#billy elliot snape
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thesongofthegreens · 7 months ago
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just doing an updated posting for my muse list and interested fandoms list!
with the fandoms, i'll put my character in bold and then leave the characters i want to interact in parenthesis. i'm oc friendly and will interact with anyone outside of the most desired list, but i wanted to throw that out there.
i do ask that everyone be 20+ and expect to be asked when i message for those who interact with this post.
fandoms list:
la la land: sebastian wilder (mia dolan, laura wilder, keith)
house of the dragon: alicent high tower (criston cole, aemond targaryen, haelena targaryen, rhaenyra targaryen)
game of thrones: jaime lannister (brienne of tarth, elia martell, tyrion lannister), jon snow (any of the starks tbh, wildlings, daenerys targaryen)
avatar, the last airbender: zuko (katara, any of the gaang, uncle iroh), katara (zuko, sokka)
twilight: jacob black (bella swan, billy black, leah clearwater, charlie swan, any of the pack tbh)
the hunger games: katniss everdeen (peeta mellark, gale hawthorne, prim everdeen, haymitch abernathy, finnick odair)
ballads of the songbirds and snakes: coriolanus snow (lucy gray baird, tigris, livia cardew, clemensia), lucy gray baird (coriolanus snow, any of the covey)
top gun: jane elliot, an oc from the original top gun timeline (maverick, ice man), rooster (phoenix, maverick, hangman, bob), maverick (goose, rooster, ice man, any of the recruits in top gun: maverick)
mission impossible: ilsa faust (ethan hunt, any of the team, anyone with an mi6 oc), ethan hunt (ilsa faust, anyone from the team)
star wars: cal kestis (trilla, merrin, cere, greez, bode), trilla suduri (cal kestis, anyone from the empire), obi-wan kenobi (anakin skywalker, padme, satine kryze, luke skywalker)
harry potter: theseus scamander (leta lestrange, newt scamander), harry potter (hermione granger, any of the weasleys, sirius black, remus lupin), severus snape - preferrably in the marauders era to develop those years (lily potter, any of the marauders, any from the golden trio timeline), julian evander, a ravenclaw oc from hogwarts legacy (sebastian sallow, ominous gaunt, poppy sweeting, natsai onai, garreth weasley)
xmen: logan howlett/wolverine (literally any of the xmen but especially rogue and laura, deadpool), scott summers (hank summers, jean grey, logan, any of the xmen), charles xavier, probably first class and days of future past centric (raven/mystique, erik lehnsherr, hank/beast, any of the xmen)
lord of the rings: aragorn (any of the fellowship, eowyn, arwen)
bridgerton: anthony bridgerton (any in the bridgerton family, edwina sharma, kate sharma, sienna, simon the duke), penelope featherington (colin bridgerton, eloise bridgerton, any in the bridgerton family, any in the featherington family)
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wintersoldierslover · 2 years ago
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my fic recs masterlist
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Bucky Barnes:
all bucky barnes
headcanon  -  blurb  -  one-shot  -  series - two-parter
40s  -  The Winter Soldier  -  Avenger  -  TFATWS
dbf!bucky  -  brother’s bff  -  bff’s brother
neighbour  -  housewife reader
lumberjack  -  firefighter  -  bodyguard
priest bucky  -  college
football player  -  hockey player  -  boxer
professor  -  teacher  -  librarian/bookshop
coffee shop  -  soulmate  -  royal
other AUs  -  taboo
moodboard  -  deactivated:(
---
Stranger Things characters:
all eddie munson  -  all steve harrington
eddie and steve (x reader)
billy hargrove  -  jason carver  -  mike wheeler
dmitri enzo antonov  -  jim hopper
robin buckley  -  nancy wheeler
---
Outer Banks Characters:
all Rafe Cameron
all JJ Maybank
Rafe Cameron and JJ Maybank (x reader)
Pope Heyward  -  Topper Thorton
John B.  -  Sarah Cameron
Kiara Carrera
---
Marvel characters:
Wanda Maximoff  -  Kate Bishop
Natasha Romanoff  -  Yelena Belova
Peter Parker  -  Pietro Maximoff
Steve Rogers  -  Stephen Strange
Frank Castle  -  Matt Murdock 
Moon knight  -  Steven Grant
Joaqín Torres - Clint Barton
Loki Laufeyson  -  Druig
Eddie Brock  -  Miles Morales
Miguel O’hara  -  Hobie Brown
---
Harry Potter characters:
Sirius Black  -  Remus Lupin 
James Potter  -  Poly!Marauders
Lily potter  -  Cedric Diggory
George Weasley  -  Fred Weasley
Severus Snape  -  Tom Riddle
Draco Malfoy
---
Avatar (James Cameron) charachters:
neteyam  -  aonung  -  lo’ak
rotxo  -  kiri  -  spider
jake sully  -  neytiri  -  tsu’tey
tonowari  -  ronal  -  colonel quaritch
---
Top Gun chracters:
Fanboy  -  Hangman  -  Rooster  -  Bob
Iceman
---
Wednesday characters:
Xavier Thorpe  -  Ajax Petropolus
Wednesday Addams  -  Divina
---
Bridgerton characters:
Anthony Bridgerton  -  Benedict Bridgerton
Colin Bridgerton
---
Criminal Minds characters:
Spencer Reid  -  Aaron Hotchner
Derek Morgan
---
The Last of Us characters:
Joel Miller  -  Ellie Williams
Abby Anderson
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The Devil All The Time characters:
Tommy Matson  -  Lee Bodecker
---
Uncharted characters:
Nate Drake  -  Sam Drake
---
Euphoria characters:
Elliot (Euphoria)  -  Fezco
---
On My Block characters:
Mario Martinez  -  Oscar Diaz
---
Modern Family characters:
Luke Dunphy  -  Alex Dunphy
---
Ted Lasso:
Roy Kent  -  Jamie Tartt
---
NHL players:
Matthew Ktachuk  -  Trevor Zegras
Nolan Patrick  -  Tyler Seguin
---
Actors:
Sebastian Stan  -  Joseph Quinn
Jamie Campbell Bower  -  Danny Ramirez
Drew Starkey  -  Rudy Pankow
Ben Hardy  -  Bella Ramsey
Jenna Ortega
---
Miscellaneous characters:
Eli ‘Hawk’ Moskowitz  -  Marcus Baker
Rodrick Heffley  -  Hunter Sylvester
Lloyd Hansen  -  Ari Levinson
Nick Fowler  -  Tangerine
Rhett Abbott  -  Hayden ‘Harvard Hottie’
Colin (Not Okay)  -  Min Ho (Xo, Kitty)
Ash (No Exit)  -  James Maguire (Derry Girls)
Jake Peralta  -  Nick Miller  -  Brian O’conner
Anakin Skywalker  -  Bruno Madrigal
Tadashi Hamada  -  Kakashi Hatake
---
Miscellaneous real people:
Billie Eilish  -  AEW Hook
---
*Updated whenever there’s a new character <3
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urmom584865 · 2 years ago
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Who I’ll write for :) (I probably won’t be able to include them all bc I’ll forget) Send Requests if you would like :)
- The outsiders (Pony, Dally, Two-bit, Darry, Soda)
- Euphoria (Rue, Maddie, Elliot, Lexi, Chris)
- Handmaids Tale (Joseph, Moira, June)
- Ginger Snaps (Ginger, Sam)
- Constantine 2005 (John)
- Nbc Hannibal (Will, Hannibal, Margot, Beverly)
- American Horror Story (Michael Langdon, Violet, James Patrick March, The countess)
- Umbrella Academy (Lila, Diego, Five, Ben, Klaus)
- Encanto (Isabella, Camilo, Mirabel)
- The arcana (Asra, Julian, Lucio, Nadia)
- Death Note (L, Misa)
- Ouran (Kyoya, Kaoru, Tamaki, Haruhi)
- HxH (Chrollo, Hisoka, Illumi, Kurapika)
-Fnaf (William Afton, Michael Afton)
-Stranger Things (Billy, Steve, Eddie, Robin, Peter/001/Henry)
- The last of us (Joel, Tess)
- Harry Potter (Fred, George, Harry, Ron, Hermione, Snape)
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severusdefender · 3 years ago
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What if... Severus Snape Billy Elliot AU?
The plot revolves around Billy, a motherless British boy who begins taking ballet lessons. The story of his personal struggle and fulfilment are balanced against a counter-story of family and community strife caused by the 1984–85 UK miners' strike in County Durham, in North East England.
Anon you're on to something
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omnivorousshipper · 4 years ago
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Hey I'm wondering before this becomes a Shobbs account, what were your favorite fandoms and ships?
Hey friend!
I know it kinda seems like I only do FF and Shobbs stuff, but I really am ok with talking about other fandoms! You just have to be gentle with me cause it's been a hot second since I've been into another fandom
Some of my other favorite fandoms are:
Avatar the last Airbender: Zuko/Jet is a big fav ship
Star Wars (Only all the stuff before Episode 8 though): Kyle Ren/General Hux
The Flash: Leonard Snart/ Mick Rory
Marvel (specifically Avengers): Loki/almost everyone, Loki/Tony Stark, and anything dealing with the character Justin Hammer (He's my fav character out of every fandom)
Bleach: way too many ships to list
Yugioh: Seto Kaiba/lot of characters
Sherlock: only for the ship Mystrade though
The Boys: Hughie/Billy Butcher, Hughie/Homelander
Leverage: Sterling/Nate, Sterling/Nate/Sophie, Elliot/Hardison/Parker
Inuyasha: Sesshomaru/Kagura
Pirates of the Caribbean:Jack Sparrow/James Norrington
House: Chase/House
Detroit: Become Human: Nines/Gavin
Harry Potter: Snape/Sirius Black
... And a bunch of other smaller fandoms and ships
I dabble in a lot of fandoms as well. So, I can talk about Supernatural, but I've never watched the show and only read fanfic
So, if there is a fandom you want to talk to me about, feel free!
I just can't guarantee that I'll actually write something for every fandom
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hitchell-mope · 4 years ago
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Characters that deserve only bad things
Beast
Belle
Verna
Audrey
Chad
Harry
Malfoy
Snape
All the death eaters
Billy
Neil
Lonnie
Palchuck
Lena
Regina
Zelena
Kylo Ren
Gwen Grayson
Bela Talbot
Carol Preston
Uther
Moriarty
Eurus
Grant Effing Ward
Sharpay
Ricky’s parents
Trevor
Elliot
Carla
Jordan
Randall
Sevarius
The dark lord chuckles the silly piggy
Francine
Angelica
Vicky
Timmy’s parents
Peter the Prat
Dora Winifred Reed
Manny Heffley
Q
Pericles
Tess Tyler
Marge
Lisa
Burns
Helen
Patty
Selma
Jimbo
Dolph
Kearney
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leafenclaw · 5 years ago
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Tag your 10 favorite characters of all time
They can be from every book/movie/TV show/Video game, then tag 10 people.
Tagged by @jamlocked, thank you! :D
But also, oh god. XD
Early on as I was making that list, I encountered three problems: 1 - Most of my favourite characters of all time are actually variations on a single character archetype, with a whole damn lot of them even wearing the same name (or similar enough lol). 2 - Most of the ones that don’t fall under this category are from the same 2-3 source material, unless... 3 - ... they’re from sources that I cannot in good conscience recommend anymore, like for example books from MZ Bradley or OS Card that were extremely significant and shaped who I am, but considering what their authors turned out to be, enough said lol.
So instead of a “my favourites of all time” list, I just picked characters that made a significant and lasting impact on me, even if they didn’t turn out to be my absolute favourite from their media source. I hope that’s okay!
Cut for length, because as usual I got chatty.
In no particular order, aside perhaps for the first two: 
1 - Jamie Moriarty from Elementary. My everything. <3 She’s made of... honestly, pretty much all the archetypes I inevitably fall for, male or female, but somehow she rises above the sum of her parts and I cannot even start expressing how much she means to me. Other characters in the same general type would be of course all the Moriartys, Magneto, Gellert Grindelwald, Red John, Alice Morgan, etc. A lot of those characters are heavily defined by their sky-high intelligence and deviousness, but more importantly by the shapes they leave behind when they aren’t on screen/on the pages or when they’re hiding behind masks and facets that never encompass them as a whole, and by the way they always make a extremely lasting impact on the protagonist. When it’s a TV show or a movie, the use of camera language (lighting, colour schemes, camera plans, etc.) around them is always tightly defined and significant, and when it comes to literature, the same effect is applied through metaphors and symbolism. It makes the layers to those characters absolutely endless and when it comes to storytelling, it’s the one thing that’s guaranteed to hook me straight away. (Jamie is also obviously my favourite from her source material, even though Sherlock comes high in second place, and Watson a close third. And I also have a baffling soft spot for Joshua Vikner that probably deserves a mention lol.)
2 - Vegeta from Dragon Ball. Started a genocidal alien who regularly committed mass murder, ended a devoted, self-sacrificial husband and father of two (three if you count his son from the future). Still the best redemption arc I’ve ever seen (and probably will ever see) in any kind of media ever. (He is also -by far- my favourite from his source material.)
3 - Luna Lovegood from Harry Potter. My fae child <3 Literally the only female character I ever identified with in that whole series. People close to me still regularly tell me I channel her lol. (Favourite from her source material: it’s a toss between Gellert Grindelwald and Severus Snape.)
4 - Jareth from Labyrinth. My (other) fae asshole child found in a trash bin lol. Love of my life before I was 10, kept me sane and believing in magic when I most needed to. I learned contact juggling because of him. (He is my fave, although I love Sarah even when she’s being a dramatic whiny teen.)
5 - Rebecca Anderson from The Mentalist. I have a strong and everlasting love for pretty much all characters in TM, but this one extremely minor character made a chilling impact on me by the fact she’s exactly who I would have turned out to be had I not made one tiny little change at a crucial point in my life. So she makes the list if only for that. (My fave TM character is Lisbon, but the way she acts and reacts baffles me on a daily basis. I understand and identify with Jane much better. Fighting hard in third place would be Lorelei Martins and Madeleine Hightower, I think, but I truly love them all and by this point it’s just nuances.)
6 - Erik from Phantom of the Opera. This one stabbed me with a spoon and ate my heart out lol. I care a lot more for the original Leroux version than the Broadway/movie version, but the absolute top iteration of this character is written by Susan Kay in the pastiche Phantom and I bet every serious PotO fan will agree. (He is -by far- my fave, with the Daroga a distant second.)
7 - Eurus Holmes from BBC Sherlock. This one took me completely by surprise. One of the shittiest character arcs I’ve ever seen, and yet. She’s the one that pulled me out of the meta mindset I had been stuck into since season 2 and gutted me like a fish before I had time to realise what happened. (Jim and Irene share the top spot for their source material, but all three Holmes siblings are fighting for third place.)
8 - Hans from Frozen. The one character that made me realise the storytelling & camera language studies paid off lol (”wtf Disney doesn’t design its princes that way, there’s something off about him!”). I genuinely hated him right off the bat when I saw that movie because he made my gut twist with so many red flags, but the moment he revealed himself as a villain things clicked into place and now I love him lol (I’m so predictable xD). He shares the “hiding behind smoke & mirrors & facets of himself” with the Moriarty archetype, which makes him fascinating to watch and analyse, and for that alone I hope to see more of him in Frozen 2 because I never get enough of that kind of character. (Elsa used to be my favourite, but lately there’s been a disconnect. I’m not sure if I just out-grew her or if it’s a depression thing. As for Hans, it’s a strange kind of love/hate/fascination thing that I couldn’t define.)
9 - Clarice Starling from Silence of the Lambs. For the sole reason that her fascination for Hannibal and the pull that makes her come back even though she knows he’s terrible for her mental health made me feel seen, and also validated my own fascination and love for villains, which people around me always found strange. (Obviously, my fave is Hannibal. I wish the recent show about him wasn’t so gore. Can’t watch it because I’m too sensitive to on-screen violence and body horror.)
10 - Laure/Mickaël from Tomboy This one is a little harder to explain, and to be honest I’m not sure I really want to. That movie is... questionable lol but maybe you’ll have an idea why that character made such an impact on me if you saw it. (Or maybe not. It’s okay.)
Runner-ups: Link from A Link to the Past, Sheik/Zelda from Ocarina of Time, Jake from The Dark Tower, Scotty Valens from Cold Case, Scar from The Lion King, Billy Elliot from Billy Elliot, Arya Stark from ASOIAF, Garraty from The Long Walk, L from Death Note, and many many others.
I have exactly 10 followers, one of them tagged me, and I tagged 5 of you earlier on something else so I’m not going to harass you people further. XD Steal this if you want to!
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emmatrustsno-one · 7 years ago
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Brace yourselves A very long essay (like, a thesis) on the British class system with references to Harry Potter Part 2
Let’s continue. Have another comedy clip showcasing how stupid the upper-class is meant to be, to get you going:
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A side point: almost all the British actors celebrated by Tumblr went to private or public school and are upper-class, or upper middle-class.Here’s a buzzfeed quiz to give your brain bracing time for part 2. I got it right for the exact same reason the top commenter did! Have a look once you’ve done it! That’s another blog post in itself!
https://www.buzzfeed.com/hattiesoykan/which-of-these-british-actors-didnt-go-to-a-private-school?utm_term=.ylwEEKxnDN#.mfyBBg7oQx
Food and diet
As I mentioned in my post about food in Harry Potter, food is intricately bound up with class. Working-class people have tradtionally had a poor diet, through poverty and lack of education, and also because of the impact of the Second World War, when food was very scarce. Where I am from people were still dying of malnutrition when my dad was teenager, so in the late 1960s. Working-class people then used to cook with beef dripping as they couldn’t afford other fats, and everyone on his street shared the same pan of dripping. I am from a former industrial town with two-up, two-down terraced workers’ houses, just like Snape, so we can assume that when Snape was a child he experienced similar levels of malnutrition around him.
Things are much better now, but in the last century people used to grow a lot of their own food if they had outdoor space, steal or not eat. They could afford to buy very little and then only the cheapest foods, which are often the least nutritious. It meant that they didn’t eat big or regular meals and that there was very little variety in their diets, and no treats. JKR has a story about trying to buy a tin of baked beans, and nothing else, from the supermarket, for her daughter’s meal, and having to put it back because she didn’t have enough money. Then, tins of beans were like 10p.
When my parents were at school, all kids used to get a small carton of milk for free at breaktime to make sure they were getting enough calcium. In the 70s, Thatcher (may she rot in hell) was education secretary (this was before she was prime minister) and she stopped the milk provision, which meant that many working-class kids stopped getting a key part of their nutrition. She was too disconnected from working-class people to understand, or care, that she was taking away critical nutrition. It was a political and social scandal and she got the nickname ‘Thatcher the milk snatcher’.
Best ever comment about that evil bitch is from the comedian Frankie Boyle, who had much to say about her, but the best was on the subject of her funeral: “give everyone is Scotland a shovel and we’ll dig a hole so deep we’ll deliver her to satan personally.”
Since we don’t finish school here until after 3, schools provide a lunch, which most people have to pay for (or you can take your own). The canteens in secondary schools are usually far too small and, certainly until very recently, when Jamie Oliver started a war on school food, served repetitive, low nutrient, processed rubbish. Until the turn of the century you would be lucky to get anything other than hot dogs, turkey twizzlers, chicken nuggets, chips and pizza, and when I say pizza, I mean a square chunk of dense bread with cheese and tomato purée on it. And cake. Now schools usually do at least pasta, salad and sandwiches as well. The main problem is budget. These schools are state-maintained and are given an allowance to spend on each thing. When Jamie Oliver started his campaign against poor quality school food, the school he worked with had a budget of 13p for every child. The ‘better’ the school the better the food: public schools, whose budget comes from fees, serve the kind of food Hogwarts did. Some kids, i.e. those from very low income families, are allowed a free school meal, and for many it is their only meal of the day, even now. I work in a working-class school and trust me, at least half never get a breakfast, and many have a sandwich for the evening meal. I know one boy who is given a Nutella sandwich every evening and that is all. Theresa May, who is a wannabe Thatcher, just announced recently that she is thinking of scrapping the free school meals program. It would be a disaster for the poorest kids.
Buying cheap food isn’t the only issue. Since working-class people work so much they are too tired and busy to cook proper meals, so they often settle for ready-meals, fast-food and takeaways. Lack of education has an impact as well. People eat food for taste and convenience alone, not fully grasping that they need to eat certain things to be healthy, and as a result many go under-nourished or become obese.
There is also the issue of how to cook things – not just in terms of lack of education, but in lack of facilities. Some people don’t have a hob, or an oven, maybe even just a microwave.
Hydration is an issue as well. A lot of working-class people don’t realise how much water they need to drink to be healthy, so they are dehydrated, and their kids are as well, so they don’t have very good concentration, so they don’t do as well at school, and the cycle of lack of education continues. 
Middle and upper-class people have the money, time and mental space to buy and make, or have made for them, varied, healthy foods. They have the education to eat and drink the right things. This means they are healthy and can concentrate at school or at other things and become successful.
Housing and class
Where you live is defined by, and indicative of, class. I am simplifying here, but in a nutshell, the north of England and a lot of Scotland and Wales is predominantly working-class. The further south you go, the higher the dominant class. This is because it was in the north that mills and factories were built in the Industrial Revolution, and because coal mines were up here. Many towns were built purposely to house workers of a certain factory, mill or mine. They all look the same, just with different bricks: terraced rows of small, dark houses with 2 rooms upstairs and 2 downstairs. Many have since been extended by owners to include an indoor bathroom, which would originally have been outside in an outhouse. A few people still had outdoor toilets in the 90s. The film Billy Elliot is an excellent overview of such towns and housing. If you haven’t seen it and you are interested in class, you should definitely watch it. Later on, social housing was built in the form of semi-detached houses and large blocks of flats, but detached houses have only recently become a thing for anyone other than the upper-class.
Working-class people end up living in the worst housing. Many of them rent rather than own, and that’s not as good here as in the rest of Europe. Tenants don’t have many rights and there is little regulation on landlords. Many people, right now, are living in slum housing. I am talking no flooring, unpainted walls, no heating, filth everywhere. You can either rent from a private landlord, who can do as little as he likes to make you comfortable, pretty much, or you can rent from your local council. Council housing is usually either semi-detached houses or in bigger cities flats in large blocks. The abysmal state of blocks of flats has recently been all over the news in the form of the Grenfell Tower block fire, where many people died and have had to be rehomed, simply because cheap cladding had been used on the outside of the building and the fire travelled up it like it was tissue paper. Many blocks have this same cladding on. The residents there had complained about safety many times but had been ignored. To make matters worse, there is a serious shortage of council housing across the country because fucking Thatcher (again) introduced a scheme where council tenants could buy their home if they lived in it for so long, and they could buy it for a crazily cheap price. Loads of people took advantage of it by buying their home for next to nothing, waiting a few years then selling it on for a massive profit, but of course that meant all the fucking social housing disappeared. My sister-in-law got divorced around 12 years ago and she went to the council to put her name on the list to get somewhere to live and the list was so long it took 5 years to offer her anything, and then it was the shittiest house imaginable, because that’s all they’ve got left.
They also ruin what little housing is left by a) putting loads of criminals and drug dealers etc in one place, so you end up with some estate from hell and b) putting foreign immigrants all in one place, so you end up with people who came here for asylum from either side of a civil war living next to each other, or ghettoising them so that they are abandoned and lost.
In Scotland working-class housing was, until very recently, tenement buildings, which were sort of communal flats. Families had their own rooms but had to share some of them. The stairs and communal areas were like something out of a Victorian workhouse. Slums. Here are some pictures, with info, of working-class housing in Glasgow between the 40s and 60s. Glasgow is especially woeful. I actually love the place, but there’s no denying it has been hell on earth for much of its history. I remember doing a geography project at school (mid 90s) and discovering that the life expectancy in the most working-class part of Glasgow was 54. It has gone up since, but is still below the national average: all the factors I have discussed combine to literally knock years off people’s lives.
https://www.buzzfeed.com/hilarywardle/glasgow-housing-crisis?utm_term=.apNOODpKkJ#.wn3BBNXxK4
Regarding the rows of terraces built to house industrial workers I mentioned earlier, this is exactly the sort of place Snape grew up. Here’s an example. They would have had a sitting room and kitchen downstairs and 2 bedrooms upstairs, with an outside toilet, while he was a child, and certainly no plumbed in bath or shower.
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Upper-class people live in detached houses, usually historic ones like castles and former estates. They usually have multiple houses.
Middle-class housing is varied depending on whereabouts on the continuum people are. It ranges from townhouses, to large, nicer semi-detached houses, to detached houses to mansions. A key point I want to make here is that it is totally normal to have the lowliest of working-class housing, such as in the picture, and then a few minutes’ walk away, a middle-class area. Upper-class housing is always considerably separate from the other two, but working and middle are near each other. I saw a ridiculous post a few weeks ago claiming that Lily must have been poor because she lived close enough to Snape that Petunia knew who he was, but that is utter rubbish – that person can’t have been British. Nearly all towns have slummy areas and middle-class areas, and our towns are small. Also, he was doing that accidental wandless magic kids do, so no doubt he had a reputation for being a weirdo.
The mere fact that Petunia criticises Snape’s clothes proves beyond doubt that she wasn’t working-class, as in those days, everybody working-class was wearing hand-me-down clothes like that, therefore another “poor” person wouldn’t have noticed/mentioned. The punk movement’s fashion of safety pins in the 70s came about due to the simple fact that the working-class were wearing such old clothes that they were falling apart and they could only fix them with safety pins. As Johnny Rotten of the Sex Pistols said, “we had to use them – the arse was hanging off your jeans so you just had to shove a few safety pins in it.” So Petunia wasn’t poor or she would have empathised with Snape, not criticised him.
It crops up everywhere and all the time
By complete coincidence yesterday I saw a review on Amazon that completely illustrates how notions of class pervade our conscious in Britain. It was a review for a book about Freud and feminism, an academic work. It was the only negative review amongst quite a few positive ones. I’ll let you read it then I’ll discuss:
I bought a copy for a penny on Amazon and that was over spending. I have worked in the mental health field for over thirty years and have trained as a psychotherapist and am very well acquainted with Freud's work. I was shocked by how badly this author described his ideas. If I didn't already know what she was talking about I wouldn't have had a clue about what she was saying. She really seems to be someone who wants to make a somewhat complicated subject even more complicated. I stopped at the end of her second chapter as I just couldn't take anymore. I wouldn't describe her as providing the reader with an explanation, in fact one could be forgiven for viewing her writing as an attempt at deliberate confusion or if not confusion an attempt to make what Freud had written about sexuality as even more difficult to understand than it was. Perhaps I shouldn't be so surprised by this. The author is essentially taking a Lacanian position towards Freud, a position that upper middle class complicated academics have taken up. Unfortunately these are people who really don't want to accept what Freud actually wrote and instead want to impose on his writings their own wishes for what they would have preferred him to write i.e. that the unconscious is structured like a language and that word representations exist at this level, despite Freud's own writing that this isn't so. What amuses me is that author purports to be a Marxist. Given the way she writes it's clear enough that she wants to keep the uneducated working class at quite a distance. This book is in my opinion pretentious upper middle class trash. I'm giving my copy to Oxfam.
Firstly, the fact that it’s a stream of consciousness rant should tell you enough to know that it’s not trustworthy. The most important thing, though, is the linking of academic analysis with being upper middle-class. The reviewer has taken a stance on psychoanalytical ideas that is typical of the science side of the discipline. They clearly think it’s a waste of time to look for meaning beyond practical application, e.g. for literary analysis, and something only someone with time and money would do.
It goes deeper than that as well. There’s a clear derogatory link between academia and being upper middle-class and the reviewer is offended because, as a result of their lower class, they don’t understand the book. They have tried to blame the author, by throwing around intellectual names like Lacan and Marx, and showing that they are the sort of high-standing citizen that gives to charity, but ultimately, the subject matter of the book is beyond them. They have taken this to be a result of class hindrances, which it probably is. The reviewer isn’t educated or cultured enough to understand the book. This annoys them and so they are attacking those who are.
There is a perception, which is hard to explain, that the most difficult and annoying class is the middle-class. Part of this arises out of the fact that the middle-class is such a long continuum. People who are middle-class often have delusions of being very high class, even though they probably started as working-class. They are constantly competing with each other within the class. This review is, to me, a good example of that, because it’s obvious that the reviewer is lower middle-class themselves. They have a profession, they are educated at higher education level and they are reading books about Freud for fun. They are proud to be middle-class. But then this book comes along and makes them feel alienated from their own demographic. It makes them feel like an outsider; they don’t have the power to understand the book. So they attack the author for daring to show that they aren’t so high up after all.
The perception of middle-class people of being stuck-up also links to a perception that some upper-class people are easy-going and easier to get on with for working-class people than the middle-classes. The idea being, no doubt, that the upper and working classes both understand their place, they are content with who they are. But the middle-classes are always wanting to keep with the Joneses, to get better, to compete with you. Here are 3 comedy clips that illustrate my point. The first is stand-up comedy by Billy Connolly, who’s about as working-class as you can get (it’s just audio), and the others are from a 90s sketch show (bonus: the second one has the actor who plays Mr Weasley in it!)
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I always felt like Gryffindor was a bit like the annoying middle-class guy comparing you to him. I can just hear Gryffindors saying “I couldn’t help but notice that I am considerably more perfect/popular than yooouuuuwww”!
In conclusion, feel free to dislike Severus all you want, but if you could stop calling him racist I would really appreciate it.
To finish (at last, I hear you cry) here is a Brief suggested watch/listen list if you interested in representations of class. They should all be accessible online.I am happy to answer questions about any of them.
TV-
Blackadder, but only series 2-4, 1 is shit (Rowan Atkinson plays a middle-class man stuck between the stupid working and upper-classes)
Harry Enfield and Chums, Little Britain (both sketch shows attacking all classes)
Only fools and horses (2 working-class brothers try to make a living by selling dodgy goods at the market)
Auf Wiedersehen, Pet (you will need subtitles – it’s about a group of guest workers in Germany and the main characters are geordies, which means from Newcastle)
The fact that these are all comedies says it all about our views of the situation.
Films – Billy Elliot (2000)
Pride (2014) (both are about the miners’ strike in the 80s, which is the most important event in recent working-class history, and both deal with LGBT themes)
East in East (1999) (about the added struggles for working-class immigrants)
The Full Monty (1997) (about unemployed working-class men stripping for money – it’s a comedy!)
Music – the album ‘Different class’ by Pulp, a band from Sheffield, a very working-class city (which I happen to love as I went to university there) which suffered terribly from the collapse of British industry since basically all the steel was made there. The film ‘The Full Monty’ is set there.
Other – any stand-up comedy (the working-class art) by the comedians Peter Kay or (pre-2000s) Billy Connolly.
Thank you and I apologise for the length!
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I haven't seen the episode. What were/are your thoughts about Ed? I'm interested.
My general feeling about Ed is a combination of Laura Snapes’s review of his album and Josie Long’s joke that there’s no way he’s good at sex.
The celebrity googlebox episode did nothing to change my view of his opinions about him and sex. But actually what I was judging him most on was just his lack of knowledge about music. Thy were watching university challenge and they played ‘Lust for Life’ and wanted to know what 1996 movie it was from and who wrote it (Trainspotting and Iggy Pop). Ed Sheeran’s contribution was to say the song was in Billy Elliot and Common proceeded to say that it was either Clash or The Jam and he gets them confused.
I’m the last thing from a music snob - and my own music knowledge isn’t that deep. There are very few people in the world I would judge for not knowing the 'important man musicians’. But Ed Sheeran has less knowledge of UK music from the 1970s than I do - and that seems like such a depressingly shallow way to approach music artistically.
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