Crawlin Back To You

tea

Gwen

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the sillies

Monster (2023) dir. Hirokazu Koreeda

Invincible stills from my animation meme contribution + a crying mark gif

Oh how I love you modern Merlin as a medieval history professor. I can just imagine his students talking about him. "His lectures are great, he talks about it like he was actually there."

"Do NOT bring up Arthuriana he WILL go on an hour long rant and you WILL miss your last train home."

"He has this weird academic beef with Geoffrey Chaucer?!"

"His office reeks of herbs, lord knows what he puts in his morning tea."

"Dude's been teaching here for like 30 years and he still somehow looks 22."

"I swear to you, I saw his eyes turn gold one time during a lecture."

Little Harry and his best birthday gift ever (a very happy birthday to the best boy out there)

currently thinking about mary 'female casanova of gryffindor tower' macdonald & sirius 'casanova of hogwarts' black and their LOSER partners. marlene is scared of dragonflies and gets attached to worms and remus is a complete pushover who's so scared of hurting people he stays alone and quiet. UGH. im SICK.

The news about Papaa Essiedu playing Snape has been a "mask off" moment for many people, and I'm really disappointed. I've seen bad takes from both sides, Snape fans and haters. Does it always have to be like that? Why can't people leave black actors alone? I don't even want to watch the show, because I don't want to support JKR, but this is disrespectful to the actor who just wants to do his job.

It’s interesting to me because I’m not going to watch that show—I just have no interest in a new version of Harry Potter. It’s not even about not wanting to give Rowling money, because that’s an easy fix (just pirate it), it’s simply that I don’t care for it and I don’t think it’s necessary. But okay.

My issue here is that, look, I can understand fans being super hesitant because they have a very clear image of Severus in their heads. I get it because, in my head, Severus looks a certain way too, and I would like him to be represented like that, but honestly, I don’t care that much. At this point, book-to-screen adaptations take more and more liberties, and I’ve just gotten used to it.

What does bother me is how everyone—literally everyone—tries to act all progressive while making up excuses that do nothing but mask their racism. I’ve seen people say they’re so worried about the hate the actor will receive, and that’s why they think this casting isn’t right. As if the actor isn’t a grown, autonomous man who’s fully aware of the consequences of taking on a role like this. They treat him like a clueless child who doesn’t know what he’s doing, being unbearably paternalistic, because they think this fake concern will somehow cover up the stench of racism coming off their words.

Then there are people who simply complain that he doesn’t look like their Snape. Okay, whatever, at least they’re being honest.

But the ones who piss me off the most are the ones crafting these elaborate arguments about how problematic it is for a black man to play Snape (as if people of color don’t have the right to play whatever character they want, even the controversial ones). They spew nonsense, calling him an incel (false), a Nazi (false), and throwing around all the utterly untrue, completely fanon bullshit people say about Snape—just to mask what really bothers them: that their favorites are going to look like the abusers they actually were.

Severus is a character shaped by poverty, abuse, and social exclusion, and it’s because of these things that he ends up following the people who provide him with a sense of safety and belonging—people who give him a space where he can have ambition and not feel like an outcast. It’s literally the same story as many kids from disadvantaged backgrounds who end up in gangs. He’s a working-class character who was systematically bullied and assaulted by a group of four people—none of whom were poor. (Because Lupin wasn’t poor as a teenager, sorry. His father worked for the Ministry—deal with it.) The ringleaders of that group were two white, cishet boys from obscenely wealthy families with bloodline statuses equivalent to the Muggle aristocracy. It was the upper class teaming up to humiliate and marginalize the lower class.

And the thing about Severus’s haters and Marauders apologists is that they constantly use every rhetorical trick in the book to minimize this dynamic, justify it, and even suggest that Severus deserved it. The problem with this casting is that it’s going to make it impossible to deny that there was a major social component to that abuse. They simply won’t be able to ignore it. And that’s what’s pissing them off—it has them shaking because they won’t be able to keep excusing the sexual harassment, the attempted murder, the constant bullying, etc. They just won’t.

And I think it’s disgusting to use race as a shield, to pretend to care about racism when the only thing you actually care about is defending characters who represent the privileged, oppressive social elite—just because they’re your favorites. It’s repulsive.

The problem with these people isn’t that they have some incredible social awareness and genuinely care about the representation of Black men in fiction or about racism. No. What they really care about is how this might affect their attempts to seem progressive online.

What actually worries them is that the abusers they constantly defend—whose classism, social prejudices, and repeated abuses of power they refuse to acknowledge—can no longer be hidden behind excuses. That now, they won’t be able to defend them without looking like complete idiots.

But here’s a spoiler: they already are. They don’t need Snape to be Black for that. They’re already defending and justifying abuse, violence, and sexual assault. The only difference is that right now, they can deny it more easily. But that doesn’t erase the sin.

Rainy day