#alan still doesn't initially know their age! which is only like. A year older than SC.

[i3utterflyeffect]

Hey you said that Alan was a manmade stick and that he was miserable before eventually escaping in reverse selkie au, right?

So imagine how he felt when he saw the kids he befriended turn into cursors and take him and his kid to a PC?

And then there's a human at the PC and they introduce that human to him by saying "this is our dad now and our new sibling"

just... what a wild experience

It's taking all his self control not to scream because he doesn't want to scare the kids and his kid, but being on a PC and seeing cursors again must be terrifying. And also realizing that they said that he's their dad now. like what.... what do you mean by that? huh???

Even worse!! i've been imagining these guys start as cursors so.

very scared alan is kidnapped with his kid! and. Well

of course eventually DJ manages to calm the poor guy down and assure him he's not going to get hurt, fortunately! he has no idea how these four just managed to kidnap some person. what the fuck you guys.

[shostakobitchh]

I have trouble with the idea of Snape as a positive character, and I'm hoping you can shed some light on it for me. I know a popular interpretation is that Lily let him down by not sticking with him after the Mudblood incident, and that she could have saved him, but that doesn't truck with me - like it's not black people's job to make whites believe they're worth, yknow, not murdering, it wasn't Lily's job to prove that he shouldn't have been a Death Eater. (1/2)

He should have been able to do that himself, regardless of background. The fact that he couldn’t, the fact that his behaviour towards Hermione and others implies that he didn’t actually regret being a Death Eater because it was wrong, just because it got Lily killed, means to me that this narrative of him being a saviour is very hard to swallow. I’d be really interested to hear your take on it. (2/2)

“Snape was a bully who loved the goodness he sensed in Lily without being able to emulate her. That was his tragedy.” – JK Rowling

You’re exactly right in saying that it wasn’t Lily’s job to save Snape – that is 100% on point, and I agree with this to the fullest extent. Lily was a fifteen year old girl at the time, in the middle of a war. I don’t think it’s fair to blame Lily for Snape joining the Death Eaters, which some people tend to do. She had every right to walk away from the friendship. Snape was already on the path to joining the Death Eaters from what we see, so it’s unfair to Lily to assume that she was the only thing standing in the way. I don’t think she was – Snape would’ve joined regardless. It would’ve been a lot harder for her, I think, if she’d continued being his friend, which is probably a large reason why she did what she did, the Mudblood-incident aside. A lot of Snape-defenders don’t take into account how Lily must’ve felt, having her best friend call her that in front of her peers. All they see is Snape and how awful he must’ve felt, but I’m pretty sure that Lily felt 150% worse than he did, in the short term, which is why she chose to break it off. Why would she continue being friends with someone whose aspiration pertain to eliminating Muggleborns? Lily wasn’t aware of his feelings, so who was she to assume that Snape would never harm her once he became a Death Eater? Who was she to know that he never would’ve harmed her?

She didn’t, so that’s why that argument is invalid, at least, in my opinion, it is. You can’t put the weight of someone else’s soul on another – especially on someone as young as Lily was. She couldn’t have saved him, and it’s wrong to assign blame to her for Snape’s decisions. 

That being said, I don’t necessarily view Snape as a “savior” or a “positive” character. Do people tend to put him on a pedestal? Yeah, they do, and that probably has largely to do with Alan’s portrayal in the movies and how tame he was in comparison to Book Snape. The problem with Snape is that before Lily was endangered and targeted, he loved the idea of power more than Lily. Once he saw that she was being hunted by Voldemort, that changed – something did shift inside of him. He’s all grey – he’s morally ambiguous. 

Snape was a product of his environment, the same way Draco was. People tend to “forget” that Snape must’ve been around the same age when Draco was Marked – maybe older by a year or so, but good god, that’s still young. Does that excuse his behavior? Not by any stretch. 

To get to your next point, which addresses Snape regretting his actions, I do thoroughly believe that joining the Death Eaters was his biggest regret. While Lily’s death contributes largely to it, and is obviously that pivotal eye-opener, we see other instances in canon that Snape no longer believes in Voldemort’s cause. 

“Don’t be shocked, Severus. How many men and women have you watched die?” 

“Lately, only those I could not save.” said Snape. (DH, 687). 

That line was always the most telling to me about where Snape’s allegiances lied, concerning Lily or not. It’s not his responsibility, or part of the Vow he made to protect Harry, to save others. If he were truly only doing it to avenge Lily instead of genuinely regretting his choices, he wouldn’t have concerned himself with “those he could not save.” It’s obviously something that bothers him – that shows he has a conscious, unlike Bellatrix or Fenrir. Snape possesses the moral capability to change, but not the emotional, which brings me to my next point; 

Obviously, there are points in the books where Snape is fucking awful. There’s still that scene in GoF where Harry is frantically looking for Dumbledore, right before they find Crouch acting weird, where Snape is standing outside the Headmaster’s office, goading Harry while he’s clearly frightened, that makes my blood boil. He’s really awful to the kids. 

That being said, bullying children doesn’t really translate to being a Death Eater and not regretting his shitty choices earlier in his life. He bullies Harry, Hermione, Ron, and all the other Gryffindors because he just really hates James Potter. His grudge against him was projected onto his son, Harry. That does not excuse that behavior. That’s simply the reason behind it, which is why you cannot categorize Snape as an exclusively positive character in canon. This is a man who has found himself dedicating his life to a woman he killed, to her son, a product of his greatest fear come to pass. Again – not a valid excuse here – but that is why he was so awful to the kids. That doesn’t mean he never regretted his Death Eater days. For example; 

“You have no idea of the remorse Professor Snape felt when he realized how Lord Voldemort had interpreted the prophecy, Harry. I believe it to be the greatest regret of his life, and the reason that he returned –” (HBP, 549). 

Initially, I do think he regretted joining the Death Eaters solely because of Lily, but over time, based on the evidence in the books, Snape came to truly understand why what he’d done was wrong, Lily aside. The whole bullying-children thing is simply just a product of Snape’s limited emotional status. As the quote I stated in the beginning says, Snape was unable to emulate Lily’s goodness. Not an excuse, but that’s his tragedy. 

Personally, I enjoy Snape because there’s a lot of unknown potential behind him. There’s still a great deal we don’t know. What if Harry had discovered his secret? What if there had been more to their relationship than just a grudge against a dead man? I honestly wish that instead of going straight to Dumbledore after he heard that Snape had told Voldemort the prophecy, Harry had gone directly to Snape. Could you imagine that conversation? It might’ve been the one time Snape couldn’t mask himself with naked hared against him.

So, all in all, Snape is a not a great guy, and I guess it’s up to everyone and their individual interpretations whether or not Snape truly achieved redemption. I think he did – is a he a dick? Yeah, a giant one. He always reminded me of House – brilliant and saving lies, but a fucking piece of work to deal with. He did, however, do the right thing when it came to protecting Harry and the Order and Lily’s cause, which he did truly come to believe in. 

Listen, if Harry Potter, who had the worst of Snape and his bullshit, could forgive him, I think that says enough. You don’t have to like the character, but he’s extremely interesting, and I think he fulfilled his debt, in the end. I just don’t think he was some tragic snowflake waiting to be rescued – he didn’t know what he wanted until it was too late.