Snapeling

the death toll was bad, but nothing compared to coal mine accidents or dam failures. the cancer caused by the radiation? awful, of course... but living near an oil refinery increases the chance of cancer, too. by a lot. not living near an oil refinery that has an accident - just living near one that works perfectly fine.

A freak accident caused by a combination of human error and shitty equipment caused a radioactive explosion. Some people caught in the explosion and some of the first responders died. Thousands of people immediately leapt into action to mitigate the damage and figure out what happened so it wouldn't happen again. They successfully did so. End of story.

But that's not scary enough, so instead we need to exaggerate the death count (the "Bridge of Death" wasn't a thing), create an entirely fake story about a brave man standing up to his oppressive government (Legasov wasn't even at that trial, and the scientific community was well aware of the problems with the RBMK reactors by that point), and conveniently not mention that even the UN's investigation found no evidence of increased birth defects and only a small increase in cancer rates among the most exposed populations (that might actually be attributable to increased screening, rather than an actual increase in rates - its very controversial).

Like, they literally have cartoon invulnerability. They intentionally put themselves through physical torture, electrocution, falling from ridiculous heights, etcetera, and they always come out completely unscathed. In the movies, they’re actually shown giving the baby a mixture that includes raw egg and vodka, among other things, for regular feedings, which, if you need to be told is bad then you ought to have your parenting license revoked.

"It's ideal for Headquarters, of course. My father put every security measure known to wizardkind on it when he lived here. It's unplottable, so Muggles could never come and call — as if they'd ever have wanted to — and now Dumbledore's added his protection, you'd be hard put to find a safer house anywhere."— Sirius Black regarding 12 Grimmauld Place

It's common in fanfic to see Grimmauld Place as a magical fortress, the ancestral fortress of the Black family, with wards (I know that it's a fanon term, but it's a useful one so don't @ me) as ancient as Hogwarts itself. And that make sense, after all, doesn't Sirius tell us so in the books? Well yes and no. Sirius does say that the house is warded, and heavily so ("every security measure known to wizard kind"). Sirius is exaggerating here, since the house doesn't feature protections like the Fidelius (until Dumbledore added it), but it's meant to show that the House is heavily protected.

“Religion must die for mankind to live. The hour is getting very late to be able to indulge having in key decisions made by religious people. By irrationalists, by those who would steer the ship of state not by a compass, but by the equivalent of reading the entrails of a chicken. […]

Faith means making a virtue out of not thinking. It’s nothing to brag about. And those who preach faith, and enable and elevate it are intellectual slaveholders, keeping mankind in a bondage to fantasy and nonsense that has spawned and justified so much lunacy and destruction.”

Logicaly speaking attheists also commited massmurder, slavery (albite in a diffrent form) etc..

Otherwise argumented faith made some people, for example in Nazi Germany, stand up against Hitler.

A bright silver light appeared right ahead of him, moving through the trees.

He screwed up his eyes as the light became blinding, the trees in front of it pitch-black in silhouette, and still the thing came closer...

And then the source of the light stepped out from behind an oak. It was a silver-white doe, moon-bright and dazzling, picking her way over the ground, still silent, and leaving no hoofprints in the fine powdering of snow.

Snow crunched beneath his feet, but the doe made no noise as she passed through the trees, for she was nothing but light.

Though the darkness had swallowed her whole, her burnished image was still imprinted on his retinas; it obscured his vision, brightening when he lowered his eyelids, disorienting him. Now fear came: Her presence had meant safety.

The imprint of the doe faded away with every blink of his eyes as he stood there, listening to the sounds of the forest, to distant crackles of twigs, soft swishes of snow.

The Doe becomes so bright that it doesn’t remain silver, it becomes white. Notice how many words focus on her light and brightness. She’s blinding. Harry cannot see anything for a time, he’s disoriented, blinded as he was by her brightness. He keeps seeing her for several moment on his retinas after she’s gone, like when you’ve been in out in the sun for long and you enter back into a dark place, seeing a greenish light everywhere instead of what’s in front of you.

Lily and Severus´s friendship fucks me up, like listen, I hear your analysis about how Snape was a toxic and emotionally dependant friend that basically guilt-tripps Lily to stick with him and how Lily was rather cold and probably did not care that much about him and wanted to ditch his friendship a long time ago.

buuuuut

I reject it, I am sorry but that sucks, I want them to be friends, good friends that genuingly loved each other but a bunch convoluted bad decisions and ocurrances made them drift apart slowly until Severus pulled the last straw.

I want lily giving longing looks to Severus when he is not watching, because he was her friend for so long, the one that laughed at her sardonic jokes that her other friends thought were too crude.

I want Severus feeling completely misarable in the summers because, now he has to stay in his horrid home all day while all the previous ones he had spent the afternoons in Lily´s room listening records, leaving just before her parents came home ( because they didnt like the awful boy from spinner´s end at all)

I want Severus telling avery and mulciber that if they even dare to look at Lily he will kill them

I want Lily getting angry at Sirius for insulting Severus´s old shabby clothes because what does a rich asshole like you know?

like, I know lily had way better social skills, was friendly and became close friends with many people later on her life, but Severus was her bestie! and it hurt so much to sever thier friendship even if she was doing the right thing.

a severitus for harry’s birthday! 🎈

I’ve been told over and over again that I am incapable of anything, worthless in every sense, unhireable, bound to mess up the simplest jobs, I couldn’t do anything, nobody would hire me, it was impossible for me to work, I was a lost cause, I’d never be independent, or able to survive without family. Once I finally got my confidence up and was 18, I said I’d look for a job, only to get crushed by a well aimed ‘You? What can you do?’ followed with a fit of laughter from my mother. At that point it was enough to destroy any confidence I had spent weeks putting together. I believed she knew the truth about me, more than I did.

Looking back, it feels so insane to think actual parents would repeatedly tell these things to their kid, in a time where a job is the only possible survival for all humans. Were they saying all these things because I truly was, a lost case, the worst most useless person, from the age 11? Of course not. If I had been so utterly incapable, they wouldn’t have to say anything, it’d be their job to help me to get capable, so that I could survive. So why would they fill their very hardworking kid’s head with all this 'you won’t ever get a job and you’re worthless to even try’?

So I could never leave. Because I was next to no cost to be kept alive in their house (they didn’t tell me that, of course, I was told I was a huge burden), and they wanted to have a half-alive scapegoat at home at all times to abuse, to force to work with no credit or compensation, and of course, to keep all of the secrets of what they did to me safe. If I’m in their house, I’m too terrified to tell anyone. Any hint of me feeling brave enough to try to gain income meant I was a step away from leaving so this had to be crushed in the most brutal way possible. But, that’s only half of what they’ve done to keep me from working.

I’ve been working for my parents, ever since I was 6, of course I didn’t know this, it was presented as 'you can’t live if you don’t work’ until I understood I’d do what I’m told, or I will be left for dead. It was all manual labour, I wasn’t allowed to learn a skill. I lost most of my memories of it, because it was accompanied by, well, torture. While working, I was humiliated, screamed at, beaten, injured, forced to do the work with false instructions so I could be punished for it, and of course, at the end I was told that all my work was worthless and it would have been better if I had done nothing. I wasn’t allowed to back out or stop working, because remember, death threats. And it was a sure way to invoke violence, regardless of me being sick, injured, mourning, starving, distressed, devastated. I wasn’t allowed to say no to work. I had no right to live if I did that.

Now that.. left a trace. I could tell, since 11, that I’d be too scared to work for anyone after that. It’s been a lot of years of additional work abuse (child abuse while child is forced into labour under a death threat?) since then, so after all that, I couldn’t work anymore. The mere idea of someone telling me to do something would invoke terror, rage, paranoia, panic, expectation, of violence, humiliation and death threats. I simply had no other experiences for my brain to connect it to anything other than that. Work and trauma became one and the same. I truly became incapable to work. Courtesy of my parents.

At that time I’d already done so much work, I’ve had physical symptoms of a person who damaged their body with work, my back hurt, my muscles were spent and aching, I was spent in my 20s from manual labor like people get at their 70s. Only I had nothing to show for it. All benefits went to my parents. I got broken and barely escaped with my life.

So, I’m still alive now, and I’ve been trying to recover from this for the last 5 years, feels funny when I write it like that, doesn’t it? Decades of abuse, but I expected 5 years would settle this. It wouldn’t, of course.

I’ve received some job training, and my brain was completely blank during it because, it still doesn’t feel safe to be aware of reality in a work-related situation. My brain did the best it could to protect me – and dissociated the hell out of that one. Ever since, I’ve been feeling the effects of work abuse on my body stronger, heavier than before. All my muscles hurt, I’m too exhausted to move, I hear screaming in my head, I have a looming feeling of 'I have to quit or I will die’ and also there’s a voice repeating 'I can’t do this, I’m not capable’ in my head. It sounds and feels bad, it’s actually next to unbearable, but I know my body is doing this to protect me. If I work, even part time, I will get triggered to the decades of abuse, I will be forced to re-live it. I’m not in state of mind that could safely handle this. It’s a risk. If I manage to take this, maybe my brain will somehow, mercifully, create new connections between working and being okay, having financial safety for the first time since I existed. Maybe it can be done. But it will hurt, and it will put me thru hell.

I’m mad they did this to me. Nobody deserved this. In a world where we all depend on a job, to have it be this painful to have one? It shouldn’t be this hard. It shouldn’t destroy me like this. I shouldn’t be put thru this, nobody should. I shouldn’t have had to work as a child to deserve to be kept alive. I shouldn’t have been put thru such traumatic work situations I now find it unbearable to handle. I shouldn’t have my entire organism thrown into panic and death fear at the idea of work. I’m naturally hardworking. I should already have worked normally for years, saved up. If I had been brought up normally, I wouldn’t be in financial stress and poverty, I’d be safe! I wouldn’t be scared of whether I will recover fast enough to survive. I wouldn’t be in traumatic exhaustion. I would be okay.