he is about the safety of his students, all of which is to make it clear that in this narrative, that protagonist-focused approach to mentorship is a flaw, not a laudable trait. At the same time, though, while Dermberder is more awful at a surface level, I've given him slightly more noble goals - he truly wants to make a good school, and wants his students to become good wizards, he just has a very bad philosophy for how to accomplish those things. He's an educator who's trying to do the right thing but, ironically, needs to learn what the right thing is before he can do it, and has a lot of biases he needs to overcome. His relationship with the protagonist ultimately positions Gernderf as the one who needs to learn from his student, which is an inversion of the usual mentor/student dynamic in fantasy fiction, and a very different relationship than the one Dumbledore has with Harry.

So yeah, outside of Dermberder, I really don't think there are any characters who are solid references to ones from Harry Potter, outside of a few surface level traits - and even Dermberder himself is pretty different from his inspiration.

...well, ok, there are some VERY MINOR characters who are references to Harry Potter, but to explain that would be to give away a series-wide gag that I'm hoping people will notice on their own.

[glamlet69]

Little rant

This might be controversial, but I have to say it because it has been bothering me so much when reading comments on Snape posts.

The whole Snape vs. The Marauders thing is not an either/or debate. They were all deeply flawed individuals with their own issues and trauma that made them act out in ways that deeply hurt each other.

Severus' childhood was shit. He was an outsider and the only one that treated him kindly was Lily. But then he called her a slur, which in the Harry Potter universe, is just about as bad as saying the n-word (even though I hate making that comparison). It was in the heat of the moment because he was embarrased and hurt, but that does NOT JUSTIFY IT. He also abuses children in his adulthood on a daily basis. That is also NOT JUSTIFIED JUST BECAUSE HE WAS BULLIED AS A CHILD. He also abuses Harry so much just because he looks like his dad. THAT IS NOT JUSTIFIED JUST BECAUSE HE WAS BULLIED BY JAMES.

Sirius Black (I'm going to focus on him because he was Snape's main antagonist) grew up in an incredibly toxic and blood-supremecist family. He hated it and saw how evil it was. It was the start of the war. People were literally being murdered by Death Eaters. And then his own brother wanted to become one. He knew what they were capable of. THAT DOES NOT JUSTIFY HIS BULLYING OF SNAPE, especially because he had not become a Death Eater yet. He was absolutely awful to him, even into adulthood, when he was fighting for the good side, and that is not okay. BUT lets not forget, Snape did become a Death Eater for a period of time. His sad past does not justify it. Sirius went to prison wrongfully and lost 12 years of his life. That does not justify his incredibly immature behavior towards Snape or his toxicity around Harry.

Same goes for James. I consider Remus a little bit more of a victim in this whole thing, because he was suffering as a werewolf, and Snape wanted to expose him as one, even though it would mean his expulsion from not only Hogwarts, but society. Even into adulthood, Snape spent Remus' entire time at Hogwarts literally trying to ruin Remus' life. That is simply NOT OKAY.

Lily really didn't deserve any of this and I hate the hate she gets from Snape-lovers, just because she didn't want to be his friend after getting called a LITERAL SLUR. She was literally defending him. Snape messed that up for himself. Also, Lily didn't get with James immediately afterward. They grew up a little and grew as people a little and came together.

As you can probably tell, I am a tad more sympathetic to the Marauders (I've been in the fandom since I was in sixth grade). But I understand that ALL OF THESE PEOPLE are INCREDIBLY FLAWED AND NUANCED. SIRIUS AND SNAPE ARE EQUALLY FLAWED. I understand why people love Snape as a character and I believe that is completely valid even though I do not love him as much myself. I also think that the author who will not be named did a pretty shitty job on Snape's redemption arc, but I can appreciate it for what it should have been. Really, this comes down to bad writing on her part. We should have gotten a much better and more fleshed out redemption for Snape (and better character motivation for that matter). We should have had Harry reckon a little more with the Marauders as flawed individuals. Someone should have called Sirius out on his bullshit and someone should have called Snape out on his bullshit as well. But we didn't get that due to poor planning for the series.

What I'm trying to say is, I wish people would stop utterly trashing these characters in order to justify the shitty behavior of their favorite one, because they all suck as people.

[saintsenara]

More ships! Severus Snape/Charity Burbage, Severus Snape/Petunia Dursley, Narcissa Black/Lily Evans, Narcissa Black/Remus Lupin

thank you very much for the ask, anon! lots of delicious ships here to get into...

charity burbage/severus snape

i'm going to start this one by pointing out something which features a lot in discussions of snape's relationship with dear old chazza b, and which i have elected to find annoying even though it's spectacularly minor:

in the book [or - certainly - in the original edition, which is what i have] of deathly hallows, charity does not say that she and snape are friends while pleading for her life. this is an invention of the films, which are rather more heavy-handed at hinting that snape isn't really a loyal death eater with blood-supremacist views than the text is.

but, nonetheless, she does still beg him to spare her... and so she must retain some belief in snape's capacity for goodness even though she must be aware, as a hogwarts teacher, that he murdered dumbledore only days beforehand...

which is to say that i love the idea of a bit of snarity [snurbage? burbape?] in a story which didn't deviate from the canon timeline. it is just exquisitely nasty to imagine the two coming together during the goblet of fire to half-blood prince period, initially just for something casual - since snape knows he can't commit to anything given his role as a spy - which then turned into something deeper he was occasionally driven to allow himself to imagine might be able to become a real relationship after the war...

...and then him having to look a woman he's fallen in love with in the eyes and arrange his features into a malevolent smirk while this is happening:

Voldemort raised Lucius Malfoy’s wand, pointed it directly at the slowly revolving figure suspended over the table, and gave it a tiny flick. The figure came to life with a groan and began to struggle against invisible bonds.   “Do you recognize our guest, Severus?” asked Voldemort.  Snape raised his eyes to the upside-down face. All of the Death Eaters were looking up at the captive now, as though they had been given permission to show curiosity. As she revolved to face the firelight, the woman said in a cracked and terrified voice, “Severus! Help me!” “Ah, yes,” said Snape as the prisoner turned slowly away again.

and then to have to pretend to be completely unruffled as voldemort kills her in front of him.

delicious.

petunia dursley/severus snape

this is one i really, really back.

i’m fond of petunia, who i think is one of the most interesting characters in the series because of how full of contradictions she is.

and who i think is also a victim in fandom spaces of how the adult cast was aged up for the films [in canon, she’s only in her early twenties when lily dies, and the implication is that vernon is a good deal older than her]. her inadequacies, such as her inability to truly care for either child in the household, seem much more nuanced in a woman of twenty-three, who has a toddler and whose entire family is dead, than they do if she’s pictured as a middle-aged woman with considerable life experience.

and like snape, petunia teeters on a knife edge between various chasms: she's a working-class girl from the midlands made good in middle-class surrey, he's a working-class half-blood boy who spends most of his life in pureblood circles; she ends up with her whole life wrapped up in a square little house when she’s barely out of her teens, he ends up with his whole life wrapped up in spying at the same age; she hates the wizarding world and yet covets it, he hates the muggle world and yet cannot escape it; she loves lily and she hates her and she loathes her for dying, he… well, you know the rest.

all of these similarities - especially when combined with the long history of resentment between snape and petunia [she thinks he stole lily from her! he thinks she was the first person to try and keep lily from him!] - makes snetunia just so compelling.

and if you're convinced and desperate to really get into the mess, you're in luck - because you can read the magnificent regretfully, yours by @maria-de-salinas, which takes snape and petunia's bitterness and awkwardness and grief and guilt and remorse and turns it into something really quite beautiful...

narcissa black/lily evans

ok, so i'm afraid to say that narlily is one of those marauders-era ships which i don't fully get the increasingly popularity of - and so, if you do ship it i would be thrilled to get your recs and manifestos as to why.

my objection doesn't actually have anything to do with narcissa being a blood-supremacist [although i don't think i'd vibe with a story which didn't address this at all - and i'm not compelled by a common version of fanon!narcissa which has her as not sincerely holding these beliefs: she is just as much of a bigot as lucius] - i think something quite interesting could be done with narlily [as in all death-eater-with-a-non-pureblood ships] as a vehicle for an examination of the hypocrisy of blood-supremacy; and with narlily as a femslash ship specifically as a vehicle for an examination of how sex with a non-pureblood which has no chance of resulting in pregnancy would be more acceptable in a culture which is so obsessed with heritage and lineage than sex which could.

why i don't really think it would slap for me, though, is that narcissa always comes across in canon as someone who is conformist and a bit staid - largely, as i've written about elsewhere, because she feels a desire to perform according to the gendered conventions expected of a woman of her class background as a way of deflecting the shame brought upon her family's standing in polite society by bellatrix and andromeda's behaviour. lily - on the other hand - is famously a bit bolshy - cheeky and adventurous and argumentative and stubborn.

and so i simply do not imagine their personalities either working well together in any meaningful way or clashing spicily [they'd clearly both regard the other as not worth their time popping off at].

please change my mind!

narcissa black/remus lupin

this, on the other hand... yes. hook it into my veins.

they both live behind masks - hers of gendered social convention, his of self-loathing - which have, at their core, the idea that a proper witch and wizard must be "civilised". and while they both seem to prefer to embrace these masks, there is the potential lurking beneath them for both of them to break free and be wild and raw in the realities of themselves.

plus... imagine if you've also got the post-1981 context of lupin trying desperately to understand how sirius could have become the death eater who would betray james to voldemort and narcissa and lucius trying to establish the fiction that he was under the imperius curse during the first war with the ministry, well before they feel comfortable becoming as complacent in their conviction that voldemort's not about to return as they are at the start of the canon narrative.

lovely misery.

[moonlightdancer26]

The appeal to me about Snape is that he's angry and nasty and bitter, and that he only defected from the death eaters after Lily was targeted rather than some 'good' reason. So many characters have no trauma (especially after being bullied and hurt by the good guys because apparently calling the good guys out on doing awful things and actually acknowledging they hurt people is not allowed) and I'm sick of it. Yeah, sure, the way Snape took out his anger on everyone especially Harry sucked, but it's such a relief to finally see someone actually get mad about being hurt by others who aren't villains and actually have trauma symptoms. And I also prefer Snape defecting because of Lily because it feels more realistic than other characters being motivated by principal. Plus it's nice to see a more selfish redemption arc than what is mostly shown everywhere.

I completely understand you anon, he’s such a realistic character, and I love how morally grey he can be. He’s bitter, angry, and can’t move on from his past because pretty much every circumstance in his life didn’t allow him to. I read the series at a very young age, and Severus was the first abuse victim that didn’t just grow to be a good person at the drop of a hat. He was a bitter and hateful man who unfairly took his anger out on the boy who triggered him so much. He didn’t have any support systems, unlike some of the other abuse survivors we’ve seen in the series. His character is given room to be as abrasive and hostile as he is, and he really encapsulates how real-life victims cope with their past in different—sometimes unhealthy—ways. And, what many antis fail to grasp, is that the turning point for his arc was actually realistic. Of course Severus didn’t wake up one day and suddenly think to himself “Hey, how about I fight for the good side instead?” People can’t seriously expect him to simply skip 15 years in mental development and precipitously change his loyalties. Someone he loved was in danger, and he realised that if he didn’t do something, she would get hurt, and he would be partly to blame. He did what he could, tried to prevent her death as much as he could, and was willing to quite literally exchange anything for her safety. Her death was a turning point for him; it opened his eyes. That was when his arc started, from then on, he had only grown. He may have initially done it for Lily, for a personal reason, but he then grew to wholeheartedly believe in what the Order stood for. He went on to defend Hermione—someone he openly disliked and made no attempt to hide it—when a portrait referred to her as a Mudblood. And even after he found out Harry was raised to die (meaning all the years he spent dedicating his life to fulfilling Lily’s wish was a complete waste), he continued with the plan and practically signed a suicide contract so Voldemort could finally die. If that isn’t a redemption arc, I sure as hell don’t know what is.

[halfblood-princes-crown]

Ok. I'll write the meta. (tw bullying, victim blaming) The two largest moments in HP (the werewolf prank, SWM) which are sympathetic to Snape aren't really that well handled.

The werewolf prank doesn't really have that much impact on the plot. Harry pretty much never thinks about this. For the most part it mainly describes why Snape hates Sirius and Remus so much. And it's so victim-blamey too, with Sirius and Remus demonizing Snape. Plus, it's focused on Remus and Sirius too.

SWM was also really really really badly done. Worse maybe than the prank. Harry's POV just shuts off entirely DURING THE SCENE (I've had people get confused so I'm clarifying. During the scene. Not after). No mention of how Harry feels when the bullying starts, or his disgust and disbelief when he sees Sirius and James start bullying Snape. No conflict when he sees that hey the people he loves weren't really that great. No feelings when he sees the person he hates being hurt by the people he loves. ETC.

(SWM is so hard to write meta on for this reason).

And the aftermath isn't really that great either. It's okay for a while, but then it's neatly tied up by Remus and Sirius saying 'oh he liked dark arts, he wasn't that great, James changed THE END' Harry is satisfied with that. And then Harry pretty much never thinks about it again (with like one exception I think). Even when Snape sabotages his potion, even when he's around Remus and Sirius. Even in the aftermath where Snape reveals he was Harry's much adored Half Blood Prince and goes on about the history of 'levicorpus.'

I get that Harry has valid reason to hate Snape but at the same time I'd think finding out your role models did pretty awful stuff and sitting in class with your parent's victim (who hates you due to that bullying) would cause the issue to be more prominent in Harry's mind, especially since he's a victim of bullying himself and canonically is very adverse to people who remind him of Dudley, his own bully.

Wow, that last paragraph hit me in the chest lol

I love that you brought up Harry’s aftermath of Remus and Sirius’ dismissal.

Although Harry did call some bullshit when recalling that Remus had told him that he was made a prefect specifically to tone James and Sirius down but in the memory he stood and watched, and how it only happened because Sirius announced his boredom (which made me happy that he recognized those things), it was disappointing that he let it go so quickly

I think JK wrote it like that because she didn’t intend on him being viewed in a sympathetic manner. That’s why she skipped over it with Harry. It’s from his POV but she’s the writer. If she doesn’t care then she’ll write him to forget about it or ignore it after a couple of scenes, which, like you said, is contradicting to his character considering his feelings towards bullies.

She lacks sympathy and brain cells, and she doesn’t have a great attitude when it comes to Snape. The most she did was clear up the “he’s a villain” crap, so it’s not a surprise, but even though she wrote it that way, I think the situations alone is enough to sympathize for ppl who are naturally sympathetic.

The people in the fandom who don’t sympathize with these incidents just lack sympathy in general. The situations are pretty clear: attempted murder, purposely seeking someone out with malicious intent, torture (choking with soap is equivalent to water boarding which is torture), forcefully stripping someone in public (a minor at that). I don’t see what’s so hard to grasp for some people.

I also think a general misconception is that sympathy = liking the character which is completely not true. You can recognize and address indecency without loving the victim. It’s an excuse.