I Made A Severus Snape Playlist On Spotify. I Hope You Like 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!

Lost dreams 2024. Photograms

Angel's Egg (1985) dir. Mamoru Oshii

Hyperfixating pt. 3

Requiem (2025)

I can’t stand another day of my life without saying that Rick Owens, fashion designer, is the most accurate representation of what Snape from the books would look like.

Guys, it's really creapy . This isn't a "looks alike" thing. When I come across photos of this man my first reaction is to think that it’s a super realistic Snape fanart. Lol the way Owens looks like Snape is insane. He's his identical twin brother!!

Why I've never seen anyone saying that?

The Marauders didn't stop bullying Snape after the prank. It actually got worse.

A lot of people are surprised to realize that the scene in Snape's Worst Memory happens after the werewolf prank. When first reading OOTP, people generally assumed that SWM showed escalating tension between the Marauders and Snape that up led to the prank. But in DH, we see Snape and Lily talking about the prank before SWM. This means that the Marauders are still singling Snape out and targeting him after prank. Why?

My theory is that the bullying actually got worse after the prank. Because the only way to hold their friend group together was for the Marauders to double down and rally around blaming Snape for what happened.

Think about it: How did that incident not tear them apart? Sirius not only exposed Lupin's secret – he also attempted to use Lupin as a weapon against Snape, and he could have gotten James killed in the process. That's a huge betrayal.

But Sirius isn't mature enough to take responsibility for it. Lupin isn't self-confident enough to confront Sirius about it. "James would-consider-it-the-height-of-dishonor-to-mistrust-his-friends Potter" isn't going to be the one to lay blame on Sirius or break up the group. But it's too big an issue to ignore. The only way they can get over this is to put it all on Snape. It was just a joke, and Snape is an idiot, and James is a hero.

If you compare the two incidents that the books show us of the Marauders bullying Snape, you can see that totally different dynamics are driving the bullying. This shows how and why the bullying got worse after the prank.

The first bullying incident we see is on the Hogwarts Express, when James and Sirius engage in verbal bullying of Snape, with one small attempt at tripping him up as he leaves. This bullying is a form of bonding for James and Sirius and forms the basis of their friend group. This is an example of bullying driven by Peer Group factors (source), and this sort of bullying is generally done to:

to attain or maintain social power or to elevate their status in their peer group.

to show their allegiance to and fit in with their peer group.

to exclude others from their peer group, to show who is and is not part of the group.

What we're seeing here is that the soon-to-be Marauders are in new environment and they're defining their peer group and establishing social hierarchy, trying to establish their status. The Marauders continue in this pattern of Peer Group bullying throughout their school career, as evidenced by the detention records Snape has Harry transcribe in HBP. The Marauders seem to have thrown out hexes in a scattershot way to establish superiority over other students and look cool. This casual, incidental sort of bullying is likely what Snape experienced for the first several years of school.

But what we see in SWM isn't bullying to maintain Peer Group dynamics. This bullying isn't just flinging a single insult or a clever hex. James and Sirius hunt Snape, they deprive him of his wand and ability to escape the situation, and they repeatedly hex him until Lily (temporarily) stops them. This incident is extremely personal. This is an example of bullying driven by Emotional factors, and this type of bullying is done when the bullies:

have feelings of insecurity and low self-esteem, so they bully to make themselves feel more powerful.

don’t know how to control their emotions, so they take out their feelings on other people.

may not have skills for handling social situations in healthy, positive ways.

What we're seeing here is all the fraying edges of the Marauders' friendship. Sirius has just damaged their group, but he can't apologize or address it without accepting blame, so he has to take his emotions out on Snape. Punishing Snape is a way to exorcise his guilt. And it's actually imperative that he bully Snape into silence, because he is the one who has revealed Lupin's secret to Snape and put them all in jeopardy. Lupin can't confront Sirius about the betrayal of trust, and likewise he can't confront his friends here. Not only does Lupin not have the emotional security for handling this situation, he also can't risk putting himself in front of Snape in this moment, lest Snape scream "Werewolf" instead of "Mudblood." James is here trying to work through his own insecurities – in bullying Snape he is defending his friends, but James is also trying to get Lily's attention. James offers to change his ways if she'll give him a chance, because James needs to reassure himself that he is chivalrous, that he is a hero.

Looking at the way the bullying dynamics change and escalate in those two scenes, I think it’s clear that Lupin’s line, “Snape was a special case. I mean, he never lost an opportunity to curse James so you couldn't really expect James to take that lying down,” is an understatement.

Snape was a special case because he knew Lupin’s secret, which would always make him a potential threat. The Marauders would always take any opportunity they could to reinforce that Snape was powerless to do anything to them. And they’d continue to take out all their emotions about the prank on Snape rather than confronting each other.

Here is a model/contraption i created based around Haydens ring theory. This diagram has been heavily inspired by various old planetarium and astronomy diagrams i dug up. I wanted to create my own imaginary diagram of what this would look like, of course having the diagram designed for an earlier time. You may also notice hints of Etienne’s designs throughout, such as pinholes in the cenotaph from him memorial to Isaac newton :) Im not used go creating anything in such detail so i am quite pleased with the outcome, Enjoy :)

@mothercain <3

snape chalk pastel