[ SECRET POST #4320 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #4320 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

01.
[Gerard Way (formerly of My Chemical Romance) - "Baby You're a Haunted House"]



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02.


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03.


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05.


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06.


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07.
[The Good Place]


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08.
[The Haunting of Hill House]






Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 01 pages, 09 secrets from Secret Submission Post #618.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

Snape was a bullied kid whose one friend began to make nice with his bully after a time, and he was vulnerable to a bad crowd (like real life kids are) who offered him acceptance. Of course he fell in with him. That's how real-life gangs get people. They seek out the vulnerable. They offer them what they want--a crowd that seems to Get Them. And then when you're neck deep, you don't have a way to stop, and even push away your friends in the process.

That doesn't mean JKR handled it well, mind you, or that it excuses the way he became, but like. There's real-life psychology behind this, and I'm tired of fandom only acknowledging this stuff when it's their precious boy, but this explanation (and yes, explanation, not excuse) is just bunk if they hate the character.

(I do wish we'd gotten to see James actually feel sorry for being part of the Snape bullying at least.)

[(Anonymous)]

I agree with this as an explanation of Snape's character. He's a really good character with a lot of complexity!

It's also frustrating because the reality is that people do use that complexity as an excuse for his shittiness.

[(Anonymous)]

James was a bit busy being dead because Snape's new bff murdered him. Somehow I don't think he was sorry? He probably thought he was right to have always believed Snape was evil.

[(Anonymous)]

Self-fulfilling prophecy that the person he sexually assaulted and tormented snapped then.

[(Anonymous)]

Bullied and assaulted yes, sexually assaulted no

[(Anonymous)]

Uh huh, if Malfoy held Hermione in place and lifted up her skirt to show off her underwear in front of everyone I doubt you'd suggest otherwise

[(Anonymous)]

You only see Snape's perspective in the books. It's implied by other characters (Dumbledore, Lupin, Sirius) that they had an antagonistic relationship - meaning that he wasn't some helpless victim that James wouldn't leave alone. He was a teenage wizard who invented his own potentially fatal curses.

[(Anonymous)]

Lily was also a witness to the mutual antagonism and called Snape out for his shit in the same breath as calling James an insufferable toerag, so it's not like she was playing favorites.

[(Anonymous)]

We saw that Snape would be minding his own business and James would harass him. James was popular with his gang of friends, Snape was generally a loner. When James bullied him everyone cheered him on and laughed at Snape. They weren't in equal positions of power.

[(Anonymous)]

And that was... How many years later? So uh. Sorry. That just reflects poorly on James by that point.

[(Anonymous)]

Barring the fact that there's no indication whatsoever of James's feelings on the matter past "Lily thought he grew up finally" and "he fought against Voldemort instead of joining up", how does a hypothetical negative feeling about Snape's shitty allegiance reflect poorly on James?

[(Anonymous)]

Because there's no suggestion he ever actually felt bad for being a bully in his childhood, and given that a lot of bullies grow up and... Don't really feel sorry about what they did and brush it off as, "I was a kid then, I'm different now" reflects poorly on James because he was the bully as a kid.

It doesn't mean jack shit to Snape's allegiance other than retroactively "justifying" it.

[(Anonymous)]

'He fought against Voldemort instead of joining up'

Kind of a low bar for James, tbh.

[(Anonymous)]

K so. Just thinking out loud.

You don't get on with this kid because you think he's a POS. You're like 11 and kids are dramatic. That's normal.

He likes the same girl you do so you do dumb boy stuff to each other that escalates because it's a bad idea to give teenagers unlimited magical powers and minimal supervision.

He eventually says racist shit to the girl you like.

He joins up with a group of baby racists while you're still in school together.

After school he stays with them and they do worse shit like actual torture and murder.

You and your wife join up with the opposing side in what is now a goddamn war.

His friend kills you both on his way to kill your baby.

He cries about your wife but that does shit all and you don't see it because you're already dead.


I'm sorry but when was James supposed to think he was wrong to hate the heck out of Snape?

[(Anonymous)]

After his death obviously. Like when Snape is bullying Harry and other kids like Neville and Hermione! Wait... When he's all to happy to let Sirius get punished for a crime he didn't commit! Er... When he outs Lupin as a werewolf! Oh goddammit.

I like Snape, I'm not too found of teen!James, but to reduce things to "James the Mean Bully and Snape the Innocent Victim" is simplifying it way too much.

[(Anonymous)]

YES!

I also have to admit that I hate the "He'd never have called Lily a Mudblood if he didn't believe it", completely ignoring that a LOT of abused kids are adept at sussing out and hitting others in their most vulnerable spots. Maybe he really bought into the Pureblood Superiority, but I don't think we really see evidence of that. We do know he saw the conflict between Lily and Petunia, making it the most obvious way to lash out at her. He was a horrible person, but the reductionist arguments when it's one of the more believable representations of abuse in canon annoys me.

[(Anonymous)]

It is way more reductionist to completely wipe out the connection between Snape and the ideology behind the Death Eaters

[(Anonymous)]

I find it way more likely that he was prejudiced against muggleborns and Lily was the exception rather than the rule, until he felt betrayed by her and she was just "one of them".

[(Anonymous)]

Except there is evidence that he was prejudiced. His opinion of Petunia was formed before they ever interacted because she was "only a Muggle" and Harry witnessing this can hear the disdain in his tone. Lily points out that he used the Mudblood slur freely on other muggleborns and says "why should I be any different?". He and his friends used dark magic on muggleborns like Mary Macdonald. He actively wanted to join up with the Death Eaters while he was still at school, while he was still friends with Lily, and this was already at a time that Voldemort was so feared and powerful that they were calling him You-Know-Who. It's WHY Lily ended the friendship.

And while fandom Slytherin fans can say there's more to the house than bigotry (the traits in and of themselves can be great), in the context of the story it was deeply entrenched in bigotry. Salazar /made/ the house in part to exclude muggleborns (and he created the Chamber of Secrets, intending to literally kill muggleborn kids entirely). It attracted all the pureblood supremacists for this history, and it clearly hadn't progressed much because in CoS, the common room password was "pureblood". So characters that were deeply drawn to it, like Snape and Malfoy and Bellatrix etc, it says something about them, because lbr no one would look at a house with that kind of disgusting history and not be turned off if they weren't even a little bit bigoted themselves.

All that to say, I don't see how anyone can say he didn't buy into pureblood superiority and that calling Lily a mudblood was just hitting her where she was vulnerable. It'd be like saying a white guy who wanted to join the KKK, used the N slur frequently, attacked black kids at school, had wanted to join a house with a history of intense racism that had common room passwords like "white power", and then say there was no real evidence that he was racist.

[(Anonymous)]

I feel like Malfoy's a bit of a stretch to be this innately awful disgusting character on par with Bellatrix, considering he's what, 11-12 in CoS. If he'd grown into adulthood like Bella and Snape (or, idk, Dumbledore, who's literally emblematic of Gryffindor from day one and had a huge boner for power. Not to mention tons of characters who brush off shit happening when it's to Muggles or have this deepheld beliefs that your blood tells, including half the order of the Phoenix) being awful, sure; but he has to be 'forced' into torturing people, which tbh, puts him one above Harry, who does it of his own free will.

(And it's particularly dissonant when the text discusses 'dark magic', which it never really defines as much beyond this right-wing style 'My scarring someone's face/slicing someone up and reacting to it by complaining about missing Quidditch/slipping Muggles sweets that choke them/shoving a kid into a vanishing cabinet is self-defense, yours is dark magic!')

[philstar22]

I agree with this completely, even though I really dislike Snape. He's complicated, though. He went through some terrible things, made some terrible choices, and had to live with it. Doesn't excuse how he treats Harry, much less how he treats Hermione, Neville, or the other Gryffindors. He's a teacher bullying students, and there is no excuse for that. But he's still complicated.

[(Anonymous)]

"He's a teacher bullying students, and there is no excuse for that." That's the biggest sticking point for me in my dislike for Snape. Trying to posion someone's pet is not okay, neither is making a side comment about a a 15 year old girl's appearance and it's doubly fucked up that it was adult who had power over both of those kids. He was a goddamned adult. I wish he acted more like it.

[(Anonymous)]

Right, all of that is true, and he's still an abusive asshole on top of it because he's a complex character.

[(Anonymous)]

It has the same depth and character psychology as the Ramones song "Today Your Love, Tomorrow The World"

[(Anonymous)]

I agree. Morever,wasn't his father a violent moldu ? And yes, it's an explanation not a justification but I wish people didn't oversimplify what happened by saying that he turned towards the death-eaters because he was rejected by the girl he liked.