Aegon Really Just Straight Up Fired His Pops To Promote This Asshole And All I Could Do Was Laugh Because

Aegon really just straight up fired his pops to promote this asshole and all I could do was laugh because my dude, this man just let your son die and your sister-wife be traumatized for life because he was fucking your mother AND YOU PROMOTE HIM FOR IT

Lol hotd could never fool me, this is some top shit comedy

(Sorry online illiterates but you could never convince me this man is fit to be king)

i keep sucking at my job but they keep promoting me 😭

The thing about Armand to me is that he strips us of any preconceived or prejudiced notion of what it means to be a manipulator or a narcissist. Most people who'll emotionally abuse you in your life won't be this evil character who is out to get you, they'll be people who actually feel and experience the emotions and feelings they manipulate you with.

To them, the reality of those feelings is there, raw and feeling like an exposed wire. That's why it's so hard to get out of toxic and/or abusive relationships — because you learn the way your abuser see and experience the world and it makes sense to you, even if it doesn't on a rational level. You get it. You empathize with it. And it becomes so much harder to leave.

So yes, Armand is this abused, traumatized man who regrets things and is so desperate to be loved he'll do anything to have it. But he also will do anything to have it.

It's why forgiveness is earned, not deserved. If forgiveness was about deserving, the whole world would be made of saints.

Being an adult while watching iwtv means that you really can't pick a character to hate on because of nuance - and they're all equally horrible lovable hateable complex beings, can't even be mad at armand because he's not some evil mastermind manipulator, while at the same time he is, but he has the cadence of doing all of that while being a shivering, quivering scared chihuahua and that's what makes it worse because 'evil' is not some big tough infallible guy. It's a 17 year old guy with glowing orange eyes with enough anxieties in him to melt a planet and he's always plotting in such a loser yet scaryy way. You get me ?

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.

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.

Hey, babes!

My previous account (licorice-lips) was deleted -_-

If any of you have any type of access to my post about snape (the one in wich I talk about the extreme casualty of the fact that he was a de) or have its screenshots, please contact me!

I'm so hurt for loosing that essay, I really put so much effort into it and I didn't want to lose it 😭 I tried everything, but even Internet Archive doesn't have it ):

I most certainly WILL write a mile long text once I finish reading The Hunger Games about its bazillion critics on capitalism, race, and so on and there's nothing anyone can say or do to convince me otherwise