I Love How The Marauders Fandom Is Like Everybody Is Perfect The Way They Are, They Can Be Black, Brown,

I don’t really see Severus Snape as morally grey. I think a lot of people call him that because he can be mean and unpleasant, and they don’t like him, so they assume that must mean his morality is questionable too. But to me, he’s not morally grey—he’s just a polarizing character. People either really connect with him or really can’t stand him, and that makes it feel like he’s complicated in a moral sense, when he’s actually pretty straightforward.

It’s totally fair not to like him. He’s can be cruel, he’s mean and unfair to the students, he holds grudges, and he’s generally just not a nice person. But I don’t think that automatically makes someone morally ambiguous. Those are personality flaws and trauma responses, not moral decisions. When you look at what he actually does—he spends years risking his life as a double agent, protecting Harry, helping Dumbledore’s plan succeed, and ultimately dies for it—it’s really clear what side he’s on.

And yeah, he was a Death Eater at one point. That was absolutely a moral failing. But it was a relatively short part of his life, and he changed. He made a conscious decision to switch sides, and everything we see afterward is him trying to make up for the harm he helped cause. Growth doesn’t make someone morally grey—it shows that they made bad choices, learned from them, and did something about it.

I get why people find him confusing. He’s written as a red herring through most of the series; we’re supposed to doubt him. But that doesn’t mean his morality is actually unclear. Once you see the whole picture, it’s pretty obvious where he stood.

I made a Severus Snape playlist on Spotify. I hope you like it :)

I saw a Snape playlist here on Tumblr recently, I had this playlist for a long time so I decided to post it.

Professor Remus Lupin on platform 9 ¾ before he boards the train to Hogwarts.

Lupin is one of my absolute favorite HP characters, so it was about time I drew him!<3

Louise Burgeoise

One of the things that changed for me in my 10+ years fandom break is my view of Severus Snape. A decade ago, 20 didn't seem so young as it seems now. Who I was at 20 is nowhere close to who I was at 38.

Severus started spying at 20. It's possible that the man we see in canon is similar to the man he would be when finally free to be himself, but this time around, I can't help but wonder how much of what we see of Severus Snape is a carefully constructed lie.

I took so much as true the first time around, and this time I'm questioning all of it. Maybe he hates the Malfoys. Maybe he hates Potions. Maybe Professor Snape is just a role for him, a living performance, and he'd act totally different once Voldemort was defeated.

I can see also him, after playing a role nearly half of his life, struggling to figure out who he is and what he wants.

Angel's Egg (1985) dir. Mamoru Oshii

ABSOLUTELY YES that's exactly how I see her. I imagine her too as the actress who plays Pearl, they have a great alike. Some people compare them, It's probably the vibe, they both have a similar vibe.

Shelley Duvall is how I always imagined Eileen Snape would look.

There is a thing that deeply disturbes me about Severus' behaviour in SWM. He just wrote a very important exam on a subject that we know he loves and deeply cares about. He probably had been diligently preparing for it for a very long time, was anxious and aspiring how all the studious kids usually are. A normal teen behaviour is sharing how you wrote it with your friends – this is exactly what the Marauders do. But Severus approaches no one, talks to no one. Lily is hanging out with her other friends – he isn't invited to spend time with them, nor is he exchanging at least a couple of words with Lily personally. While she clearly has other people to chat with, Severus doesn't talk to any slytherins, not Mulcibier or Avery or anyone else. And he doesn't seek anyone out too, he just settles with reading alone like it's normal. Yes, he is introverted, but even the most introverted person would like to share such an important event with someone close to them.

It's like Severus had absolutely no one in that school who cared enough to hear about his pride and joy of writing the exam well, or his worries on getting something wrong. It's like he didn't even expect anyone to care. It is clear from everything in that scene that he is painfully lonely and largely ostracised, that him and Lily aren't particularly close at that point, and that he doesn't have any "gang" or any good friends in slytherin either.

Action Painter, 2011-2014

Kahn + Selesnick                                    

I feel like every couple years I reevaluate whether I could return to running trans Snape week. I kind of can’t believe that was 5-10 years ago now. I was a whole-ass teenager at the beginning and boy did it show lol.

So much of fandom has changed and rearranged itself since then. Most of the blogs that created trans Snape works back then are defunct now. It makes sense: those who are most inclined to create trans-focused works are also the most likely to be hurt by *gestures to the entirety of the JKR-inclusive transphobic genocide machine*. Lots of folks wanted nothing more than to get away.

But honestly, it’s how the fandom/internet behaved in the wake of it all that burned me the most. Staying in fandom at all, even (maybe especially) for the sake of creating intentionally trans fanworks, was seen as a moral betrayal that deserved any punishment the internet could deal out. The death threats and suicide bait were frequently—and ironically—indistinguishable from the hate from anti-trans JKR-defenders. I’m not ready to risk all that again.

Especially as the new HBO show comes to pass, I am steeling myself to see it all the old discourse reemerge. Needless to say I won’t be interacting with any of the new canonical works. Anything that gives JKR money or a larger platform is verboten in my own personal books. In the words of that Fred Rogers meme going around, often appended to posts about AI, “your own imagination is far more wonderful.”

But that’s always been the central tension for me: I’ll always stay here in my tiny corner of fandom. I love it here. Small though it is, it means the world to me. Chronically online teenagers (which is, I think, who they typically are) have an outsized view of the impact small fanworks have on the larger political/media zeitgeist. The idea that making trans Snape fanworks for 0-10 notes on tumblr in any way supports JKR is frankly ridiculous. So I have no qualms on that score.

But I think… I am still very much burned by all that happened here 5 years ago. How quickly fandom at large abandoned trans creators (hi hello lol) who wanted to remain in community.

Somehow, staying in fandom but avoiding making trans content ended up being the deeply, deeply ironic “solution.” I’m still not sure how this happened, but boy did it ever. Just what Dr. JKR ordered.

As soon as I realized that the ballet!AU was destined to become a trans!snape fic, I abandoned it. But I still want to work on it and put more of it into this (very very tiny) tumblrworld. The truth is, I miss the freedom and joy with which we spoke and wrote about trans Snape back then. I miss it so much. It taught me that I was okay. My little slice of heaven.

There’s more to say but some of it I’m keeping to myself.

The world has changed and the fandom has changed and I have very much changed, but I haven’t ever shifted the grief (resentment? lack of courage?) I feel around this. So I rewrite essentially this same post every couple of years.