I Haven't Seen The Word "friendzoned" In Relation To Snape. I Would Find It Odd, If It Was Used As A

I haven't seen the word "friendzoned" in relation to Snape. I would find it odd, if it was used as a descriptor for him and his relationship with Lily. Mostly, because the "friendzone" doesn't exist. It's just a term used by shitty, misogynistic men ("nice guy"s, incels, etc.) to denounce any female friends they might have for not being interested in a sexual relationship with them. Usually, it follows this pattern:

shitty misogynistic man has a female friend

instead of valuing her as a friend, he sees her as a walking and warm sex toy (probably one that should take care of his emotional, physical, emotional and physical needs)

when he asks her out and she rejects him, he accuses her of friend zoning him, instead of realizing that a platonic friend might be just that. (Bonus points, if he asks her out multiple time, making her increasingly uncomfortable each time it happens. Or alternatively, he never asks her out and only watches her from the sidelines, seething, while she is living her life.)

It's a misogynistic concept at its core. No matter what one thinks of Lily: She did not friend zone him. It doesn't even matter if Snape was romantically interested in her or not. She was a friend, who cut contact in the end. (Which is a normal thing to do. One doesn't have to keep a friendship they don't want to continue, just like one doesn't have to enter into a romantic relationship, just because the other person is interested.)

The only perspective from which this friend zone accusation could make sense is that of Snape. If he really had romantic feelings for Lily, that she didn't reciprocate, he could've felt friend zoned. (At least in theory. It would still require a certain amount of misogyny on his part.)

So a Snape!hater calling him friend zoned ... sounds odd, to me.

What would be more plausible for Snape!haters is to call him an incel, I guess. I saw some people doing that, in fact. It would still require a very different reading of his character, comparing to yours. While I don't agree with the incel allegations, I can see where they are coming from.

When it comes to whether Snape had romantic feelings for Lily or not (and to how malicious they were, if they were there at all), I think Rowling's mediocre writing is to blame for this.

Firstly, there is this massive tone shift halfway through the series, and Snape is heavily affected by this. He started out as this horrible, mean teacher, who bullies the protagonist and his friend. After GoF, Rowling started to build him up as this tragic figure and martyr, complete with tragic backstory and everything. However, I think she just failed to pull it off. She never really manages to reconcile mean!Snape from the earlier books and tragic!Snape from the later books.

It also doesn't really help that Rowling avoids character development like the plague. Instead of writing about how her characters grow from their experiences, she tends to simply reframe them instead. So Snape doesn't really develop during the books (or during his backstory), he just changes sides. He also never really sheds his meanness. He kind of starts mean and stays mean, never really growing beyond that. (Rowling just drops and ignores his bullying behavior, once it doesn't suit the tone of her books anymore.)

This alone invites readers to have pretty uncharitable readings of him. Especially if they take mean!Snape and apply his early characterization to his later version.

And then there is the whole thing with Lily. Rowling likes to talk about Lily's love a lot. Most of it is focussed on her romantic love for James and her motherly love for Harry. (This means, Lily has sexual connotations from the start. She loved James. And she did so in a sexual way - otherwise, Harry would not exist.) This does spill over onto her relationship with Snape. Because the narrative frames James and Snape as rivals/enemies (with Lily at the center of their rivalry) and because James is romantically interested in Lily, this can lead readers to read Snape as romantically interested in Lily, too.

The flashbacks in Deathly hallow do not help, either.

I just reread the chapter. The first thing I notice was, that there wasn't a single scene that portrayed Lily and Snape as friends, doing friend-things and enjoying their company. Instead, they argue a lot. Even in the earlier memories and in the memories were that could have shown them as best friends.

In addition to this, there are some scenes that would be read as romantic or sexually-predatory in most stories. The most notable once were:

The scene the playground (Snape was around 9 or 10): The narrative frames Snape as a creep, who is hiding in some bushes, to watch Lily. He is described as wearing creepy clothes and having a look of "undisguised greed" on his face, while invading their privacy. (Note: I'm not saying that Snape was a creep in this scene. He was a kid, behaving in a way that was normal for his age and his situation. I just don't think that the setup of this scene was accidental, as it draws heavy parallels to the usual "an adult creep hides in some bushes, to lust after a woman who doesn't even know he's there"-scene. The whole thing could have been set up without the creepy undertones.)

The scene after the playground-scene, where Snape tells her about Hogwarts and rules regarding the usage of magic: The narrative calls him greedy again. (Quote: He watched her as greedily as he had watched her in the playground.)

The scene where they argue about the marauders: First, the scene shows him to be somewhat possessive of her and she picks up on it (He says: "Saved? Saved? You think he was playing the hero? He was saving his neck and his friend's, too! You're not going to - I won't let you -" She answers: "Let me? Let me?") Immediately afterwards, Snape brings up that James fancies her. She then insults James, which leads Snape to be relieved and to have a new spring in his step.

The scene where Dumbledore and Snape talk about Lily's death. Dumbledore says "If you loved Lily Evans, if you truly loved her, then your way forward is clear." Firstly: Fuck you, Dumbledore. Secondly, I think it is important how he stressed Severus' love for Lily and how he doesn't use any qualifiers or the word "friendship". The word "love" in itself is usually reserved for romantic love, especially between a man and a woman.

The when she reads the letter Lily had sent to Sirius: In this scene, he rips the photograph of Lily, James and Harry in two, so he can take the half with Lily with him. In media, most of the scenes that involve the ripping of photographs happen in a romantic context. It's usually the owner of the photograph removing their ex or a lover who is separating their love interest from their rival.

I think, this is where Snape!haters are coming from, when say that Snape was romantically/sexually attracted to Lily and when they call him an incel. I'm not saying that this is the true reading of that chapter, of course. In fact, I think the chapter can be read both ways. It's mostly in the subtext and in the implications that arise from the wider context of literature and pop culture.

When one takes this subtext and its implications and adds Lily's role as love interest and mother (and as a woman that gets fridged to motivate both Snape and Harry) on top of it, Snape's love for Lily will get read as romantic/sexual. And when that reading is then mixed with an uncharitable view of his character (which is mostly caused by the author), "Snape is an incel and a creepy stalker, who never got over his first crush" isn't all that unlikely as a conclusion.

I don't really agree with that reading, but this is probably where people are coming from. (Personally, I'm not really a fan of Snape. However, I do think Rowling did Snape dirty with her uncharitable portrayal of him. He doesn't strike me as particularly misogynistic, either. He just hates everyone equally.)

Sidenote: I just had to add the word "incel" to the library of my language tool. I feel like I have to scrub something. *shudder*

wait,, i sort of just realized something

snaters like to throw around the word 'friendzoned' when talking about him, but severus and lily weren't even friends in the end? it was never 'i don't like you romantically', it was 'we were friends and now we are not'.

canon snily was never actually romantic in the first place, it was more of a close sibling-like best friends bond (i think). (it was a pretty unhealthy friendship for both of them in their later years, but that's completely unrelated.) where did the friendzone thing even come from? was it just because lily ended up dating james and then people interpreted severus' hate for him being caused by that? because as far as i remember, severus hated james for making his life a living hell during hogwarts.

i don't know, i just feel like a lot of snape hate comes from misconceptions within the fandom

Gender and Harry Potter is such a hydra that just keeps revealing more heads the more you try and chop through it. Case in point: Today I just realized Harry Potter might've been originally intended as a book for boys, which if it was *wow*, way to miss the mark Joanne. Do you think it was actually intended for a male audience? To me it kinda makes sense if it was because of the way most women and girls are portrayed in it.

Bloomsbury Publishing definitely requested that JK Rowling publish with her (gender neutral) initials instead of 'Joanne Rowling' because they were concerned boys would not buy a book with a woman's name on the cover.

My guess is that her British publishers slotted it more firmly under 'boy' than her American publishers did. Harry Potter is 100% a school story, a super established British children's book genre. Historically, there are boy school stories (set in all-male posh public schools) and girl school stories (set in all-female posh public schools.) Hogwarts is of course co-ed, but that fact that it comes out of a literary tradition in which all the characters are the same gender... might help explain why in-universe gender politics seem remarkably absent from the wizarding world.

It actually kind of bugs me, when a canon-compliant fic makes a big deal about male-only inheritance or something, because that's just not something we see. There's one line about "Black family tradition" saying that the house goes to the next oldest guy, but since Dumbledore is worried that *Bellatrix* is about to inherit, it clearly isn't that important.

JKR has made a fantasy society where gender doesn't really matter - Augusta Longbottom and Walburga Black are clearly the powerful matriarchs of their respective families, Maxime and McGonagall are headmistresses, no problem. There isn't the boys quidditch team vs girl's quidditch team, the locker rooms and the prefects bathroom seem to be co-ed, "robes" are gender neutral, there isn't a sense that a specific discipline or type of magic is gendered (we see both male and female Transfiguration, Care of Magical creatures, and Defense Against the Dark arts professors...) There is kind of a sense that the boys are supposed to ask the girls to the yule ball... but multiple girls still ask out Harry. Gender comes up a lot in these books yes, but not so much in the actual worldbuilding. We have gendered bathrooms and dorms, and the rule that the girls can go into the boy's dormitory, but not vice-versa. Ron considers lace a girly fabric. Of the top of my head, that's all of the "gendered" rules I can think of.

But, since the main character is a boy, it makes sense that her British publishers would slot it more into the category of "school story (boy)" and market accordingly. I think it's extremely likely that she was asked to lean more heavily into quidditch, an aspect of the world building that JKR is clearly not interested in. She's said multiple times that she dislikes writing quidditch games - which is why she throws in comedy with the commentary, or makes some magical thing go down, or finds ways to cancel quidditch entirely. The mechanics and tension of the game *itself* are not interesting to her. I think it's also possible this is a reason for Hermione's relatively late intro into the friend group during Book 1? Harry can be friends with a girl, but first we need to establish that Ron is his *best* friend.

But then the books hit America, and the whole "school story" thing didn't read as "boy" as much as it just read "British." There was a sense in American advertising, especially in the 90s, that girl's products were for girls, but boy's products were for everyone. Scholastic Publishing seemed less interested in gendering the book, and more interested in making sure it didn't come off as too high-brow to American children - so we get the name change from "Philosopher's Stone" to "Sorcerer's Stone," things like that.

But then right before the publication of Book 4 the series exploded, and JKR could have just self-published the thing if her publishers didn't behave. So I think that you can see the fingerprints of that marketing push on Book 1, which grandfathered in a number of worldbuilding choices that JKR maybe wouldn't have made later. But pretty quickly it just became JKR doing her thing.

Oh, I like this idea!

Considering Molly tried to do something like this with Tonks ... yeah, I could definitively see her do something like this.

I think I would prefer this with an amicable break-up, where they stay friends or become over time. (Maybe because of Molly's meddling and the shared misery?) And after a dozen or two of those invitations, Percy will bring Oliver with him and then he will encourage Audrey to bring her new girlfriend and Molly is just like ... wtf is this couple doing here?

in worlds where Audrey is magic in someway or another and she and Percy were to get divorced after having Molly 2 and Lucy i can 100% see Molly 1 inviting her to Weasley events behind Percy's back and I think it would happen even more often if he was trying to move on and was seeing someone else

one of those things where Molly does think she's doing a good thing by trying to get her grandchildren's mother back in the picture

because she just honestly feels like they need a mother even though they are perfectly fine on their own but not understanding that its actually a really bad thing to be doing and that this isn't a romance book where they'll realize they just needed a break and fall back together

now if Audrey would even show depends a ton on like why they broke up in the first place obv like if she even knows Percy's seeing someone or just expecting this to just be one of those things where she shows up and like 40 people are there. Just to actually show up and realize it's only the main family and every single one of them is looking at her like "oh no oh fuck" except Molly

then there's like her still being in love with Percy and her and Molly working together but while that would make more sense in like a long term situation where it happens over and over i don't like the way it makes me feel so I'm sweeping it under the rug feels too close to bashing to me

Oliver: What's wrong with you?

Percy: Off the top of my head, I'd say low self-esteem, a lack of paternal affection, and a genetic predisposition for anxiety and depression.

The sad thing is that we don’t even get to see any uncomplicatedly happy memories of his innocent childhood friendship with Lily. There’s this pervasive sense from the start of that chapter that JKR thinks that even 9 year old Lily was too good for him (the horrid judgemental use of the word ‘greedy’ and that quote she once gave where she said Snape’s tragedy was that he was drawn to but couldn’t emulate Lily’s innate goodness makes me hurl - what was so innately different about them aged 9 other than her good looks and middle class parents?) and so every single scene is her chastising him for something or other. Like she couldn’t allow saintly Lily to be seen as genuinely choosing and enjoying the company of someone as prickly and offputting as Snape, so she time skips 5 years and just tells us instead of showing us that they’re best friends. Unfortunately by failing to show any gentle, unspoiled moments the whole thing comes off like Lily sees him as a charity case she condescends to hang out with on occasion, while Severus fails to get the picture that clinging hard to someone who doesn’t want that is always going to end in a toxic place for both parties. Sorry for the super long post! It’s just rare to find someone who doesn’t buy into JKR’s intended reading of the Potter parents.

This is quite an interesting topic because even years ago, when I re-read the series at 19 or 20 and was quite involved in political groups and unions at university, I got the impression that Rowling creates a world where classism is constantly justified unless you are on the side of the bad guys. That is to say, Draco being a classist is wrong because he’s Draco, and he’s bad, and he’s Slytherin. But then you have quite a few characters who have clear classist attitudes and nothing happens because they are part of the heroes of the story, and so we’re going to completely overlook it. For example, Sirius is a classist; he always has been and even has nothing against slavery and treats his house-elf like rubbish. He doesn’t even consider him a conscious and independent living being; he’s just a bug to him. The Weasleys have a clear class resentment; they are humble and are sold to us as open-minded and tolerant people, but the reality is that if someone doesn’t fit into their narrow standards of “goodness,” they shut down and are just as petty and prejudiced as any blood supremacist. The best example of this is how the Weasley women treat Fleur simply because, instead of being a humble pick-me girl, she’s posh. But the fact is that Fleur has done absolutely nothing wrong for Ginny and Molly to treat her that way; her only sin is being beautiful and feminine, end of story. It’s supposed to be a story to learn that prejudices are wrong, but Hermione spends her life labelling other girls like the Patils or Lavender (before Lavender gets involved with Ron) as frivolous because they like doing things that are traditionally classified as feminine, which reveals that Rowling has quite a few prejudices against certain groups of women and their attitudes, stemming from a clear internalised misogyny that is present throughout the novel. You only have to look at how she glorifies motherhood as the pinnacle of female fulfilment and the real way to become a moral and brave example within the saga (Lily and Molly, Narcissa being redeemed ONLY because she loves her son) compared to the female characters who either haven’t seen motherhood as a dream come true (Merope Gaunt) or who have no children (Bellatrix), who are portrayed as little less than the worst of the worst in the story.

What I mean by this is that Rowling has quite a significant cognitive dissonance when it comes to establishing the moral values of the story. Because this is not A Song of Ice and Fire; it’s not a multi-voiced story with various perspectives from which you can develop your own complex criteria. It’s a story told from a single point of view where the dichotomy between good and evil is a central point of conflict, but is often blurred by quite a few contradictions that have no explanation, not even theoretically. I mean, the social themes in this story are terribly mismanaged and portrayed in a very superficial way. In the end, the conclusion you draw is that Gryffindor’s mission, the Order, or Harry’s is basically to defeat Voldemort to continue preserving the same status quo in which the magical world has always been immersed, with no intention of going to the root of the problems and taking action for real change. But well, we’re talking about a story written by a woman who turns her protagonist into the magical equivalent of a cop. I mean, LOL. I mean, ACAB, what can I say.

I say all this because when we talk about James and Lily, all of this applies in the same way. James and Lily make no sense. James and Lily are an example of what should NOT be done when writing a script, for instance. In screenwriting, the premise is always show, don't tell. But Lily and James are purely the tell. Lily and James are known for what other characters tell us about them, totally subjective characters, especially those who were friends with the couple. They are presented as great heroes when the reality in canon is that they did nothing. They joined the Order, were in it for a year, and then spent a year and a half holed up at home with their child, then they died, and that’s it. They can be treated as something tragic, but heroic? I wouldn’t say so.

They are also shown as paradigms of "the good ones," of the "correct morality," especially Lily, who is basically the Virgin Mary of this story and seems to have no flaws at all. But the reality is that if we go to canon, everything Lily does is a constant failure. Lily is condescending to Severus from the very beginning, probably because he is poorer than she is. Then she treats him as a charity case, which is already annoying her because he’s too geeky, odd, and marginal, causing her problems in her social circles. Then she half-smiles at his abuser while he is mistreating and humiliating him in front of the entire school. And then she marries that abuser. You can tell me whatever you want about Lily Potter, but what you’re showing me is rubbish, and if you show me rubbish but tell me wonderful things, there’s something that doesn’t add up, and for me, that’s the greatest failure of all.

If I have to be honest, I go back to what I mentioned before: for me, Lily had a huge inferiority complex. She felt inferior in the Muggle world because perhaps she wasn’t poor, but her family didn’t live in a good area either; they were probably lower middle class, without status or a promising future. At Hogwarts, she felt inferior for being the daughter of Muggles, so throughout her life, she secretly wanted to be part of the elite, to stand out, to be popular, to be seen as something important. That a boy like James Potter—handsome, wealthy, popular, with pure-blood status—would take an interest in her never displeased her. Deep down, she liked it; it was what she wanted. In the end, she gave in and married him, and she was probably very happy with her decision because that way, she ended up at the pinnacle of the social ladder. Of course, she liked James deep down for a long time; as Rowling once said. She liked what James represented, what he could mean for her. She would no longer just be the good student, pretty, nice, and popular; she would also have one of the most popular boys in school as a partner, who was also rich and of pure blood. I think that deep down, she and Petunia are quite similar in that regard, both seeking social ascent, each in their own way. After all, they were sisters.

Skip Google for Research

As Google has worked to overtake the internet, its search algorithm has not just gotten worse.  It has been designed to prioritize advertisers and popular pages often times excluding pages and content that better matches your search terms 

As a writer in need of information for my stories, I find this unacceptable.  As a proponent of availability of information so the populace can actually educate itself, it is unforgivable.

Below is a concise list of useful research sites compiled by Edward Clark over on Facebook. I was familiar with some, but not all of these.

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Google is so powerful that it “hides” other search systems from us. We just don’t know the existence of most of them. Meanwhile, there are still a huge number of excellent searchers in the world who specialize in books, science, other smart information. Keep a list of sites you never heard of.

www.refseek.com - Academic Resource Search. More than a billion sources: encyclopedia, monographies, magazines.

www.worldcat.org - a search for the contents of 20 thousand worldwide libraries. Find out where lies the nearest rare book you need.

https://link.springer.com - access to more than 10 million scientific documents: books, articles, research protocols.

www.bioline.org.br is a library of scientific bioscience journals published in developing countries.

http://repec.org - volunteers from 102 countries have collected almost 4 million publications on economics and related science.

www.science.gov is an American state search engine on 2200+ scientific sites. More than 200 million articles are indexed.

www.pdfdrive.com is the largest website for free download of books in PDF format. Claiming over 225 million names.

www.base-search.net is one of the most powerful researches on academic studies texts. More than 100 million scientific documents, 70% of them are free