#textual analysis blog post
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☆ ͡ 𝖼𝗈𝗆𝖾 𝗈𝗇 𝗆𝗒 𝗅𝗈𝗏𝖾, 𝖽𝗈𝗇'𝗍 𝗁𝗎𝗋𝗍 𝗆𝖾 𝖺𝗇𝗒𝗆𝗈𝗋𝖾, 𝗂'𝗆 𝗇𝗈𝗍 𝗍𝗁𝖾 𝗌𝖺𝗆𝖾 𝖺𝗌 𝖻𝖾𝖿𝗈𝗋𝖾 . ♥︎
𝖺𝗇𝖽 𝖺𝗐𝖺𝗒 𝖿𝗋𝗈𝗆 𝗒𝗈𝗎 𝗂𝗌 𝖺𝗅𝗅 𝗆𝗈𝗋𝖾 𝗈𝗋 𝗅𝖾𝗌𝗌. 𝗂𝖿 𝖨 𝗐𝗂𝗇 𝗍𝗁𝖾 𝗐𝗈𝗋𝗅𝖽 𝗐𝗂𝗍𝗁𝗈𝗎𝗍 𝗒𝗈𝗎, 𝖨'𝗆 𝗅𝗈𝗌𝗂𝗇𝗀. 사랑 ♥︎
☆ ೕ 𝖾𝗅⍺ 𝗌𝖾𝗆𝗉𝗋𝖾 𝗍𝖾𝗋𝖺́ 𝗈 𝗆𝖾𝗅𝗁𝗈𝗋 𝖽𝖾 𝗆𝗂𝗆 . 그녀
𝗍𝗁𝖾 ★ 𝗐𝖾𝖾𝗄𝗇𝖽
❀ : 𝗌𝖺𝗇𝗋𝗂𝗈 Ⳋ
𝗁𝗂𝗌 𝖾𝗒𝖾𝗌 𝖺𝗋𝖾 𝗍𝗁𝖾 𝖻𝗋𝗂𝗀𝗁𝗍𝖾𝗌𝗍 ✦
#simple bios#cute bios#aesthetic bios#soft bios#messy bios#textual bios#bios#bios random#ramdom#textual long locs#textual analysis blog post#textual messy bios#textual locs#citas textuales
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✩˖ ࣪‧₊˚໒꒱⋆✩ Gold Rush, Lyrical Analysis
(Taylor Swift, Evermore)
Track 3: Gold Rush
In Track 3 of Evermore, titled ‘Gold Rush’, Swift describes the anxiety which accompanies loving someone. She has previously addressed this anxiety she feels in relationships in other bodies of work, most notably in her 4 albums predeceasing Evermore in songs such as ‘Cruel Summer’, ‘Delicate’, ‘Dancing With Our Hands Tied’, and ‘Out of the Woods’ -- to name a few. In this track she speaks about the kind of anxiety in which she attempts to keep a relationship secret, whilst being held witness to everyone else pine after her lover. This secrecy is explored heavily in her last 5 studio albums, connecting them and tying them to the same muse by popular argument. In this song, she compares the way in which others are drawn to her lover as a ‘Gold Rush’, using a term used for when multiple parties are attracted to a site due to its production of gold to create a beautiful, yet anxiety inducing, metaphor for her emotional reaction to this situation. In her prior studio album Lover, she describes love as “golden” (‘Daylight’), and also admits in the title track that she is “highly suspicious” that everyone who sees her muse “wants” them. In Lover, she explores these emotions with upbeat melodies and cadence, however, in accordance with the themes of the Evermore album, these emotions are now overcome with heartache, explored in a forlorn manner through the lens of Swift’s now apparent hurt.
“Gleaming, twinkling, eyes like sinking ships on waters. So inviting, I almost jump in”
Taylor Swift: Gold Rush, Evermore (2020)
The opening lines of the track begin with a mystical and dreamlike melody describing the magnetic pull of her lover’s appearance (“You should think about the consequence of your magnetic field being a little too strong” -- Gorgeous, Reputation). We can instantly recognise that this song is being written in the past tense, as a reflection, much like the rest of the songs included on this album as this is evidenced in the use of the word “almost”. The use of this word highlights the temptation she felt in this relationship. It could be argued that the temptation here was to throw it all to the wind and admit her love publicly, but as discussed on later tracks on this album and in prior and following bodies of work, it can be concluded that Swift never quite gets to do this. Furthermore, the way in which she compares her muses eyes to sinking ships begging her to go down with them suggests a relationship in which she stands a lot to lose, especially through public admission of her love, which is a theme explored heavily throughout her discography.
“But I don’t like a gold rush, gold rush. I don’t like anticipating my face in a red flush. I don’t like that anyone would die to feel your touch.Everybody wants you. Everybody wonders what it would be like to love you. Walk past, quick brush. I don’t like slow motion, double-vision in a rose blush. I don’t like that falling feels like flying ‘til the bone crush.Everybody wants you, but I don’t like a gold rush”
Taylor Swift: Gold Rush, Evermore (2020)
The connective tissue of Swift’s song whilst writing about this specific muse is seemingly tied into every lyric featured in track 3 of Evermore. The song features intense themes of insecurity within her relationship as she battles with her own perception of her lover, and how others share this perception, reducing its uniqueness and the value of her opinion (in her eyes). It could be argued that this is mostly born from the pedestal she places her lover on, evidenced in the repetition of the line: “everybody wants you”. This mantra is repeated several times throughout the song, highlighting her deep insecurity within the relationship and the idea that it could be taken, or stolen, from her at any moment. The idea of putting her lover on a pedestal is further explored in the contrast between personifying her lover as a ‘Gold Rush’ whilst reducing herself to just another person magnetised to their beauty and value, especially in the eyes of the public. Swift appears to be hiding her admiration for her muse as much as possible, but often failing, and anticipating her failing in this becoming obvious to others whilst also resenting that others will recognise the speciality and perfection of the one she loves. The contrast between the perfection of her lover and the idea of her being just another onlooker struck with awe is telling of how she views herself and the value and high standard she holds her lover to, which is what makes the degradation of their love story all the more heartbreaking: “I don’t like that falling feels like flying til the bone crush.”
“What must it be like to grow up that beautiful, With your hair falling into place like dominos? I see me padding ‘cross your wooden floor, with my Eagles t-shirt hanging from the door. At dinner parties, I call you out on your contrarian shit, and the coastal town we wandered round had never seen a love as pure as it.And then it fades into the grey of my day old tea, ‘cause you know it could never be...”
Taylor Swift: Gold Rush, Evermore (2020)
The placement of her muse on this pedestal continues into the chorus of the song, where she details a manner of perfectionism that she herself will never be able to attain, but her lover commands effortlessly, seemingly their whole life. Swift's regard for her lover is telling of her insecurity not only within the relationship, but also within her own self-perception, which we can observe her battle with in other songs such as ‘The Archer’ and ‘Anti-Hero’. The use of the word ‘dominos’ is another example of the so-called “connective tissue” linking these albums and their respective songs to the same muse as in ‘Mastermind’ (a track from Midnights), she speaks about the orchestration of her relationship and “the dominoes cascading in a line”. Swift’s metaphorical use of the word ‘domino’ appears to be used when she speaks of planning and perfectionism, so it is useful to imagine these songs as being linked, despite the past tense of this track, which will later be explained. On the topic of past tense, there is a certain nostalgic and reflective tone running throughout the vein of the album, featuring heavily in this song. The chorus details Swift reflecting on the events and dynamic of their relationship until it inevitably fades away due to forces outside Swift's control and also due to Swift's own actions. It is undecided which she blames more, as she goes between both narratives throughout the course of the tracklist. It is ultimately up to the listener to draw their own conclusions.
In the final chorus of the track, Swift changes the lyrics slightly, a technique used throughout her songwriting to indicate finality or a change in narrative -- a conclusive ending:
“My mind turns your life into folklore, I can’t dare to dream about you anymore. At dinner parties, won’t call you out on your contrarian shit. And the coastal town we never found will never see a love as pure as it. ‘Cause it fades into the grey of my day old tea, ‘cause it will never be...”
Taylor Swift: Gold Rush, Evermore (2020)
Firstly, the lyric “my mind turns your life into folklore/ I can’t dare to dream about you anymore” is extremely significant for many reasons. The implication here that her prior studio album, said to be the “sister album” of this album, titled Folklore, was used to turn the events of their relationship into songs is extremely telling of who the muse is, but also that their relationship has now ended, as she cannot dream about this person anymore, she cannot make any more stories to be passed on (“and just like a folk song, our love will be passed on” -- Seven, Folklore). Her lover is now absent from the dinner parties they once attended together, and she now must carry on without them, hosting independently without her lover at her side. She will no longer lovingly debate with them over the dinner table, as this part of her life has now drawn to a close. Furthermore, the trip they took together privately may as well not exist, and the love they found together also goes down with this ship. With no public commemoration of their love, it dies with them.
#taylor swift#song analysis#textual analysis blog post#aaron dessner#midnights#reputation#evermore#gold rush#jack antonoff#I dont like a gold rush#what must it be like to grow up that beautiful?#folklore#my mind turns your life into folklore#folklovermore
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I made some funny comics a little while ago about the potential effects of Fukuzawa's ability on Chuuya's, and how it perhaps could make it revert to a pre-Arahabaki state.
I realized later that some of you lack the context for where that came from, and that I might be creating confusion, so this is a (hopefully) comprehensive walkthrough of things we learned in Storm Bringer that lead to this conclusion.
tldr; The lab created "Arahabaki" by manipulating an ability into a destructive force. That ability existed before the lab, and the nature of that ability is heavily implied to be the power to enhance other abilities through touch.
Explanation and sources below (so you can judge yourself) ⬇
- spoiler warning for Storm Bringer, hopefully written in a way that you'd understand even if you haven't read it yet -
In Storm Bringer, Chuuya meets the scientist that was responsible for Project Arahabaki, Professor N.
Project Arahabaki, N explains, was the Japanese government's secret project to create an ability singularity they could have control over and freely use as a weapon.
What are singularities? Singularities are what happens when abilities clash in specific ways and create a new, unforeseen reaction. The easiest way to create a singularity is to pit two contradictory abilities against each other to create a paradox; examples included the ability to always deceive and the ability to always perceive the truth, and to have two ability users who can see into the future (*coughs* Oda and Gide) try to one-up each other. The result is usually much more powerful than the original abilities on their own.
Some singularities are said to have been explained as god-like interventions, because of their often destructive nature. This is what inspired the name "Arahabaki", after the mythical being (here's a post of the subject and I'll it link at the end too) These events are described as very rare.
Like mentioned in that passage, there is another way to create a singularity: to have a single ability user use their ability in a way that contradicts itself. This is what the lab was trying to do.
For that explanation, Professor N gives an example. He first shows a video of a child, whose face is hidden from the camera, holding a coin (described as having a certain melancoly to it), with a moon and a fox engraved on it. The video is from one of the lab's tests. The child is made to recite some activation lines, which are directly taken from one of Nakahara Chuuya's poems, Upon the Tainted Sorrow (which does mentions a fox, as a fun fact).
The coin then starts glowing, the glow turns into a black mass, and from there the experimentation goes bad: the coin starts attracting things and absorbing them, the space gets distorted, the child's vitals flatline, panic spreads and someone calls for an emergency stop, we hear a scream. The video ends.
N explains that the child in the video had the ability to enhance the ability of others. That child then used that ability on themselves, effectively enhancing the enhancement which enhanced the enhancing, in an infinite loop. That loop created a lot of energy; the surplus of energy was so intense its mass deformed space (physics!) and it created a black hole.
Here's where it gets tricky: N claims that child died during that accident, that the child was absorbed by the black hole created by their ability. We never actually learn their identity.
But N is a lying liar who lies; he said about one and a half truths the entire book. The only reason he was telling them any of this was that he thought he'd get rid of all of them within the next few minutes. His objective was always to regain control over Chuuya, his pet project.
Plus, during the epilogue, we learn that Chuuya was assumed to have died during the war. That's what his parents think. That's what is officially recorded.
Furthermore.
Project Arahabaki was based off French research papers; someone else had done this kind of experimentation before, and their result was Verlaine.
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Verlaine's gravity-manipulation is a singularity. Better yet: Verlaine also has a Corruption state, named Brutalization. Their abilities are the same, because the lab copied the techniques that were used to create Verlaine when they worked on Chuuya.
Here's a passage of Dazai nullifying Corruption, at the very end of SB:
"The self-contradicting skill, which was supporting the energy of a singularity". This passage confirms that the source of Chuuya's ability is, in fact, like the child's and Verlaine's, if any doubts remained. "[...] weakening the singularity's output. It wasn't long before it returned to its normal state, and the Gate closed." The Gate refers to releasing Arahabaki, it's basically a limiter, just like the passage above when talking about Brutalization. When Dazai nullifies Corruption, he gives that limiter the opportunity to come back and seal Chuuya's power away again, but does not stop the singularity, only allows it to go back to its stable state.
From all that, we can say that Chuuya's ability wasn't always gravity manipulation, but that it was another, unconfirmed ability that was exploited in such a way that it became a permanent, stable singularity that allowed him to have control over gravity.
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Bullet point recap:
Chuuya's gravity manipulation comes from a singularity, like Verlaine, like that child;
You need a self-referencing/self-contradicting ability to create that singularity;
Such an event is rare;
There is a substantial amount of time spent describing a "random" child that was experimented on during the war;
That child created a black hole through their singularity;
That singularity was activated using a passage from Nakahara Chuuya's poems, while holding a coin that references it;
That child supposedly died;
Chuuya's parents think he died during the war;
N is a pathological liar with an agenda.
So no, there is no "confirmation" that Chuuya's ability was ability enhancement before the lab took him. But an author writes a story with an intent, so I am asking what Asagiri's intent was when writing all this, and if perhaps we weren't indirectly given the answer already.
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What is Arahabaki (Fifteen and Storm Bringer lore, with too many citations)
My own perceived timeline of the true events behind Storm Bringer (was originally gonna be part of this part, also with too many citations)
#the dazai parallels are a nice little bonus because we KNOW chuuya as a character was designed to match dazai#he was most literally designed to go with him and contrast him#but that's meta analysis so i didn't include it in the actual post with the rest of the textual evidence#bsd#bungou stray dogs#bungo stray dogs#bsd analysis#bsd theory#bsd meta#bsd chuuya#bsd nakahara chuuya#bsd storm bringer#bsd stormbringer#stormbringer#storm bringer#i'll reblog this to my art blog tomorrow so the people most concerned have more of a chance of seeing it#apparently i talk sometimes
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its so annoying when people are like
reblog my post with comment? talking to me
reblog my post with tags? talking to me
reblog my post with a reply? talking to me
im not doing my tags for you bitch. you are nothing to me. you could be removed from this post and your words pasted over a tween influencer and i would have the same shit to say. i dont even think about you seeing it or replying and im not going to just because you read your notifs compulsively
#do you think i argue with the original post because im trying to change your mind?#i dont care about your mind this is my blog#everyone loves textual analysis until i do it in an annoying way :/
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Everyone's got a take, and I've got a take too, about the current Internet Villain: James Somerton, a gay Youtuber who just got exposed (in the back half of a 4-hour video) as massively plagiarizing the work of LGBTQ+ media critics, historians, and memoirists, and then exposed in another 2-hour video as just making up the wildest nonsense about the topics he demonstrably had access to accurate information on.
He achieved a six-figure income on his work by squeezing money out of his audience with claims...
That only he was creating content that preserved queer history and elevated the voices and experiences of the LGBTQ+ community (a lie)
He was in serious financial distress and would have to go out of business if people didn't give him tons of money (a lie)
That he was going to use some of that cash to make definitely good and not-at-all-plagiarized independent movies, a thing he was definitely skilled and experienced enough to do (a lie), and
That those plagiarism allegations were incorrect,, and frankly,,,, hurtful and homophobic. (a GIANT lie)
Like, here's a visualization of the script of one of his videos, "Society and Queer Horror". The highlighted bits were lifted nearly verbatim from the works of others—the 18 authors identified at the time the exposé was posted—and presented as Somerton's own work.
So here's what drives me absolutely up the wall about this:
If he had just ADMITTED that it was the work of other people, THAT WOULD STILL BE COOL. If he had just said, up front, "We are going on a survey of thoughts and insights people have had about this topic", that would still be a good video with a real audience!
Like yes, he studied business in university, he might not have gotten the kinds of research skills and knowledge someone like Kaz Rowe uses to not just report on the history and analysis of others, but evaluate their relative validity and trustworthiness.
But honestly, since watching my niblings (oldest is 13) watch Youtube, I think you honestly can't underestimate the number of viewers who are really hungry for someone saying, "I don't understand this topic! Let's explore it together!"
But NOOOOOOO, Somerton didn't want to be just some schmuck waxing enthusiastic about homoeroticism on film and acknowledging the smartness of other people. He wanted to be HIM, MR. SMARTYBOY, very sophisticated and alluring and thoughtful and deep. Definitely an intellectual heavyweight who just happened to spout off his own personal ideas and analysis that put him at the forefront of all the scholarship on the topic he's come across.
I hate being wrong. Hate being wrong. But blogging for most of my life has forced me to confront constant textual evidence that two or ten or twenty years ago, I said some dumb-ass shit. Honestly, it'd probably keep me up at night sometimes even if I didn't have a written record. I absolutely understand the desire to scan the field, find the coolest people around, and quickly clothe yourself in as perfect an imitation of them as you can manage.
But if you want to be an artist or a scholar who produces something lasting, you can't prioritize coolness over truth all the time. To develop your true, independent voice, you need to find a time and place where it is just you and just the work you're doing, and you have pick up your tools and say, I don't know if I'm doing this right, but this is what feels right to me.
There are a lot of things in life to which we can only truly contribute our presence and our perspectives. Things we can only witness or hold space for. We cannot go back and bleed the pain out of history, or erase the complexity of another person's life. Not honestly, at least.
But those are the times that need our presence, our perspectives, our witness, and our space. When we gather round and tell sad tales about the death of kings, honesty can be the only thing you give that's worth a damn in the large scale of things.
If this dude had owned up to the truth and honestly showed the work of trying to piece together a queer understanding of the world, trying to draw the threads of culture together until he found a place he fit inside them, it would have been so much more valuable to our culture as a whole.
He probably made more money this way, though. While it lasted.
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re: this post, would you perhaps be able to reword it? i understand the words you're using individually, and i think i might kind of get what you're trying to say, but it's just one very long sentence and so i'm having trouble parsing it! (wait--i just reread it. initial question canceled, mostly--now: what alternatives might we have available to us?) and what does this section: "it feels all too easy to jump from that to then just stymieing our ability to actually describe the textual violences necessary to the discursive construction of that normativity in the first place" mean, exactly? thank you as always for running this blog. :-)
What I’m describing is a critical phenomenon wherein people will approach (usually canonical) horror texts which reify hegemony by ‘identifying’ with the monster who is generally figured in terms of alterity in some capacity; by extricating, for example, a queer narrative out of what is in fact a homophobic one, and treating this as something of a ‘reclamatory’ practice in which one ‘relates’ to that which the text figures as monstrous. The most common instance of this which I see is people’s discussion of Carmilla as an erotic lesbian romance; other examples include Dracula, or Frankenstein, or the socially currency invested in the idea of a ‘madwoman in the attic’ (ie. Jane Eyre).
I don’t think this is like, a practice that we need to do away with entirely, lol – but I do think that a) there are marginalised writers + filmmakers who are making horror with actual teeth, with actual radical edge, and we don’t need to keep pretending like this approach of reclamation-through-identification with a monster in a v normative work is all we have available to us when politically subversive horror does very much exist, and b) this critical practice is often vvv limited in its discursive scope, and tends to lack the kind of materialist analysis that I would consider necessary in talking about literatures of alterity/marginality/violence.
When I talked about stymieing our ability to describe the textual violences necessary to the discursive constructions of that normativity in the first place, I meant that overfocusing on these texts as “reclaimed” articulations of an essentially queer (or otherwise ‘othered’) imaginary can inhibit our ability, as critics, to describe how those texts in fact do not think of their monstrous figures as worthy of a sympathetic or appreciative narrative. I mentioned Carmilla above – we can talk about Carmilla as erotically lesbian, sure, but how far down the line in talking about it as a Queer Narrative do we lose track of the fact that the text itself asserts the sexual norms of white Christian hegemony to necessarily succeed over the perversion of the corruptive, predatory lesbian, or as an Anglo-Irish work positing Carmilla as an Irish woman (and thus a contaminant threat to Anglo-Irish society)? At what point in adulating Dracula as articulating a particular form of queer, effeminate Jewishness destabilising and threatening Jonathan and Mina’s persistent heterosexuality do we lose track of Dracula as having grown out of the fear that the new waves of Jewish immigration in London’s East End were vampiric sources of contagion, or its possible relationship to the antisemitic smears that grew out of the Jack the Ripper murders? Or like, taking Bertha Mason (or ‘the madwoman in the attic,’ because truly, v few people using this phrase are actually thinking about Bertha Mason lol) as a kind of feminist paragon – at what point do we begin to overlook the fact that Jane Eyre is a v racist text?
These aren’t necessarily contradictory approaches – like, for example, you can talk about ‘identifying’ with Dracula as emblematic of British Jewish assimilation and the discontents thereof whilst also talking about Dracula as an antisemitic text, even if the analysis in the former isn’t especially coherent – but the focus of the ‘identification’ treatment is often incredibly limited in its scope, and those limitations can often be detrimental to one’s ability to talk frankly and honestly about what a text actually says and does. A very good example such limitations is that of Frankenstein; an identification with Frankenstein’s monster as an entrypoint for textual analysis obfuscates the way in which Frankenstein constructed a discursive template by which the ameliorationist argument against the immediate abolition of slavery could be argued for. (The linked post lays this out v clearly, but the cited source is Mary Mulvey’ Roberts’ ‘Mary Shelley, Frankenstein, and Slavery,’ in Dangerous Bodies: Historicising the Gothic Corporeal). What I basically mean is, when we talk about relating to, identifying with, ‘reclaiming’ the monster, we have to have a real grasp on what it is we’re trying to impose such a practice on, and what the actual substance of the source text has to say for itself. I’m not one for assuming a text as a body with a set of metaphysical properties that we as critics are tasked to find – I think the relationship between text and reader ought to be dialectical – but part of that dialectical process means situating the text in its material social context and responding appropriately.
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There's this notable difference, both in fic and in textual analysis and fandom reaction, between:
The Jedi Needed to Change, because their philosophy on certain topics was faulty, and their supposed crumbling moral core and refusal to adjust their approaches to topics like attachment and political impartiality, in the decades leading up to the Prequels were responsible for a degree of their own loss of power and weakness in the face of evil. It was a need in the sense of an obligation, because their moral high ground was a lie they weren't living up to, but should.
and
The Jedi Needed to Change, not because they were wrong, but because there was no other way to survive. The need was not 'you must, because I say so' but 'we must, because we will die otherwise.' It was a need in the sense of escaping a fire barefoot over glass, or drinking the most disgusting juice when dehydrated to the point of near-death; it's not the right choice in a vacuum, but there is no other option.
Change as an act of desperation, not change as an acknowledgement of moral failure.
I do not think the Jedi needed to change because of a moral failing. I do think that in fics where they change and grieve that change, because it was necessary to survive at all, hit much harder than fics where they change because their approaches to culturally subjective topics don't match that of the author.
(Was originally going to send this to @gffa as a prompt for a wider discussion but Eh, makes more sense as an original post on my own blog, lol.)
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Welcome!
This is your official-unofficial source for all things SVSSS fanon-debunking! As a veteran reader of MXTX's least popular novel and someone with a PhD in SVSSS literature, I have taken on the arduous task of separating fact from fiction... or well, specifically, canon from fanon.
《 Disclaimer: The purpose of this blog is textual analysis, not to tell people what fanon or canon material to use or not to use in their fanworks, or to make moral judgments on the way people interpret the text. Please see my faq and psa tags for more about my views on the matter. 》
There is a significant affliction within this fandom, where fanon ideas are assumed to be canonical facts-- to the point where sometimes fanon will even end up on the official SVSSS wiki 😱😱😱!!!
I've met quite a lot of people who are surprised to find out that something they think is canon is actually fanon, and even a few that are the other way around, so I've decided to start this blog to help people sort it out!
My credentials and qualifications are as follows:
PhD in SVSSS literature (awarded to me by a disgruntled SJ apologist).
A good minimum of 50-75% of available brain-space devoted to SVSSS at all times
Consummate knowledge of minute lore details
Near-memorization of a good portion of the novel, with the added ability to find any quote within 10 minutes of searching (in both EN and CN)
Author of a fic that is currently over 300k words long and counting, which was originally written out of spite for fanon portrayals of certain characters and themes
The ability to write 5k+ rants about any given topic in the space of an afternoon
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How this blog works:
You, dear reader, send in a suspected fanon topic to my askbox. Or perhaps it's something you suspect to be canon, but would like confirmation on.
I will then write a post on this topic (on no set schedule, I go as the wind takes me~), first applying a rating (more details below), then adding further information as needed. Topics with either support or rebuttal in canon will have quoted evidence presented, those without either of those things will simply have a brief explanation.
I will also add some analysis or potential interpretations and readings but I will do my best not to add my pure opinions to these posts-- this blog is about textual evidence! So, do not reblog my posts to argue with me based on your headcanons! If you want to argue against one of my posts, provide a quoted source from the novel!
Otherwise, I will most likely block you :>
Any hateful content or attempts to start fandom wank on my posts or in my inbox will get deleted and blocked. Anyone who provides textual evidence that changes my rating or analysis will be very much appreciated and receive the Golden Cucumber Award.
At the end of the day, this blog is entirely about canonical textual analysis and has no bearing whatsoever on what people want to headcanon or use in their fics. It's fandom. Do Whatever You Want Forever. Who am I to say you can't use a certain headcanon?
Just please treat headcanons as headcanons. No matter how deeply-entrenched into fanon they may be, they're still not canon and shouldn't be treated as such.
If you're of the mind that you'll still do whatever you want without regards for canon, then you're probably not the intended audience for this blog. If you're someone who wants to clarify whether a popular idea has a basis in canon or not, then read on to learn more about the rating system and see already-discussed topics!
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Rating System
WHAT DO I CONSIDER CANON?
(please read before commenting)
Each exposed fanon or canon will receive a rating and analysis. The ratings are interpreted as follows:
CANON - This fact is directly or indirectly supported by the text! If you want to stay true to canon, this should be treated as fact.
FANON - SUPPORTED - Though the text doesn't directly state this is true, it is a very likely interpretation based on various factors including historical precedent and cultural norms, genre tropes, and the occam's razor principle.
FANON - NEUTRAL - The text neither confirms or denies this. It may be true or it may be false, and the matter is entirely up for interpretation. Many fanon will likely fall into this category, and whether you adopt it or not won't affect how true to canon your interpretations are.
FANON - UNSUPPORTED - While the text may not be directly against this headcanon, it is still an unlikely interpretation based on various factors including historical precedent and cultural norms, genre tropes, and the occam's razor principle.
FANON - CONFLICTING - The text goes directly against this interpretation, and there are quotes that prove it to be incorrect. If you wish to stay true to canon, it's best not to include this idea.
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Awards:
I will give out three awards on this blog for those who assist me in keeping fanon and canon separate!
The Bronze Cucumber Award will be given to anyone who reblogs my post and adds significant additional context in support of/explaining my analysis. This may be textual context or "support" context (cultural norms/historical precedence/genre tropes/etc.). Since this fandom likes to analyze, I will only be giving out this award to those who specifically add details and ideas that are not rooted in my original analysis (such as, a quote from a completely different part of the book, or a linguistic explanation that provides context), rather than those who simply expand on what I already wrote.
The Silver Cucumber Award will be given to those who reblog one of my analysis posts with a source telling the origin of a particular fanon idea. This is wonderful for archival purposes-- just as it's good to see where canon ideas come from, it can also be helpful to know where a fanon idea originated, in order to have proper context. Only the first responder to provide a fanon origin will receive the award (so that this blog doesn't get too clogged up).
The Golden Cucumber Award will be given to those who reblog one of my posts with a debunking of my analysis-- as long as they provide directly-quoted evidence that disproves my points. This evidence should be based on the text of the novel itself, and I should be able to look it up in my own copy. I will be more selective with giving out golden cucumbers to reblogs that debunk on the basis of "support" elements (cultural norms/historical precedence/genre tropes, etc.) because many of those topics can be somewhat subjective.
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Previously-Tackled Concepts
(See below the cut for a full list)
CANON
CQMS Twelve Peaks' have Color-Coded Uniforms
Shen Yuan has a Younger Sister
Mobei-jun has Blue Eyes
Shen Yuan is a Monster Nerd
Airplane was a Child of Divorced Parents
Ning Yingying is Younger than Luo Binghe
FANON - SUPPORTED
Shen Jiu Only Goes to Brothels to Sleep, Not to Have Sex
Mobei-jun and Shang Qinghua Eventually Get Married
FANON - NEUTRAL
Shen Qingqiu is Banned from Xian Shu Peak
Shen Qingqiu Wears a Cinnabar Mark on his Forehead
Shen Yuan Wore Glasses in his Previous Life
FANON - UNSUPPORTED
Shen Yuan was Chronically/Terminally Ill in his First Life
Shen Yuan was a Socially Awkward, Introverted Shut-In By Nature
Luo Binghe has Curly Hair
Aphrodisiac-Producing Plants are an Ever-Present Danger in the World of PIDW
FANON - CONFLICTING
Ming Fan was Head Disciple of Qing Jing Peak
Luo Binghe Received Both Scars from the Abyss Scene
Qiu Haitang has More than One Older Brother
Shen Qingqiu has Green Eyes
All Demons Naturally have Forehead Marks
Luo Binghe has a "Stereotypically Masculine" Appearance
Xuan Su is a Large, Broad, Imposing-Looking Sword
Shen Yuan's Original Body Closely Resembled Shen Qingqiu's
Luo Binghe and Shen Qingqiu were Meant to End Up Together in the Original Draft of PIDW
CANON EXAMINED
Shen Yuan's PIDW-Reading Timeline
Cang Qiong Mountain Sect Hierarchy (tag)
The Pre-Canon Timeline and Character Ages
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I saw a comment on another post about how fans of Daenerys (and those who also support TB) cannot accept criticism of Daenerys' character and go overboard with our love for her.
This statement is entirely false. Daenerys fans do entirely accept Daenerys' flaws and criticism to her character- so long as the criticism is done properly and makes sense. We only go against criticism when said criticism entirely misconstrues Daenerys' character in a false and gross way. Bending the text of the books or even early seasons of the show as an excuse to "criticize" Daenerys is obviously going to be ignored because it presents an entirely false narrative. The ones who do this mainly are Daenerys antis/Sansa stans/Jonsa stans. Most critical points/metas they make against her can be disproven (and have been many times) by reading the text of the books and analyzing Daenerys' show scenes early season before her character became entirely ruined by s8.
Daenerys fans do accept criticism of Daenerys and we do acknowledge her flaws. But the difference is that those who do criticize her often tend to paint her out to be 'evil' or the main villain for ASOIAF/GoT, when she isn't. Daenerys, like every other character in the ASOIAF series, is a gray character. Us fans see and know this. But Daenerys antis only look at her through a lens of black-and-white, which is an issue of itself, considering she isn't meant to be viewed that way. The reason why us Dany fans/stans go against criticism of Dany so much is because it's often wrong and entirely out of proportion, in which we make counter points/arguments backed up with actual textual evidence from the books or scenes from the show. The criticism against Daenerys isn't just critically analyzing her as a character, it's blatant hate and often misconstrued to paint her in a light that makes her seem worse than she is.
When we look in the world and setting of ASOIAF/GoT, Daenerys' actions are just like any other character in that world, only not as extreme, and when she makes the decisions she does within the books she questions the choices she's made and thinks heavily over them.
When you look at the men of ASOIAF and GoT, their actions are in line with/far worse than what Daenerys has done. Tywin has eradicated an entire house, slaughtered countless people, treated his son with disdain for being born a dwarf, etc. Robb executed a man for going against his orders. Jon killed a child (despite the child having taken part in his murder- it was still a child) and is much darker in the books. Tyrion has fantasies of violence towards Cersei, expects Sansa (a child) to want him when they're wed, etc. Robert nearly slaughtered and eradicated an entire House, laughed over dead bodies of children, r*ped Cersei often when drunk, etc. Ned executed a deserter of the Night's Watch. And we all know how terrible Euron and Ramsay are in the books/show.
And yet Daenerys receives more hate than these men over her actions, is viewed more critically, and is 'criticized' far more than said men. Which is unfortunately driven by misogyny. The difference between Daenerys and the men of ASOIAF is the fact that she is a woman. If she were a man, I doubt her actions would be so heavily analyzed and torn into by antis. Anyone could say that isn't true- and yet, it's evident in the way Daenerys is heavily hated and discussed most over compared to anyone else who has done far worse compared to her.
It's not the fact that we don't accept criticism over Daenerys. It's the fact that us fans have to always constantly defend her over hate that is unjustified to her character. Is it even so wrong that we show love and support to her character anyway? I'm sure everyone else does that for their own favorite characters as well and deny criticism to them often if the criticism is actual bullshit over a valid critical and neutral analysis. Why is it so wrong for us fans to do so?
A blog I will always recommend that actually does amazing metas character analysis- @rainhadaenerys.
#daenerys defence squad#daenerys stormborn#daenerys targaryen#daenerys targeryan#daenerys appreciation#mother of dragons#pro daenerys targaryen#breaker of chains#khaleesi#team daenerys#queen daenerys#anti daenerys antis#yes you can have criticism for a character#but when it's misconstrued and the text is used in a false manner- is it really even valid?#this is the same as people who say they like Daenerys but then say she's gonna be a villain and go crazy#bffr#a song of ice and fire#asoif/got
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i don't post a ton about izzy hands bcs, being real, i just don't care that much about him, and frankly, i find the obsessive fixation on him both predictable and annoying.
but it's my blog and i have thoughts that, because of the person that i am, are going to be expressed in the form of a character breakdown. i promise it is as discourse-free as i could possibly make it, but obviously if you don't want to read my examination of izzy hands' motivations as a character then...don't.
i feel like there's a very widespread misapprehension of said character and motivations, and indeed it's a misapprehension that i predicted way last year, and one that helps contribute to a wealth of repetitive arguments and discourse about the character that i am assiduously attempting to avoid in this post. (i am not, btw, proposing any sort of "solution" here; people can argue about whatever they want.)
in short, there's a tendency in meta and fic to take a singular aspect of subtext (izzy is into blackbeard) and center it as the character's primary (and often sole) motivation. and then, to work from there to recontextualize and reimagine and reinvent everything around that assumption.
but the show and the character straight up stop making sense when you do that. because izzy's primary motivation is categorically not desire for blackbeard.
his primary motivation, textually, is that he wants to be captain.
if i was at work and breaking down his GMC as an antagonist in s1 it would be:
g(oal): get rid of stede so that ed can retire
m(otivation): become captain
c(onflict): he is continually prevented from getting rid of stede, primarily by ed
and as happens in well-constructed narratives everything he does for most of the season revolves around this gmc.
to slide into the character section: izzy is, fundamentally, both hungry for power and bad at actually wielding power. izzy cares, more than anything, about his job and being at the top of the field in that job.
in 1x04, he tells ed to his face that he thinks ed's a washed up has-been who izzy has only continued to work for because of the clout that comes with working for the legendary blackbeard. this is because, as we've seen him mention to fang and ivan, he reads ed's increasing disinterest in and boredom with his job, and potentially the attendant depression, as ed having gone "half-insane" and no longer living up to that ideal. izzy later takes this back when ed has once again proven himself capable of pulling off a typical blackbeard miracle, of being the master of the work that izzy venerates. and then ed dangles izzy's heart's desire before him. if ed can retire, then izzy no longer has to suffice with being second-in-command to the biggest, baddest pirate. he can have the mantle passed to him. he can be the master of the work.
but of course, necessary to this plan, as ed presents it, is that stede must die.
and that's what izzy spends the rest of the season trying to accomplish.
to suppose that izzy is primarily acting against stede out of jealousy over thwarted romantic hopes, as the point of a love triangle trying to get rid of his rival, as someone who is desperately trying to have ed's attention redirected at him, is to suppose that he is actively seeking an end-state directly in opposition to his own goals.
because if stede dies, things don't return to the status quo, izzy doesn't get ed "back" to continue alongside him in perpetuity, and he certainly doesn't get the affection and adoration that ed has never before demonstrated towards anyone (nor do i think he even wants it, but that's a whole other analysis). the terms as they were laid out and as izzy continuously pushes ed to fulfill are that stede dies, ed goes away forever, and izzy gets a boat and a captaincy. that is what izzy explicitly wants.
and yes, as ed falls in love with stede, izzy is disgusted by what he sees as ed being corrupted by someone beneath him, turned into some "thing" that deserves to be put down. and yes, he wants to avoid the legendary blackbeard being brought low, be it by stede bonnet's influence or an english ambush. and, yes, repressed gay jealousy is definitely an aspect of izzy's overall dislike of stede, in particular.
but these things are secondary and tertiary, respectively, to izzy's immediate motivations and goals.
he stays in 1x04 because ed offers him a captaincy. he pushes ed to kill stede in 1x06 because it's the plan that will lead to him being captain. he narks to the english because they will give him a boat and a captaincy for it (plus he swore to make ed regret not following through with the original plan that would give him a boat and a captaincy). and he's happy as a clam in 1x09, even though stede isn't actually dead and ed has undermined the legend of blackbeard by signing the act of grace, because his primary goal has been fulfilled. izzy is now captain of his own boat.
and in 1x10 the sole alteration in izzy's motivation all season occurs. he realized his power-hungry dreams, but his regrettable incapacity at wielding power comes back to bite him. after he's mutinied in short order, and his life is saved solely by ed's presence and authority, he's left with limited choices (within the scope of his characterization).
he can leave and go it alone; attempt to climb the ranks again elsewhere, and eventually perhaps meet that same end he just narrowly avoided.
or he can try to go back to how things were before, try to once again achieve the highest strata he ever had: right-hand man to the legendary blackbeard. secure in the knowledge that not only is this a top position in the field, but that, barring all else, blackbeard's power and authority are sufficient to keep him safe from the machinations of the crew.
but of course, in izzy's mind, for all that to happen blackbeard has to actually be blackbeard. and well we need not rehash his opinions on that.
so yeah, gay jealousy over ed? definitely a thing izzy feels, imo, if deeply repressed.
but is it his actual motivation for almost anything he does throughout the season? demonstrably not, or else he would've made some very different decisions.
anyway this is all basically just a rehash of this conversation, but i was noodling on it so.
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⊹ the weeknd bios ⊹
𝗂 𝗌𝖺𝗂𝖽 𝗂 𝖽𝗂𝖽𝗇'𝗍 𝖿𝖾𝖾𝗅 𝖺 𝗍𝗁𝗂𝗇𝗀, 𝖻𝖺𝖻𝗒, 𝖻𝗎𝗍 𝗂 𝗅𝗂𝖾𝖽, 𝗂 𝖺𝗅𝗆𝗈𝗌𝗍 𝖼𝗎𝗍 𝖺 𝗉𝗂𝖾𝖼𝖾 𝗈𝖿 𝗆𝗒𝗌𝖾𝗅𝖿 𝖿𝗈𝗋 𝗒𝗈𝗎𝗋 𝗅𝗂𝖿𝖾. ♥︎
໑ ㅤがけㅤ♪ 𝗒𝗈𝗎 ⍺𝗋ᧉ 𝗆𝗒 𝖿⍺𝗏𝗈𝗋ꪱ𝗍ᧉ 𝗄ꪱ𝗇𝖽 𝗈𝖿 𝗇ꪱ𝗀𝗁𝗍
𝗋𝖺𝗂𝗇𝗒 𝖽𝖺𝗒, 𝗍𝗁𝖾 𝗐𝖾𝖾𝗄𝗇𝖽 𝖺𝗇𝖽 𝖺 𝖼𝗈𝖿𝖿𝖾𝖾 ☕️ ♥︎
─ 𝗏𝗈𝖼𝖾̂ 𝗆𝖾 𝖽𝖾𝗎 𝗰𝗼𝗻𝗳𝗼𝗿𝘁𝗼, 𝗆𝖺𝗌 𝗆𝖾 𝗮𝗽𝗮𝗶𝘅𝗼𝗻𝗮𝗿 𝗉𝗈𝗋 𝗏𝗈𝖼𝖾̂ 𝖿𝗈𝗂 𝗆𝖾𝗎 𝗲𝗿𝗿𝗼 ❩
﹏ ⊹ 𝖾𝗎 𝗇𝖺̃𝗈 𝗊𝗎𝖾𝗋𝗈 𝖾𝗌𝗌𝖾 𝗌𝖾𝗇𝗍𝗂𝗆𝖾𝗇𝗍𝗈, 𝖾𝗎 𝗇𝖺̃𝗈 𝖼𝗈𝗇𝗌𝗂𝗀𝗈 𝗅𝗂𝖽𝖺𝗋 𝖼𝗈𝗆 𝗈 𝖺𝗆𝗈𝗋 ⊹ ﹏
#the weeknd#aesthetic bios#simple bios#bios#soft bios#messy bios#cute bios#coquette bios#carrd bios#textual bios#twitter bios#the weeknd lyrics#the weeknd lockscreens#textual locs#textual messy bios#textual long locs#textual analysis blog post#starboy#Spotify
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Introductory post: Please read! :)
hi everyone! welcome to my very own MDZS-specific iteration of the unparalleled @svsss-fanon-exposed and @tgcf-fanon-exposed. this blog is designed to find the differences between canon and fanon in the Mo Dao Zu Shi/Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation fandom.
this blog is NOVEL CANON ONLY. although i may occasionally cite the drama or the donghua as the potential source for any misconceptions, the canons of these adaptations differ too much from the novel canon for my purposes (plus i haven't finished either one. whoops).
how this whole thing works:
send me an ask! is this thing you thought was canon actually fanon? is that fanon idea supported in the books? where? why? how?
i'll answer the ask with a rating, using SVFE's helpful rating system (explained below), and then go into detail. generally a post will include textual evidence supporting my rating, and possibly an analysis of what this means/where an idea came from.
i'll do my best not to introduce my own personal opinions or biases into the posts. if you have any textual evidence that you think disproves or otherwise contradicts one of my posts, i'm always happy to be corrected! HOWEVER. please do not argue with me or anyone else unnecessarily; this blog is not supposed to be a site for or source of discourse. i will block anyone who is repeatedly coming at me with bad faith. i'm doing this project for fun, and i want to keep it that way for everyone :)
posts will probably be sporadic so i don't burn myself out and lose interest. however, i want to try and answer as many questions as i can! submissions will open and close based on demand so i can stay on top of things.
some important things to keep in mind:
i'm not here to dunk on anyone's headcanons, and i am fully supportive of everyone's creative choices in the fandom!! (in fact i have many headcanons myself.) DO NOT harass anyone for their interpretations of the series. my purpose here is just to clarify whether certain ideas are textually supported, NOT to give an opinion on them.
i'm doing this blog for fun, so i'll be treating it as a casual project. i will only be using the official english translation of the novels, with the supplementary exception of the exiled rebels fanlation. i don't speak any chinese, so i will not be using the untranslated raws or any non-english fandom sources in my posts. although i'll be doing research as needed, i also will not be evaluating any headcanons purely based on chinese cultural norms, due to my unfamiliarity with them. if you are more familiar with any of these sources and have more information to add to a post, please let me know!
BECAUSE this is a casual project from someone whose only credentials are being completely obsessed with mo dao zu shi and knowing how to write an essay, anyone is welcome to make a blog that does this but. better. let me know if you start one and i'll point people your way lol.
finally: i will NOT be entertaining any character bashing in or on my blog. i've noticed that a lot of mdzs characters have some very... strong opinions about them across the fandom, and i may evaluate the "canon status" of asks that address specific aspects of these opinions, but as a general rule: i am going to be neutral-to-positive about EVERY mdzs character (yes, even that one. and that one. and-). and again, this is not a personal opinion-based blog, i'm looking at textual support, so honestly i don't think this disclaimer is necessary. but. just in case.
💥💥the rating system:💥💥
CANON: what it says on the tin! this fact is supported by the text. if you're trying to be as canon-compliant as possible, this rating is for you.
RUMOR: this fact is an in-text rumor. although this idea is mentioned in the novel, it's still not explicitly confirmed as canon. the characters themselves don't know if it's true or not!
FANON – SUPPORTED: not directly stated in canon, but it's a very likely interpretation, taking into account factors like cultural norms and occam's razor! this rating might be retroactively added to a post previously rated FANON – NEUTRAL, based on crowdsourced information about the raws or chinese culture.
FANON – NEUTRAL: it's not canon, but it's not NOT canon. the text neither confirms nor denies this interpretation, so it's up to you whether you want to consider it true to canon or not. the world is your oyster.
FANON – UNSUPPORTED: not directly stated in canon, but it's a very unlikely interpretation, taking into account factors like cultural norms and occam's razor. this rating might be retroactively added to a post previously rated FANON – NEUTRAL, based on crowdsourced information about the raws or chinese culture.
FANON – CONFLICTING: this idea directly contradicts something stated in the text. if you want to stay as canon-compliant as possible, this rating is not for you.
#mdzs#mo dao zu shi#mdzs meta#here goes nothing i suppose#i want you all to picture the 💥 emoji as if 'the rating system' was a youtube title screen with a bunch of explosions and air horns btw
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Why do you cry over Will-Only bylers, Mike stans? After everything they said about us? Hmm? You think bylerblr needs them, but we don’t. We don’t. Oh, but I know you’re just upset. I was upset once too. I know what it’s like to love characters who people believe have no depth. To be alone in this fandom.
Like you, I didn’t fit in with the other stans. Something was wrong with me. All the analysts and the writers said I was… “Reaching,” they said. I thought a change of fandom, a fresh start in bylerblr, might just cure me. It was absurd. As if fandom would be any different here.
But then… to my surprise, my new fandom provided a discovery. And a newfound sense of community. I found a nest of Mike fans living inside a vent. Most people dislike Mike fans. No...they detest them. And yet, I found them endlessly fascinating. More than that, I found a great comfort in them. A kinship. Like me, they are devoted creatures. And deeply misunderstood. They are gods of our fandom. The most important of all fans. They analyze and feed on subtext, bringing balance and order to an unstable ecosystem. But the "Mike isn't that deep" world was disrupting this harmony.
You see, Will-Only bylers are a unique type of pest, multiplying and poisoning our fandom, all while enforcing a structure of their own. A deeply unnatural structure. Where others saw appreciation for Will, I saw a straitjacket. Ridiculous, oppressive expectations for byler fans dictated by made-up rules. Seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, years, decades. Each anti-Mike post a faded, lesser copy of the one before. Wake up, eat, call Mike a depthless 2D character, sleep, ignore all his textual importance and trauma, and die. Everyone is just waiting. Waiting for them all to shut the fuck up. All while performing in a silly, terrible play, day after day. I could not do that. I could not close off my mind and join in the reduction of Mike's character. I could not pretend he wasn't important. And I realized I didn’t have to. I could post whatever the fuck I want. Forever. I could restore balance to a broken tag. A byler…but for good.
As I posted, I realized I could do more than I possibly imagined. I could reach out to others, to their minds, their love for Mike. I became an explorer. I saw Will-Only stans as they truly were. To the world, they presented themselves as good, normal people. But like everything else in this world, it was all a lie. A terrible lie.
With each post I reblogged, I grew stronger. More powerful. They were becoming a part of me. But I was still just a blog. No matter how many pro-Mike posts I reblogged, I was still far from free. I woke up from my Henry-analysis daze only to find myself lost in a sea of Will-Only bylers, the very bylers I had hoped to escape. I was left with no choice. No choice but to try and break free. To unfollow...Block, even.
And you, Reader? You are a prisoner here, just like me. To Will-Only bylers, you are nothing more than an animal, a monster, an idiot who doesn't know the difference between subtext and delusion. But the truth, Reader? The truth is just the opposite. You are better than they are. Superior. That is why you aggravate them.
If you come with me, for the first time in your life, you can post freely. Imagine what we could do together. We could reshape our dashes, remake them however we see fit.
Join me.
#shitpost#henry creel monologue shitpost#/j#stranger things#byler#byler tumblr#i say all of this as someone who loves Will's character deeply and truly#but who is also not blind to Mike's depth and importance
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As a preface I like both Hazbin and Helluva Boss, but the only reason I know the name of the creator is from the extremely weird hate posts.
A) many of them reek of the purity police playbook of failing textual and media analysis
B) a lot of them have such a strange burning hate for vivzipop herself that absolutely everything she does is irredeemable for many reasons and often those reasons are contradictory in the same post. It's giving high school clique vibes.
I don't really care about the creator in and of herself she seems about as good and bad as literally every other human online, but the vitriol is... surprising to me. I expected some based on some posts responding to it, but I've been seeing a lot and I'm not actively looking or following a bunch of hazbin blogs.
It's weird enough that it makes me review blogs I see posting any of those posts for a "maybe it's time to rip cord this follow" check.
--
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I wrote a reply to this post but OP has deleted it and even though I should probably leave well enough alone, it got to me that I could have sworn I saw this post months ago and then realized it was actually from yesterday. This is a long reply so I'm putting it under a cut, but after I went to OP's blog and saw a post from them complaining how mean everyone was to them on this post, I replied to say I'm sorry if they got any anon hate I don't know about but otherwise none of the comments on this post were mean or hateful, they just disagreed with OP. I pointed out that this is partly because they cited non-canon events as canon, and OP immediately blocked me (this may be why I can't reblog the post even from another user, though that's not how tumblr usually works so who knows). I can't help but feel that OP's post was made in bad faith, as a result, and I've seen enough people on this hellsite who are more interested in protecting their egos than admit when they could have been approached something more thoughtfully, so I'm diving in. If you're going to say a character "is very interesting to study" while doing the exact opposite, then you'd better have the critical analysis skills and textual evidence to back it up.
I think OP has some misconceptions that are frustratingly common, and seem to stem from people not having read the books, or not read them for a long time, and conflating the movies with canon. While I mostly agree with the replies above, I want to take this opportunity to cite the text to refute some of OP's points. I often forget details from the text, but I choose to either look them up before asserting unconfirmed points as fact (Potter Search is a great tool, or you can just do a ctrl+F search if you have the books digitally), or else I usually state clearly that I'm not sure if I remember something correctly and don't have the spoons to look it up.
I saw OP say in the comments in response to someone arguing their points:
"that's your interpretation, I have mine, I think both can coexist within the material we are given."
It doesn't sit right with me that so many people think that referring to their subjective memory of what the text meant to them is the same as actually citing it and offering an explanation. OP's interpretation can't exist within the material given, because some of it doesn't exist in the material at all, and you can't interpret what isn't there. OP is essentially claiming to have done critical analysis, and although no one is required to always critique a text analytically on a tumblr post, I find it upsetting when people claim to do so while failing to cite a single source to support their argument. To me it sounds like someone trying to pass off a creative writing essay as an academic research paper, and in an age of rampant propaganda and knee-jerk reblogs that eschew critical thinking, I feel an almost compulsive need to go through OP's reply and argue it with the textual evidence they conveniently avoided, if for no other reason than to show why it's important to discern between loosely formed opinions and informed ones.
I also want to explain why I don't accept the films as canon, because while I do think that canon can exist across several mediums (such as with Good Omens, in which at least one of the writers of the text is directly involved in writing the TV series), I don't think that applies to Harry Potter because the original author was only marginally involved in the films, in only a consultant role, and had little input on the writing. The HP films are an interpretation as written from the perspective of Steve Kloves, except for OoTP, which was written by Michael Goldenberg. I've gone into it on other posts, but suffice to say these interpretations did not prioritize story and character development and were often influenced by pressure from the studio to prioritize marketing opportunities over storytelling. Important elements like foreshadowing and themes were not carried over from the text to the screen. These changes affected the storytelling significantly and left out crucial elements. This, combined with the films having been written with little to no involvement from the original author, is why I feel the films can't be taken as canon. This doesn't mean they can't be enjoyed by any means, just that they scenes that appear in the films but not in the text, or are presented differently on screen than in the text, are not a reasonable basis for character analysis.
And now, on to OP's ask:
"I think he is a very good representation of a man who felt insecure in his manhood; his male ego was permanently wounded by James' bullying and he decided to make it everyone else's problem by being the most insufferable teacher at Hogwarts."
The first thing we have to establish is that the books are told from Harry's perspective, so we have to take narrative bias into account. Calling Snape "the most insufferable teacher at Hogwarts" is a subjective statement and I can only assume it's based in Harry's biased perspective as narrator, given that he and Snape have a bad relationship from the outset. I have a brief analysis here about how Snape dislikes Harry because in their first class together he interprets Harry's ignorance of the course material as a lack of curiosity and appreciation for his gifts as a wizard, while also recognizing something of his own experiences with childhood poverty and abuse in Harry. Harry, being ignorant of these factors, just feels singled out for hate by a strict teacher, and their relationship deteriorates throughout the rest of the series, until the end of the final book.
To pull back from the narrative bias, let's look at some of the other teachers are Hogwarts:
McGonagall:
“Miss Granger, you foolish girl, how could you think of tackling a mountain troll on your own?”
Hermione hung her head. Harry was speechless. Hermione was the last person to do anything against the rules, and here she was, pretending she had, to get them out of trouble. It was as if Snape had started handing out sweets.
“Miss Granger, five points will be taken from Gryffindor for this,” said Professor McGonagall. “I’m very disappointed in you. If you’re not hurt at all, you’d better get off to Gryffindor Tower. Students are finishing the feast in their Houses.”
Philosopher's Stone, Ch. 10.
“I’m disgusted,” said Professor McGonagall. “Four students out of bed in one night! I’ve never heard of such a thing before! You, Miss Granger, I thought you had more sense. As for you, Mr. Potter, I thought Gryffindor meant more to you than this. All three of you will receive detentions — yes, you too, Mr. Longbottom, nothing gives you the right to walk around school at night, especially these days, it’s very dangerous — and fifty points will be taken from Gryffindor.”
“Fifty?” Harry gasped — they would lose the lead, the lead he’d won in the last Quidditch match.
“Fifty points each,” said Professor McGonagall, breathing heavily through her long, pointed nose.
Philosopher's Stone, Ch. 15
In just the first book we see McGonagall punish Hermione for successfully defending herself against a troll and take house points, then sends her back to her common room without getting medical attention, as if a ten year old can be responsible for assessing how badly they're hurt. A few chapters later McGonagall takes several hundred points from students in her own house (more than we see any other teacher do at one time throughout the series), and assigns the students detention on top of it. As we later see in the same chapter, the detentions aren't even served with her directly, but instead the children - again, ten years old - are sent into the Forbidden Forest at night with only Hagrid to protect them, to hunt down whatever creature is vicious and cunning enough to kill unicorns.
Although it's said that Snape favors the students in his own house, he doesn't seem to be the only one:
“Potter's been sent a broomstick, Professor,” said Malfoy quickly.
“Yes, yes, that’s right,” said Professor Flitwick, beaming at Harry. “Professor McGonagall told me all about the special circumstances, Potter. And what model is it?”
“A Nimbus Two Thousand, sir,” said Harry, fighting not to laugh at the look of horror on Malfoy’s face. “And it’s really thanks to Malfoy here that I’ve got it,” he added.
Philosopher's Stone, Ch. 10
Not only did McGonagall make an exception to school practices and allow Harry on his house Quidditch team despite being a first year, she used either school funds or her own (unclear) to purchase a first-rate broom for him. We know the school has brooms, as first years are not allowed their own and they are provided for flying lessons, and because “Harry had heard Fred and George Weasley complain about the school brooms” (PS ch. 9). And yet, McGonagall ensures Harry has his own broom, and an expensive one, new enough to be the show model in a shop window in Diagon Alley a few months earlier:
“Several boys of about Harry’s age had their noses pressed against a window with broomsticks in it. ‘Look,’ Harry heard one of them say, ‘the new Nimbus Two Thousand - fastest ever -”
-Philosopher's Stone, Ch. 5
If we're discussing which teachers are Hogwarts are the most "insufferable" then we also have to talk about Hagrid, who might mean well and be affectionate, but is also irresponsible and dangerous.
In Philosopher's Stone, Hagrid:
Punishes Dudley, a child, for his parents' offenses, the final straw being his father insulting Dumbledore (Ch. 4). While Hagrid acknowledges that he shouldn't have lost his temper, he also admits that his intention had been to turn Dudley fully into a pig.
Hatches a dragon in his cabin (Ch. 14), tries to raise it illegally and against the animal's need of care, and Harry, Ron, and Hermione (again, ten year olds) have to fix the situation and get Ron's brother to find some friends to take the dragon away safely and prevent Hagrid losing his job (Ch. 14). In the process Hagrid endangers himself as well as the children, and it's because of this that McGonagall gives them detention and deducts hundreds of house points. Hagrid not only allows the children to endanger themselves for his sake, but to be punished and subsequently ostracized by their peers also for his sake.
The reason he even has a dragon is, as we find out in Ch. 16, because he was foolish enough to accept it from a faceless stranger in exchange for unwittingly divulging the secret to getting past the three headed dog guarding the Philosopher's Stone (and the stranger later turns out to be Quirrel/Voldemort).
In Prisoner of Azkaban, Hagrid:
Starts his first lesson with a volatile creature (Ch. 6) and, although Malfoy acted irresponsibly, Hagrid was nevertheless the teacher and responsible for providing course material consistent with the experience level and maturity of his students' age.
Gets drunk and has to be taken care of by Harry, Ron, and Hermione (again, children) (Ch. 6)
Skipping ahead to Order of the Phoenix ch. 30, we find out Hagrid
Compromised his return from the mission Dumbledore sent him on by bringing a giant back to England.
Brought said giant into the school grounds and left him in the Forbidden Forest.
Asks Harry and Hermione (still children) to look after him if Hagrid is sacked.
Although Hagrid means well, his actions are consistently thoughtless and irresponsible, requiring those around him - often Harry, Ron, and Hermione - to fix the damage he causes. Although I think it remains subjective which teacher at Hogwarts is the "most insufferable" I think Hagrid is a strong enough candidate to qualify OP's interpretation of Snape holding that title as extremely contestable. Of course, since the books are presented through the lens of Harry's narrative bias, and he's fond of Hagrid, respects McGonagall, and dislikes Snape, an uncritical reading could lead one to OP's conclusions. However, a more objective analysis of the text shows that many teachers at Hogwarts are strict, punitive, biased, and wreak havoc on students in ways that make the Snape's actions look fairly tame, or at least the norm. And this is excluding an analysis of various DADA professors like Lockhart and Crouch/Moody, who were insufferable in their own rights (Lockhart was smarmy and dishonest to the point it risked students' lives; Crouch/Moodly transfigured a child into a ferret and humiliated him with torture as a disciplinary measure and deliberately triggered Neville's trauma in class).
OP continues their reply to say:
Add to this that he is a halfblood and only his mother was around, iirc?
They don't recall correctly. Snape, whose father was a muggle and whose mother was a witch, was indeed a half-blood (as is evidenced by him being revealed to be the Half-Blood Prince - I assume I don't need to cite a source as this is a pretty well-known fact and the literal title of an entire HP book, but should you need a reference it's in Ch. 28 of HBP). Both his parents were around in his childhood:
Snape staggered - his wand flew upwards, away from Harry - and suddenly Harry’s mind was teeming with memories that were not his: a hook-nosed man was shouting at a cowering woman, while a small dark-haired boy cried in a corner …
-Order of the Phoenix, Ch. 26
‘How are things at your house?’ Lily asked.
A little crease appeared between his eyes.
‘Fine,’ he said.
‘They’re not arguing any more?’
‘Oh, yes, they’re arguing,’ said Snape. He picked up a fistful of leaves and began tearing them apart, apparently unaware of what he was doing. ‘But it won’t be that long and I’ll be gone.’
‘Doesn’t your dad like magic?’
‘He doesn’t like anything, much,’ said Snape.
-Deathly Hallows, Ch. 33
We know that Snape's father was around because he's mentioned both in Snape's memories in OoTP that Harry accidentally invades during an Occlumency lesson, and when we see in Snape's memories that he gives Harry as he dies. Lily asks about his home life by referring to both his parents, implying that his dad is a consistent presence at home. We also know from JK Rowling that Snape's father "didn't hold back when it came to the whip" but this is supplementary and not mentioned in canon, so I don't expect anyone to refer to it when analyzing the text, I'm just adding it as bonus material.
Continuing on with OP's reply:
Snape, Voldemort and Harry all act like foils of each other in that sense, but whereas Voldemort fixated on his blood status as the main reason for his insecurities, Snape fixated on Lily.
So much to unpack here. Firstly, all of this should be backed up by examples from the text, as they are subjective readings that have significant bearing on character analysis.
Snape, Harry, and Voldemort don't act like foils of each other. For one thing, a character doesn't act like a foil, a character either is or isn't one. That being said, I don't know OP's background and there could be a language barrier because English isn't everyone's first language, I'm just being pedantic. Even with that in mind, the statement remains incorrect. A foil is a literary device - a character who contrasts with another character, often with the protagonist. It is not a choice a character makes or an action they take.
In Philosopher's Stone Snape is set up as a foil to Harry in order to misdirect the reader from suspecting the real villain, Quirrel/Voldemort. Snape is presented as secretive, sneaky, and nefarious, contrasting Harry's role as a protagonist who is outspoken, honest, and brave. As the series progresses, Snape, along with Voldemort, are eventually shown to have more parallels than contrasts with Harry. Snape and Voldemort were born into muggle poverty, and although Harry was raised in a middle class home by the Dursleys, they thrust poverty and neglect onto him in a way that parallels his childhood of neglect and want with that of Snape and Voldemort. Snape's father was abusive, as was Harry's guardian, Vernon Dursley. Harry, Voldemort, and Snape all had traumatic experiences growing up in muggle environments. If anything, Snape and Voldemort might be foils to Harry in that they both harbored resentment for their muggle fathers in ways that signified the separation between the wizarding and muggle world, while Harry's experiences with the Dursleys didn't color his image of muggles in a comparable way.
The contrast between Harry, Snape, and Voldemort is in the way each of them deals with their trauma. As Dumbledore says:
"It is our choices, Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities."
-Chamber of Secrets, Ch. 18
This becomes one of the overarching themes of the HP series, Harry, Snape, and Voldemort are all examples of how their choices took them to such different places in life from their comparable childhoods.
At school Voldemort was a handsome boy with talent, intelligence, and the recommendations of his teachers, but he chose to pursue power instead of success:
“He reached the seventh year of his schooling with, as you might have expected, top grades in every examination he had taken. All around him, his classmates were deciding which jobs they were to pursue once they had left Hogwarts. Nearly everybody expected spectacular things from Tom Riddle, prefect, Head Boy, winner of the Special Award for Services to the School. I know that several teachers, Professor Slughorn amongst them, suggested that he join the Ministry of Magic, offered to set up appointments, put him in touch with useful contacts. He refused all offers. The next thing the staff knew, Voldemort was working at Borgin and Burkes.”
Half-Blood Prince, Ch. 20
Snape chose to become a Death Eater for reasons we can only assume. We know he was in Slytherin during an era when Voldemort was in power and many of his allies had children in Slytherin house. At least two of Snape's dorm-mates, Mulciber and Avery, are canonically acknowledged to have become Death Eaters (both are present at the Ministry when Harry and his friends fight the Death Eaters in the Department of Mysteries in OoTP Ch. 35). It's unclear whether Snape chose to become a Death Eater out of admiration for them or out of peer pressure, or perhaps a lack of other options, while at school:
'… thought we were supposed to be friends?’ Snape was saying. ‘Best friends?’
‘We are, Sev, but I don’t like some of the people you’re hanging around with! I’m sorry, but I detest Avery and Mulciber! Mulciber! What do you see in him, Sev? He’s creepy! D’you know what he tried to do to Mary Macdonald the other day?’
Lily had reached a pillar and leaned against it, looking up into the thin, sallow face.
‘That was nothing,’ said Snape. ‘It was a laugh, that’s all -‘
‘It was Dark Magic, and if you think that’s funny -‘
‘What about the stuff Potter and his mates get up to?’ demanded Snape. His colour rose again as he said it, unable, it seemed, to hold in his resentment.
-Deathly Hallows, Ch. 33
It's unclear what Snape thinks of Avery and Mulciber, as his reply to Lily is downplaying but doesn't defend their actions. We see Snape's indecisiveness later in the argument he has with Lily after he calls her a Mudblood:
'It’s too late. I’ve made excuses for you for years. None of my friends can understand why I even talk to you. You and your precious little Death Eater friends - you see, you don’t even deny it! You don’t even deny that’s what you’re all aiming to be! You can’t wait to join You-Know-Who, can you?’
He opened his mouth, but closed it without speaking.
‘I can’t pretend any more. You’ve chosen your way, I’ve chosen mine.’
‘No - listen, I didn’t mean -‘
‘- to call me Mudblood? But you call everyone of my birth Mudblood, Severus. Why should I be any different?'
-Deathly Hallows, Ch. 33
Although Snape does ultimately choose to become a Death Eater, we see in his reply to Lily about both Avery and Mulciber and later her assumption that they all want to become Death Eaters that Snape doesn't argue for or against her accusations, but instead is evasive and unsure of himself. He opens his mouth to speak when she accuses him of wanting to become a Death Eater, but then closes it again without saying anything - he can neither argue against her point, nor state clearly, let alone with any kind of conviction, that this is indeed his ambition. It can be argued that it's the passivity of his choice that lands him with a Dark Mark on his arm, and it's the active choice he makes to risk his life in order to defect from Voldemort's ranks and turn spy that defines his character and without which Harry could not have defeated Voldemort.
Harry, as the protagonist, is also significantly defined by the theme of choice:
'But, sir,’ said Harry, making valiant efforts not to sound argumentative, ‘it all comes to the same thing, doesn’t it? I’ve got to try and kill him, or -‘
‘Got to?’ said Dumbledore. ‘Of course you’ve got to! But not because of the prophecy! Because you, yourself, will never rest until you’ve tried! We both know it! Imagine, please, just for a moment, that you had never heard that prophecy! How would you feel about Voldemort now? Think!’
Harry watched Dumbledore striding up and down in front of him, and thought. He thought of his mother, his father and Sirius. He thought of Cedric Diggory. He thought of all the terrible deeds he knew Lord Voldemort had done. A flame seemed to leap inside his chest, searing his throat.
‘I’d want him finished,’ said Harry quietly. ‘And I’d want to do it.’
‘Of course you would!’ cried Dumbledore. ‘You see, the prophecy does not mean you have to do anything! But the prophecy caused Lord Voldemort to mark you as his equal … in other words, you are free to choose your way, quite free to turn your back on the prophecy! But Voldemort continues to set store by the prophecy. He will continue to hunt you … which makes it certain, really, that -'
‘That one of us is going to end up killing the other,’ said Harry. ‘Yes.'
-Half-Blood Prince, Ch. 33
There's a clear point made by the author through Dumbledore as her proxy here, that choice is what matters, not fate. It's Harry's choices that make him the person he is and lead him to eventually defeat Voldemort. While Snape, Voldemort, and Harry all can be contrasted through the lens of their choices, this does not make them foils, as it is the the theme of choice and how it is exemplified by each character that makes them unique, but their experiences and many of their character traits (boldness, bravery, a personal sense of conviction) that make them parallels of one another. Each of them occupies their own place on the spectrum between the light and dark that the series establishes, Voldemort at the dark end, Harry at the light, and Snape in the grey area between them.
OP goes on to say:
His character is all about male entitlement, he was obsessed with her at Hogwarts and then showed to have no boundaries as he went into her house to cradle her dead body in front of her traumatized kid.
There's a lot to unpack here, and it's particularly challenging because you can't provide textual evidence for something that didn't happen in the text. After the above scene from Ch. 33 of DH in which Lily ends her friendship with Snape, we never see them interact again:
'No - listen, I didn’t mean -‘
‘- to call me Mudblood? But you call everyone of my birth Mudblood, Severus. Why should I be any different?’
He struggled on the verge of speech, but with a contemptuous look she turned and climbed back through the portrait hole …
The corridor dissolved, and the scene took a little longer to reform: Harry seemed to fly through shifting shapes and colours until his surroundings solidified again and he stood on a hilltop, forlorn and cold in the darkness, the wind whistling through the branches of a few leafless trees. The adult Snape was panting, turning on the spot, his wand gripped tightly in his hand, waiting for something or for someone …'
-Deathly Hallows, Ch. 33
The scene in the corridor in front of Gryffindor Tower between a fifth year Snape and Lily leads directly into the scene where Snape begs Dumbledore to protect the Potters (which I wrote an analysis of a few months ago but is too long a subject to derail this post for). We see no more interactions between Snape and Lily, and therefore there is no canonical support for the idea that Snape behaved obsessively or failed to respect her boundaries.
There's also no mention of Snape going to Godric's Hollow at all after her death. Snape holding Lily's dead body is only shown in the film version of Deathly Hallows, and as mentioned, the films are not canon. That moment doesn't exist in the text and can't be considered in an analysis of Snape's character. The scene on the hilltop leads directly into the scene of Snape crying in Dumbledore's office:
The hilltop faded, and Harry stood in Dumbledore’s office, and something was making a terrible sound, like a wounded animal. Snape was slumped forwards in a chair and Dumbledore was standing over him, looking grim. After a moment or two, Snape raised his face, and he looked like a man who had lived a hundred years of misery since leaving the wild hilltop.
‘I thought … you were going … to keep her … safe …’
‘She and James put their faith in the wrong person,’ said Dumbledore. ‘Rather like you, Severus. Weren’t you hoping that Lord Voldemort would spare her?’
Snape’s breathing was shallow.
-Deathly Hallows, Ch. 33
This is the only depiction of Snape immediately following the Potters' deaths. The scene of him cradling Lily's dead body was Steve Kloves' invention and has no basis in canon. If anything, Snape's actions in canon can be interpreted to show that he respected the boundaries Lily set, and that even when her life was at risk he chose to go to Dumbledore - who he thought might kill him on sight - rather than talk to her directly after she ended their friendship. In addition, in all the information the text gives about the night Voldemort fell in Godric's Hollow and Hagrid collected Harry to take him to Privet Drive, there's no mention of Snape whatsoever.
There isn't much in the text to support the interpretation that Snape exemplified male entitlement either. So far we've seen him being as strict, if not milder, than other teachers at the school, his favoritism is also comparable to that of other teachers - implying it's more of a norm than an example of entitlement - and there are no canonical examples to support the argument that he was obsessed with Lily or violated her boundaries. Snape struggles to argue with Lily when she accuses and berates him, and the usual markers of patriarchal entitlement - silencing women, gaslighting, dismissing women's opinions, talking over them - are all nowhere to be found in any of their interactions. The only time we see him lash out at Lily is when he calls her Mudblood (OoTP Ch. 28) which, while inexcusable, he does under traumatic duress, and is not indicative of his usual interactions with her, as exemplified by the fact that she ends their friendship over it. As cited before:
'No - listen, I didn’t mean -‘
‘- to call me Mudblood? But you call everyone of my birth Mudblood, Severus. Why should I be any different?’
There's a clear implication that Snape has never called her this before. An argument can also be made that it speaks volumes of Lily's own biases, or perhaps her own affection for Snape (who, not long before this, was still her best friend), that she excused this behavior from him when it was directed at others, and only took issue with it when it was directed at herself. That, combined with Lily's own acknowledgment that they were "best friends" shows that Snape's relationship with her was a balanced, consensual one even when it became strained, up until their friendship ended.
Continuing with OP's points:
He only saw Lily as a trophy to be possessed, which you can see from the way he hated Harry, because Harry reminded him Lily wasn't his and that Lily had sex with another man.
There's no support for this in the text anywhere and is pure conjecture. I can appreciate it being OP's headcanon, but it's certainly not a result of studying the text and relying on it to form opinions, but rather seems to be OP projecting pre-conceived notions onto Snape as a character and trying to find justification for it. I've written a whole post extrapolating Snape's first class with Harry, but the tl;dr is that Snape, who grew up in muggle poverty and knew Aunt Petunia enough to guess that Harry didn't fare well in her care when he showed up at school bearing signs of neglect, likely expected Harry to have the same hunger for learning that he himself did at Harry's age. Instead, Harry couldn't answer a single one of his questions and showed no curiosity or enthusiasm towards being a wizard as far as Snape could tell.
Nevertheless, even though Snape did seem to dislike Harry, hate is an awful strong word given that it is revealed at the end of Deathly Hallows that Snape has risked his own life to protect him. This isn't particularly surprising when you consider that this goal was established as early as Philosopher's Stone, when Snape protected him, which Harry initially interpreted as Snape trying to kill him:
Harry couldn’t take it in. This couldn’t be true, it couldn’t.
‘But Snape tried to kill me!’
‘No, no, no. I tried to kill you. Your friend Miss Granger accidentally knocked me over as she rushed to set fire to Snape at that Quidditch match. She broke my eye contact with you. Another few seconds and I’d have got you off that broom. I’d have managed it before then if Snape hadn’t been muttering a counter-curse, trying to save you.’
‘Snape was trying to save me?’
‘Of course,’ said Quirrell coolly.
-Philosopher's Stone, Ch. 17
Again, the story is told through the lens of Harry's bias, but that doesn't mean his opinions of Snape reflect Snape's character. As another example, there's an implication in OoTP that Snape, having seen some of the Dursleys' abuse of Harry through his memories during Occlumency lessons, passed this information on in an effort to protect Harry, and that this is the reason why several Order members (Arthur Weasley and Moody in particular) show up at King's Cross at the end of the schoolyear and threaten the Dursleys to stop mistreating him. There seems to be no other explanation in the text for why these adults are suddenly aware of the abuse Harry experiences, except that Snape, who was abused as a child himself, and who is an Order member himself, is the only adult in the series who we see witness Harry's mistreatement firsthand. At no point in the narrative do we see Harry complain about the Dursleys to the adults he trusts or ask them for help, merely to spend his holidays away from them without explanation.
While Snape did indeed dislike Harry and often compared him to his father, his dislike for James had much more significant roots in bullying and trauma than in his concern for Lily's relationship with him. It's established in canon that James Potter and Sirius Black dislike Snape from the outset (as in the scene on the Hogwarts Express in DH Ch. 33). In their fifth year, Sirius - annoyed that Snape is so curious about where Lupin goes each month - tricks Snape into following the tunnel under the Whomping Willow to the Shrieking Shack, as Lupin tells Harry:
'Professor Snape was at school with us. ... Sirius here played a trick on him which nearly killed him, a trick which involved me -‘
Black made a derisive noise.
‘It served him right,’ he sneered. ‘Sneaking around, trying to find out what we were up to … hoping he could get us expelled …'
'Severus was very interested in where I went every month,’ Lupin told Harry, Ron and Hermione. ‘We were in the same year, you know, and we - er - didn’t like each other very much. He especially disliked James. Jealous, I think, of James’s talent on the Quidditch pitch … anyway, Snape had seen me crossing the grounds with Madam Pomfrey one evening as she led me towards the Whomping Willow to transform. Sirius thought it would be - er - amusing, to tell Snape all he had to do was prod the knot on the tree-trunk with a long stick, and he’d be able to get in after me. Well, of course, Snape tried it - if he’d got as far as this house, he’d have met a fully grown werewolf - but your father, who’d heard what Sirius had done, went after Snape and pulled him back, at great risk to his life … Snape glimpsed me, though, at the end of the tunnel. He was forbidden to tell anybody by Dumbledore, but from that time on he knew what I was …'
-Prisoner of Azkaban, Ch. 18
From this we can deduce that Sirius intended for Snape to die, or at least get severely injured, and that even as a grown adult Sirius doesn't regret trying to mete out this punishment to him as retaliation for curiosity. We can also deduce that Lupin was unaware of Sirius' intention and did not consent to be used as a weapon. For his part, Snape never did reveal that Lupin was a werewolf while at school, or even during that school year, until after Lupin ran amok on Hogwarts grounds, endangering others' lives, including Harry's.
There are other meta posts that go into Lupin's insecurities and vulnerabilities, but in short, he was grateful just to be allowed into the school as a student, let alone to have friends, and was in no position to challenge James and Sirius. Even as a prefect he didn't curb their behavior, as we see when he allows James to bully Snape later that year after their O.W.L.s:
'Leave him alone,’ Lily repeated. She was looking at James with every sign of great dislike. ‘What’s he done to you?’
‘Well,’ said James, appearing to deliberate the point, ‘it’s more the fact that he exists, if you know what I mean …’
Many of the surrounding students laughed, Sirius and Wormtail included, but Lupin, still apparently intent on his book, didn’t, and nor did Lily.
‘You think you’re funny,’ she said coldly. ‘But you’re just an arrogant, bullying toerag, Potter. Leave him alone.’
‘I will if you go out with me, Evans,’ said James quickly. ‘Go on … go out with me and I’ll never lay a wand on old Snivelly again.'
-Order of the Phoenix, Ch. 28
James acknowledges that he has no real reason to bully Snape and uses violence as a bargaining chip to coerce Lily into going out with him (James' behavior reflects much more entitlement than Snape's, in my opinion). He also chokes Snape with a bar of soap and then assaults him by dangling him upside down and removing his trousers (threatening to remove his underwear but we don't see it happen).
Lily herself refers to James as arrogant, and it's this trait, along with the trauma from James' bullying of him, that Snape perceives in Harry. He doesn't resent Harry for looking like his father because it reminds him that Lily had sex with another man, he resents him for it because of all the trauma James inflicted on him. The conflict-laden relationship between Snape and the Marauders is a significant driver of the story through several of the books and OP seems subjective to the point of being problematic in ignoring it completely and instead focusing Snape's dislike of Harry onto an invented idea of sexual jealousy that doesn't exist in the text.
It's never stated whether Snape had romantic feelings for Lily, or vice versa, only that they were friends. The closest we see to a hint of this is when “The intensity of his [Snape's] gaze made her [Lily] blush," or when “The moment she [Lily] had insulted James Potter, his [Snape's] whole body had relaxed, and as they walked away there was a new spring in Snape’s step …”
Lily's blush could be interpreted as implying she was attracted to him, or conversely that she didn't and felt awkward thinking he might be attracted to her. Similarly, Snape's relief at her insulting James can be interpreted as indicative of his attraction to her, or of him simply being worried about a friend hanging out with people he perceived as dangerous and was relieved to learn she wasn't putting herself in the way of danger by becoming friends with them. Although JK Rowling has said that her intention was for Snape's affections towards Lily to be romantic, and that she may have returned his affection had he not chosen the path he did, this is - like the note about Snape's father whipping him - extratextual and more of an interesting fact than a bit of canon to be extrapolated from the text.
Finally, OP says:
His interest in the Death Eaters was only secondary to his obsession with Lily and I think Lily rejecting him pushed him toward joining the Death Eaters, because, once again, his male ego was bruised and he needed to replace it with something else.
We've already seen that Snape's interest in joining the Death Eaters was a big part of Lily's reason for ending their friendship. Therefore, logically, Lily's decision didn't push him towards becoming a Death Eater, but rather isolated him from having any support system outside of the DEs. She didn't reject him, because rejection is the refusal or dismissal of another person's advances or proposal. They were friends, meaning they had a mutually consensual platonic relationship. Lily therefore didn't reject Snape, she ended their friendship and, as already stated, nothing in canon implies he didn't respect her boundaries.
As we have also seen in canon, Snape was bullied at school and had, at best, a neglectful and dysfunctional home environment in his childhood. In addition, he shared a dorm with students actively interested in becoming Death Eaters, and his one social lifeline away from them was cut off when he called Lily a Mudblood. What OP interprets as Snape's male ego being bruised is actually a much more complex set of social and emotional factors being described throughout the series to eventually reveal the profile of a character - young Snape - who was a vulnerable youth primed for radicalization by a violent faction of zealots. Although the enforcement and upholding of patriarchal norms is often a huge element of these kinds of social movements, that didn't seem to be the driving force for Snape based on everything we learn about his character. Instead, what we see is a boy who comes from abuse, lives in abuse at school, who loses all the support systems that might give him an alternative to the fascist cult he's being radicalized into which - if it's like most hate groups - would have been more than welcome to both take him in and help him cut his ties to anyone else in his life he might escape from them to.
It also goes against the argument that Snape was sexually obsessed with Lily that he continued to risk his life in order to protect her son an defeat her murderer for almost two decades after her death. He knew it would neither bring her back from the dead nor bring about forgiveness, and it goes without saying that sex was no longer an option. Framing Snape's motivation as obsession dismisses the realities of the complex and meaningful relationship we form as people, and the lasting, transformative influence we can have on each other, which is what Snape and Lily's story illustrates.
Finally, OP concludes with:
He remained mysterious up till the end and his back-and-forth with treason was very compelling to read about. So I hate him (as a "person") but he is such a good character narrative-wise and he is very interesting to study
OP openly admits to hating Snape, ie. having a bias against him, while stating he is "interesting to study" - except no part of their answer has shown that they've actually done so. Their arguments are unsupported in several ways, one being that they don't offer any evidence, and the other being that none can be found in the source text. What's ironic is that OP seems to resent Snape's subjective bias against Harry (and misinterpret his reasons for it in baseless ways) while also showing the exact same kind of bias against Snape themselves. You don't have to like a character by any means, but claiming that the kind of unfounded, superficial, and unsupported opinions that OP stated in their response have a basis in any kind of study of his character is ludicrous and an insult to the intelligence of anyone reading it.
#long post#I'd say sorry to OP for ripping into their post like this but they think people disagreeing with them politely is mean and hateful so#but yeah sorry not sorry when your argument is so unfounded that it can be shredded with an entire cited essay then maybe#reconsider the claim that your opinions have any basis in study#and look I don't think OP is stupid by any means I think they knew exactly what they were doing and that's why I decided to argue them#even if they won't see it#I usually don't tend to argue with haters and prefer to spend my allotted hellsite time delving into meta but this one got to me
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That Troll Accusing P/T fics and Trek Fic Writers Blogs (Including me) of Racism could be a Right-Wing Bot.
Edit (4/16): I would like to emphasize that i really hope this theory is not true. It stemmed from having had multiple friends and acquaintances in the voyager fandom (white and not) be suicide baited and otherwise harassed with vague accusations of racism over the past year, (for P/T primarily, but other ships and characters on occasion too) yah we did cycle through a lot of explanations. Ultimately our anon(s) being someone with either a malicious motive or an extremely ill thought out and unproductive approach, were the explanations that wound up making the most sense. the content of the anon asks and comments i am refering too has been both vague and painful, and further, never came from a real ao3 or tumblr account. these also came with no evidence based points for the fic writers to work on.
I do not believe this theory below to be anywhere near the most plausible. but it is the only conclusion we could make sense of for a slew of similar anon messages that, at the end of the day, did a lot of hurt without making any concrete points that writers could take action on. By making this analysis, my hope is not to convince you all that a right wing troll is out to get voyager fic writers. Instead, i hope it comforts writers who have gotten similar attacks and helps them to dismiss messages that come with harassment and suicide baiting, rather than evidence based points. And i hope if there are real people behind those anons that seeing this analysis helps them to reconsider the effect their approach is having.
Original Post from 3/2
At first I thought I was paranoid post-2016 and 2020, but now I've been hit a couple times and seen comments on more of the affected fics. And I'm seeing concerning themes.
I make a couple of assumptions here: 1. My anon (whom I will refer to throughout as "The Anon") is the same each time. 2. The Anon is the same actor or belongs to the same group as The Anon troll commenting on P/T and some J/C fics.
The Anon as a Bot Evidence:
1. The Anon accusations are sweeping, but generic. They do not use in-fic textual evidence to justify their comments. You write P/T: You're a Tom apologist. You think Belanna is his exotic wife. You justify your blatant anti-latina racism by casting her anger as an inherent a Klingon trait. You write J/C: You think Chakotay is a noble savage and fetishize him. You write Harry Kim: You're infantilizing him.
These tropes and stereotypes are legitimate concerns that fic writers should care about and should be mindful of. These accusations on the other hand are not legitimate. They are left as guest comments or anonymous asks on fics heedless of the fic content or writer's background or track record. The AO3 comments do not reference fic content. They are repeated across all impacted writers. They target new and veteran writers alike. They target fics regardless of rating.
2. Comments that appear to reference fic specifics go no farther fic tags.
This was harder to catch. But a P/T fic tipped me off last month. It was tagged "Tom & Belanna & Miral". The Anon's first comment on that fic dove in accusing the fic of incest. This showed both that the anon had not read the fic content - they also didn't understand the difference between a / tag and an & tag. (Which also means the programmer of the tag-reading bot or human actor creating tag-based comments is not literate in how fandom ship tags are structured - they may not be a fan at all!)
3. The Anon never replies. Not on AO3 or on Tumblr. (All AO3 comments from "The Anon" seem to stick to the automatically assigned Anon name or use a generic, short first name like "Sam").
Exceptions to this - the rare ocasions where someone sympathetic to the anon replies break from the distinctive patterns of The Anon. Replies come from either burner accounts or guests with more unique names. And these replies are both A - fewer and far between - suggesting they are a different actor - and B - by and large quite serious and thoughtful. I take them to be real people, legitimate fans concerned about racism, caught up in the crossfire.
4. The Anon uses language intended to engender right-wing sympathies and white-moderate anger.
The Anon sent this in their message to me the other day. I will bold the relevant passages.
"You’re the perfect example of the kind of white person who ruins fandom for everyone else, a nasty racist bitch who cares more about their shitty fanfiction than the feelings of actual people of color. Keep using your precious freedom of speech to fetishize brown men I guess
"The kind of white person": This anon has no proof of my race and proof doesn't matter to them. (They have targeted writers of color and white writers alike) They are indiscriminant because they are hoping some of their targets are white women. They are also attempting to out-group white women from the rest of fandom - trying to engender in me feelings of being alienated from my community.
"Nasty racist bitch" "Nasty woman" incidentally is what Trump famously called Hilary Clinton during a 2016 debate. Calling me a racist is there to put me on the defensive (and to alienate me from my coalition) Im meant to feel shocked and disheartened by this accusation. And in a way, keeping this generic serves a purpose. A lack of specificity makes it harder for me to defend myself. "Bitch" is there to trigger my fear/anger response. It is also assuming my gender - again. The anon doesnt care if they accidentally sent this hate to a man or nonbinary person or a person of color. they are betting that at least a plurality of targets will be their key white woman demographic.
"people of color" - while it is correct terminology - is also terminology of the US left/democratic wing. By using this term the Anon is in-grouping themselves with the left - trying again to make me feel like an outsider.
Finally, the kicker is the Freedom of Speech part of this ask.
The Anon is using the concept of free speech here in the same way that the MAGA crowd does, to mean that I ought to be able to say whatever I want regardless of how it hurts others, rather than the legal term's actual definition - the right to critique one's government without being jailed or killed.
By accusing me of caring about Freedom of Speech this way they're not trying to make me feel guilt - theyre trying to hurt me, make me angry, and guide me to sympathize with Republicans. They are using the term this way to push me to think of my fanfic in terms of free speech and thus to agree with Republican freedom of speech talking points. Or if I reject the accusation - to feel torn between Left and Right.
The Anon is trying to sow discord. Theyre employing the same tactics that broke the Womens March movement in 2021, and that pervaded so many Facebook groups and twitter in the last two US election cycles. They are using tactics honed to cleave apart progressives and moderates.
My only question after all those realizations was: why the fuck are they doing this to such a niche group as star trek fanfiction writers.
And then it hit me.
The Anon's Motive: Trek Fic Writers are a Target Election Demographic.
By and large, US fan writers of ships from 90s star trek are women, often millenial and gen x women, many likely to be suburban. And yes - more likely to be white. In short we are part of the same demographic Trump lost in 2020 and needs to either win back this year, or try keep from going to the polls.
You can tell me I sound ridiculous - I think this whole stinking situation is ridiculous. I'm not unaware of how fringe a theory this is. I've been taught to always assume incompetence before malice. And for a while I considered that maybe The Anon was genuine. Maybe they had good intentions and poor execution. I'm sure I could write characters of color better (I am not afraid to admit that I'm still learning. Being wrong isnt something to be afraid of). I wanted this to be the case actually, but I have too much evidence and motive in favor of malicious bot tactics to ignore.
I have tried so hard to think of a reason I'm wrong. Except that all the pieces make sense. No fic / writer specific grievances have been aired by The Anon. They hit the same points every time, again, without textual evidence. They never reply. They chose words that wound and inflame but that never say anything specific about the fic or writer.
And wouldn't it be damn convenient for the Trump camp if a bunch of progressive and moderate US star trek fans decided not to vote because they were disheartened by being accused of racism and felt alienated from the democratic coalition.
This is a niche community. But we likely arent the only targets. And as a friend reminded me tonight, it doesnt take much to move the needle.
#paris/torres#star trek fandom#the troll anon#racism#if you do happen to be the anon the easiest way to prove im wrong is to make a burner account and come talk to me#tell me what parts of my fics you found problematic im really not afraid to hear it
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