Whenever I'm Studying Marxism (and That's Quite A Lot Of Times Actually) I Remember Marx's Idea That

Whenever I'm studying Marxism (and that's quite a lot of times actually) I remember Marx's idea that Revolution can only take form through hate.

Of course, I know now it's a very specific form of hate and that it's pointed to a specific community of people but when I started learning about it, I often found myself rebelling at the notion of hatred as a conductive to Revolution.

I thought hate was too volatile, too savage to be trustworthy but as I grow older and see the world as it is I see myself tasting that hate — and it's hard to actually put into words but this hatred is not ugly and unpredictable.

This hatred is actually quite beautiful, it's not a firing blaze scorching down the earth but a burning fire cleansing a wound, it's born out of indignation and love for humankind. It's there because I love humanity so much I can't help but feel the indignation for what happens to us to my very core and I can't help but turn this into anger, into hatred against those I know are responsible for this.

I really think Marx was onto something with this besides the whole political and economic points he usually made.

She's trembling.

She's trembling in his arms but there's such calm stillness in her eyes. As if Death was a fine wine she knew had been poisoned. He couldn't comprehend.

"You're afraid." He said, hoping that would shake her from her stillness.

"Yes." She said and her voice was shaken like her body.

But she didn't run. Didn't scream. He could tell she was thinking about it, every instinct on her body demanding it. But the strange, strange creature in front of him did not move.

"You're going to die."

"I'm aware."

"Won't you try to run?" He crooked his head. "To beg?"

"Would it change anything?"

He scoffed, half amused, half incredulous.

"I suppose not." She nodded at his answer, her eyes curious as they shone to him. "Are you suicidal?"

"No." She blinked. "Why would you think that?"

"People who want to live usually try to do something to ensure they do."

"Good point." The corner of her lips turned up. He could hear her beating heart wildly inside her ribcage. "I suppose I like the idea of dying in the hands of a vampire. It's an interesting death, even if no one will know."

"An interesting death?" He was captured by the insane idea as if her words had been a trap for an innocent prey.

But he was no prey.

"It's better than the alternatives, I suppose. Every death I can think of living is either boring, painful, too quick, or all of the above." She looked him in the eyes, fearful but not wavering. "Are you going to do it now?"

"Why would you want to die?"

"I don't but I don't suppose you'll let me go as well" He didn't respond. She hesitated. "Will you?"

"Would you like that?"

"Yes." There was no hesitation this time but they still danced around each other like they were aliens, other species completely. Which, to be fair, he was to her. "But will you?"

"I don't know." He was honest and she got quiet. "Why are you so complicit in your own death?"

"I don't want to die like a human, I guess." She laughed a bit at the irony of it all. "I don't want to be afraid even if I don't want to die now because if I am afraid... fear is the last thing I'll ever feel."

"What do you want to feel like as you die then?"

"Warm"

He blinked, that only word feeding at his heart like predators over carrion. It had been a long time since he had died but he couldn't help but try to remember what it felt like, his beating heart matching hers as memories long forgotten flooded his brain.

"If you died, would you tell me?" He asked then, his voice as soft as summer rain. "What it feels like?"

"I don't want to." Her quick comprehension made him chuckle.

"Why not, doll?"

"What future is there for you, or me, or anyone who lives forever? Where will my loved ones be in thirty years? Fifty? Where will I be when humanity finally manages to destroy itself? What will be left but despair and death and a touch of amused malice?"

"Strange. You seemed like the hopeful type."

"My hope lies in the present. Not in the future. I don't hope for things I know are just a fickle possibility, an echo of what shines bright and loud right now. And I won't trade the burning flames of the present for the certainty of the future. I can live with my anxiety over what's next. I won't live with the empty promises of tomorrow."

He felt his temper flaring.

"Don't you wanna know what it's like to be powerful? What on Earth wouldn't you trade your pitiful human life for eternity and the ease of a darker kind of life?"

"I fear I'm not that power-starved." She sounded amused by his impatience. "Nor am I so easily swayed by promises of a better existence. We're made of the same stuff, you and I, even if yours is better utilized. We're stardust and connected energy, we're freaks of the Universe and still, we're both suffering. Again, we cry and weep over and over. What is there for us, creatures of the same element, then to make the best we can with what we have, and hope the randomness of the Universe grace us with some kind of mercy? I cannot bear to be the protagonist of this story. I cannot bear the thought of suffering without my bright lights and my feet on the ground. I am not made for the intensity of eternity or the pain of idle life. To dream about grandeur is a better thing than to live it."

"So it's a coward's choice." He was disappointed.

"Could be." She said looking at him with the same confusion he looked at her. "Do you like it? Your meaningless existence? The loneliness drenched in despair you wear like a coat? The memories that haunt you every minute of every day against the cold reality of this existence for eternity? Drowning in arrogance and beliefs of Darwinian self-importance so that you can bear it? The fear of going mad slowly in a spiral because you can't remember how it feels like to be human anymore?"

He was heaving. Her lips touched his ears, a shiver running down his spine.

"What are we but desperate creatures, clawing our way through the dirt of our own cores?"

I think life loves us

I honestly think we have the wrong idea about love and life. I think love is being tender and forgiving, even when we're not to ourselves. and I think love is being firm when needed because our actions have consequences and we need to accept them even when they hurt. Not shielding the people we love from the consequences of their actions is an act of love, it's a chance you have to say "I'm here, I'm with you, I'll stand by you, and I want you to be the best version of yourself you can be so I'm not gonna shield you from life."

And I think that's why life loves us. Because she won't shield us but she'll be with us every step of the way, holding our hands.

To Decadent Poets - Summary

Hey, guys! That's my book here, I decided to post a few chapters (or maybe more) after translating it from Brazilian Portuguese to English. I really wanted to share this work and hope you enjoy it.

Here's a quick summary of the book:

Title: Taigh Hill Dedications

Series: To Decadent Poets

Tags: Dark Academia, Poetry, World War II, Scotland, Art;

If you liked... you're gonna like this: Chronicles of Narnia, Harry Potter (especially Marauders era), Anne with an E, Enola Holmes, Pride and Prejudice, etc.

Trigger Warning: child abuse/neglect, abusive relationships, racism, antisemitism, xenophobia, biphobia, homophobia, anxiety crisis, mentions of abortion, PTSD, post-partum depression.

Add: The book didn't have a Sensitive Editor, so any problems with how people of color, disabilities, or queer people are portrayed can be discussed directly with the author.

Synopsis: When the war begins Christian is sent to the North of Scotland to live with his estranged godfather in his isolated property. He couldn't imagine he would've found his kindred spirits at that forgotten place, his family in every way but blood.

Noah is a jew, Oliver is German, and Annie has a strong head that can rival his own. All of them were very different but their love for art and an old mystery of the old property can be enough to join them forever or never again allow their friendship to flourish.

Author's note: Historical accuracy is not something this author tried to pass on in this story, dear readers. There are a lot of historical changes happening in the books and in no way should this book be considered a good account of real events of the time they represent.

Summary (with links):

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7 - Coming soon...

Your analysis focuses entirely on Snape being irredeemable because he never takes responsibility for the harm he does. Almost all of your quotes in evidence are from his childhood and teenage years, in which he is indeed blind to his own malevolence.

Except this is the whole point of his story of atonement. He was radicalised into walking down a very bad road, and then tried to claw his way out of it. He does eventually take responsibility - as an adult. He commits himself to a dangerous path of spying to defeat Voldemort. He can’t bring Lily back, he can’t undo his mistakes, but he can understand that he was wrong to join the Death Eaters and dedicate himself to a different cause. If he didn’t take responsibility for his choices, he would’ve spent his days mourning Lily on a beach in the Bahamas instead of willingly signing his own death warrant by joining Dumbledore to protect Harry.

Nobody - and I really do mean this - is beyond salvation. Nobody, even those who have sinned gravely, is beyond waking up one morning and choosing to be a tiny bit better than they were the day before, even if they remain imperfect. Its a fundamental part of humanity. It’s a very dangerous road for go down when you dehumanise young people who make terrible choices, write them off as fundamentally evil, and deny them the opportunity to take a different road. Snape remained bitter and cruel and perpetuated the cycle of abuse, but he did in one very vital respect choose a different road.

https://youtu.be/SSH5EY-W5oM?si=XBskWqOT2X0tl0Am

Okay, that's a valid point to be made, I did focus mainly on teenager Snape but only because I thought adult Snape would be obviously interpreted from that point on. The fact is adult Snape doesn't exactly atone for what he did and what he chose to become as much as it looks like he did, simply because his harmful ways didn't affect only Lily, to begin with.

Look, you're starting from a point where Snape's most serious mistake was to turn on Lily and forgetting what I said earlier on in the analysis: Snape's biggest fault wasn't his personal/individual issues, it was his political agenda and beliefs, and what he did in the name of that.

Fascism isn't only a political aspect, because to be a fascist, there's a series of prior beliefs one has to have to be okay with what fascist governments and political groups will do to stay in power. To be a fascist, to openly advocate for what Voldemort and his followers advocated for instead of just going with the flow (which was not what Snape did at all), you just don't "become radicalized" like there's no one to blame here but some notion of propaganda. To radicalize to fascism, you must seek out information about it, advocate for it, and have prior beliefs of superiority that allow you to relate to it in a deep, core level - all of which we already attributed to young Snape in my analysis.

Let's put it this way: fascism is capitalism's emergency button. It'll only arise when capitalism is in crisis, which we don't see in the HP books because it's neither relevant to the story nor it seems that Rowling has the political knowledge to do so. But more than that, fascism is based on colonialist views of the superiority of one versus the other.

Think about what you know about Iluminism: the first thing I learned about it in school is that it was a dichotomous stream of thought - we have a lot of duality in it. In Art, we have the chiaroscuro technique; in metaphysics, we have the discussion about man versus God; and in politics, we have the "illuminated" man (white, heteronormative, cisnormative, high-class, educated men) versus barbarians or savages (non-white men or women).

The colonialist way of thinking stems from this very deep-rooted belief that some people are more rational, and more advanced - superior - than other peoples, and so it'd be their God-given task to "illuminate" those "savages" through colonialism. Fascism is the elevation of those beliefs to a place of persecution and political revisionism in the newer stages of capitalism. So quite literally, to be a fascist, one has to first have this deep-rooted belief that there are people who are inherently superior to others. A belief system that Snape demonstrates early on in his life that he does have.

And that's exactly what I criticize about JK Rowling's writing and what further supports my point of Snape failing to atone for his beliefs: what she says in her books, basically, is that it's okay to think some people are superior to others as long as you don't do anything against those inferior ones like it's very much exemplified by what happens to the Malfoys after the war. It's where her individual background shows itself in the worst ways - because she was raised in a society that benefited from colonialism, their way of looking and thinking still carries a lot of reminiscent of colonialist thinking. Ask a person from the Global South about Europeans and you'll see what I mean - even when they don't realize, there is clearly a rooted racism in the ways they're raised because of that.

So it's obvious to me that Snape's development couldn't ever surpass the point where his core belief of superiority lies because Rowling doesn't see this as a problem. Maybe as an annoyance but certainly not as a problem when it is, 100%, the problem. Especially if we're talking about a redemption arc because then it means that Snape could never actually make proper amends or be actually accountable for what he has done as a Death Eater.

To break free from this way of thinking we need what Fanon calls cognitive dissonance: an extreme discomfort that is the only thing able to shatter a core belief like that of superiority. Now, we can argue that for Snape a cognitive dissonant experience would be Lily's death, or Voldemort's persecution of he,r because this did show Snape that his beliefs of Lily's exception to the rule were misplaced. However, there are various indications that that doesn't really happen for Snape, especially when we talk about his adult version's behavior and that might be explained by a series of earlier motives.

I'll focus first on the behavior pattern that I identify as cues on the fact that Snape didn't exactly atone for his mistakes in his adult life and then I'll come back to talk about why I don't think Lily's persecution or death was a cognitive dissonant experience for Snape, as traumatic as it may have been.

So I said earlier in the analysis that it doesn't matter why we do something, it only matters that we did do something because our actions are what will have a reflection in real life, not our intentions. And while I stand by that, I cannot in a sane mind say that our intentions do not play a role in our actions - that's simply not true. But our intentions have a different role to which importance should be attributed, and that is in the way we make things. Our intentions have as the main core, our beliefs, and our beliefs will therefore guide our actions.

Now, to simplify, if I believe every human being has the same value and should be treated as such, I'll act with the intention of demonstrating such belief. So I vote for candidates who preach equality, and I advocate for equality in the environments I'm inserted in (even if it's only me doing it subtly, it's still there). I cannot dissociate myself from it, it's a part of who I am and therefore it leaks into all aspects of my life. The same happens with the contrary: if I believe that some people are inherently superior to others because of their birth, then my core actions will reflect what I believe.

See where I'm going to?

Adult Snape perpetuates the cycle of abuse he grew up with, not only in his house but also in his political beliefs and later on as a professor. Yes, it was the abuse he suffered early on in his life that made a core belief of his that there are people who are superior because of their strength (and then it evolved to believe that this strength came from magic and purity) but as an adult who believes in this, it's painfully obvious how he perpetuates it: he defends bullies and is a bully himself.

He uses his place of power to punish and abuse this power simply because he can, he looks down on those he considers weak and acts against them in a show of his own superiority. And that isn't exclusively shown only to his students but also to people who are "below" him in the social hierarchy of the wizarding world, such as Remus.

And yes, I do realize there is more to their relationship as colleagues than just a non-werewolf "picking" on a werewolf out of prejudice but I have to note that if you really broke through your initial core belief of superiority, the very least you have to know is that there are some boundaries you can't break even out of well-placed resentment. And one of these boundaries is using your place in the hierarchy to oppress people who are below you, which Snape does when he reveals Remus' condition to the wizarding world.

Plus, I do want to challenge your statement of nobody being beyond salvation as I do see it as a very naive way of thinking, although that's not my exact point about it.

First of all, salvation and forgiveness are two different things. You can do unforgivable things and still become a better person than you were when you did those things, I do not deny that. But the damage you did is still there, and no victim of this damage is required to forgive you because you became a better person - sometimes our actions are irreversible, sometimes the damage we cause (especially when it comes to fascist beliefs) is too great, sometimes we can't possibly do enough to amend the things we've done. That counts with abuse, with fascism, with r*p*... there are many things to consider before we say so freely that no one is above salvation. It's naive to believe that everyone deserves forgiveness because there are things that cause too much harm to ever be amended again.

And as I said before, salvation and forgiveness are two different things. I do believe people can do better even after doing unforgivable things. I won't say it's exactly fair to the victims but there are abusive people who have become better after a especially bad relationship, there are parents who have become better parents to their youngest children than they were to their oldest, there were supremacists who became much better people with life, I do not deny that. I have no desire to deny that actually.

What I am advocating for, however, is that we hold these people, and characters, responsible for their own actions and uphold the very pillars that will give us the basis from which we should judge the changes in their behavior. And what I am saying about Snape is that he did not fulfill any of these milestones for redemption, it only appears so because he turns against Voldemort but that alone isn't indicative of change because the evidence shows that his core beliefs are still the same and as such, his actions on a personal and general level will reflect that even without Voldemort.

The point I'm making is that our core beliefs are the ones that guide our actions, and therefore, Snape's actions cannot be deemed as completely redeeming because they don't reflect an actual change of behavior more than they reflect a change of perceptions of the people he sided with in the beginning. Snape's actions don't reflect a cognitive dissonant change but on a shallower level, a change in perception: he doesn't turn on Voldemort because he realizes that his supremacist beliefs are frayed but because he takes Voldemort's persecution of Lily with hatred.

I explain: we only hate in three instances, one of them being when the object of our hate directly or indirectly threatens the things we love. As much as I deem Snape and Lily's friendship toxic, I cannot deny the existence of love, so when Lily is threatened by Voldemort, Snape hates him because he is a threat to her. Which is fair, but it's not a cognitive dissonant event for him because of all the points I make above. His change is superficial, his loyalties change out of emotions and not out of convictions, and as much as this doesn't matter when it comes to the actions he has taken - Snape did have a fundamental role in defeating Voldemort and (questionably) defeating the corruption within the system Rowling so much adores - it matters because it'll indirectly impact the actions he'll make around it, hence his role as professor, for example.

As much as I do respect what it has cost him to endure as a spy for Dumbledore, I cannot say that his actions towards Voldemort are enough for a redemption arc because there's no actual change in Snape. He is the same he always was, he just had a change of loyalties out of love, which is noble but at the same time, it still causes damage to the people around him exactly because he didn't change.

TBH

I find so funny when I'm scrolling on these hashtags and then find some post with a hashtag like "I don't endorse abuse" of smt like that bc you'd think, with a media like IWTV, that'd be a given

We obviously don't like these characters because they are sane babygirl