#I'm really overinvested

[shayvaalski]

a weird thing no one tells you about becoming a parent while being a person that gets overinvested in media is that you will, quite abruptly, exit the type of media people write thoughtful fanfiction and meta about, while -- and this is key -- not becoming any less consumed by the desire to consume thoughtful fanfiction and meta about the media you're currently deeply invested in

what i mean by this is that every time mint and I listen to the podcast we've both pairbonded with i am Compelled to either check the tumblr tags to see what people think about the latest expansion of the podcaster-focused framing narrative, or look for Little Hedgehog and Bebe fanart, or search AO3 to see if anyone has really like, dug into the complicated sibling relationship between the proprietors of competitor business The Sleep Railway and The Sleep Train

and they NEVER HAVE

[vegaseatsass]

So one of my favorite underrated elements of Gap was just how much damn fun the group of friends is. Raucous mean girls who turn their bullying to good when they become the lesbian village it takes to raise a Sam. I never finished Secret Crush On You but the friends groups in that were also the stars of what I saw of the show. So I'm really really really happy Idolfactory is continuing this trend in The Sign! The groupchat cannot shut UP about Yai. Laura called him revolutionary: the first straight man hag. We cannot get enough.

[dayurno]

agh….. there are a lot of little things about kevin’s treatment in tkm especially that really hurt me, but the whole situation with telling wymack is the worst of it. give our boy a break 😭😭😭😭 he’s struggling!

SO MEAN TO HIM i was just talking to luni liaisun about this yesterday but the way kevin is blamed for so many things that are not at all his fault (neil going to evermore out of his own volition, kayleigh hiding that he's wymack's son, neil asking him to lie about his past and not tell the foxes that he's the butcher's son) and subsequently isolated from the group because of that is insane LOL i think kevin and andrew get a pretty similar treatment from the upperclassmen but by the end of tkm andrew has been 'humanized' to them through neil while kevin hasnt yet shown the threshold of humanity needed to be treated like a person worthy of grace and understanding

this is mostly a personal opinion and can be totally disregarded from canon intentions but to me kevin's isolation from the foxes is very relevant to my own experiences of navigating the world while noticeably neurodivergent, and its one of the things that brought me closer to kevin's character in the first place. i think while reading it is easy to agree with how the world at large (and even kevin himself at times) thinks kevin is, but kevin's crime really is that he's weird even among people who are weird; he's annoying and he's overinvested and he's programmed and when you're neurodivergent that's three of the top reasons why people choose to deny you kindness and humanity and understanding. i'm not sure where i was going with this and i'm not the best at articulating my thoughts on this subject, and of course kevin is annoying and intense, but that's not. illegal. you know? a person being annoying to you shouldn't make them an easy target for all of your frustrations and that's, ultimately, a very Autistic Experience

[terrence-silver]

Can I be blessed with some CK Terry and college beloved headcanons Bea💚 I just started my freshman year of college recently and I'm already getting stress acne it's only week 2 🫠 (also you’re sticker on my water is helping me get through my criminal justice class half the time lol I'll just stare at it looking at all the beautiful detail keep up the amazing work!)

-

― You sure you don't your diploma simply...you know, bought? Because that's the first idea that permeates Terry Silver's mind; just cut to the chase and buying the damn thing for you like he would buy a new race car or a new mansion. Maybe give the college or university in question a tactical 'generous grant' that leaves them indebted to him, as a benefactor, doing so to such a high degree letting you graduate under mysteriously premature circumstances is simply a given. Is it unfair? Yeah. Is it sleazy? Yeah. Does Terry care? No. In fact, the notion that it's morally wrong makes the whole idea more attractive as a prospect to him. Maybe he should simply charmingly threaten the head Dean if the place proves to be incorruptible, which only makes his desire to corrupt all the more ardent; whatever the case, Terry might see the college as an obstacle to himself. All the time beloved's investing focusing on exams, learning, studying and extracurriculars is time not spent with him, which is the way it should be. But, it isn't. And that's a problem. He's a territorial person, you see, and everything could potentially be a threat; even college.

― As a result, he undoubtedly mentions the whole 'lemme buy your graduation credentials for you' plan very, very, very often. On the daily. Tries to practically muscle you into it, not taking 'no' for an answer, having a whole onslaught of reasons why his standpoint is correct and why you're, in his opinion, making this harder for yourself than it really should be; he comes off strangely compelling and logical about it too. Why spend years and years on this when he knows the right people who know the right people. Not that Terry Silver's against education; on, in the public eye he's the patron of all causes noble (supposedly), so clap in awe of him, except, in his own private life he's just too greedy to share those he considers his. Too possessive to be eclipsed. Look at you; your face is breaking out in zits from the stress, oh, beloved; that right there, among many other factors is a tool of manipulation Terry might use to have you capitulate and let him have his ways because these pricks and punks are here stressing his beloved out to the degree the stress is physically manifesting all over their face. There should be hell to pay for that. He wants revenge on your behalf.

― But then again, as an upside Terry Silver does enjoy having a beloved currently in college because for the lack of a better word, it's hot, regardless if this is a very young post-Nam era Twig, 80's Terry Silver or old man Terry, the fact beloved's still in education has major fetishistic qualities for him and not to lie, said fetishistic quality only ripens and gets stronger as he ages. Old man Terry, for example, is fully aware the fact he's with someone who's still in college would raise eyebrows, run into critique and even downright judgement and disgust but he doesn't care and in fact, he relishes in it for that specific reason. It's quite literally a trope as ancient as can be and he realizes this, playing into it majorly; an older man and the student. Just the sound of that makes him gleeful and turned on and while he might be meddlesome and feel jealousy over the actual educational aspect of...you know, getting an education, the sound of it suits him far better than the practical aspects. Suffice to say he's as invested in this as beloved themselves is, if not more. Everything beloved does is something Terry himself is overinvested in more than beloved.

― Means that while he'd might wanna keep beloved away from school, or invent tactical shortcuts to the whole process by pretty much buying everything for them and presenting it on a silver platter (because, why not, if he can?), but he sure likes the sound of beloved being in college and regardless if beloved consents to this or not he will absolutely meddle, one way or another, into all of this. He'll be there making donations to the university, becoming a backer and a sponsor for various projects around campus, he'll be attending opening ceremonies, holding speeches, probably opens a Karate extracurricular headed by Cobra Kai just to drill the point home that this is now his territory through you and if it's at all possible, he'll invest so much into this philanthropic deeds around this college that these people will have no choice put to put up his framed picture in the lobby. It's like Terry Silver's presence infects everything it touches. Beloved's only a freshman and my god, the man they're with is already in everything. People who fight against it or speak up on the subject? Promptly fired. Maybe they get embroidered in a convenient scandal not of their making if Terry decides that's more fun for him.

― It's obsessive, yeah, but Terry loves beloved. Adores them. In his own messed up, dark way, sure. This is how his devotion manifests; this university? Better be honored to have someone his within their walls. That he's allowing beloved to grace this place at all. Better give them a preferential treatment as a result. They better be just as biased as he is. Yeah, they better be afraid on the downlow because he's butter up, shake everyone's hand, lowkey threaten everyone, bribe whoever he feels needs it and weave everyone into their web to ensure this happens. You want this education? You'll have it. And you'll have it however you want on whatever terms. He could've bought it for you and he's infinitely disappointed you didn't accept that route (or...maybe you did) but these people will worship the very ground beloved walks upon because he'll ensure that happens through his power and influence; the long reach he has. Might not be immediately apparent, but when you're loved by someone as influential as Terry Silver, it pays off. When your significant other's picture hangs in the hallway? People tend to notice. Might just make you valedictorian by the end of your educational career because Silver money just lined the halls of that school.

― Nothing's for free, see? Beloved does graduate with exemplary grades and achievements regardless if they actually did or if, uh, the system of said university got a couple of well meaning nudges in the right direction, if you catch my meaning. If Terry made the right people a couple of offers they couldn't refuse. They're their generation's best student. Probably got handled multiple accolades and awards too simply because Terry had the itch to see them happy and beaming. And he'd do it. He'd do anything to make them content and fulfilled. He's undoubtedly with them, right there on that stage once they graduate because he's invited up to hold a speech. An audience of hundreds of students know beloved belongs to him. Heck, they might even know a great many of these achievements are a source of complete and utter nepotism, but Terry doesn't care. He's amused by it. Totally gleeful like a smug snake. He laps it all up. Sees it as feeding fuel. He crapped over the system in effect in the name of devotion. Beloved's all smiles. Terry's won in their name by any means neccessary. So, that's all that matters to him. If they said 'burn down the campus' he'd just as easily do that as well, so everyone should count their blessings all beloved wanted was a diploma and a graduation cap and not blood.

― 'Perfect' Terry would purr looking over beloved's immaculately perfect grades in the back of his limousine he's totally bribed out of the professors for them. All the better if beloved's just naturally that accomplished and talented, but my god, if they aren't, the whole world's gonna be what Terry Silver wants it to be because he'll make it so.

[bread--quest]

hey.

do you like weird obscure bits of history? do you like first hand accounts of historical events? do you like getting emails from 1800s real estate agents in distress? do you know what the aroostook war is? do you want to?

maybe you should subscribe to my substack! i had to read this journal for school, and then i got really overinvested, and now i'm dragging you all down with me! updates start TOMORROW but will be really really short for the first few days so you won't miss much if you forget it's okay. it's alright. i love you

sign up to get emails from my new historical blorbo who's so obscure he doesn't even have a wikipedia page

[mamawasatesttube]

When/how do you think Kon started like exploring his gender? Did having to change his look to fit in at smallville have smth to do with it?

you just walked into my askbox and went "i'm gonna activate tumblr user mamawasatesttube's trap card!" i hope you know this.

so YES, firstly. i do believe changing his look to fit in with everyone in smallville had something to do with it, BUT. it's not just a case of "oh small town = conservatism, homophobia, transphobia, etc". it has more to do with him having a civilian persona for the first time in his lifie, and not knowing how to do that. through all of his time in sb94, he's never really fit in with "normal people" - he was always held apart from his classmates in hawaii, then he simply never interacted with regular people while living at cadmus, and finally when he lived in metropolis in the suicide slum it was. well. not good.

so moving to smallville and having a secret identity to protect - not just his own but superman's secret identity - is a lot of pressure to perform a role he's never played before. it's not even so much about small town attitudes so much as it is just the contrast of what he's used to and the concept of "normalcy". superboy, the clone of superman who's a hero and a celebrity, has never had to worry about being normal and not drawing too much attention. conner kent, on the other hand, has to worry about that very much.

he takes out his earring. he cuts off the longer parts of his hair and lets the shaved part grow back in. he grows keenly self-conscious of being a "geek" and making too many references to this or that media. for the first time, he starts paying consistent attention to what other people think of him and how they talk about him. it's not the same as his identity crisis before, when he just was worried about being "cool" and got a makeover about it; this is about something bigger than him, something so much more important than just his reputation. he has to keep this secret. it's not freedom, at first; it's a burden he's trying to learn to carry.

that's part of why he resents smallville at first. it's a whole new set of rules and restrictions and boxes he needs to fit into. and he's used to rules and restrictions and fitting into boxes, but these ones are nothing like the ones he knew before, and the stakes feel so much higher. he misses his "freedom" from before, so he hates "conner kent" and what smallville represents.

at this point, he doesn't really know that his gender and sexuality are involved in this repression. he just knows the way he dressed before and the way he acted before get attention in a way he doesn't want now, and he assumes any feelings of ickiness and missing anything are just tied to his whole resentment of smallville. it doesn't click for a long time. he just straight up doesn't clock that he has any gender-related feelings outside the norm, and he doesn't register any of his attraction to guys as attraction. he's deeply in his "overinvested straight ally" phase (think of his interactions with hero cruz - defending him from sparx and telling her homophobia is Not Cool!!).

and then he dies.

to establish a core part of my feelings about smallville... as someone who grew up queer in small town america, i am Deeply critical of everyone who dismisses rural areas as entirely conservative, intolerant, and bigoted. these people definitely do exist in rural areas, sure, but they are by no means the only ones (and they also very much exist in urban areas, too). to that end, i don't think smallville is just a ~homophobic little town~ where kon is miserable in the closet because of external pressure.

i do think kon does languish miserably in the closet for a time. but it's a lot of internal pressure and identity issues at play, not just the worry of homophobia. he spends a lot of time introspecting after his resurrection, learning to love his life with ma; it's during this time that i think he starts to actually realize his feelings about himself are queer feelings.

one of my personal favorite headcanons is that the first person he ever admits any of this to (first that he thinks he's into guys, bc that's the first one that he actually puts together) is hero cruz. hero is definitely the friend who's been out the longest, and very possibly (though ofc this can depend on personal hcs!) his only friend who's out at this time, given that he and cassie Just broke up.

now a major reason he struggles in the closet here is the idea that being queer as conner kent would mean deviating from the "normal" as conner kent. and conner kent is supposed to be a very normal guy, to fit in and fade into the background, to not draw attention. and that's his major hangup. it's easier to consider if superboy could come out than for conner kent to come out, because superboy has never been normal. he's always been set apart. but conner kent? conner kent has a vital secret to keep. he doesn't want anyone looking at him.

he finds it harder to accept queerness as a civilian than as a hero bc as a hero he's already "weird" and "alien" (literally), right. he can be loud and proud and obnoxious there and it doesnt matter! but conner kent is supposed to be ~normal~ and not like kon-el. conner kent is keenly aware of everything that makes him not fit in, and for a long time those things bring him uncertainty and shame because he is still struggling to try and figure out how even being a civilian works, let alone living a civilian life that's """abnormal""". it takes him a hot minute to work through this.

and then senior year, there's rumors going through smallville high because this one guy wanted to bring his boyfriend to prom but the school prom committee head teacher wouldn't sell a couple's ticket to two boys who are known to be dating despite selling them to plenty of girls who say they're just going as friends, and now a bunch of students are protesting by getting same sex couple's tickets and insisting on going actually as couples, and of course kon has to join in on that, he will always stand up against injustice even as a civilian...

...and one thing leads to another, and conner kent finds himself making out with simon valentine in the back corner of the dance hall, and they crown him prom king despite it (or maybe because of it!) and he's stunned because he didn't know he was popular (because he's kind, and loved, and funny, and good) and he's still popular despite clearly being into men now, and it's not a bad thing in everyone else's eyes, and oh? that was allowed all along?

and it's freeing.

that's the first step to exploring gender. first he has to let himself admit to being queer at all, and admit to being okay with it rather than needing to repress it forever, and it's kon. of course that only happens once he can use "helping someone else" as the reason.

NOW back up a large step. there's a second component to all this i haven't dug into yet, and it's about fashion.

more to the point, it's about ttk. one of my Favorite hcs is that he practices it via fibercrafts, even before his death but especially after. first crochet, then knitting, then bobbin lace, slowly increasing the number of moving parts he's working with; he ends up making a lot of lace.

ma uses some of his little lace scraps as bookmarks. he makes a bunch of doilies and then table runners. it's genuinely great ttk practice, but really, they have a lot of lace. so kon starts learning to sew, so he can start making lace-embellished tablecloths and then some simple circle skirts and things for ma. they sell some of them at local farmers'/crafters' markets.

and kon starts wearing some of it himself. at first he's really self-conscious, but... it's something he made, and he's proud of it, and it does look really good, so. fuck it. he and ma can go to do groceries wearing matching skirts, right? (circle skirts are easier to sew than pants, okay. pants have so much more going on. he's still teaching himself, okay!!!)

it takes him a LONG minute to realize that maybe some of the "oh, i do look good in this!" feelings might, in fact, be gender euphoria. as in, he doesn't realize it until after he starts unpacking his sexuality feelings and going ohhhh. conner kent is actually allowed to be queer and that's okay. only then does he realize that uhm... maybe conner kent is, like, extra queer. like, turn up the dial and add more spice.

with time, support and encouragement from friends and family, and some exploration, he gains more confidence in exploring presentation and actually thinking about gender. he doesn't really care that much about pronouns, but he Does hate being confined to traditional masculinity - he does enjoy being masc sometimes, but he hates the idea of having to fit in it as a box. he's much happier getting to flit around from masc to femme to all sorts of places in between. he finds it freeing.

okay i have rambled so much. this is more or less my idea for how the overall arc of kon exploring queerness goes, but im sure ive forgotten bits and pieces and will remember them within like 5 minutes of hitting post. but here we are here it is ive been typing on and off for like an hour now so im cutting myself off. there it is. my kon gender and sexuality thesis.

oh one other thing. also he loves to be young justice's babygirl. okay im done now

[olderthannetfic]

First as a disclaimer: I'm pretty sure I'm not an anti (I'm anti death threats and am fine with incest, age-gap, abusive ships etc)

However I'm probably still a social/political enemy for various reasons but you sometime post asks from people you disagree with I think and I think you might know this answer.

Anyway onto my question I'm the kind of shipper who likes canon compliant ships and looking for hints and stuff but these days it feels like everyone boasts about how much their ships deviate and poop on canon etc. Do other shippers with my mentality still exist and I just don't notice them (Outside of anti spaces) or are we actually a dying breed?

--

Eh. I think "political enemy" has a pretty fluid definition if one is really into playing politics. If you aren't out campaigning on a white supremacy platform, we probably have some goals in common.

I usually block people for being extremely annoying on a day I'm feeling hormonal or for attacking people particularly viciously in my comments, not for nominally being in some other camp.

--

I think the more canon-adjacent fandom flavors are actually really common.

They're a little lost in the tumult of "My headcanon is actually canon!!!" stuff on tumblr that we like to laugh at on my own blog.

They're also less common in oldschool m/m-shipping spaces because those are often inherently non-canon ships. In the past, it was because homophobic censorship wouldn't let anything be made. These days, it's because the flavor of m/m a lot of people like is more easily found by adding romance to a buddy canon than by trying to add buddy-ness to a romance canon in many cases, and this can be true even if canon is original m/m aimed at fandom types.

Here's the thing: oldschool m/m shippers tend to be particularly prone to building community spaces and recording our history precisely because it's so easily erased and so often attacked. This type of shipper also tends to have more of a cohesive identity. That makes it far easier to name ourselves and set up little fiefdoms on modern social media.

I'm one of these people. Shittons of the people doing amateur fandom history work are. Much of the OTW old guard are. And lots of us know each other at least a bit, so if you're running into one of us, you're probably running into more of us.

--

However, that doesn't actually mean this type of shipping is the most common or that there have never been spaces devoted to something else.

That old Beauty and the Beast tv series with Linda Hamilton had epic canon shippers. So did Moonlight (the vampire tv series). So did and does Twilight.

A lot of these shippers had this as their first and possibly their only fandom and carried on being obsessed long after canon was over.

Lizzie/Darcy shippers put anything I have ever been a fan of to shame. No matter what the AO3 numbers show, this ship far, far exceeds the popularity of Destiel or any of the other m/m heavyweights.

--

I think the problem you're running into is that in the modern era of binging things on Netflix and regular joes being huge media geeks, analyzing canon in a nerdy way and obsessing over your canon ships is just how a big chunk of the population engages with media.

Fan theories that are closely tied to what was actually on the screen/page are the bread and butter of water cooler conversations and have been since The Sopranos and its ilk.

Yes, I know some fuck will immediately show up and go "Ahem, ahem, I am a GEEK and SPECIAL and the people around me never have intellectual conversations about media literally ever!!!!" just like every single time we have this conversation. But times have moved on, and being overinvested in canon theorizing just is a normie activity now, and that's great! Except when you want a special term and space to find your people.

The only time canon shippers really stand out from that is if they're extremely fic-focused, and then they often start straying farther from canon, especially if they stick around the same fandom for a long time. Either they start becoming more fans of some fic writer or they start wanting to diversify what they themselves are writing.

The really good close-to-canon fandom activities are at their best when lots of fans find the same currently-running canon at the same time and before canon itself passes its prime.

Even I started out on alt.tv.x-files, analyzing the shit out of season 2 and not caring much about non-canon things. (Though, admittedly, I was more NoRomo than MSR.)

--

That said, antis are not actually that canon-focused in most cases. They will do the "My headcanon is reality" thing as much as anyone. They just tend to spend a lot of time hating on explicit m/m and a lot of explicit m/m is of non-canon ships.

Honestly... anon... you might want to figure out what the latest CSI-ish franchise is and find the obviously-future-canon het ship from that. Those tend to get the 10 seasons of build up and fan theories that don't stray too far from canon.

This stuff is not only not a dying breed, but it's so common that one of the editors of NCIS delivered a deeply cringeworthy lecture at my film school about what "shippers" are and how the Tiva shippers affected the production.

People into those ships don't need tumblr: Major entertainment magazines are publishing their fan theories for them.

[hot-take-tournament]

Yanderes aren't for everyone, so I've included a content warning.

HOT TAKE TOURNAMENT!

PRELIMINARY #223

Submission 720

yanderes are good, actually

i know for a fact this is hot because the inverse take was validated earlier. but i'm also gonna justify it just because.

the yandere trope is good and cool. people bash it for being a glorification of abuse or "toxic" or basically... bizarre and disturbing. but have you ever stopped to consider consensual yandere tropes? because the problem isn't ACTUALLY the "yandere" behavior, it's that in "classical" yandere media, it's portrayed as unwanted or frightening to the recipient. the problem is that it's portrayed as unconsenting. but that isn't a problem that's UNIQUE to the yandere genre.

whereas, if you were to consider a consensual yandere relationship...

what if the recipient WANTED someone to be a little obsessive, controlling, devoted to them? what if, in all their devotion, the yandere LISTENED to feedback and catered to their partner's wants and needs? what if "yandere" is simply a trope designed for the weird, the broken, the overinvested, the traumatized? what if to be loved possessively is not a sign of abuse, but a metric of security? what if a yandere is simply a person who is too broken to be well adjusted to the conventional levels at which society expects them to love? what if that love is so WARPED by their lived experience that it appears bizarre and shocking and frightening to the public, but warm and intense and unrelenting, unyielding and securely present, to its recipient? what if, such a person could exist, that would only feel at ease with such a devoted and intense form of love? what then? what if being a yandere were about jealousy and selfishness and possessiveness and control, but moreover, about devotion and care and dedication and conviction to never leave, to care deeply and passionately even when it doesn't seem acceptable, to love in a way that feels safe and ensured.

the yandere trope represents intense and broken lovers and i unironically love it. i WILL die on this hill.

Can I... tell you a secret? It's kind of embarassing, so... keep it between us, okay? I said this poll was for everyone, but really, it was only for you... so I hope you liked it!

Maybe this is a little too forward, but I'd love it if you posted propaganda! B-but you don't have to, if you don't want to! Just being seen by you, being able to be near you... that would be enough... for now, that's enough...

And it's okay for you to reblog our favourite polls for exposure... it feels weird sharing our special things, having everyone see my love for you... but it makes me happy! I want them to know - to know that you're mine... But if you don't reblog them, that makes me happy too! It's like I get to keep you all to myself...

[RESPONSES TO THE ORIGINAL TAKE BELOW]

[severus-snaps]

Snape in the eyes of Pureblood Supremacists in Slytherin

Back at it again because I've had more thoughts following 'Mudblood' and Muggle-borns on Snape's youth and time in school (I started this what feels like so long ago, got overinvested, lost steam, and then just abandoned it - but might as well put it out there since I've made it Lengthy now. Welcome to part two of my half-baked metas, as it were).

A lengthy mixture of me projecting about Snape's early attitudes to blood supremacy and upbringing; the timeline of Snape's school years and the War; Snape's appearance and first impressions to his housemates (and others); Slytherin 'friendships' through the lens of what we see in the books from Harry's generation, and Snape's alluded-to 'friendships' with Lucius and the 'gang of Slytherins'; and the role of blood purity in Slytherin.

In A War Context

Going back in time for a moment, starting from the fateful night where the series begins:

31 October, 1981 Voldemort is vanquished. This is the same night that one-year-old Harry was sent to live with the Dursleys. We also see Snape crying in Dumbledore's office that night, in Snape's memories.

September 1981 Snape started teaching probably a month before that, age 21 (14 years prior to Umbridge's inquiries in the starting term of 1995).

Late Autumn/Winter 1980 (to early winter 1981) Snape turned spy when Voldemort decided the Prophecy applied to the Potter family. Scene on the 'windy hilltop' probably followed ver shortly after Snape finding out.

31 July 1980 Harry is born.

Autumn/Winter 1979 Snape overhears part of the prophecy and relays it to Voldemort.

"The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord approaches… born to those who have thrice defied him, born as the seventh month dies..."

[Note: I've made some assumptions. Trelawney tells Umbridge in September 1995 that she started work at Hogwarts "nearly sixteen years" ago. Hogwarts traditionally follows a British school calendar, with terms starting in September (autumn term) and January (spring term). Assuming she starts in time for a new term, if she started in the autumn (September 1979), and assuming the interview was some time before her appointment in time for a new term, her interview might have taken place in the summer of 1979, around June, July, or August - but she probably would've just said "sixteen years" instead of "nearly", so... If she started in the spring term (January 1980): Her interview could have been held in late 1979, possibly around November or December 1979, assuming that the intervew was held a short but reasonable amount of time before she took the role, and perhaps during the holidays. Seeing as JKR likes Halloween (aka All Hallows' Evening) as a date, she may well have delivered the prophecy on Halloween - and possibly the literal moment Harry was conceived. What a thought.]

However, I'm just as bad (if not worse) as JKR with numbers and dates, so please do correct me if this is total nonsense.

31 October 1979 Harry is possibly conceived, assuming a perfect 9 month pregnancy.

1979 Regulus Black dies. There's a flimsy bit of evidence to suggest Snape was Marked/started working for Voldemort in summer 1979 (imagine if it was Harry's future birthday lol) but really it could've been author error, putting Snape's joining the DEs (to my mind) any time from the aftermath of SWM onwards - but what use would Voldemort have for Snape when he's in school for another few years under Dumbledore's watchful eye, and has no money, information, or connections yet? (Unlike Regulus, who had a well-known, affluent Pureblood family, and the ability to use magic/research the Dark Arts at home as well as at school - this is, of course, assuming that Snape can't use magic freely at home because his father doesn't like magic or anything, much).

June 1978 Snape graduates from & leaves Hogwarts. "By the time [the Marauders] left school, Lord Voldemort’s ascendancy was almost complete. True resistance to him was concentrated in the underground organisation called the Order of the Phoenix..." [X]

1977/1978 Regulus Black joins the Death Eaters.

June 1976 "Snape's Worst Memory". Snape & Lily's friendship ends. Fear of Voldemort is already so ingrained that people won't use his name; Lily calls him "You-Know-Who". His followers are also widely known to be called "Death Eaters" by this time.

Early 1976 (approx.) The Prank. Shortly after, Lily 'accuses' Snape of hanging out with Mulciber and Avery. [Neither of these friends - nor any members of the 'gang' Sirius mentioned Snape belonging to - seem to want to hang out after exams or protect him from being hunted for sport during SWM (June 1976; during OWLS), nor are they ever mentioned to retaliate by a Marauder, so perhaps that 'gang' membership came later (c. 1978 in Snape's 7th year). Alternatively they were all already friends, but I'll go into more depth into the flimsiness of Slytherin friendships later. Just from info from the book text, it would be reasonable to assume the 'gang' attended school all at the same time - but Bellatrix was mentioned among them, by her married surname, and her generally given date of birth from wherever that sort of information comes from (seriously, I can't find a source that isn't the wiki) suggests that that she'd be too old to attend school with Snape - so who knows where Sirius got that from. There's also the fact that Sirius introduces Bellatrix as a Lestrange in the 'gang' context and not a Black, which suggests that she's already left school and married at a young age by the time Snape is in the gang. 'Early' marriage is normal for wizarding society after all - or perhaps it simply means that Sirius didn't want to associate her with his surname.]

Autumn 1975 - Summer 1976 Marauders 'finally managed' their Animagus transformations in their fifth year. [This had certainly happened by Summer 1976/SWM, as they had their nicknames by then, derived from their Animagi forms and Sirius wants it to be a full moon so they can run around.

As for whether the Marauders managed their transformations prior to the Prank, I've seen arguments saying that it is likely to have happened prior to the Prank, otherwise Sirius wouldn't know about the knot or how to slip past the Willow, and that Snape was "trying to find out what we were up to" which implies they were collectively up to something like becoming Animagi or running around, and in Snape's memories he says "they" sneak out at night, not just that there's something weird about Lupin.

On the flip side, perhaps it isn't likely they were Animagi by the Prank - otherwise it wouldn't have been a risk to James' life, since he could transform and be safe. (Of course, maybe James also couldn't transform in front of Snape without getting outed to Dumbledore and potentially getting all of them arrested and expelled or whatever, so it was a risk either way).]

Summer 1972 (approx) Lucius graduates. In the year(s) prior to this, Snape has presumably built some sort of friendship with him (enough for Snape to be considered Lucius' "lapdog"), which I'll go into later. If Lucius was a Prefect when Snape started, he'd have graduated from Hogwarts around the year of 1972/1973, after Snape's second year. Within seven years, by 1980, he was high-ranking and trusted enough by Voldemort to keep the diary Horcrux - (to open the Chamber, which, I assume, would destabilise the school to the extent that if Voldemort hadn't died, he'd have used it to take the school in the first war).

September 1971 Snape and Lily started at Hogwarts, aged 11. Lucius welcomes Snape to Slytherin. Voldemort "started looking for followers" around this time, and became more public in his agenda; at the time of Voldemort's death, the wizarding world had had "precious little to celebrate" for the past 11 years - and Voldemort had spent a few years even before that skulking about in the shadows, probably recruiting dark creatures and engaging in dark magic.

So, onto the show.

Pre-Hogwarts

Aged 11 (and probably for some time before that) Snape excitedly and somewhat naively hopes that he and Muggle-born Lily will be in Slytherin together. We can only speculate why Snape wants to be in Slytherin - perhaps because his mother was, since it tends to run in families. Maybe he's read somewhere that Merlin was a Slytherin and he has ambitions to be the next most powerful wizard of a generation (certainly seems to fit the Dark Arts interest, his experimenting, his disdain for reciting answers straight from the books, and his knowledge of curses/magic and wizarding society even before he attends Hogwarts). Maybe in line with that he's read about the Houses and thinks of himself and/or Lily as cunning and ambitious (he certainly thinks of them as "brainy", though he still didn't want to be in Ravenclaw, for example). Maybe it's mostly about 'rising' from his current situation, and he values the ambition to get there. In short, we have no idea what drew him to that House - but I doubt it's some desire at the age of nine to join a pureblood supremacist cult or to celebrate blood purity.

Snape's pause is often used by antis as a sort of gotcha for Snape already harbours blood supremacist views (as much as a child can 'harbour' anything; nature and nurture and all that. He'd have to have been taught). He's then spent two years getting to know Lily, seeing her (advanced) control of wandless magic and possibly training his own, and she's his only friend. He knows how talented she is; he can tell that being Muggle-born has no bearing on skill ("You have loads of magic"), and also likely knows from himself that being part-Muggle also does not influence skills. To my mind, Snape's hesitation when Lily asks if it makes a difference being Muggle-born suggests he might be aware of supremacist attitudes, but not necessarily that he believes them. I can believe that he'd dislike Muggles, but I doubt somehow that nine-year-old Snape, raised in a Muggle town, and his best friend the Muggle-born would've had too deep an understanding of the true extent of blood supremacy and how it could affect them, otherwise he probably wouldn't be suggesting she join Slytherin. Lily may be Muggle-born, but he's (at least) half Muggle himself, lives in the same place, isolated from wizarding society in almost the same way that most wizards are from Muggle society. As Draco might say, he's "never been brought up to know our ways."

But then, something is also going on with Eileen, which is why a witch is stuck in a less-than-stellar marriage with a Muggle who doesn't like magic, and living in poverty or distress severe enough to neglect her child - so Snape might know from being on the end of discriminatory attitudes himself, rather than simply holding them. Perhaps he'd seen his mother shunned as a blood traitor (after all, he's wearing his mother's clothes - where are the rest of the family? aunts/uncles/cousins? family friends?).

Eileen might be half-blood or Muggleborn herself, which is how she came to marry a Muggle. What we do know is that a pureblood supremacist witch would outright reject associating with Muggles or even visiting an area where Muggles frequented, much less forming a relationship, marrying, having a child, and living with one (Bellatrix even thinks that she and Narcissa must be the 'first of their kind' to visit Spinner's End). Maybe Eileen was from a dying-out Pureblood family like the Gaunts, viewing a Muggle man as an escape from something worse only for it to not work out... but even then, she'd still have liked a Muggle enough to abandon her family for one, which is more tolerance than you'd get from Bellatrix, for example. And even tolerant Purebloods don't really mix with Muggles; they just don't have enough shared understanding, and don't seem to know how the world would function without magic.

I'm personally very fond of the idea that Eileen might herself have been half-blood or Muggle-born - Hermione finds the name 'Prince' difficult to find in the school records, and they're obviously not a well-known family since Lupin says "there are no wizarding princes" - and he might have remembered if they were a family on a level with, say, the Malfoys, at any point in recent memory, and it seems unlike Hermione to not remember a name as easily memorable as Prince if she'd read about it somewhere. There's a whole host of options that perhaps Eileen's ancestors kept producing daughters and so the male name/line went extinct (as discussed with relation to the Peverells in the later books), but to me, 'first generation' (half and half) half-bloods, and Muggleborns, are the most likely to associate with Muggles in the first place - since wizarding society (with a few notable exceptions) tends exist fairly isolated from Muggles. Even Tonks - daughter of a Muggleborn man - seems to treat Muggles like some distant and foreign concept:

“Very clean, aren’t they, these Muggles?” said the witch called Tonks, who was looking around the kitchen with great interest. “My dad’s Muggle-born and he’s a right old slob. I suppose it varies, just like with wizards?”

Overall, Pureblood/Wizarding supremacist attitudes are commonplace in wizarding society, and take many, many forms - from a total lack of knowledge, to fascination, to disinterest and low-key derision of Muggles; from Slughorn's amused and impressed response to Hermione being skilled for a Muggle-born to Draco's frequent slurs; and Grindelwald/Voldemort's whole 'subjugate them all' deal to Harry's "they're just people, I guess??".

Snape could have been anywhere on that spectrum. In short, neither Snape, nor the wizarding world at large, know how much of a difference being Muggle-born was about to make.

First Impressions

This section is largely speculative, so be warned. I like to think it adds context.

When we're first introduced to Snape, and as his story unfolds, we get rather frequent descriptors of his appearance - more frequent than most characters.

The first description of Snape is "a teacher with greasy black hair, a hooked nose, and sallow skin". But the younger Snape had a "stringy, pallid look", being "round-shouldered yet angular" and with a "twitchy walk that recalled a spider", as well as "long oily hair that jumped about his face". Snape, when not in his robes, wears "clothes were so mismatched that it looked deliberate: too short jeans, a shabby, overlarge coat that might have belonged to a grown man, an odd smocklike shirt" that might have been his "mother's blouse". At various points, we're told over and over that he has "yellow teeth", an "overlarge nose", and "greasy" hair. As a kid, Sirius describes him as "slimy, oily, [and] greasy-haired". On the Marauders map, "Mr. Wormtail bids Professor Snape good day, and advises him to wash his hair, the slimeball"; an ugly git; and an idiot; and even on the train during their first meeting, James decided that Sirius was "alright" for a potential Slytherin but Snape wasn't, and that Snape was neither brawny nor brainy.

In terms of Snape's experience at school, he was already in for a tough time for the crime of looking a bit weird. But more than that, Muggles and Muggle-borns are clearly and repeatedly described by Pureblood supremacists as common, filthy, dirty, disgusting, and foul - which is just how people might see Snape.

Gaunt describes Merope as a "dirty Squib", "disgusting little Squib" and a "filthy little blood traitor" (and she's a Pureblood witch, albeit struggling with her powers); and in CoS of course Voldemort calls his father "a foul, common Muggle". We also see throughout the books "Mudblood filth", and "filthy little Mudblood" in particular reference to Muggle-borns such as Hermione and Lily (and to Bob Ogden, who is not Muggle-born). Bellatrix describes Harry as a "filthy half-blood" and when Alecto Carrow teaches Muggle Studies during the events of DH, she teaches that "Muggles are like animals, stupid and dirty".

Obviously, descriptions of Muggle-borns and Muggles aren't necessarily rooted in physical appearance - Marvolo and Morfin Gaunt are Purebloods, as are the Carrows and Crabbe and Goyle, and none of them are described as being lookers, exactly, or well-groomed. They mean it in terms of blood being dirty. But greasy and poorly cut hair, improperly fitting clothes, the difference between someone like James who was "slight, black-haired like Snape, but with that indefinable air of having been well-cared-for, even adored, that Snape so conspicuously lacked" - all of these would be just another marker of Snape's poverty, neglect, and 'common-ness' to add to the fact that he was a Half-Blood/half a Muggle, and had a Muggle-born best friend in a House that didn't just accept or ignore these things, but actively scorned them. By comparison, privileged and powerful Purebloods like Draco, Lucius, Bellatrix, Narcissa, Sirius, and James are described (Draco as a child/young adult, the others in adulthood) as more handsome or noble-looking, or in other ways that denoted their relative attractiveness as a shorthand for 'good breeding'.

And obviusly, whilst Pureblood James & Co. would never call anyone a Mudblood:

“Apologize to Evans!” James roared at Snape, his wand pointed threateningly at him. “I don’t want you to make him apologize,” Lily shouted, rounding on James. “You’re as bad as he is…” “What?” yelped James. “I’d NEVER call you a — you-know-what!”

...they would suspend a poor, ugly, slimy nobody upside-down and (threaten to, or actually) remove their underwear in front of a crowd just because "he exists" - just like the Death Eaters do to the Muggle woman, Mrs Roberts, at the Quidditch World Cup (and probably other Muggles). Voldemort calls this behaviour "a spot of Muggle-torture".

Similarly, Draco et al.'s comment on Hermione's teeth ("the long-molared Mudblood") [See here for another meta on Snape's comment on Hermione's teeth], and on Lupin's clothes, and just a general knowledge of how teenagers and people are, show that they're not above making physical taunts that could just as easily apply to a young Snape, mocking Hagrid's "d'you call this a house?", calling him an oaf; the Weasley's "hovel" of a home, and Lupin's clothes:

“Look at the state of his robes,” Malfoy would say in a loud whisper as Professor Lupin passed. “He dresses like our old house-elf.”

Snape would also, when not in robes, have been wearing the mismatched and odd clothing likely to have been mocked in the same way by a family affluent enough to own a house-elf, and god forbid anyone Snape went to school with find out that he lives in a "Muggle dunghill".

Snape was undoubtedly used to this sort of thing from his time in Cokeworth (looking at you, Petunia), which was why he changed his robes so quickly on the train. As a child and teenager, Snape’s physical appearance - marked by greasy hair, mismatched clothing, and an overall unkempt demeanour - likely exacerbated his social isolation (seen as a child lurking to make a friend) and fueled the mockery he likely endured both at home and at Hogwarts - after all, Petunia also mocked Snape's appearance, as well as the Marauders and Harry.

I think there's also a comparison here, if tenuous:

“Want one, Granger?” said Malfoy, holding out a badge to Hermione. “I’ve got loads. But don’t touch my hand, now. I’ve just washed it, you see; don’t want a Mudblood sliming it up.” “I was watching him, his nose was touching the parchment,” said Sirius viciously. “There’ll be great grease marks all over it, they won’t be able to read a word.”

More than many other characters I can think of (perhaps besides Umbridge the Toad - and Sirius' dog descriptors, owing to his Animagus form), Snape is also most often compared to, or described in a way that provokes imagery of, animals. Snape is described on more than one occasion as an 'overgrown bat'; his nose is described as a "beaklike protuberance"; and once he is described as a lapdog. He snarls perhaps more than any other single character in the series [snarl: (of an animal such as a dog) make an aggressive growl with bared teeth]; Snape yelps; he roars; he howls; he bares his teeth; and my personal favourite, when he's described as "demented, inhuman, as though he was in as much pain as the yelping, howling dog".

Of course, when animalistic descriptors like these are applied to people Harry likes - such as Sirius barking with laughter - they come across as more illustrative and amusing than insulting, and even where Sirius is described in a less flattering light as "very still, like a dog that has scented a rabbit", Sirius is still the one with the power, a hunter, and Snape is his prey. But that's decidedly the case with Snape - such descriptors are entirely used to be insulting and invoke specific negative imagery that paints him as out of control of himself and/or needlessly melodramatic, even when he is correct (e.g. Harry did help Sirius escape; Harry and Ron did break the law in CoS; Lupin did know more about Sirius getting into the castle than he was letting on; James really was that bad).

As readers we can recognise that Snape becomes agitated and enraged when distressed, triggered, or losing control of a situation, and when he is correct but not believed or trusted - but as anyone knows in a school setting, letting people see they're getting to you just leaves you open to further ridicule. It was this very 'overreaction' that James and Sirius especially liked to get out of Snape, and Peter liked to watch, which we see in SWM.

Here is also a section which illustrates all of these things; Snape is not only animalistic here, but we are reminded that he has a large nose again, he is ugly and unpleasant, melodramatic but not to be taken seriously despite being correct, and Harry/JKR/the narrative wants us to know it:

“Potter!” Snape snarled, and he actually turned his head and stared right at the place where Harry was, as though he could suddenly see him. “That egg is Potter’s egg. That piece of parchment belongs to Potter. I have seen it before, I recognize it! Potter is here! Potter, in his Invisibility Cloak!” Snape stretched out his hands like a blind man and began to move up the stairs; Harry could have sworn his over-large nostrils were dilating, trying to sniff Harry out...

In a real and fictional world (exacerbated by a Harry-centric narrative) where physical appearance and likeability is often seen as a shorthand for worth, goodness, or social standing, Snape's perceived lack of these things, combined with his half-blood status, friendship with a Muggleborn, and general demeanour, rendered him an easy target for mockery and othering - both within his own House, and from others like the Marauders - and would only serve to strengthen the association between Snape, his Muggle heritage, and common, dirty, animalistic Muggles in the eyes of pureblood supremacists/future Death Eater Slytherins.

With friends like these...

So what would entering Slytherin look like for a young Snape? He's spent the first eleven years of his life waiting for the moment he can leave Spinner's End, escape his father, and finally go to Hogwarts. And now he's here! A far cry from the less-than-friendly welcome he received on the train from James and Sirius, where he was insulted and tripped in a classic dickhead schoolboy fashion, Snape is warmly welcomed into Slytherin:

And Severus Snape moved off to the other side of the Hall, away from Lily, to where the Slytherins were cheering him, to where Lucius Malfoy, a prefect badge gleaming upon his chest, patted Snape on the back as he sat down beside him. …

I imagine that felt amazing to a young Snape after years of a challenging home life, dreams of escape, hopes of a welcome - after his father didn't like anything, presumably including him, or magic; after Petunia mocked his clothes and he seemingly had not made any other friends beside Lily. He's finally in uniform, the same as everyone else. A fresh start. Cheers as he approached from a whole table full of people. A literal pat on the back. He must have been having the best night of his life in that moment...

But setting that aside for a moment, I'm going to take a closer look at some of the Slytherin friendships that we do see. They're hardly loyal, warm, and close like the Trio, or even arguably the Marauders; nor does being a (fellow) Pureblood, or a fellow Death Eater, necessarily even grant you respect.

We see it often with Draco's so-called "best friends" (per Hermione in CoS), Crabbe and Goyle. They're not even on a first-name basis.

More often than not, Crabbe and Goyle are positioned to follow Draco, to be a receptive audience to Draco's jokes, and to act as his "cronies" or "bodyguards" - rather than his actual friends:

“Oh, this is Crabbe and this is Goyle,” said the pale boy carelessly (PS) “You know I haven’t, Goyle, how many times do I have to tell you?” snapped Malfoy. (CoS) Crabbe and Goyle looked at [Draco Malfoy] for instructions, thoroughly bewildered (PoA) Malfoy beckoned to Crabbe and Goyle, and the three of them disappeared (GoF) Crabbe and Goyle guffawed sycophantically (GoF) Crabbe and Goyle lumbering in [Draco's] wake (OotP) Behind [Montague] lurked Crabbe and Goyle ... Malfoy stood to one side (OotP) Draco Malfoy had slid out from behind the door, followed by Crabbe and Goyle (OotP)

They start to drift apart by HBP, after Lucius' fall from grace within the Death Eaters and the setting of Draco's task. Crabbe and Goyle aren't in on Draco's plans despite all of their parents being DEs; there's a sense of dissent; and they even start to talk back:

Crabbe and Goyle were gawping at Malfoy; apparently they had had no inkling of any plans to move on to bigger and better things (HBP) "... if you are placing your reliance in assistants like Crabbe and Goyle — ” “They’re not the only ones, I’ve got other people on my side, better people!” (HBP) Crabbe opened his mouth, but Malfoy appeared to second-guess what he was going to say. “Look, it’s none of your business what I’m doing, Crabbe, you and Goyle just do as you’re told and keep a lookout!” (HBP) [Harry] skidded to a halt and turned around. Crabbe and Goyle were standing behind him, shoulder to shoulder, wands pointing right at Harry. Through the small space between their leering faces he saw Draco Malfoy. “That’s my wand you’re holding, Potter,” said Malfoy, pointing his own through the gap between Crabbe and Goyle. (using them as human shields? - DH) “Potter came in here to get it,” said Malfoy with ill-disguised impatience at the slow-wittedness of his colleagues, “so that must mean — ” “ ‘Must mean?” Crabbe turned on Malfoy with undisguised ferocity. “Who cares what you think? I don’t take your orders no more, Draco. You an’ your dad are finished.” (despite this being one of their last encounters, Draco does appear upset by his death - DH)

[Also worth noting from the other meta I linked: "The power of the “Malfoy” name was the reason Crabbe kept Draco company. Now that that power is gone, he’s just some guy called “Draco”, so Crabbe drops him."]

And even on the train, where Harry is concealed beneath his cloak (OotP), doesn't feel especially warm, and everyone seems almost indifferent to one another (the scene is rather too long to quote here for the sake of an example, but I did stumble across this which was interesting). There's an element of tallying 'successes' or listing others' faults (such as the Weasleys being blood traitors, Harry being 'the Chosen one', Neville being... well, Neville, and whether Slughorn had gone senile). But fortunately I've also found another meta that goes into this in more detail; these people hang out together, but don't really come across as friends. Draco doesn't even tell Pansy his plans, and she's been on his arm for some time now; she seems surprised, and almost hurt, that she hasn't been told - but Draco doesn't really seem to care.

[Unrelated side note: I also think it's interesting that Zabini speaks "scathingly" about Draco's father, was invited to Slughorn's party (so has no known Death Easter connections), and is also an enthusiastic blood purist. (We also find out that his mother's seven ex-husbands died, so... maybe some of them were? Idk. It's just interesting that people would reject/be critical of DEs in that climate but still be a blood purist).]

Protected by their Pureblood status (I'll touch on that later, but have covered it in the first meta), Crabbe and Goyle cannot be targeted or treated the same way as Muggle-borns and Muggles; but that doesn't mean they get treated with respect. Draco may have liked Crabbe and Goyle, at least enough to be worried about whether or not they lived or died (although even that 'friendship'/comraderie evidently soured with the war despite being on the same side, because of Lucius' fall from grace with Voldemort) - but mostly he ordered them around. And they were content to follow, but started to dissent when Lucius (and Draco) are no longer the most powerful voices:

Who cares what you think? I don’t take your orders no more, Draco. You an’ your dad are finished.

We're also seeing these friendships under strain of a building war in which certain people are being recruited as Death Eaters where others aren't, and a majority of their parents are possibly (or certainly) already involved with Voldemort and/or his ideology; a perfectly reasonable parallel to Snape's own situation when he was in school.

But we're also often seeing these friendships not only through the lens of Harry, but in front of Harry, who acts as their sort of nemesis. It's perfectly possible that these friendships were warm and friendly and they enjoyed one another's company in the privacy of the Slytherin common room - but even in the scene in the common room (CoS), Draco does not seem to be impressed with their conversational skills, but still takes their blind acceptance of his leadership/sycophantic behaviour:

Far too late, Harry and Ron forced themselves to laugh, but Malfoy seemed satisfied; perhaps Crabbe and Goyle were always slow on the uptake.

My interpretation is that Slytherin friendships are more representative of the social circles of politicians or high society. You may be civil, friendly, and even end up real friends - but as soon as being friends with someone someone stops serving you, or damages your social standing, you’d turn on them to avoid any blowback. Friendships may exist but loyalty to a person isn't really part of it; there's an element of loyalty being to whoever has the most power in the room, be that from a combination of intellect, blood status, reputation, accomplishments, more powerful friends, or money.

Obviously, Snape is not entirely analagous to Crabbe or Goyle - being depicted as intelligent and curious and more outspoken, for starters - but also lacking those family connections, money, upbringing, or blood status. His only hopes were to build connections with more powerful people, and his intellect - especially since he's hardly described as having the size for physical intimidation or brawls. He was likely good at hexing people - I doubt he made all of those new spells just for fun - but JKR makes a point of telling us that it's James who hexes people for the fun of it, and showing us that Snape acts in retaliation ("Give me a reason").

And so Snape became, ultimately, a follower to more powerful people. We see Lucius in Snape's memories extending the metaphorical hand of friendship the moment that Snape is Sorted. Lucius is a Prefect, however, and several years older; no older teen wants to regularly hang out with an 11-year-old. And yet in adulthood Snape is described as "Lucius’s old friend"; Lucius "speaks most highly" of Snape to Umbridge; and Draco seems to like Snape already as a teacher, and even suggests him for headmaster in CoS, when "The appointment — or suspension — of the headmaster is a matter for the governors" - including Lucius:

“Sir,” said Malfoy loudly. “Sir, why don’t you apply for the headmaster’s job?” “Now, now, Malfoy,” said Snape, though he couldn’t suppress a thin-lipped smile. “Professor Dumbledore has only been suspended by the governors. I daresay he’ll be back with us soon enough.” “Yeah, right,” said Malfoy, smirking. “I expect you’d have Father’s vote, sir, if you wanted to apply for the job — I’ll tell Father you’re the best teacher here, sir —”

Perhaps Lucius, for the few years' overlap where Snape was in school and Lucius was Prefect, may have befriended Snape. But in a House where pecking order, prestige, and blood status play a role as well as age, this isn't certain. Far from being 'friends' in the traditional sense, Snape is once described as Lucius' "lapdog" (a small pampered pet dog; a person or organization that is influenced or controlled by another). Other metas and essays have pointed out may refer to a relationship like the Ancient Roman tradition of patronage:

Patronage (clientela) was the distinctive relationship in ancient Roman society between the patronus ('patron') and their cliens ('client'). The relationship was hierarchical, but obligations were mutual. The patron was the protector, sponsor, and benefactor of the client; the technical term for this protection was patrocinium. Although typically the client was of inferior social class, a patron and client might even hold the same social rank, but the former would possess greater wealth, power, or prestige that enabled him to help or do favors for the client.

Or, more worryingly, to 'fagging', which features in some older boarding school stories and may have been referenced, intentionally or not, by JKR:

Fagging was a traditional practice in British public schools and also at many other boarding schools, whereby younger pupils were required to act as personal servants to the eldest boys. Although probably originating earlier, the first accounts of fagging appeared in the late 17th century.  Fagging sometimes involved physical abuse  and/or sexual abuse. Fagging originated as a structure for maintaining order in boarding schools. Fagging carried with it well-defined rights and duties on both sides. The senior, sometimes called the fag-master, was the protector of his fags and responsible for their happiness and good conduct. In case of any problem outside the classroom, such as bullying or injustice, a junior boy's recourse was to him, not to a form master or housemaster, and, except in the gravest cases, all incidents were dealt with by the fag-master on his own responsibility. The duties undertaken by fags ... would include such humble tasks as blacking boots, brushing clothes, and cooking breakfasts, and there was no limit as to hours the fag would be expected to work. Later, fagging was restricted to such tasks as running errands and bringing tea to the fag-master's study.

I think it's more feasible that Snape was Lucius' "fag", or at the very least his errand-boy; it may well have developed into more of a patron/client style relationship in later years, post-Hogwarts, especially with Severus and Lucius both connected to the school (until Lucius was removed from the Board of Governors), and supporting one another in proposals/managing Slytherin house/Draco - and prior to that, working together with Severus reporting to Lucius under Voldemort.

In any case, Sirius calling Snape a "lapdog" implies that in some capacity Snape was influenced or controlled by Lucius in school. I say in school, because Sirius didn't even initially know that Snape was a DE, or that Snape was working at Hogwarts - suggesting that this insult was in reference to Snape's early years at school, before Lucius graduated.

Either option (fagging or patron/client) functionally makes Snape little more than Lucius' own personal house-elf, although perhaps he would've treated Snape better than a house-elf - despite his blood status and younger age, he was still a wizard. (And Draco does once say "this is servant stuff", possibly suggesting they also have servants/staff as well as a house elf; Voldemort's supporters are also called servants. Lucius was likely getting Snape 'trained'/grooming him). And of course there's Dumbledore's line to Voldemort feels particularly reminiscent of the type of relationship I'm imagining between Snape and Lucius:

“I am glad to hear that you consider them friends,” said Dumbledore. “I was under the impression that they are more in the order of servants.”

I'm firmly of the belief that it became more of a reciprocal patron/client relationship after school, rather than during; if Lucius had been 'polishing' Snape so that he appeared less... Snape, he didn't do well. Snape is 'clearly unpopular' and still 'greasy' as an older teen, and also Lucius and Snape's school years didn't substantially overlap.

This also ties into something I read somewhere (and please, god, if someone can find it I'd love to read it again) where it was argued that Snape appears to be well-spoken/polished enough for Bellatrix to be surprised (and disgusted) when she sees Spinner's End - as though she had no idea that Snape was from somewhere as run down as that. (She did, however, know that he wasn't Pureblood - she reckons that she and Narcissa must be the "first of their kind" to step foot in Spinner's End. To me, this also suggests further that Snape's mother wasn't Pureblood, because Bellatrix of all people would know the Prince name if she had been, and Snape may have raised it as 'evidence' for his 'worthiness').

Anyway, perhaps Lucius would've helped Snape go from the sometimes brash, stuttering teen to the (largely) soft-spoken, sharp-tongued adult - before he's introduced to the Death Eaters and Voldemort. Introducing a Snape who seems "common" or "lowborn" wouldn't have done Lucius any favours, but we can expect that Snape would otherwise have been considered useful; something I noticed on a recent reread is that Lucius was in posession of some poisons he thought might get him in trouble during the raids in CoS:

“You have heard, of course, that the Ministry is conducting more raids,” said Mr. Malfoy, taking a roll of parchment from his inside pocket and unraveling it for Mr. Borgin to read. “I have a few — ah — items at home that might embarrass me, if the Ministry were to call … and as you see, certain of these poisons might make it appear — ”

I like to imagine that Snape was the one who brewed them for Lucius since he's the character most often associated with poison.

Still, given the snootiness of the Malfoys, it is interesting that Lucius 'befriended' or otherwise used, groomed, or recruited Snape in the first place - and that other Pureblood Death Eaters just accepted it.

(Pure)Blood Is Thicker Than Water

I think we can assume that Lucius and Draco shared roughly the same views in school; Draco learnt it all somewhere, Lucius was in the same position of privilege and power in his school days, coming from a Pureblood family, and from what we can see of Slytherins of that generation, Regulus Black and his parents shared the view that Voldemort had the 'right idea', which apparently many Pureblood families did. These views aren't anything new; we can see that with Marvolo Gaunt. Voldemort just harnessed them, and he's probably been doing it since he was in school (with a Lestrange and an Avery in Slughorn's memory).

The Malfoys prided themselves on being purebloods; in other words, they considered anyone of Muggle descent ... second-class. (GoF)

Although the above quote is Harry's perspective, he's probably not wrong about the Malfoys' view on Muggle heritage. This is slightly complicated by writing from JK:

From the imposition of the Statute of Secrecy onwards, no Malfoy has married a Muggle or Muggle-born. The family has, however, eschewed the somewhat dangerous practice of inter-marrying within such a small pool of pure-bloods that they become enfeebled or unstable, unlike a small minority of fanatic families such as the Gaunts and Lestranges, and many a half-blood appears on the Malfoy family tree. [X]

Given the near-meaninglessness of 'half-blood', it's open to interpretation whether the Malfoys would allow someone with one Muggle parent, for example, to marry into the family; more likely they allow 'second generation' half-bloods or more, with some Muggle(born) ancestry but slightly removed by a generation or more. (Does this also mean the Malfoys are technically half-blood? The entire system is more political than scientific, but I expect they are 'technically' half-blood to stricter purists. Marvolo Gaunt would certainly think so: "Generations of purebloods, wizards all — more than you can say, I don’t doubt!")

But the attitude is what matters here.

Families like the Blacks, for instance, seem to have been more strict:

"If you’re only going to let your sons and daughters marry purebloods your choice is very limited, there are hardly any of us left. Molly and I are cousins by marriage and Arthur’s something like my second cousin once removed. But there’s no point looking for them on here — if ever a family was a bunch of blood traitors it’s the Weasleys." "While his will makes it perfectly plain that he wants you to have the house, it is nevertheless possible that some spell or enchantment has been set upon [Grimmauld] place to ensure that it cannot be owned by anyone other than a pureblood."

Walburga Black's portrait screams at everyone in the Order that they're Mudbloods, half-breeds, and scum - and the Order consists of Pureblood blood traitors, Half-bloods with two magical parents (good enough, perhaps, for the Malfoys - but not for the Blacks or Lestranges), and (one) Muggle-born. Of course, discrimination in familial marriage requirements and property owenership don't necessarily translate to how you'd treat people on a day-to-day basis, but the biases obviously inform it. Lucius, when trying to appear moderate in front of Fudge, is less openly hostile to the blood traitor Weasley family, for example.

But at Hogwarts, the teens and tweens are left unattended in their Common Rooms, free to be as cruel as teens and tweens can be without a guiding hand. In CoS, Draco is comfortable enough in the Common Room to discuss his family's illicit goings-on, brag about the fact that Lucius has additional knowledge about Voldemort's involvement in the Chamber opening last time, to say 'Mudblood' with careless abandon, and that he wishes Hermione dead, all in one breath:

“And Father won’t tell me anything about the last time the Chamber was opened either. Of course, it was fifty years ago, so it was before his time, but he knows all about it, and he says that it was all kept quiet and it’ll look suspicious if I know too much about it. But I know one thing — last time the Chamber of Secrets was opened, a Mudblood died. So I bet it’s a matter of time before one of them’s killed this time. ... I hope it’s Granger,” he said with relish. (CoS)

The Slytherin Common Room password, during a major event in which several students have already been Petrified by the Heir of Slytherin's monster, and messages left on the wall in blood, Draco manages to say "Mudblood" no less than 6 times in 3 pages - imagine how much it's being said in general, not just by Draco in the hour that Harry and Ron spend there. And the Common Room opens to a password of "Pureblood". Like I said in the previous meta, "there's a strong sense of pureblood supremacy communicated in that password that's only strengthened by the timing, echoing the Heir's agenda. In any case, it speaks to the entrenched nature of Pureblood ideology of Slytherin as a house."

Draco is also comfortable to say 'Mudblood' in public (Madam Malkins' shop), and in front of his mother:

“If you’re wondering what the smell is, Mother, a Mudblood just walked in,” said Draco Malfoy. (HBP)

So I expect it's a fairly common occurrence at home, since Draco's been using it since he was ~12, before the second rise of Voldemort. I suggest that Narcissa Malfoy (nee Black, after all) and/or Lucius Malfoy, and the rest of the Pureblood supremacists, were more than comfortable saying it as students, too.

Salazar Slytherin himself "wished to be more selective about the students admitted to Hogwarts. He believed that magical learning should be kept within all-magic families. He disliked taking students of Muggle parentage" (CoS). The Sorting Hat sings in OotP "...Slytherin took only pure-blood wizards... just like him" and we see Walburga Black refer to Muggle-borns and half-bloods in the Order as:

"MUDBLOODS! SCUM! CREATURES OF DIRT!" “Filth! Scum! By-products of dirt and vileness! Half-breeds, mutants, freaks, begone from this place! How dare you befoul the house of my fathers — ” "Mudbloods, filth, stains of dishonor, taint of shame on the house of my fathers!"

Slytherin House is just as much home to the likes of the teenage Lestranges, Blacks, and Malfoys of the world as 12 Grimmauld Place was to Walburga:

“My whole family have been in Slytherin,” [Sirius] said. "Well, no one really knows until they get there, do they, but I know I’ll be in Slytherin, all our family have been." [Draco]

Snape's presence there, in the eyes of some, is likely defiling the House of their fathers - especially during a period in which Salazar Slytherin's own heir was stoking the fires of Pureblood supremacy, affecting both Hogwarts and the wider wizarding world - and he was continuing to recruit Slytherin students. Certainly of those we hear a reasonable amount about who became Death Eaters, most (if not all) claim to be Pureblood, whether that be true or not:

"The Death Eaters can’t all be pure-blood, there aren’t enough pure-blood wizards left," said Hermione stubbornly. "I expect most of them are half-bloods pretending to be pure." "I got this one," [Neville] indicated another slash to his face, "for asking [Carrow] how much Muggle blood she and her brother have got."

But... Snape is not Pureblood; he is half Muggle. He would quickly be identified as half-blood, since "the pure-blood families are all interrelated", and "there are hardly any of [them] left". So I'm sure it must have come up as a (certainly impolite) discussion in the Common Room when it was realised that Snape was not Pureblood.

Somewhere above, I've quoted the ('not in the books' information) that the Malfoys accepted half-bloods into their family - and so perhaps their view on Snape as a half-Muggle would've been more moderate, although this isn't entirely guaranteed. Regardless, Voldemort-loving Regulus Black, whose mother called everyone from Purebloods to Muggle-borns "Mudbloods" would not have been so 'kind'; and certainly neither would Bellatrix Black, if she were attending around the same time.

We vaguely hear about Snape being "part of gang of Slytherins who nearly all turned out to be Death Eaters":

"Rosier and Wilkes — they were both killed by Aurors the year before Voldemort fell. The Lestranges — they’re a married couple — they’re in Azkaban. Avery — from what I’ve heard he wormed his way out of trouble by saying he’d been acting under the Imperius Curse — he’s still at large."

Avery is mentioned both in this quote and in Snape's memories with Lily, so presumably at some stage Avery became friendly enough with Snape for Lily to comment on it. But this would imply that Snape only became part of this 'gang' later on - I hardly think that Lily would be fine with someone like Bellatrix but not with Avery, aka Generic Death Eater #4 compared to Voldemort's most well-liked (if you can call it that) Death Eater. There's also a curious lack of a mention of Mulciber in the gang, who was friends with Snape (per Lily), was confirmed as a Death Eater, went to Azkaban, and was apparently a specialist in the Imperius curse - and who Lily seemed to think was worse than Avery. Even more curious an absence from Sirius' retelling of Snape's 'gang' is Lucius Malfoy, given that he's the only person ever mentioned as Snape's 'friend' in adulthood.

Some Slytherin students' families were already tied to Voldemort (e.g. Avery and Lestrange, as seen in Slughorn's memories of Voldemort's youth), or would quickly become so - including Lucius, who left school and shortly after Snape arrived and was trusted enough to look after Voldemort's Horcrux/Diary, and Snape likely would've attended school with Regulus Black, who somehow managed to sign up at 16. Within the 'gang' of Slytherins was also apparently Bellatrix, who was certainly Voldemort's favourite, and a staunch blood supremacist.

I'm sure it was totally fine and she was very relaxed about it. She certainly didn't insult Harry for being a half-blood, both before and after Harry tells her that Voldemort is half-blood himself:

"filthy half-blood" "You dare speak his name with your unworthy lips, you dare besmirch it with your half-blood’s tongue, you dare -"

It's worth noting here the definition of 'besmirch' because I just thought it meant 'slander', which it sort of does:

She thinks that the claim damages Voldemort's reputation, and his good name. Bellatrix's reaction underscores the strong disdain and contempt that pure-blood supremacists have for anyone who is not Pureblood. To her, Harry's truth lie about Voldemort's half-blood status is an insult and an affront to Voldemort's perceived superiority. Bellatrix uses "half-blood" derogatorily, and later calls him a "filthy half blood" - highlighting the belief that being a half-blood is inherently inferior and contaminates his worth and status, despite Voldemort's considerable power, lineage, and reputation.

Bellatrix also seemed... surprised at where Snape lived in HBP:

“He lives here?” asked Bella in a voice of contempt. “Here? In this Muggle dunghill? We must be the first of our kind ever to set foot — ”

Perhaps, then, Snape lied about his heritage. After all Bellatrix, for all of her other insults, never insults Snape's blood status (that we see) - but then Half Bloods are awarded respect for their behaviour or usefulness, and Voldemort arguably thinks of Snape as his most trusted follower by this point, and Bellatrix can only question that to a certain point without appearing to question Voldemort. And, she only steps foot in Spinner's End after Harry's made his claim about Voldemort being half-blood himself, so she might be treading more lightly.

She may instead be surprised not because Snape's a half-blood (that would've been clear) - but because he, Voldemort's right-hand Death Eater, chose to stay in not only a Muggle neighbourhood - but a really old, really delapidated one.

Perhaps (if we are to go by JK's additional writings, and not by Sirius/ the book information alone), Bellatrix never went to school with Snape - she'd be a few years older, and would have graduated before Snape even arrived. She personally wouldn't have ever needed to taunt Snape for his parentage, especially if Lucius had already had a hand in polishing his appearance and speech.

Now think about what it all means for Snape. Snape's status as a half-blood places him in a precarious position within the rigid hierarchy of the (Pureblood supremacist) wizarding world. If it didn't then the other Death Eaters, and Voldemort himself, wouldn't pretend to be Pureblood.

And when you consider the fact that Snape is "best friends" with Lily - potentially as late as his 5th year - he's going to be on the receiving end of some very pointed questions even from the most 'lenient' Pureblood supremacist. Consider below some quotes from Draco which may have been applied to Snape:

“Saint Potter, the Mudbloods’ friend,” said Malfoy slowly. “He’s another one with no proper wizard feeling, or he wouldn’t go around with that jumped-up [Granger] Mudblood.”

I think it's worth noting at this point that Snape might be considered also not to have the "proper wizard feeling", as he grew up, like Harry, impoverished, neglected, and separated from Wizarding society. He also 'goes around' (is friends with) a "jumped-up Mudblood", the talented Lily (both Lily and Hermione were talented according to Slughorn, who coincidentally also rejected Draco). The only thing I might add is that Lucius sometimes warns Draco to hold his tongue, so Lucius might have been more politically-minded and not gone around saying Mudblood 6 times each breath.

More to consider with regard to Snape's friendship with Lily, based on Draco's quotes about his father and the political situation:

"... Father actually considered sending me to Durmstrang rather than Hogwarts, you know. He knows the headmaster, you see. Well, you know his opinion of Dumbledore — the man’s such a Mudblood-lover — and Durmstrang doesn’t admit that sort of riffraff."

"You’ve picked the losing side, Potter! I warned you! I told you you ought to choose your company more carefully, remember? When we met on the train, first day at Hogwarts? I told you not to hang around with riffraff like this!” [Draco] jerked his head at Ron and Hermione. “Too late now, Potter! They’ll be the first to go, now the Dark Lord’s back! Mudbloods and Muggle-lovers first!"

Despite the pressure Snape probably faced to stop talking to a Muggleborn Gryffindor since day dot, it's interesting to note that Lily only seems to talk about Severus hanging out with Mulciber and Avery after the Prank, as if it were a relatively new development in the grand scheme of things:

"... I don’t like some of the people you’re hanging round with! ... I don’t understand how you can be friends with them."

"You're hanging around with" being in the present tense gives me the impression that it's been a few weeks/months and this unexpected, inexplicable addition of Sev's new friends has surprised and worried her, causing this particular argument. They're not like him; until that point, she'd seen a side of Severus that didn't match the "creepy" and "evil" Mulciber and Avery. Perhaps he tried to hold out as long as he could, but the Prank spurred him to realise that he needed to fit in with more people than just Lily.

But none of Snape's "precious little Death Eater friends" are shown to help him during SWM, and some of them, presumably, would have finished the exam at the same time, left at the same time, and gone out to enjoy some fresh air and sunshine. Lily leaves with her friends, James leaves with his friends, and Snape leaves alone to sit in a bush. When Snape was finally accosted by the Marauders, "Several people watching laughed; Snape was clearly unpopular."

This is the situation unfolding in Snape's dormitories; a growing sense of unsafety, of choosing sides.

"Don't pick the losing side, Snape. I'm warning you, you you ought to choose your company more carefully. You'll be the first to go, now the Dark Lord’s rising. Mudbloods and Muggle-lovers first."

On the one side, Snape could follow Lily and other future Order members, the opposition of Voldemort under Dumbledore; the ones who strung him in the air and threatened to strip him, the ones who silenced him after the Prank, who didn't listen to his side of the story. He could remain neutral, perhaps work for a Ministry that regards nepotism as a valid career path, and whose blood supremacy is quieter but no less damaging to his opportunities. Or, Snape can approach the side who may have initially discounted him - but they're his House, his family-away-from-family. They cheered when he entered their House; they extended the hand of friendship. Perhaps they're starting to see his value, because he's finally starting to play along like Crabbe and Goyle do - laughing at jokes that aren't funny, siding with the more powerful people in the room. He's sharing a laugh with them about what they "tried to do to Mary Macdonald" - because in his mind, even if it was Dark Magic, it's not as bad as or is on a par with "the stuff Potter and his mates get up to" (aka attempted murder; illegal hexes like on Bertram Aubrey).

[There's also a fun essay somewhere that argues the 'dark magic' in question was Levicorpus since Hermione shares a reaction with Lily and Harry/Ron share a reaction (and descriptive language "just a laugh") with Harry/Ron but I don't remember whose it is or where i read it :( I literally can't find it so if someone knows where it is, I'd love to find it again.]

I expect that that Snape's started to earn himself some (perhaps begrudging) respect by this time for spell creation and his academic success, and that eventually Snape proved himself (as half-bloods need to do) as useful.

...But useful doesn't mean essential. Lucius was useful to Voldemort, until he wasn't. Snape may have been useful to the other Slytherins, but they didn't help him until they had some reason to, until he was powerful - when Voldemort trusted Snape above Lucius, and Bellatrix. Snape himself was ultimately, arguably, the most useful to Voldemort - and he still killed him.

But Snape doesn't know any of this yet. It's 1970, and Voldemort has just started recruiting in earnest. Like the other future Death Eaters, he's no doubt been told that "Lord Voldemort rewards his helpers". Loyalty to the cause means "reward[s] beyond any of his other supporters". "He would reward you beyond all of us." And he's starting to believe it; he's starting to find a community, approval, and a sense of power and protection. He lives with people who believe he's lesser until he proves himself, and he possibly shares a dorm with them. Conforming to it, even playing into it, contains an element of survival - since he has no other connections, power, money, or a good name for himself. His relationship with Lily is straining; she doesn't ask his side of the story with the Prank, she doesn't see why he'd spend time with Mulciber and Avery. They're growing up and growing apart. The only resistance to Voldemort at this point is Dumbledore - the same man who silenced Snape on the Prank and, to Snape's mind, turns a blind eye to the Marauders sneaking around and tormenting him, and attempting to murder him. Why should Snape trust Dumbledore? Why should he later trust the Order? If he doesn't pick a side, he'll surely just get caught in the crossfire.

Voldemort is nearing the height of his power - for Snape's own survival, he reckons he's got a better chance with the Death Eaters. And who can blame him?

If only things had been different.

"You know, I sometimes think we Sort too soon."

[ms-all-sunday]

like for example a really common statement is "roronoa zoro has no interest in women" and that's just... straight up not true. it can come from both queer people and straight people (its one of those statements that the reasoning changes but both sides say). zoros narrative is notably feminist and he's over-invested in women to the point of coming off as dismissive, sometimes.

his interactions with nami are example A, he is overinvested in a womans ability to best him. its the reason why my friend jokingly calls his obsession with nami psychosexual. famously the arlong park scene is an example of his over-eagerness to have a woman have power over him regardless of what he thinks of that. "you couldve been a serial killer, but i'm going to attempt suicide so you can save me"... his relationship to nami parallels sanji so clearly to the point arlong park is the first time they have parallels and it's them arguing about nami.

example B is tashigi obviously, he's too over-invested in her as someone who looks like kuina and tries to distance himself from that aggressively. example C is his interactions with kiku, psychosexual obsession with women being better/besting him comes back as he deliberately pushing her buttons, like he does with nami, to get her to show off her skills.

[aihoshiino]

I used to really enjoy your deep dives into Oshi no Ko—your insights were pretty sharp. But lately, it's become glaringly obvious that your Kana bias is clouding your objectivity. It's almost like you're watching a completely different series. Maybe take a step back and revisit the manga? Just a thought!

i like how you can tell this is definitely a butthurt low effort troll attempt from a salty aquruby shipper on the onk sub who's never read anything i've posted because there's no way on god's green earth you could be even a short term follower of my onk meta and come away with the assumption that the character i'm unhealthily overinvested in is arima kana

[sapphire-weapon]

just woke up to a shitton of asks

some of you are really new here, huh

let me be very clear about who i am and what this blog is.

i am not your personal army. my blog does not exist for you to vent your frustrations on in hopes that i will share those frustrations and then go attack people for them.

i do not write meta posts with the intentions of debunking aeon for the sake of sticking it to the shippers. i analyze the story of resident evil as it was written, and debunkings of aeon happen to fall out of that on their own. i am not doing it on purpose, and i will not write up a post to try to prove your point about whatever stupid bullshit fandom thing you're mad about if the text does not support your conclusion.

i am not going to wage a war against aeon fandom.

i do not fucking care about aeon fandom.

i don't care what they're doing or saying about or to anyone. whatever they're saying or doing is not my fucking problem. if they've harassed you or given you shit, that sucks, but i don't really care. your failure to block people on social media is not my fucking problem.

i am being 100% sincere when i say that i find their mass reporting of this blog funny. i was laughing about this with my roommate last night so hard that tears were coming out of my eyes. when i say that what aeon fandom is doing isn't my problem, i mean it. even though they went after my personal blog, it's still not my problem, because it is not a problem. i have real problems in my life. this is not one of them.

so if you're here because you think i'm going to be the big dick defending you against a group of teenagers on the internet -- if you're here because you think i'm going to be your voice -- or if you're here because you want to try to incite me to wage some kind of war against a group of teenagers on the internet -- you are overinvested, and you need to touch grass.

the second you cross the line from "this is an interesting phenomenon" or "this is worth a laugh" into legitimate anger that is actually causing you real stress and is affecting your mood and your behavior, you are in too deep, and you need to go outside.

the problem is not aeon fandom, in that case.

the problem is you.

you are fucking toxic. and i don't want you here.

[paradoxcase]

Gideon the Ninth audiobook reactions

I listened for a little over an hour, to the end of Chapter 3, and so far it's been great. It's a little odd making notes for what I think about it though - with the ebook I could visually skim over what I read before and take specific screenshots and everything, currently I've just been taking notes in a text editor and it's a little awkward. I had to look back at the pronunciation guide, which was also a little awkward, since the audiobooks are on my linux partition now and the Nook app is on Windows, so I keep having to reboot. I think I decided that for my next computer I'm not going to partition and will just run linux in VM

Anyway, for the name pronunciations:

Nonagesimus: Yeah, that pronunciation is going to bother me, but realistically I think she is going to be saying it so often that I'll just get used it it

Aiglamene: This was stressed on a syllable I didn't expect, but after consulting the pronunciation guide, that is how it was described and I was just wrong. Woe

Glaurica: Not how I pronounced the au. I note there's no instruction in the pronunciation guide about how to pronounce the au, the "phonetic" spelling also just says "au"

Palamedes: Also stressed on a syllable I didn't choose, but I knew full well that that was how the pronunciation guide said to pronounce it and was just in denial. I don't know if I'll get used to this one, we'll have to see

Character voice opinions:

I love Crux, he sounds kind of like Locked Tomb Gollum who doesn't double-mark plurals

I always headcanoned Gideon as having a low voice, probably because I have a low voice I want to see more representation for women with naturally low voices, this audiobook is not giving me that and I just have to accept it. Otherwise it's pretty good, although it's not always distinct from the narration

Aiglamene's voice is perfect

Harrow is also pretty good, but I'm curious if it will change when the main person she's interacting with is Ianthe, because right now it's very aristocratic and I feel like that would sort of overshadow Ianthe being even more aristocratic

The Glaurica voice was great

I'm not sure how I feel about Ortus's voice, but I guess I'll have to wait for the next book to reassess that first impression, since Ortus is now officially gone for the next 16 hours

Just regular stuff about the text that is hitting different a second time:

The Eighth House being described as "The Forgiving House" in the Dramatis Personae made me go "lol nope". Also it feels like a, uh, call-forward, I guess, to Mercy talking about forgiving John

The book opens in the year 10,000. I remember being Gideon and Harrow's age when we got to the year 2000, and we were all having endless arguments about whether the millennium actually began in 2000, or 2001. Why are none of the nerdy young people in this book getting really overinvested in the question of what is the actual first year of the myriad? I can see Harrow and Gideon having an incredibly violent argument about this and it would have been a great callback to some early aughts culture, which is something this book absolutely loves to do

Not really hitting different, but even after reading the whole thing I am still mystified by Gideon's apparent knowledge of Pluto's seasons

At some point it said "they chipped her". Did they put a tracking chip in Gideon, like you do with a cat?

Harrow says "I swear by my mother I have nothing on me" but Gideon was asking her to confirm that it was a fair fight, and it absolutely wasn't, haha

"My parents should have suffocated you" followed by "I'd like to see them try that now." Oof

Harrow saying "my parents have been waiting long enough" at the end of Chapter 2 hits a bit different when you already know at this point that they are dead and its their zombies that are waiting to be puppeted by Harrow. And everyone in the room knows this, she's not like pretending her parents are still alive for the benefit of some random nuns who aren't in the know

"In the Ninth everyone knew [cavaliers] were chosen for how many bones [they] could hump around" - I remember last time someone filled me in on this after Gideon's fight with Naberius and someone else said it was a spoiler, but it's actually stated quite plainly in Chapter 3

[beautifulpersonpeach]

https://twitter.com/RequestBTSRadio/status/1714121533864513936

so they sent his WHOLE ALBUM to radio but can't even sent atleast title tracks of other members? WOAHHHH. or their western collabs ? Not JM's no.1 song ? Not OTS or CLOSER which had even more potential than these western reject songs ? How can you all be completely think this is ok ? You all suddenly throw yours ethics out of window because its your fav member ? Everytime excuse it away when JK is the biggest industry plant rn.. I just wanna say no matter how desperately they want him to be an established pop star it's not gonna happen. He's always gonna be a kpop member who release generic song in English for western validation.

***

It's fine if you want to complain. Anyone who thinks other members' songs should be sent to radio is free to say so, tag HYBE, email BigHit, etc. You disagree with how BigHit/HYBE America is promoting the first full English album from a BTS member relative to the other solo debuts. Sure, that's valid.

All that talk about ethics and whatnot sounds insane to me though. There's no use saying it at this point but Anon, you've become completely sucked in, you've picked up the Frankenstein language of the overinvested stan transferring their aggression to Jungkook.

Getting songs sent to radio doesn't make one an 'industry plant', talk less the biggest one, and much less for a guy who could sell out stadiums if he announced a tour today. It would be great to hear Closer or Hectic by RM on radio, same with Amygdala or Polar Night; Future, Alone, and For Us would be great additions too. Heck, Coldplay literally wrote The Astronaut and it sounds like a radio hit so it should've gotten a good push as well. But they didn't and of course it's okay to feel upset and communicate that to the company. But I also love that Jungkook is getting this push, and with a full English album, the first run by HYBE America (by all appearances), I think songs sent to radio is what to expect. Nobody from BTS will likely ever get full Western validation, and Jungkook's back-to-back hits of mid songs certainly aren't helping all that much, but it's true Jungkook is doing well, making more fans and leaving his mark. Just as the other members have done and will continue to do with even stronger impact. None of them are stupid and they are aware of their situations. I trust them to handle their business.

What ticks you off is that you feel you'll have to stream more, buy more, put more effort in than JJKs to get the same results. You're pissed off more for yourself than you are about Jimin. Which is fine. But Jimin is fine too lol. The way y'all talk about that man makes me wonder if you actually know him, or if when we talk about Jimin, we're talking about the same person.

What Jimin wants, he ultimately gets. When he really wants something he makes sure he gets it, in the way that works best for him. I've seen him win, get his way, make his way in moments, weeks, months, and years. His documentary is literally around the corner that will confirm yet again, that this is the sort of person he is. I'm not trying to be clever or make excuses, in my mind this is really what I think. It's fine if you disagree but don't send me asks like this chuck full of your frustration. I really don't relate.

[eisforeidolon]

any thoughts on the latest “I thought it was the Jared padalecki show” drama from Liverpool comic con? It’s towards the end of the panel. And if you hadn’t heard about it…would love your fresh opinion.

I guess I shouldn't be surprised there's drama because it's well nigh impossible for there not to be drama in this fandom, but they were obviously joking around - and it's not even the first time Jensen and Mark have told a version of that same joke on stage.

Back at Vancon22, one of the cons Jared missed, when Mark joined Jensen and Misha onstage for the main panel, they had this exchange:

Mark S.: [laughing] I missed you guys! I really missed you guys, it's been a while.

Jensen: How's it goin', big guy?

Mark S.: It's going good. I'm working for Jared now.

Jensen: That's what I hear.

Mark S.: Yeah.

Jensen: But let's be honest, haven't we always been working for Jared?

Mark S.: [cracks up] It's a long way up there, the air is thin. I'm working for the moose. How you doin'?

Compare that to the exchange from this weekend's panel from Liverpool Comicon 23, where Jensen has been telling the story about Misha's weird first impression and them not knowing the plan for the character:

Sam Smith: I don't think any of us were supposed to stay more than a minute.

Jensen: What? Yeah. I wasn't either. This was supposed to be the Jared Padalecki show. [chuckles]

Mark: I thought it was? [laughs][Jensen cracks up] Well, he thought it was.

Jensen: Still does. Um, so [continues story]

Let me guess, the loony Jensen stans are smugly insisting that Jensen is totally 100% serious and taking a legit dig at Jared who he can't actually stand, see see!?! And the loony Jared stans are pissed off and talking shit because how very dare Jared's friends who actually personally know him joke about him in a way they don't approve of?!? If only these competent professional actors would let their creepily overinvested fans with major projection issues dictate their lives for them!

[gyrovagi]

i do need a clearer explanation for how owain has avoided getting married thus far why is your 32-year old heir maidenless‼️ the lesbian seduction incident was like a decade ago who gaf anymore 🙄

it IS a major part of my trevelyan lore that martyn and rowena are (in)famous for having eloped, breaking off martyn's engagement since childhood to a different noblewoman (of higher status than rowena's family, but with fading influence/diminishing wealth; rowena's dad was a social climbing prosperous merchant who managed to marry into a not-very-impressive title and it was not an accident that his daughter got the trevelyan heir's attention). this story was popular and widely romanticized in the early years of their marriage but has since, uh, gone sour.

i think it might have influenced their own mindsets enough early on to not pair off their kids when they were young (and would YOU hitch your daughter to the boy who everyone says is the spitting image of his father, the guy well-known for not following through on his arranged marriage. r turning out to be a mage also wouldn't have calmed any qualms lol.)

owain has a... difficult relationship with his father where martyn kind of occupies both extremes of being overinvested in His Son And Heir, and then going strangely hands off and kind of letting him do whatever because 'the boy must come to understand these things himself'. he's never been quite sure whether dad approves of the whole dragon hunting business or not, and even less sure whether he wants his approval. so martyn has gone back and forth on the You Need To Get Married thing, but w rowena's insistence i think they found a fiancee for him in his teens when they'd left the Possible Mage Age Range, this being the one valerie lesbian seduced later on.

(might move that incident one or two years earlier in the timeline?? i'm being overly finicky abt my own oc lore that only matters to me.)

valerie definitely coached him like. ok eventually the scandal WILL die down and mother will be insistent on finding you a wife again. the story has to be that you were madly in love with your fiancee and heartbroken by her betrayal and you can never give your heart to another or trust any woman ever again. every now and then you should pretend that you're trying to find her and take her back or rescue her from whatever backwater chantry they've got her ministering at now. it's the perfect compelling romantic story that also makes you completely unmarriageable.

owain probably remembered half of this advice at best. however he is fucking TERRIFIED by the idea of getting married or really having any committed romantic relationship for reasons he hasn't examined. so at the slightest hint that his parents want him to meet a noblewoman he will immediately find some epic fantasy saga adventure to embark on for the next six months. all together it works to help him maintain bachelorhood i guess