ABSOLUTELY YES That's Exactly How I See Her. I Imagine Her Too As The Actress Who Plays Pearl, They Have

Hyperfixating pt. 3

Requiem (2025)

I don’t really see Severus Snape as morally grey. I think a lot of people call him that because he can be mean and unpleasant, and they don’t like him, so they assume that must mean his morality is questionable too. But to me, he’s not morally grey—he’s just a polarizing character. People either really connect with him or really can’t stand him, and that makes it feel like he’s complicated in a moral sense, when he’s actually pretty straightforward.

It’s totally fair not to like him. He’s can be cruel, he’s mean and unfair to the students, he holds grudges, and he’s generally just not a nice person. But I don’t think that automatically makes someone morally ambiguous. Those are personality flaws and trauma responses, not moral decisions. When you look at what he actually does—he spends years risking his life as a double agent, protecting Harry, helping Dumbledore’s plan succeed, and ultimately dies for it—it’s really clear what side he’s on.

And yeah, he was a Death Eater at one point. That was absolutely a moral failing. But it was a relatively short part of his life, and he changed. He made a conscious decision to switch sides, and everything we see afterward is him trying to make up for the harm he helped cause. Growth doesn’t make someone morally grey—it shows that they made bad choices, learned from them, and did something about it.

I get why people find him confusing. He’s written as a red herring through most of the series; we’re supposed to doubt him. But that doesn’t mean his morality is actually unclear. Once you see the whole picture, it’s pretty obvious where he stood.

Snirius flirting stage. They are really normal

I feel like every couple years I reevaluate whether I could return to running trans Snape week. I kind of can’t believe that was 5-10 years ago now. I was a whole-ass teenager at the beginning and boy did it show lol.

So much of fandom has changed and rearranged itself since then. Most of the blogs that created trans Snape works back then are defunct now. It makes sense: those who are most inclined to create trans-focused works are also the most likely to be hurt by *gestures to the entirety of the JKR-inclusive transphobic genocide machine*. Lots of folks wanted nothing more than to get away.

But honestly, it’s how the fandom/internet behaved in the wake of it all that burned me the most. Staying in fandom at all, even (maybe especially) for the sake of creating intentionally trans fanworks, was seen as a moral betrayal that deserved any punishment the internet could deal out. The death threats and suicide bait were frequently—and ironically—indistinguishable from the hate from anti-trans JKR-defenders. I’m not ready to risk all that again.

Especially as the new HBO show comes to pass, I am steeling myself to see it all the old discourse reemerge. Needless to say I won’t be interacting with any of the new canonical works. Anything that gives JKR money or a larger platform is verboten in my own personal books. In the words of that Fred Rogers meme going around, often appended to posts about AI, “your own imagination is far more wonderful.”

But that’s always been the central tension for me: I’ll always stay here in my tiny corner of fandom. I love it here. Small though it is, it means the world to me. Chronically online teenagers (which is, I think, who they typically are) have an outsized view of the impact small fanworks have on the larger political/media zeitgeist. The idea that making trans Snape fanworks for 0-10 notes on tumblr in any way supports JKR is frankly ridiculous. So I have no qualms on that score.

But I think… I am still very much burned by all that happened here 5 years ago. How quickly fandom at large abandoned trans creators (hi hello lol) who wanted to remain in community.

Somehow, staying in fandom but avoiding making trans content ended up being the deeply, deeply ironic “solution.” I’m still not sure how this happened, but boy did it ever. Just what Dr. JKR ordered.

As soon as I realized that the ballet!AU was destined to become a trans!snape fic, I abandoned it. But I still want to work on it and put more of it into this (very very tiny) tumblrworld. The truth is, I miss the freedom and joy with which we spoke and wrote about trans Snape back then. I miss it so much. It taught me that I was okay. My little slice of heaven.

There’s more to say but some of it I’m keeping to myself.

The world has changed and the fandom has changed and I have very much changed, but I haven’t ever shifted the grief (resentment? lack of courage?) I feel around this. So I rewrite essentially this same post every couple of years.

a few great films that are free on the internet archive

in decent quality too!

here is the archive collection of these films so you can favorite on there/save if desired.

links below

black girl (1966) dir. ousmane sembene

the battle of algiers (1966) dir. gillo pontecorvo

paris, texas (1984) dir. wim wenders

desert hearts (1985) dir. donna deitch

harold and maude (1973) dir. hal ashby

los olvidados (1952) dir. luis bunuel

walkabout (1971) dir. nicolas roag

rope (1948) dir alfred hitchcock

freaks (1932) dir. tod browning

frankenstein (1931) dir. james whale

sunset boulevard (1950) dir billy wilder

fantastic planet (1973) dir. rené laloux

jeanne dielman (1975) dir. chantal akerman

the color of pomegranates (1969) dir. sergei parajanov

all about eve (1950) dir. joseph l. mankiewicz

gilda (1946) dir. charles vidor

the night of the hunter (1950) dir. charles laughton

the invisible man (1931) dir. james whale

COLLECTION of georges méliès shorts

rebecca (1940) dir. alfred hitchcock

brief encounter (1946) dir. david lean

to be or not to be (1942) dir. ernst lubitsch

a place in the sun (1951) dir george stevens

eyes without a face (1960) dir. georges franju

double indeminity (1944) dir. billy wilder

wild strawberries (1957) dir. ingmar bergman

shame (1968) dir. ingmar bergman

through a glass darkly (1961) dir. ingmar bergman

persona (1961) dir. ingmar bergman

winter light (1963) dir. ingmar bergman

the ascent (1977) dir. larisa shepitko

the devil, probably (1977) dir. robert bresson

cleo from 5 to 7 (1962) dir. agnes varda

alien (1979) dir. ridley scott + its sequels

after hours (1985) dir. martin scorsese

halloween (1978) dir. john carpenter

the watermelon woman (1996) dir. cheryl dune

EDIT: part two here + the letterboxd list

I made a Severus Snape playlist on Spotify. I hope you like it :)

I saw a Snape playlist here on Tumblr recently, I had this playlist for a long time so I decided to post it.

It seems like you somehow manage to have one foot in the marauders fandom and one in the snape fandom and I’m so impressed. How do you do it?

Also, since you get to see both sides of things I’m wondering what you like the most about each fandom?

Ok this is an interesting question! Honestly I think I’m able to do this, and do this enjoyably, because I really try to make an effort to not moralize. This hasn’t always been how I interacted with fiction in the past, so it’s been a tricky process of learning how to do this with consistency. But it is something that I think is very important for me to do, not only because I have a better time in fandom when I'm not moralizing, but also because it inspires a sort of self reflection and allows me to practice empathy in a way that’s feels more analytical than emotional/inherent. And in the case of navigating two fandoms that have a built in tension between them, this becomes especially helpful.

The tension between the snape and marauders fandom almost always comes down to moralizing. The back and forth arguments between fans are usually rooted in the idea that the other character is not only morally flawed, but more morally flawed than theirs. If you look at any anti Snape or anti James post there’s an underlying agenda that’s trying to prove one is worse than the other. This is pretty irritating to me because I find it to be very boring, silly, and just missing the point of the characters and themes. But this is also irritating because I find that it's ineffective in producing any real meaningful analysis on these characters. Because the goal is not to understand that character, but to condemn them.

(This doesn’t mean that I think you shouldn’t examine the behavior of the characters, just that assigning a moral judgment to that behavior outside the world of that character leads to heavily biased analysis (meaning making it personal and about your standard of morality leads to a messy understanding of the character and story))

Going back to the tension between these fandoms, I think when you’re busy trying to prove how shitty a fictional character is you have a hard time separating them from their fans. Because it’s not really about the character anymore it’s about you and your personal feelings and beliefs.

I very frequently run into posts talking about “snape defenders” and “marauders defenders”, like this is some kind of battle where a side needs to be picked, and then picking a side is a reflection of your morality and politics (I’ve seen marauders fans imply that “snape defenders” are fascists or fascist sympathizers and I’ve seen snape fans call marauders fans “class traitors”, all in the last couple days mind you).

I’m going to be honest and say that whenever this pops up it’s gets pretty frustrating, frustrating because it feels like people are just using these characters as avatars for larger discussions they actually want to be having, but because these characters have specific stories, motivations, and complexities it makes this extremely messy (want to vent about the cult of conservatism that's growing all around us? Bring out the Snape Ken doll and talk about how he deserved his bullying (if he even was bullied)! Hate feeling the weight of capitalism on your chest while the class divide grows larger and larger? Call James “bourgeois scum”!)

(Or as @sideprince wisely said, it’s a way to be political without actually engaging in politics)

So yes I find this tiring, but I also really get it. I have done some form of this myself plenty of times. I am not immune to moralizing or having these same type of strong emotional reactions to a fictional character. In fact, I had this very recently when I watched “Girls” for the first time last month. Until maybe this week I felt a strong hatred for the character “Adam”. This hatred came from seeing him do something in a scene that I considered to be morally repugnant. The scene itself was incredibly graphic and triggering to the point where I had to stop watching the show for a couple days. The disgust response firing in my brain made it so I was incapable of viewing his character as anything but a POS, and all the complexities of him were lost because I refused to engage with them. So all his actions after that were viewed with a moral judgement from me. I mean even when he was being funny, sweet, or just interesting I felt incredibly annoyed because I desperately didn’t want to like him. However I was cognizant of the fact that I was having this sort of moral reaction to fiction because this is a show that is defined by its complex, complicated, and realistic characters, who have all done some very questionable things, and yet he was the only character getting this treatment in my head. So feeling frustrated with my own hypocrisy I decided that I needed to start approaching this differently.

So I made a choice to look at his action, the one that I found disgusting, and start breaking it down: Why did he do that? What was it saying about his relation to shame, power, control, violence, sex, gender, etc.? How else has he reacted to those issues in the show? I kept asking those types of questions, on and on, until suddenly I wasn’t just thinking about the disgusting act itself, but the character. The act stopped being about my own feelings and trauma and became about him.

That’s what I do with the marauders and snape, that’s what I strive to do with any fictional character, because to me that’s the most enjoyable way to engage with fiction. And I find that the fun I have in fandom is greatly limited when I’m pissed at a character, because it makes it difficult to interact with others who are their fans. If I see that someone is playing with that character, a little voice would go, “but what about my anger?” followed by a sharp sting. That type of anger, that moral anger, is personal, but this character is public, it lives beyond me and my feelings. My anger is mine, it never belonged to the public.

And I have at some point felt that same type of moral disgust/anger for both the marauders and snape. But I zeroed in on what specific action was making me feel that way, tried to understand why I had that reaction in the first place, and then went back to the action itself and tried to contextualize it within the character and story so it was removed from myself.

That’s how I’ve been helping myself with the moralizing issue. I’ll still have these reactions in the future, I might even have one on here, but I'll keep working on it. Because either way I love all of these characters and I want to continue to be able to exist in both fandoms without having to choose a side, or even lean a certain way. When you're not trying to win the war on which character was the Shittiest™ the pressure turns off and you can just enjoy these multifaceted characters with their many flaws and many strengths.

And as for what I like most about each fandom: I adore the snapedom because I've always felt that the best meta in the entire hp fandom came from there. Honestly the whole reason I love snape so much wasn't because I ever felt particularly identified with him, but because I read a billion incredible metas and analyses about him and truly came to appreciate his complexities.

For the marauders side I think I really enjoy the camaraderie, there are a lot of really sweet and cool people I’ve talked to on here and that's always been a blast!

JK Rowling took inspiration from his chemistry teacher to create Snape's character. In a long essay who talks about him the writer mentions his autism and makes a great parallel with Snape, it's very interesting.

I believe Snape is autistic

(FYI: I’m autistic myself and I have autistic children.)

He’s lonely. He doesn’t really have friends. We know of Lily, we also hear about Lucius Malfoy, but we don’t really see their friendship which in my opinion is much less close than fans believe. As a student he’s so alone that no one but Lily tries to stop the bullying.

He doesn’t participate in any social meetings. He’s quite miserable during the Christmas in Harry’s third year. He patrols the corridors and the grounds instead of attending the Yule Ball. He doesn’t stay for dinner after the Order meetings. He only attends the DE meetings because he has to.

His peers at school think he’s weird. Lily’s friends from Gryffindor don’t understand why she’s friends with him. When Harry asks why the Marauders bullied him, Sirius says he was different, weird, he was an "oddball". Autistic children and teenagers are often bullied because they are perceived as not normal, awkward, weird.

He doesn’t make a normal eye contact, he stares a bit too much. It can be partly explained by Legillimency, but he stared too much even as a teenager.

There’s a difference between how he speaks as a teenager and as an adult. It doesn’t sound entirely natural, he definitely had to put effort into that. It’s partly because he doesn’t want to sound like a poor man with a northern (?) accent, but autistic struggle with fluent communication may also be a reason.

He insists on precise definitions: Legilimency is not mind-reading, ghosts are not transparent but they are imprints of departed souls. He’s irritated that Harry has "no subtlety" and he doesn’t "understand fine distinctions".

He’s quite rude. He might be just *evil*, but he may just not fully understand how cruel he actually sounds. From his point of view he’s just honest and doesn’t beat around the bush. OK, maybe he’s a little mean, but not cruel… right?

He uses sarcasm (a lot of autistics actually do), but he doesn’t really appreciate Harry’s and other people’s sass, he treats their words too seriously.

He usually speaks coldly / calmly / without much emotion.

He’s usually dispassionate, he has limited facial expressions. Many autistic people also have a "resting b!tch face" unless they try to look more "normal". Perhaps he isn’t always as hateful as Harry thinks, perhaps it’s just his face.

He seems a little oblivious to other people’s emotional state and seems to analyse their behavior more intellectually.

He has special interests: Dark Arts / DADA and Potions.

He has his own collection of Potions ingredients, including rare ones, collection of weird jars (I guess they may contain some Potions ingredients, but also he may like them because of visual stimming aspect) and vast collection of books at home.

His Potions ingredients must be very orderly, he knows immediately that something is missing and what it is.

He "loves" rules. Students are breaking the rules? He takes points or gives detention. The Marauders are bullying him? He wants them expelled. (While Harry deals with the bullies on his own.) He’s caught Sirius whom he believes to be responsible for Lily’s death? He’s going to hand him over to the Ministry and the Dementors. (While Sirius and Remus want to murder Peter themselves.)

Since Snape likes rules and order, Harry who is a bit wild and unpredictable annoys him.

He doesn’t wash his hair as often as he should. It could be partly because of his poor background (he was neglected, he wasn’t taught to take a proper care of his hair, he didn’t even have a real bathroom as a child), partly because he has no one to look nice for, partly because of the Potions fumes. Autism might make him care less about his appearance. (He does care about hygiene though. Apparently he shaves regularly and Harry would certainly notice if Snape was dirty or smelly. His sallow skin and teeth have nothing to do with hygiene, it’s a result of his poverty and malnutrition.)

He stimms: He’s shredding leaves as a child. He’s flexing his fingers after the Shrieking Shack incident. During the Occlumency lessons he’s touching his lips with his finger while he’s thinking.

He has some sensory issues. He wears the same, a little baggy robes (they flutter as he walks). He’s sensitive to light: his Potions classroom is dim (it’s in the dungeons, but he could brighten it up with magic); he makes his DADA classroom dim, even though it’s no longer in the dungeons; when Harry comes to his first Occlumency lesson, Snape waits for him in a dark room. (You know, people don’t do things like that because they’re evil, it doesn’t make sense).

As a teenager he walks "like a spider" and generally he isn’t good at sports (we see him on a broom three times: in a memory of his unsuccessful flying lesson at school, being very pale and probably frightened after refereeing the Quidditch match in PS and trying to curse a DE and missing during the Battle of Seven Harrys).

John Nettleship whom Snape was partly based on was probably autistic.

I love how the Marauders fandom is like everybody is perfect the way they are, they can be black, brown, white, fat, skinny, tall, short, everyone is pretty. Except Snape, no no no, he cannot be pretty, he has greasy hair, you cannot be pretty with greasy hair