I Honestly Cannot Get The Idea Of Snape Bowing Sarcastically At Umbridge Out Of My Head. Snape Outrunning

i honestly cannot get the idea of snape bowing sarcastically at umbridge out of my head. snape outrunning a hippogriff. snape writing poetry. severus “would you like me to do it now? or would you like a few moments to compose an epitaph?” snape. snape referring to himself in the third person when he comes up behind harry and ron in cos “or maybe, he’s waiting to hear why you two did not arrive on the school train”. snape hiding behind a suit of armor and walking out with a dramatic “it is i, severus snape!”. robes billowing. the scowling. peaceing tf out by literally throwing himself out the window.

why do people hate this man. he’s hilarious.

🔥 gale?

the takes couldn't get hotter with gale honestly.

the fandom villainizing gale has to be one of the most extreme examples of character hatred and considerably racism that i have ever seen.

people like to dehumanize gale, an impoverished boy of color from the poorest part of the most penurious district who had been heavily oppressed alongside his people by the capitol, and watched the people around him fall to squalor and starvation. when his home is then BOMBED and turned to ashes by that same oppressor, he goes out of his way to save 900+ victims out of the 1000 population count.

in dealing with the war that followed, gale then weaponizes his passion, anger and hurt that had followed him and the district for years, seeking justice and having that very thing backfire after a weapon he helped to develop, not create, not put out himself, but simply curate ideas and thoughts — ended up killing one of the people he had sworn to protect for the entire trilogy, primrose everdeen, (his best friend's sister and the most cherished person within her life.) despite knowing that gale is not responsible for her death, but rather helped to again, create the weaponry that led to it, was something that she distanced herself from him for and moved away from him for.

and yet, YET people will come to the defense of coriolanus / president snow, a WHITE elderly man and excuse his dictatorship, the trafficking of HIS victors, the abuse he put his victors, civilians AND the districts through, and the indoctrination and full corruption of the very centre of panem. he gets a pass because he's attractive in the movies and acts a certain way in the books, but then people are quick to tear down gale (a victim OF snow's reign and who was opressed BY him?) and compare them as if any of that is within the same vein.

yes, snow is extremist and gale has traits of extremism, but one is a fully fledged 80 year old dictator with generations of blood on his hands and the other is an 18-20 year old poc who is a victim of his circumstances and tries to fight back from the systemic exploitation and abuse that he and his people suffer through BECAUSE of snow. they are not comparable in any way and the "prim reaper" jokes are foul and disgusting and have never been funny.

yes, gale has a lot of issues personality wise that make him dislikable, and treats katniss with a lot of dismissal and can often have an uncomfortable relationship with her, but that doesn't mean you get to treat him sub-human for his other characteristics in which are justified.

send 🔥 for more hot takes!

Gale and Katniss are proof that you can grow up in the same circumstances and still learn to see the world in a different way.

Growing up in famine, abuse, violence, poverty and under control of a corrupt government gave them similar circumstances to grow up in: being the oldest sibling, their fathers dying in the mine, becoming the providers of the house at an early age, losing almost everything to said government. While Katniss developed a sense of empathy for everyone affected by this government (whether they were more privileged than her, or not), Gale developed a sense of hatred and thirst for vengeance because the people that weren’t his people had privileges that no one should have, while his family and his friends were being starved, or killed.

That’s why from an early age (pre-teen to full blown teenage years) he had always been thinking with the mindset of a hunter, only he wasn’t only hunting in the forest for prey and food, he was hunting in the real world and he was hunting his enemies, perpetrators and by-standers who did nothing to stop them, they all fit in the same category for him: the enemy. He grew up thinking of ways in which he could kill them if he could, that’s why earlier in the books he tells Katniss he would kill the Capitol citizens if he could, they were nothing to him.

When Gale sees the Capitol bomb and fire his district and kill his people, then gets evacuated to district 13 and has the opportunity to do something, to be of value and design strategies that can help kill said enemy, he does it. No second thought.

The thing is, both Katniss and Gale were right in certain aspects, especially in those they couldn’t agree on, and for me is easy to see from the perspective of both.

In war it should be common rule to offer the possibility of surrender first, but when your enemy doesn’t surrender and you see your own army lose more and more members, you attack - most of the time these are “last resort” attacks that end in lots of human life lost, but when you still give them a last chance to surrender like they did with the train in 2, it still shows a little glimpse of hope and empathy, that not everything has to be lost to war, and this is the part Gale didn’t understand, because if he paid too much thought to it, the lines would get blurred in his head, it was easier to see in black and white.

Personally, I’m in a grey zone when it comes to both of their thinking, and that’s why as a world with increasing and escalating issues we’ve created mechanisms like humanitarian law, war law, international human rights, etc, etc, we need to draw the lines, this is the playbook Katniss was referring to. What’s too much in war? A bullet to the head? Burying people in a mountain just for the sake of killing them? Where’s the line? Hijacking and manipulating people, stripping them of their consciousness and identity? Sending children into an arena to murder each other? Human trafficking? Sex trafficking? You see where I’m going? This is not about Gale, it’s about war.

Look at history, look around you. What do you see? What do you make of it? And please, use critical thinking. Is it acceptable to kill group B if they’ve killed people from group A? Do people from group B deserve a second chance, although their victims didn’t? Your opinion and reasoning depends a lot on the morals you have, and your own experience with war and abuse, which, if you’ve been lucky enough not to have a first hand experience with it, you should also take it into consideration before saying something. Just think, consider, see beyond yourself, see from different points of you, keep the definition of good and evil close to your hand and take note where they start to get blurry. What do you see?

Leo. Genuine question. How much time did you spend staring at Jason’s lips to figure that one out?

Y'all are so gross about Gale, it's really telling.

Like, this is a kid who has been forced to be an adult and seen his whole community be brutalized and literally blown into bits and what, he's expected to be real level-headed and reasonable and compassionate?

"Oh, but Peeta didn't do this. Katniss didn't do that."

Have y'all ever heard of different trauma responses? Katniss flees. Peeta fawns. Gale fights.

I'm sorry Gale isn't a perfect victim. Systematic oppression and brutality doesn't create perfect victims. It only traumatizes people. It makes them justifiably angry. It makes them want justice. (And you know, Gale is a fucking kid.)

So Gale's anger and hatred makes you uncomfortable? Makes you feel icky? Good. Sit in it. Reflect on it. And realize that the people you should be directing your outrage towards are the people doing the brutalization and oppression, not the victims.

(Yes, I know Gale is a fictional character. I also know that the way some of y'all see him is the same way you see people fighting back against oppression.)