Do you think Snape hate has increased since we found out he was poor?
I think there’s a number of reasons, but yes, I think it’s a possibility. We can quickly compare and contrast how Draco and Snape are perceived by fandom, or even Regulus and Snape. I suspect that the poverty that the Snape family were steeped in is too difficult for some readers to wholly grasp, whereas perhaps it is far easier to admire and aspire towards the riches and decadence of the Blacks and the Malfoys.
Maybe it’s also easier for some modern readers to imagine the psychological impact of not agreeing with the politics of your parents than it is to imagine the undercurrent of domestic violence and living in a destitute environment in a dilapidated house. Additionally, there are uncomfortable messages for some from Snape - this dirty, unloved, dishevelled child is as powerful and as capable as any other wizard, and given the opportunity, he flourishes. Depending on your class, you may read Snape’s success as a powerful message of triumph over adversity - or perhaps, a dangerous message about competition from the underclass.
Still, I suspect the real issue is generational - and not necessarily generational from Harry starting at Hogwarts in 1991 and us discussing this almost 30 years later, but generational from JK. I’ve spoken a lot previously about how her depiction is of teachers from the mid 70s put into a book set in the early 90s and how that doesn’t wholly translate to the kid of the late 10s.
With that in mind, I think her notion of a love story is also mired in history. For someone of JK’s age when she started writing, unrequited love was seen in positive terms - it wasn’t meant to be creepy. Love is a huge theme throughout the series, and the idea that Snape - who had walked down this horribly dark path and was outwardly a mean and nasty and spiteful man - would completely change his ideology and allegiance due to his unrequited love for Lily was supposed to have been indicative of the power of love.
But we read Potter now with modern eyes, and unrequited love has not aged particularly well. It seems rare that people genuinely ‘quietly love from afar’ - and instead, fandom insists on applying traits to the character which don’t exist in the text. For instance, there’s no indication of Snape being a stalker or a creep, there’s no indication that he wanted a sexual relationship with Lily, there’s no indication that he bothered her or harassed her. He isn’t a ‘nice guy’ or an ‘incel’ - but some readers can’t find the trope that they’re expecting, so they apply others to the series, even if they don’t quite fit.
So, I think the author and the readership are in conflict. The author wrote a tale of genuine unrequited love, and the readers are trying to view it through modern frameworks, and they draw incorrect conclusions about the character’s motives.
I suspect this is exacerbated by the readership not ageing with the series. Everyone who read Potter whilst it was being published had to wait for the next book to be written, but these days, they’re binge-read. I think that lack of distance between each book (and the subsequent lack of maturity, because you’re reading the next one within a week, and not waiting three years, so you can’t have matured further) means that many struggle to separate Snape from being a cipher for their mean teacher at school to becoming the secret hero that he is.
I think that’s my real conclusion. The problem is that this is an old text which is being read as if it is modern - and that leads to a clash between reader expectation and authorial intent.
Summary: Sigma hopes to transcribe the universe’s melody, in hopes of awakening his true powers, but gets more than he bargains for when the government facility he has escaped from has found him once again.
Read it here, or find it on AO3
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Sigma sits in front of a piano. Not the Bechstein studio grand piano that used to sit in his apartment in The Hague but a cheap, upright Yamaha instead. He knows it is old just from the touch, the damp thud of the keys and the slow responsiveness of the pedals. Most aggravating of all is the tuning, the way the notes sound off to his ears. He does not have perfect pitch, and he never will, but if he concentrates hard enough, he can feel the shape of a note. Middle C is a yellow circle, and if he rises it up to a D, it transforms into an orange triangle. He hypothesizes that his abilities over gravity have given him a sensitivity to the electromagnetic waves that make up sound, but he cannot test this without rigorous testing. The beauty of these powers is that there are so many potential experiments and possibilities.
It’s been a long time since he’s played. Or at least, he thinks it’s been a long time. The last time he had touched a piano was one week before he went up to the international space station that caused his accident, but time is no longer linear and memories no longer make sense and he cannot say how many years have already passed since then. Has it been three years or longer? He cannot say.
He very much prefers listening to music rather than playing it, but he does not have that luxury. Talon is many things but it is not a musically inclined organization. His previous request for an parabolic microphone must have fallen upon flat ears for the next day he gets a regular microphone, the kind used for karaoke parties. It didn’t even have the batteries in it. So it is a miracle of sorts that his request for a piano got through. It was probably salvaged from a nearby dump, but it is still in working order, and he is grateful for whatever gifts Talon bestow upon him.
His body suddenly stiffens as he feels a shift in the air. He turns his head slowly, eyes wide as he finds himself staring back into his face. Only it’s not his face but another version of him, decked out in the orange jumpsuit that government facility crafted specifically for him. His copy smirks sinisterly.
“Gravity is like sanity. All you need is a little push.”
“W-w-what?”
“They called the geniuses of old insane back in their times.”
He is frozen in fear, staring into a face that is his but not his. The other approaches him and places his hands on his shoulders. He can feel the energy being sapped away from his body, his twisted mirror image growing larger, impossibly larger than him. As the energy leaves his body, he can feel his mind clearing. As his mind clears, he can see this twisted alter ego for what it truly is. It is sin, the devil in disguise. And behind that disguise is the black hole that destroyed his career and his mind. And it laughs. It laughs so viciously.
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Head canon!: Severus wasn’t actually super powerful magic wise. Like he has a normal magic level. He’s so good at dueling, not because he uses overwhelming force but rather because he knows various spells, when and where to cast them, is extremely creative with them and is very dextrous. All skills he learned at a young age fighting against 4 people at once. He learned to fight dirty and for his own survival and he learned fast! He’s such a unique opponent because at any point he could also pull out a potion bottle or make a wall fall down on you you never noticed. He never fights ‘honorably’ because that will get you a early an shallow grave, he fights tooth and nail using any and all tactics to win and THAT is what makes him a good fighter.
I genuinely have no clue where this fandom gets the idea that James and Snape were rivals. The definition of rivalry is competition for the same objective or for superiority in the same field.
If James and Snape were rivals, as many like to call them, what were they competing for?
Lily?
No. Snape and Lily were best friends, years before James and Snape even met. And Lily is not a “prize to be won” which many people—including James, as we see in SWM—fail to understand.
Their studies? [I’m including this because I’ve actually seen someone try to use this argument before]
No. That had nothing to do with their feud. And James and Snape excelled in different subjects. Snape was brilliant at potions and DADA. James was highly knowledgeable in transfiguration.
Unlike Harry and Draco (who were rivals when it came to Quidditch), James and Snape had nothing you could argue they were “competing over.”
Another important thing many people seem to forget about rivalries is that it means equality. Rivals’ statuses/dynamics are meant to be balanced. Does that apply to Snape and James?
James Potter: was a rich, well-groomed, spoiled pureblood Gryffindor.
Severus Snape: was a poor, unattractive, neglected half-blood Slytherin.
It can only ever be called a rivalry when both sides are equally powerful, which cannot be said for James and Snape whatsoever.
A huge reason as to why people like to call it that is because Snape apparently “gave as good as he got” (I like how there was not a single time that phrase was ever used in the series). They use a line said by Remus—one of Snape’s bullies, funnily enough—in OoTP as evidence of Snape’s supposed fighting back:
“Snape was a special case. I mean, he never lost an opportunity to curse James, so you couldn’t really expect James to take that lying down, could you?”
To a majority of this fandom, never losing an opportunity (opportunity: a time or set of circumstances that makes it possible to do something, Remus never said anything about Snape succeeding all the time) to curse James—who, in the author’s words, relentlessly bullied Snape for the past six years—in their 7th year (one year) meant “giving as good as he got” and automatically cancels out everything James did to Snape for the six years before that.
Demonising Snape for wanting to get back at James after being subjected to bullying, assault, and even attempted murder (the werewolf prank) for years is complete and utter victim-blaming. If the victim fights back, it is to be called self-defence, not “bullying back” (there is no such thing anyway) or a rivalry. Acting as though in order to be a “good victim”—whatever that’s supposed to mean—you have to take the bullying lying down, and if you defend yourself, you’re reclassified as the bad guy, is genuinely disgusting to me. If a woman were to defend herself against her assaulters, would she be in the wrong, would that negate what the assaulters did to her?
The pro-bullying and victim-blaming attitude that comes from this fandom is revolting. Defending oneself does not alter the dynamic from a person with more power bullying a victim to a rivalry between two equals. When will people learn to understand that.
And besides, there is absolutely nothing to back up Remus’s claim. In fact, there is more evidence that he was lying:
Remus makes it sound like Snape would just come up to James randomly and just hex him there and then. If he did, don’t you think Lily would’ve found out? Or at the very least the Hogwarts staff? That very much suggests that it was James who initiated these fights.
The Marauders had the cloak of invisibility, a map that could track Snape and everyone at Hogwarts’ every move, and the two-way mirror. What did Snape have?
Why would James hide it from Lily? If he was truly innocent and was the one being hexed senseless, he obviously would not have hidden it from her. What would he even have to hide if that were the case? It’s clear that he knew he was in the wrong and that Lily would have never gotten with him had she known what he was doing behind her back.
Remus is canonically a liar, who lied to Harry many times, especially about Snape. Why does this fandom act like his words about the person he used to bully should be trusted?
Moving on, none of the Marauders’ reasons for bullying Snape exactly scream rivalry:
James himself stated that he bullied Snape because he exists.
Remus called it “an old prejudice” when he and Harry talked in HBP, casting the Marauders as bigots (especially when you remember that Snape was a Slytherin whom they bullied because of his existence).
Sirius (in GoF) claimed that “Snape was just this little oddball who was up to his eyes in the Dark Arts.”
In SWM, we are shown that the reason James and Sirius attacked Snape—who was minding his own business—was because Sirius was bored, meaning they had done it for fun.
Lily claimed that James walked down corridors and hexed anyone who annoyed him “just because he can.”
Sirius claimed that “we [the Marauders] were sometimes arrogant little berks.”
Tell me, does this seem like a rivalry to you?
I just had a GALAXY brain idea, Rincewind says that his mother ran away before he was born, right, which ISN’T POSSIBLE
… if she’s cis.
deltarune soriel comic I did month ago.(1/2)
Wholesome content from Teacher Appreciation Celebration in Hogwarts Mystery!
“I am aware that this request is fundamentally selfish. I can offer no justification for it, no argument in its favor. It is simply the outcome I desire to see the most.”
it’s very wild to me that people can earnestly and sincerely say shit like “well snape fought back, so was it really bullying?” and not just like… hear how utterly gross they sound tbh. like do i have to use the “think about if this was an actual, real kid” argument to get people see that fighting back doesn’t erase victimhood or magically turn bullying into rivalry or friendly roughhousing?
idk. i feel like people say that shit really never experienced bullying in their whole damn life. bc how could they truly think that fighting back against bullies, shoving back, throwing back insults and punches, is anywhere near making things “equal”? defending yourself is not nearly the same thing as starting a fight for fun. protecting yourself is not the same as hurting someone else. like do they just like… forget how to use empathy and critical reasoning skills when it comes to snape or are they just really that clueless??
wow so cool;;;;
I wonder if they are able to have a normal conversation, What is it like? From prison to prison. In his view, there is no difference between talon and governments.
“I c-can’t stop.”
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Ah Vander...
I'm still cracking up over this one line!
Vander has seen Silco turn a teen into a monster who killed 5 armed enforcers, the sheriff and then Benzo, got knocked out and dragged here, heard Silco's passionate speech, and he still seems to think that Silco could possibly be satisfied with just killing him.
WHAT HAVE YOU DONE, VANDER??
What have you done to Silco, that you believe that he might stop everything he's got going and call it quits after killing you?
The more I look at this sentence and the more it feels like Vander has this sort of... self important perception of who he is, or what he means to Silco.
Vander betrays a massive lack of understanding for Silco's dreams and passions, which is sort of heartbreaking, and feeds my perception of a young Vander who was always more in on it for himself than for ideals or true beliefs.
Vander would settle for personal revenge. Vander understands revenge more than anything else, because even after Silco's speech, he *still* believes that deep down it's all this is really about.
It hints at a young Vander who was full of rage and violence, but devoid of ideals. Silco thought he'd shared his dream with him, but he only gave him a direction to channel his anger, a conduit for his violence. Vander, I think, never really cared for a free Zaun, or never believed in it. That probably made betraying Silco that much easier, back then.
Silco asks him if he's forgotten, and he hasn't. He simply never really believed.