“O Mine Enemy” By KirbyLane

The phrase that Judas said after Jesus's death. A little comic experiment for me!

Days at the cafe

having a persona 3 moment… if you couldn’t tell

She was not pretty; she looked simultaneously cross and sullen, with heavy brows and a long, pallid face.

Reading Snape through a queer lens

It’s funny how the years shape your opinions, and no matter how hard I try, I can never shake the idea of Snape as being queer – whether he’s gay, or bi, or genderqueer, or whatever…there’s something ‘different’ about Snape that makes me love him through a queer lens.

And for me, the most joyous moment is when Sirius calls him Lucius’ lapdog – because the implication and insinuation in that is so strong for anyone who has an awareness of what boarding school could be like in the 20th century.  

So, it’s a full admission from me when I say that I’ve always read Snape through a queer lens – but I have, at times, read his relationship with Lily as being heteronormative, and subsequently taken it as read that he coveted a sexual relationship with her.

As I get older, that reading has made me more and more uncomfortable.  I understand where the ‘nice guy’ criticism comes from – which, in fairness to JK, wasn’t such a trope when she wrote the books, and I don’t think she was aiming for.

But Snape’s ‘desire’ for Lily absolutely reduces his character from being someone powerful and interesting to well, a character who is a little pathetic – pining after someone who had no reciprocal interest, and who had clearly moved on.  

So, let’s break down the heteronormative reading:  

-  Firstly, Snape and Lily are boy-meets-girl which is prevalent in our culture.  

-  Secondly, Voldemort reveals that Snape desired Lily.

-  Thirdly, the way Snape reacts to Lily over James – particularly his possessiveness, and also:  “The intensity of his gaze made her blush.”  

The first can potentially be dismissed; we know for a fact that Lily is some variation of heterosexual, as she marries and has a child – but we know nothing about Snape’s sexuality. 

The second can definitely be dismissed because the whole point of Voldemort’s character is that he doesn’t understand love.  Interestingly, Snape must be presenting as some variation of heterosexual or bisexual for this to be credible to Voldemort.  Furthermore, we see throughout the series that Snape consistently lies to Voldemort.  

The last can be interpreted in a few ways; it could be a young teenage boy wrangling with his feelings…but it could be a young teenage boy who realises that he’s got competition for his best friend and a boyfriend will always rank more highly than a friend.  The contrast of ‘he fancies you’ versus ‘I’m your friend’ is quite interesting.

And it’s here that the message is rather mixed – for a man who devotes his life to honouring Lily’s name, he doesn’t explicitly choose Lily; he wants to associate with Mulciber and Avery at the same time.  For a 15 year old with raging hormones, he throws himself down the path of power…which follows his obsession with James, Sirius et al, who routinely strip him of his power.  He doesn’t, at any point, attempt to woo Lily.  

When Lily closed the door on Snape, he walked away.  Canon doesn’t state that he sent her flowers, or wrote her letters, or hung about outside her house; it rather suggests that they left each other alone with no further contact.

So when Snape goes to the hill and begs Dumbledore to keep Lily safe, he isn’t doing it because he thinks that slaughtering her family will mean that the path is clear for him; he does so because:

-  Lily is the only person in the Potter family who matters to Snape; if she hadn’t been at risk, he wouldn’t be defecting.

-  James was his schoolyard bully.  When James is long dead in the 90s, Snape still hasn’t moved on from how he was treated – Snape’s hardly likely to request a pardon for him…he’d probably be pleased if he was murdered.

-  Harry was the baby in the prophecy.  It’s not that I think Snape cares particularly either way about Harry – but that he believed that if Voldemort wanted to murder Harry, he wouldn’t be in a position to prevent it.  I think he felt Lily could be spared, whereas Harry couldn’t. 

You can read Snape’s acquiescence to Dumbledore’s suggestion to save the entire Potter family in two ways – either he sees it’s the only way to save Lily and accepts it, or he genuinely hasn’t thought any further than, “Lily must stay alive.”  I rather subscribe to the latter, which makes it an incredible scene of selflessness and selfishness in one swoop (which is Snape all over; a mass of contradiction).  

Our reading of Snape is distorted, because we read Snape-the-Spy.  We don’t see any sign of Snape’s true character (which would probably have been present in his post-school Death-Eater years) – instead, we meet him when he seems to despise his occupation which he’s forced into, and he socialises with people who are useful to the cause, as opposed to who he wants to.

As it stands, we can categorically state that Snape doesn’t appear to move on from his love for Lily – but we don’t know how much of this is love or coveting of Lily, and how much is due to his role as a spy.  We only have to look at Lucius and the way Voldemort treats Draco and Narcissa to see the dangers of having a family when you’re embroiled in warfare; Snape would be bringing a partner or a family into a war.  

…so I think sometimes we fall back on thinking that Snape has spent 15-20 years crying over Lily, when actually, he hasn’t flaunted a relationship with anyone for fear of them being toyed with by his enemies as a way of reaching him.  

For me, reading Snape as non-heterosexual helps to clear the path slightly.  If we assume that he wasn’t interested in Lily sexually, the story is tilted slightly differently – and Snape’s story becomes one of guilt.  Sirius tells us in OotP that many wizarding families followed Voldemort because his true thoughts weren’t apparent until it was too late, and I think Snape’s childhood, where his Muggle father seemingly dominated his magical mother, caused him to believe the two worlds should be separate.  

We don’t learn much about Avery and Mulciber, although Snape doesn’t appear to have a particularly close relationship with them post-school.  The rest of the Death Eaters present as varying degrees of insane, with the Malfoys being notable exceptions – and it would be credible to suggest that Lucius groomed Snape for his own ends, suggesting a bit of a power imbalance in their relationship.

However, we also see how Snape isn’t – despite Dumbledore standing up for him, and it not being proven until GoF that Snape was a Death Eater – really trusted by anyone on the side of the light.  It’s easy to see how Snape, who was bullied and almost murdered by a group of boys who were subsequently groomed into the Order, wouldn’t have aligned himself with any group they were in or with Dumbledore.

So that leaves, in his entire shabby life, Lily.  Her death stunts him emotionally because it turns out that she was the only person who seemed to like him for who he was.  Yet, he ignored her warnings, followed the wrong path, and was implicated in her death (committed by those he was aligned to).  He tried to make amends, but it was too late – which is the story of their friendship.  

Lily became an emblem of the path he should’ve taken and somewhat perversely, when Lily dies, Snape “becomes” Lily.  With Lily’s love for Harry keeping him safe in Surrey, Snape’s love for Lily causes him to take up the role of protector at Hogwarts.  Snape also assumes her patronus (or what we’re led to believe is her patronus), which is strongly coded as feminine – suggesting that it’s transformed, and isn’t his natural patronus.  

Somewhat ironically, when Snape leaves his own path and takes on Lily’s preferred route, he becomes everything she’d have been impressed by: a teacher, Head of House, and ultimately, Headmaster – and he gained the prestige and power he coveted as a youth. 

We start the story knowing that James and Lily were an item long before we discover that Snape and Lily had a friendship.  When we finally discover James and Snape didn’t like each other, and Lily and James ended up together, we assume that Snape treats Harry badly because James got the girl.

But that’s a huge reduction.  Snape doesn’t hate Harry because he’s James and Lily together; Snape hates Harry because he’s James.  We see throughout the series that Snape is the only character who refuses to acknowledge any amount of Lily in Harry (until, arguably, his dying moments).  Snape hates Harry because he looks exactly like the boy who tortured him for 7 years, and because he perceives Harry to be an arrogant rulebreaker, in the same way that James was.  

So no, I don’t think Snape was pleased that James and Lily ended up together, but not particularly because he was jealous.  Instead, it was the idea that he lost his best friend to his school bully – and that his own actions helped to push her that way. 

And that reads a whole lot more neatly to me than Snape coveting a relationship with Lily. 

Of course, you don’t need to read Snape through a queer lens to draw these conclusions; he could well have been heterosexual and either had a crush on Lily whilst they were friends but grew out of it, or he could’ve been heterosexual and not interested in Lily at all.  But if you read Snape as a celibate heterosexual, you do end up drawn down the Nice Guy path. 

Instead, Snape’s ‘pure of heart’ patronus rather suggests that he was genuine in his feelings, which points to him regretting the death of his childhood friend, rather than him feeling as if he friendzoned and missed out on a relationship that was somehow owed to him – and a queer lens rather helps to clarify that stance.  

I remember first seeing this around the time it was first being made and can I just say love the art style. Series is a must read for any Alola fans as the development for characters like Guzma and Gladion is so good.

El’s Alolan Adventures MASTERPOST

HELLO and WELCOME to “El’s Alolan Adventures” - A Pokemon-Fancomic series :D Here you will find all comics of the series ordered chronologically by story arc (so not chronological by date of upload, the more you know) 

This list will be updated with every new comic canon to the timeline! A couple of scribble comics and singular artworks are NOT included in this list, so check out my blog with the hashtag #Els Alolan Adventures for everything else! 

If you’d like to support this series, you can tip me with a Ko-fi!  :D  Or consider supporting me on Patreon!

5$ Pledgers get early access to new comics and future videos!

Info on the protagonist |  Current character overview 

SEASON 1

Guzmas Redemption:

Dont get it twisted

An unexpected friend

Hala’s Advice Part 1 |  Part 2

Slice of Life inbetween:

Ten Carat Training

NO SWEARING AROUND HAU

Fishing for Araquanid

El’s Pokemon: An Introduction

Package to Hoenn (tiny teaser)

Back from Hoenn Part 1 |  Part 2 |  BONUS

Dusk - The sassy sword from overseas Part 1 |  Part 2 | Part 3

Introducing: Latias

Someone REALLY wants to battle Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4

BONUS (meme)

Rescuing Reskull

Do you have a license for that

A long overdue conversation

Call from Kanto

Call from Kanto: Aftermath

Conversations Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | BONUS

SEASON 2

Wait what do you mean you have a full bug team

Swipe through Memories

Bug Buddies (Illustration)

A new friend Part 1 | Part 2

Returning the Favor | BONUS

Gladion - Aether Foundation’s President

A present absence Part 1 | Part 2

Midnight Chatter Part 1 | Part 2

Aether’s broken Paradise

Mr. Beans Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4

Mohn - The Bridge

Gladion meets Mohn Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5

A Promise

I thought he said he PROMISED Part 1 | Part 2

A Compromise

Calm before the storm

Pastime Games Part 1 | Part 2

Dusk is not happy

Shitposts I don’t know where to put in the timeline yet hdsjdhsdsdh

- It’s a full moon in Alola so yoU KNOW WHAT THAT MEANS - Galar? I dont know her - Hau and Guzma go on a quest

Dusk takes over twitter (April Fools 2020)

Tweets Part 1  ->  Jenna Snapshots 

Tweets Part 2 

Tweets Part 3  ->  Kira Snapshots

Tweets Part 4 FINALE

VIDEO: When El isn’t home

VIDEO: Mr Sandman Meme

happy ninjaposting friday your ninjapost is this joke titled I Loved Season Four And Have Drawn Like 3 Different Versions Of This Same Joke

the reason Edgeworth takes off his glasses during the trial in AA5 is because he can’t focus on court if he’s distracted by seeing Phoenix Wright clearly

FoolMoon art for Persona 3 Secret Santa 💖✨️

A complex and many-layered thing

But Harry’s anger at Snape continued to pound through his veins like venom. Let go of his anger? He could as easily detach his legs. . . .

This is the first Occlumency lesson. Harry is right, of course. Feelings don’t go away because you want them to. To let go of them when they’ve not been addressed or validated can be as hard as detaching a leg. And yet, it’s what Dumbledore asked Snape to do, and it’s what Snape had to do to survive the first war as Dumbledore’s spy. You have to ask yourself… how?

Trapped animals chew off their own legs to escape. It’s a sacrifice they make to survive.

If there’s one thing in a fic that turns me off it, it’s the idea that Occlumency shields are a thing, that Severus was so gifted at it because he’s got some power like Second Sight or being a metamorphagus. I always preferred to think of Occlumency and Legilimency as skills that can be learned, even if some have more aptitude for it than others.

Severus entered Hogwarts with the kind of life experience that primed him for developing these skills, and left it with even more. Occlumency is magical dissociation, a post-traumatic coping mechanism, and Severus has C/PTSD. More under the cut; tw: just general angst.

To survive, he would have had to develop a knack for telling how explosive and unpredictable people feel. Over his life, he faced at least two egregious examples of what Pete Walker, author of “Complex PTSD” calls “the Charming Bully”.

Especially devolved fight types can become sociopathic. Sociopathy can range along a continuum that stretches from corrupt politician to vicious criminal. A particularly nasty sociopath, who I call the charming bully, probably falls somewhere around the middle of this continuum. The charming bully behaves in a friendly manner some of the time. He can even occasionally listen and be helpful in small amounts, but he still uses his contempt to overpower and control others. This type typically relies on scapegoats for the dumping of his vitriol. These unfortunate scapegoats are typically weaker than him. […] He generally spares his favorites from this behavior, unless they get out of line. If the charming bully is charismatic enough, those close to him will often fail to register the unconscionable meanness of his scapegoating. The bully’s favorites often slip into denial, relieved that they are not the target. Especially charismatic bullies may even be admired and seen as great.

These would be James Potter and Tom Riddle, who are distantly related, I might add. Harry inherited the tendency to default to the fight response, but since he grew up the scapegoat and not the golden child, he never becomes quite as appalling, and after all, a fight response is normal when they are after you. Even so, Harry, who has both James and Voldemort inside him, triggers Severus to no end. It’s not a coincidence that the memories Harry sees when he is with him are largely horrible, and vice versa. There had to be happy or at least neutral or even boring moments, but these two detest each other, and they know they detest each other. Negative emotions and associated memories are so close to the surface they can’t be contained. This is the purpose of the Pensieve in this context - to contain the emotions. Since Severus knew what was in there when he pulled Harry out, my theory is that you don’t suddenly forget the memories you placed there, but rather you make them less fraught with emotions.

“Get up!” said Snape sharply. “Get up! You are not trying, you are making no effort, you are allowing me access to memories you fear, handing me weapons!”

Harry stood up again, his heart thumping wildly as though he had really just seen Cedric dead in the graveyard. Snape looked paler than usual, and angrier, though not nearly as angry as Harry was. “I — am — making — an — effort,” he said through clenched teeth.

“I told you to empty yourself of emotion!”

“Yeah? Well, I’m finding that hard at the moment,” Harry snarled.

“Then you will find yourself easy prey for the Dark Lord!” said Snape savagely. “Fools who wear their hearts proudly on their sleeves, who cannot control their emotions, who wallow in sad memories and allow themselves to be provoked this easily — weak people, in other words — they stand no chance against his powers! He will penetrate your mind with absurd ease, Potter!”

A lot to unpack here.

“Memories you fear,” “weapons”, “easy prey”.

Fearing your own memories, viewing your own lived experiences as weapons to be used against you, being easy prey… Severus could not be speaking louder of himself here. He is the one whose mind had been penetrated with absurd ease, he is the one who handed weapons to Voldemort, and he is the one who had to do the psychological equivalent of detaching his own leg – again and again – to survive.

I’ll argue that Severus developed a fawn response and a flight response, as fighting had never really worked out for him if it was possible at all. He had at least two more people I’d describe as bullies in his life, Tobias and Lucius.

Again from Pete Walker:

These [fawn] response patterns are so deeply set in the psyche, that as adults, many codependents automatically respond to threat like dogs, symbolically rolling over on their backs, wagging their tails, hoping for a little mercy and an occasional scrap. Webster’s second entry for fawn is: “to show friendliness by licking hands, wagging its tail, etc.: said of a dog.” I find it tragic that some codependents are as loyal as dogs to even the worst “masters”.

Remember what Sirius called him? Lucius’s lapdog. Bellatrix called him Dumbledore’s pet, Dumbledore said he dangles on Voldemort’s arm, the narrative compares Snape to a rabbit in SWM and Harry compares the Half Blood Prince to a beloved pet who had gone feral (yes, this does mean a lot to me on a personal level, yes my username is not a coincidence).

His unconscious fawn response might have been his undoing, drawn as he was to figures like Lucius and Voldemort. As an adult, I think he utilized the skills he had developed to survive in order to stitch these people up, and involuntary dissociation and fawning became Occlumency, which to me, is his signature magic. Harry needed only to banish Voldemort from his mind; Severus could not settle for this. He had to give Voldemort something, and knowing how to fawn meant knowing what to give him and how to draw himself in such a light that Voldemort would believe it. We see how he wanted to be seen by the Death Eaters: a self-serving coward who sought to hide behind Dumbledore’s apron, playing his pet. But that’s Pettigrew, not Snape. Imagine the self-immolation, the self-violation, it must have taken to convince everyone that you’re an ersatz Wormtail! Snape is a man and a prince, and the text recognizes this as Harry calls him, in the end, Dumbledore’s man, the bravest man, and as that chapter is called “The Prince’s Tale”. Voldemort thought Snape was nothing more than a “good and faithful servant,” and that his last words were “My Lord”.

But Severus had an unequaled gift for Occlumency, specifically against Voldemort, because Voldemort could not legilimens what he couldn’t feel; and he couldn’t feel love, grief, guilt, and remorse. This was Severus’s secret weapon, which would not have worked against Harry - who can feel these things, and who is also Lily’s son. I can prove it. The first time Harry gets the hang of Occlumency is after Dobby dies:

His scar burned, but he was master of the pain; he felt it, yet was apart from it. He had learned control at last, learned to shut his mind to Voldemort, the very thing Dumbledore had wanted him to learn from Snape. Just as Voldemort had not been able to possess Harry while Harry was consumed with grief for Sirius, so his thoughts could not penetrate Harry now, while he mourned Dobby. Grief, it seemed, drove Voldemort out . . . though Dumbledore, of course, would have said that it was love. . . .

Harry learned to dissociate, though fortunately in a healthier way than many of us ever get to.

Of course, Snape was a good and faithful servant… to Dumbledore, which brings us to the flight response. The chapter wherein he escapes after killing Dumbledore is called “Flight of the Prince”. He should be fighting, he had just proven that he can cast a killing curse, and yet he flees. He can literally fly, in fact: He, Lily, and Voldemort are the only ones we see pulling this off.

As a child, we see this too: He copes with his home situation by reminding himself “it won’t be long and I’ll be gone.” He is thrilled when he imagines Hogwarts, his escape; he follows Lily out of the carriage instead of confronting James and Sirius head-on (which might have saved them all a lot of pain eventually). But this doesn’t work out, we see that in terrifying detail. The next attempt at an escape is joining the Death Eaters, but this too doesn’t work out.

He can’t flee anymore.

“Severus, you cannot pretend this isn’t happening!” Karkaroff’s voice sounded anxious and hushed, as though keen not to be overheard. “It’s been getting clearer and clearer for months. I am becoming seriously concerned, I can’t deny it —”

“Then flee,” said Snape’s voice curtly. “Flee — I will make your excuses. I, however, am remaining at Hogwarts.”

Shortly thereafter:

“Severus,” said Dumbledore, turning to Snape, “you know what I must ask you to do. If you are ready . . . if you are prepared . . .”

“I am,” said Snape.

He looked slightly paler than usual, and his cold, black eyes glittered strangely.

He was ready, and he was prepared. He didn’t fly; he walked toward what might well have been his end with open eyes, armed only with the strength of his mind. Before Voldemort killed him, he looked pale, again, and terrified.

“I sought a third wand, Severus. The Elder Wand, the Wand of Destiny, the Deathstick. I took it from its previous master. I took it from the grave of Albus Dumbledore.”

And now Snape looked at Voldemort, and Snape’s face was like a death mask. It was marble white and so still that when he spoke, it was a shock to see that anyone lived behind the blank eyes.

I ask myself if this was the moment he realized he had been betrayed, that by giving Dumbledore a painless death he had secured his own. Maybe he wasn’t pale because he was scared; maybe he was pale because he was shocked. He was at his absolute limit, Occluding with all his might when he could have easily saved himself. The dam is about to break. All the memories he feared, all the weapons, the entire content of his heart is about to spill through - literally.

He fawned for Voldemort, the worst of all possible masters, but in the end, he was Voldemort’s undoing. All the ways in which he was weak and powerless against Tobias, James, Lucius, et al., proved to be part of goodness and source of his power. It doesn’t surprise me in the least that Snape is so loved. I’ve never actually seen such love for any other fictional character. He represents a kind of courage that many of us need to get by, lest we simply become evil or give the fuck up (“I wish I was dead”). A kind of courage rarely celebrated. The more time I’ve spent in the fandom in general and in the Snapedom in particular, the more I am convinced of this.