cauldron of thoughts

The point of his character is that you're not SUPPOSED to like him until you finally put the pieces together and realize he's the good guy. The point of his character is to acknowledge his wrongs as much as his rights and love him for that. For his growth and development.

I love him so much. I love his flaws and I love how he grew from his past.

it never clicked in my brain that that’s what he is - a twist Hero. Because you only ever see that applied to a twist villain. In fact, in all the media I’ve consumed, Snape is probably the only twist hero I’ve ever seen. Not a bad guy that has character development over the series and turns out good by the end. A guy that you hated right along with the main character up until it was suddenly revealed that he was working WITH the mf all along. And then the pieces all fall into place.

Think the old man from Home Alone. Sweetums in Muppet's Treasure Island. This is the entire premise of the movie Monster Squad.

Hell, even Sirius Black falls under this in Prisoner of Azkaban! Did yall forget the first thing we're told about Sirius is that he's a murderer who escaped the most dangerous wizarding prison to come kill Harry.

Everything Sirius does in POA is villainous if you lack the context. He breaks into the castle, slashes the Fat Lady when she refuses him entry to the Gryffindor common room (and I never see Marauders fans actually talk about this; the Fat Lady did nothing wrong and Sirius attacked her. I know she's just a painting but paintings are sentient in this universe!) and biting Ron. He absolutely could have just chased the trio into the Womping Willow in hindsight, but again - we are supposed to read his actions as malicious, because he's a red herring.

I think the difference is how much time we have to get used to Sirius as a 'good guy' after this; Snape dies before we really find out the truth, so all we're really left with is the revelation. It changes Snape's behaviour in hindsight, but we don't have any 'after' behaviour to compare to. We don't get to see Snape when he's not in a multiyear spying operation.

Honestly, let’s just leave it, because you know what? There’s a saying in Spain: you can’t get something out of nothing. So if that’s all they’ve got in their head, it’s so little that no matter how much effort we put in, we’re not going to get the results we want, guys.

Os as we say in spanish:

'James fought for light'

Girl where? He joined the Order but we literally hear nothing about what he did.

We see how Snape fought against the Dark. We see Snape turn away from Voldemort. We see him go to the Light side. We see him put the Potter's safety over his own.

And yes, he did sacrifice his own safety to betray Voldemort. Remember Voldemort was winning the war when Snape turned cloak. There was no guarantee the Order would win, even with Snape's forewarning. That's why Voldemort's downfall was so shocking to the wizarding world - he was at the height of his power. No one expected it.

Snape wasn't exactly a high level Death Eater either. And even when he was after Voldemort's return, he was still disposable. If Lily's sacrifice hadn't protected Harry, he could just as easily killed Snape long before his canon death.

Snape put his ass on the line for a woman who turned her back on him and a man who harassed him for most of his school years.

Snape was trying to teach his students competence around a cauldron, and the students who couldn't do that weeded themselves out. Being nice was not part of his job, nor was it to baby and pamper them. He was not trying to teach them a way of them. He was teaching a skill. Snape didn't put his hands on his students (in the books, and moreover, that scene in the fourth movie was not violent and did not cause harm.) Kreese physically and mentally abused his students. Even into adulthood, he abused his students.

Kreese was supposed to be a mentor.

ORIGINAL CHARACTER: Irene Snape WORDS: 2027 AUTHOR’S NOTE: Not gonna lie, I’m iffy on the midlands slang. I tried my best, but if it’s too noticeably rough, let me know and I’ll go back to dial it back. I kinda just picked an old Greek name for Mulciber. Please like and reblog if you enjoy!

This has never in the history of ever helped any country.

“We gave the characters interesting personalities.” No, you didn’t. First of all, you haven’t given them any personalities. You’ve copied personalities, tropes, clichés from other series and films you’ve watched and forced them onto characters who, by the way, already had personalities before you showed up. The problem is that you don’t understand those personalities because you don’t know how to handle characters who are even remotely complex, characters with light and shadow, who are flawed, who are problematic, who aren’t the heroes you think they are. Because they’re not. So instead of engaging with what was already there, you’ve stripped away everything interesting about them and replaced it with things you think are interesting, but aren’t, because you treat them like aesthetic accessories instead of serious traits.

For example, suddenly James is brown. And apparently being brown is a personality. Now James is Latino. What does “Latino” even mean? There are hundreds of countries in Latin America. Which one are you talking about? Because being from Mexico isn’t the same as being from Uruguay. And by the way, not all Latinos are brown, there are plenty of white Latinos. But you don’t seem to understand that either. Or suddenly a character is Asian, and that’s supposed to be a personality. Being from a certain continent is now a personality? Is that what you mean by making them more interesting? Do you realise how problematic and stereotypical that is? Or you decide Sirius is gay and, apparently, being gay is now a personality. Being gay is a sexual orientation. You can be gay in a thousand different ways. So when you say you’ve made the characters more interesting, what do you mean? That they have tattoos and piercings now? That’s a personality?

You haven’t made them more interesting. That’s a lie. You’ve turned them into walking stereotypes. You take serious social issues—issues people are still fighting and dying over in many parts of the world—and you treat them like aesthetics. It’s disrespectful. It’s genuinely disrespectful and deeply problematic.

You didn’t create anything. What you’ve done is ruin the fandom. It’s unbearable now because of you. It’s full of nonsense you call “headcanons” that aren’t headcanons at all, they’re random inventions you’ve pulled out of nowhere, projecting your own issues onto characters who already had established personalities long before you were born.

What you’re really doing is self-inserting. And because you don’t want to create OCs for some reason, you just slap the names of existing characters onto what are essentially your own self-inserts. But those characters aren’t the originals anymore. They’re just your self-inserts with your own shallow personalities. And then you act morally superior about it. You say things like, “I hate J.K. Rowling but I love the Marauders,” without even realising the contradiction. You don’t know what you’re talking about. You’re part of the problem. You use serious communities and real struggles as aesthetics, and then pretend you’re being progressive.

We never did anything to you.

We never hurt you.

There was absolutely no reason to write this.

There was absolutely no reason to post this.

You just enjoy trying to make people as miserable as you.

And a year ago it probably would have worked on me. Hell, two years ago it absolutely would have. But I don't give a fuck about what some stranger on the internet decides to throw a tantrum about. Someone does though, and I'm posting this to tell them not to. Don't feel guilty about finding joy in something. Don't let someone diminish your happiness.

I mean, you’re really keen on telling them that, right? Telling them that being classist and shitty tokenists shouldn’t make them feel bad, even if it’s deeply problematic, and that they also shouldn’t feel bad for having ruined a fandom, making it impossible for people who once cared about the characters to enjoy it, turning the characters into unrecognizable versions, and making it a complete nightmare to navigate their tags because there’s no way to find anything about the original characters.

Instead, all that exists are these selfInsert projections they do, to whom—who knows—they put a piercing on because apparently wearing a piercing is so interesting, or suddenly, I don’t know, Barty Crouch Jr. gets a tattoo because apparently that makes him an interesting character. And instead of having personalities, they dye their hair, wear crop tops, and get tattoos.

I don’t care what you think about the marauders fandom. I don’t care that you think that we are using certain cultural identities and sexualities as ornaments when that’s not true.

Because the truth is every fandom, no matter what, deserves respect and love, you may not be part of it, and if you don’t like it, you stay away from it. That is rule number one of fandom etiquette.

I am not an anime girl, but you will not see me going into one piece fandom and comment bullshit about them and using the hashtags that they use to interact with other members of the fandom, you do not invade spaces like that.

So, even if you wanna talk crap about it, (which I don’t think you should considering you are a snape fan, and technically he’s of the marauders era just like every other death eater or People from the first wizarding war that we love, whether it be James, Sirius, Barth, anyone) I don’t think you should be talking about real people like that.

But if you do for the love of God, stop using our hashtags because I want to see good fanart, good fan fiction and good hcs for my favourite characters, and you do not get to invade our fucking space like that.

And precisely because I’m a Snape fan and a Harry Potter fan in general, I can use those hashtags and I can talk about that fandom, because those are spaces I’m part of too. And precisely because I move in those spaces, it’s incredibly annoying that when I use, for example, the Sirius Black hashtag, I have to wade through a bunch of crap that has nothing to do with Sirius Black, but with some OC you’ve invented and are trying to pass off as Sirius Black, even though it has nothing to do with the actual character. Or when you try to talk about that character, people like you show up with nonsense that has nothing to do with him and is just fanon stuff you’ve made up that doesn’t hold up in any way.

So I can say whatever I want, and you can rage all you want, but freedom of speech exists for a reason, that’s rule number one of any fandom and any online space. And if what you want is to never hear opinions different from your own, then you’re the one who should create a separate space with all the brainless idiots like you who want echo chambers and only want to talk about happy flower power and refuse to engage in any kind of critical thinking. You can lock yourselves in there and leave the rest of us alone.

In fact, if all of you disappeared and stopped using the original characters’ hashtags to talk about your fucking OCs, and stopped giving your fucking OCs the names of original characters, I think a lot, a lot, a lot of people would be very happy.

So I don’t know, maybe go cry to your mother, she’s the one who gave birth to you, so she’s stuck having to put up with your nonsense forever. I’m not, and nobody’s paying me to do it. So sorry, but I’m not going to.

Kisses.

And you don't see that in any-other-parent.

Even the Weasley's. A loving family. Neither parent really lifted a hand after Ginny spent a whole year being possessed. Not Neville's grandma with Snape threatening to kill his toad. None of the kids who got attacked by the snake, or the dementors, or the many other crap at hogwarts.

Of course that logic goes out the window when the parents learn of Lupin the werewolf.

Even Draco stands up for Scorpius. When Harry pulls the two boys apart. Draco pleads with his former foe. Even reasoning with him.

"My father will hear about this!"

That tells me Draco and Lucius are close, and Draco feels safe going to his father with his problems. Like that may seem strange to bring up, but think back to your school years, especially in your teens.

Did you feel like you could tell your parents your problems?

How many of Draco's peers could write to their parents to complain about another kid being rude to them? We're told the Weasleys are pretty close knit, but Ron's not writing letters to Molly or Arthur about his school problems. Hell, he doesn't even go to his brothers for help! Percy is a prefect and at no point does he ever use his position to protect Ron. Neither do Fred and George, and they are more aware of Ron's problems than Percy is.

But anytime things go wrong for Draco, Lucius is referenced as being involved in some way, or shows up directly to defend Draco.

Regulus was disillusioned with Voldemort because he realized that Voldemort did not serve any common interests, only his own. That does not mean he rejected Voldemort’s ideology; in fact, it was precisely because he embraced and believed in that ideology and in the supposed rights of pure-bloods that he began to question Voldemort. Voldemort was not fighting for any collective cause, he was fighting for himself and for his obsession with immortality.

She chose Snape's abuser over Snape. She chose to marry and have a child with the man who sexually assaulted Snape in public.

He would have been within his rights to let that woman die. And he still tried to save her.

Harry literally had Snape's abuser's face. Can you imagine.

Six years of having to look at what's practically a clone of the man who made your school years hell, who sexually assaulted you in public, who verbally and magically harassed you.

And that little clone is a smartass you have to keep from getting himself killed while trying not to look too protective of the kid, while trying to maintain double agent status.

Can you fucking imagine.

As for Nevile . . . All of his teachers bullied Neville.

"What about Trevor?" I hear you asking.

Let me ask you.

Did you ever see Ron bring Scabbers into potions? Did you ever see Hermione bring Crookshanks?

No. Because Potions is a dangerous class. And you cannot control what an animal will do around cauldrons and boiling liquids, never mind boiling liquids with magical properties.

Snape was teaching Neville a difficult lesson about caring for his pet. About why he shouldn't bring his fucking toad into potions class. Could he have been kinder about it? Maybe. But there's no guarantee Neville would really have taken the lesson to heart.

Neville instead got a firsthand demonstration of what could have happened to his beloved pet. That was not a lesson he'd soon forget. He kept Trevor safely out of Potions class after that, didn't he?

At the end of the day, you refuse to forgive Snape for being a ballbusting teacher, meanwhile he's a war hero who protected the child of his abuser.

2— The animals at Hogwarts aren’t pets, they’re used to practise magic. This is done to ALL of them, how many of them get transformed into objects constantly? Severus had the bloody antidote for the toad in his pocket, he clearly wasn’t going to kill it, and it was a fucking lesson about not bringing animals into a highly dangerous class where, if the creature freaks out, someone could get hurt by knocking over a cauldron.

That, in comparison with our "heroes" in gryffindor, who received special treatment at school, committed many acts of violence, but never got punished for it... I mean, why am I supposed to think the gryffindors are morally superior? Why shouldn't I feel sorry for the slytherins? The moral compass here is all messed up.

If you take a group of people who are susceptible to group isolation and who have an excessively closed and hermetic cultural idiosyncrasy, and instead of contributing to their inclusion and integration you isolate them even further through prejudice or differential treatment, what you achieve is a clear case of a self-fulfilling prophecy. Slytherins are bad from the outset, but if from the very beginning you take a group of children and adolescents —at an age of cognitive and ideological development— who come from families that have already instilled certain ideas in them and have also told them that they are going to be made to feel different and discriminated against because of those ideas, and then you do exactly what their families told them you would do, the only thing you accomplish is reinforcing the idea that they are misunderstood, that the system is against them, that it’s them against the world, and that they have to defend themselves by attacking. As a result, all you do is make them close ranks even more, constantly feed off one another, and collectively reinforce the ideas they already had to begin with.

This is why I never really cared about potential 'favouritism' Snape showed them (I don't think he did, but you know).

No one is on a Slytherin's side. No one is going to take their word over a kid from any other house. When you're treated with prejudice and disdain from the moment you're sorted, you don't exactly have a lot of positive role models. Which makes you susceptible to further radicalization and grooming.