#i can't freaking imagine hearing a song where my bully was praised

[lillianofliterature]

rant about this song i heard

sometimes i forget there are some extreme marauder fans that completely dismiss the bullying each of those characters did for years—and then suddenly i’m smacked with victim-blaming content that leaves me gobsmacked … a song popped up on my discover weekly on Spotify and i thought wow this sounds a lot like Lily and James, I’m gonna add it to my Harry playlist! It’s so pretty! and then I realized it was so much like them that there was no way it wasn’t written about them. I looked up the album and the artist, and when it was confirmed that it was about them, I also found out the whole album was about the Marauders. That’s cool! I love that people are making content about their fictional loves, I love that stories can influence so much creativity! So then I though oh! I wonder if there’s a song for Snape! I could add it to my Snape playlist!

Yeah, there’s a song about Snape. About anti-Snape-x-Lily (which is whatever, I’m not bashing people’s opinions, I myself don’t like the pairing either but for Snape’s sake). But it didn’t end there. The lyrics. The lyrics are literally so biased of a narrative against Snape that my stomach dropped. The kind of biased where people are ignoring or omitting the reality of the story and what actually happened just to be able to villainize a victim in that particular era of the story.

“Never wanted me around

Till I went ahead and planned my first date”

Wait. Uh—Snape literally wanted to be around Lily, all the time, because he loved her. She was his best friend, his only friend, the only human being that had ever shown him any sort of decency. (It’s never even stated it was romantic love, for all we know it was platonic love, which I think makes much more sense with Snape’s character and everything that happened. If I screwed up and my best friend chose my abuser over me because of that mistake, I would be devastated.)

Nevermind the fact that it’s making it out like Snape dismissed her entirely until she decided to date James, because he was so controlling and jealous that he only cared until someone else was about to get her. When did that happen? Snape cared about her consistently. he made mistakes and he admittedly did not know how to communicate well or manage a friendship (or any relationship, really) very well because he’s never effing had a positive back-and-forth with someone in his whole entire effing life. 

I’ve been jealous and self-sabotaging when my best friend started dating because I was terrified that I was going to lose the only person I wholly trusted to someone new, to someone I couldn’t compete with, especially if it was romantic. This is a human response, a very human experience. Are we going to then say that everyone whose ever felt that way is an awful, jealous, controlling ass? I hope not, because I’m pretty sure everyone’s experienced that kind of jealous, desperate fear, where we truly believe that we aren’t special enough or important enough to keep someone around. 

“With the guy you swore you hated

Turns out you're the worst and he's great and

I’m friends with all his friends”

HUH?????

I—…Do I even need to comment on this?

I understand if this song is giving us a version of Lily’s unreliable narrative, then it makes sense to an extent. But if we’re taking this as evidence of what’s totally accurate for the story and what was happening—then what the actual hell?

Turns out the victim whose only known abuse his entire life, the one who admittedly clung too hard to the only friend he’s ever known, who was bullied and tormented and assaulted, who was gas lighted and told to keep his abuse secret by the only adults in his life for the sake of his abusers, is “the worst”.

But the guy who did the bullying and the tormenting and the assaulting, and went so far to make someone miserable as to write it down in the form of a pledge to his little club of bullies just because this victim existed, and also blackmailed this girl into dating him or else the bullying would never cease or he might do worse—“he’s great”.

also fyi one of those friends sells you and mr. great out and gets you killed so great choice---

I’m—I don’t want to bully the artist or their opinions AT ALL, we are allowed our opinions and our creative freedom, and their music is BEAUTIFUL, it was just a shocking reminder that so many Marauder fans literally rewrite what happened in the Marauder era just to make Snape the absolute worst character ever.

And y’know, I thought, maybe it’s a dramatized, modernized take on it, and it’s not supposed to be exactly about Snape and Lily, but just sort of inspired by this one-sided narrative in a similar sort of relationship. But no, it’s confirmed it’s about them. It’s supposed to be about their relationship as friends, as if he was an abusive, controlling ex, when he was never even with her to begin with. 

Again, I’m not attacking the artist or their opinions and their favorites, or attacking Marauder fans, okay? People have the right to love who and what they love unapologetically and I support that. And in the same vein, I deserve to love who I love just as passionately. But my point is, I don’t understand why the whole reality of the story needs to be altered...maybe don’t change the narrative or the events that canonically took place to put your faves on a pedestal they don’t fit on?? 

And it’s not just about this song, but an overwhelming amount of hate and discourse I’ve seen since entering the HP fandom. 

But I’m just looking at this song like 👁👄👁 tf?

#rant #ranting #prosnape #pro snape #severus snape #anti marauders #anti marauder #like #as a victim of similar abuse myself #and someone whose life and trauma mirrors snape’s down to the eeriest of details #it’s incredibly harmful to see shit that just dehumanizes someone who had only ever known abuse #just to make literal bullies look better #pro snape rant #i can't freaking imagine hearing a song where my bully was praised #and i was made out to be some manipulative creeping tom for caring about my best friend #and my mistakes in my vulnerable moments when my trauma and my ptsd reared its ugly head