#time to make everyone take ap lit and write 5 page analysis essays

[sneepseverus]

Pretty sure it’s already been said here before, but it seems like people don’t know what to do with morally gray characters and can only characterize them as the worst people imaginable even though there’s no actual evidence to support those claims 😅 I know I read and write Snape smut and fluff on here, but when it comes to discussions about his role as a character in the series, I can recognize he’s not just good or bad, black or white.

You’re allowed to dislike a character for things they’ve actually done. You can dislike or hate Snape for being a dick towards his students, calling Lily a Mudblood, threatening to kill Neville’s toad, and just being generally unpleasant. Even if you think that his main motivation for turning to the light side wasn’t good or strong enough, that’s fine, too. The problem is that some people extrapolate the actual events in the text to create a narrative that doesn’t exist.

Sure, it’d be interesting if Snape were truly an incel, but then that wouldn’t be Snape as we know him; that’d be some other character. It’s cool to think about hypotheticals, but they can be meaningless when discussing a piece of media’s themes and messages.

People are quick to label Snape an incel because his love was one-sided, he continued to think about her years after she died, his patronus was the same as Lily’s, he told Harry he has his mother’s eyes before dying, etc. However, one-sided love does not make someone an incel. Incels are typically misogynistic and lack the self-awareness to realize they are the problem, which don’t apply to Snape. His love for Lily was also coupled with guilt and remorse.

You do also have to understand the setting and context in which he lived. If he lived in real life in today’s time with access to proper support and care but just didn’t want to become better, then you could argue there’s no excuse for his behavior. But he was born in the ‘60s, grew up in a poor family with a Muggle father, was grouped with people who were deemed to be evil, didn’t have anyone except for one person who truly cared for him, and was led to join a cult that he thought would give him some sort of power and a sense of belonging. As many people have said, not everyone who goes through major trauma is a perfect victim who learns to be nice and empathetic towards everyone.

So, it’s okay to despise Snape, but your feelings should at least be based in what has been described in the books. You can write fanfiction about how he’s an incel who’s evil at heart as long as you understand that is not canon.