YOU WANNA TELL THAT I'M WRONG?!?!

YOU WANNA TELL THAT I'M WRONG?!?!

This makes me feel kinda cruel, BUT...

I have kinda of a love/hate relationship with IWTV because at the same time I'm invested af in this story, I really think these guys have no business being this manipulable and/or pathetic ally in love at +100yo

And I get that's kinda cruel but honestly, are you even worthy immortality if you're gonna be manipulated by someone one third your age after living all this time? I'd kms from the embarrassment alone (and yes I'm throwing shade)

And this is kinda why Armand is my favorite vampire in the tv show, I guess?? No one be manipulating more than my cancelled wife and that's what a respectable 400yo vampire should strive to be tbh

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 we all kinda collectively think Latino soap operas are the only ones serving the authentic Latino drama but let's be honest here

What the fuck hotd even is if not the family fighting over their late granpa's house?

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 ?

Taigh Hill Dedications - Chapter 1

Summary - find more chapters, read the synopsis, and trigger warnings here!

“In a Midnight dreary while I pondered, weak and weary, Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping As of someone gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door ‘Tis some visitor’ I muttered ‘tapping at my chamber door Only this and nothing more’” — The Raven, Edgar Allan Poe

People could go fuck themselves, this was Christian Anthony Evans's motto for life.

From experience, the boy could say for sure that seeking people's approval was always something bad. And Christian had learned that in the worst way possible: through the suffering of being rejected by his own father. When he was a kid, Chris couldn't understand why Maxwell wouldn't behave like his friend's parents did, carrying him on his shoulders and laughing at silly jokes that made no sense.

“Your father doesn't know how to express his own love,” his mother Jeanne would say patiently while putting him to bed when his bedtime would come. “He feels too intensely, Chris, and tries to hide these feelings to protect himself.”

At seven, Chris could understand his dad, or at least, he tried to understand the man he admired the most in the whole world. At sixteen, after countless ignored anniversaries and conversations, he was tired of his mother's excuses for his father's behavior and simply decided not to care. Well, not about everything: Chris cared about his mom and his friends, but not about his father.

Never about Maxwell.

When Jeanne had something to say about Maxwell, he didn't want to hear. Ignore just how he was ignored, Chris thought, and he couldn't be happier after he started to really do it, occupying his time with entertaining his mother, since she suffered just like — or even more than — him with his father's absence. He would have fun with his friends until late — at least after his fourteenth birthday — so he could avoid his dad all day but the five minutes through breakfast.

It was for this reason that when Maxwell came into the house that cold September afternoon, Chris and Jeanne knew there was something wrong. 

At first, the day seemed like any other day: Chris woke up at the same hour to go to school, had breakfast in an uncomfortable silence between his parents, gave his mother a goodbye kiss, and left without looking at his dad. When he came back home at lunchtime, the employees served the food while Nana, the old housekeeper who had raised Jeanne, knit in her rocking chair with an amused smile to Chris. Both of them, like his mother and him, had been very close since he was a kid and she loved to curl her finger through Chris's hair, commenting on how she had only seen his deep shade of red hair in books.

Nana was the one who had awakened the boy's taste for literature, although he rarely mentioned he liked books. For some reason, his friends seemed to think reading was boring and Chris didn't know what to think about it. He thought books were so interesting and truthful, so full of emotions and adventures, capable of curing all his pain with their magic infinite stories. He loved them immediately.

“You're quiet today,” said the old housekeeper with her sweet husky voice, her white hair as soft as cotton.

“I'm eating, Nana,” said Chris in response with a sly smile to the older one while he leaned back and looked at her. “Weren't you the one to teach me it's impolite to eat with my mouth open?”

“Sassy boy,” she provoked, laughing, and got Chris to smile, too. Then, he returned to his food. The old lady, though, seemed restless and said: “I think something is happening.”

“What is it, Nana?” the boy asked, frowning when he looked up from his plate to look at the older woman carefully while she rocked herself and looked at the window, lost in thoughts.

Nana, though, just shook her head and strongly clipped her tongue, smiling a little, but her smile didn't reach her eyes.

“Nothing, son, just an old lady's silly feelings” she finally answered and Chris snorted, sarcastically.

Like his step-grandma could be considered anything near silly.

Knowing what he meant with that snorting, Nana just smiled and got back to her knitting. After some seconds of silence, which was broken just by the soft noise of the needles hitting each other, Chris gave up and continued to eat, aware he wouldn't get an answer from the old lady.

The rest of the afternoon also passed without any problem: after lunch, he got himself clean and went down, where he knew his mother would spend her whole afternoon, waiting for visits that wouldn't come and for a husband who wouldn't come home until late at night. Jeanne was the sweetest person Chris had ever met in his life and it wasn't rare for Nana to say he should always give thanks for having a mother like her, because not many people in the world were like his mother. In fact, there were too many insufferable ignorant people and Chris could even include some of his own friends on the bill. And his parents too.

As always, Jeanne was sitting on the burgundy patterned sofa, staring at the window in front of her, so lost inside herself that Chris laughed at the sight of her open-mouthed and starry-eyed, something anyone would find weird and still, his mother was beautiful.

Silently, he allowed Jeanne to compose herself after this moment of distraction when his arrival woke her up, and walked to the right bookshelf, at the back of the living room. There was two of them, each one in one side of the marble fireplace. The wood floor ran the vertical, from the window to the bookshelves and the cream-colored wall, smooth like his mother, who had decorated the room.

“How about a bit of Jane Eyre today?” the boy offered when his mother turned to him, holding the black vellum and golden words book for her to see it.

“No, I think I want some poetry today” was Jeanne's answer.

Her voice sounded to Chris's ears like a feeling symphony, he almost closed his eyes to hear it better. There were always so many tones printed on Jeanne's voice that it was almost impossible to understand all of it.

However, instead of closing his eyes, Chris just smiled jokingly and raised an eyebrow:

“You guess or you sure?” he raised his hands in peace when his mother gave him that look.

In Chris's opinion, every mother had a look capable of stopping their children from doing whatever they were doing. It was a warning mixed with a caring firmness, hard to explain, but he could feel he should stop what was annoying her at that moment.

“Right, lemme sit next to you then.”

He traded the books on the bookshelf and sat beside his mom, without caring about the fact that she continued to look out the window as she always did, still waiting for someone who would never come. Chris just looked at his mother's red hair and looked down, to the pages of his book. Edgar Allan Poe wasn't Jeanne's style, but Chris was sure she wouldn't hear a word he said, so he just took a deep breath and started:

“Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary…”

And just like that they spend the afternoon, with his mom looking through the window and Chris's voice, soft and sounding for the reading, filling up the room with the word master's words. He read poems and some tales to his mother and, at the end of the third tale — Berenice — Chris closed the book and supported it on his bent leg, looking to Jeanne with hesitation before asking softly:

“Why don't you try to paint for a while?”

That woke Jeanne up and she looked at him, speechless for a moment with her son's suggestion, then smiled, but there was something painful in her smile, something that made Chris's heart contort inside him.

“Why don't you read to me a little more, cariad? Or maybe I could. Your throat must be dry already” was all that Jeanne said as an answer.

Chris didn't say anything for a couple of seconds, just staring at his mom and trying to convince her silently to talk to him, but it was in vain. Jeanne could be twenty times more stubborn than her son and just looked back at him, that soft expression making keeping the discussion up impossible for Chris. The boy looked away and handed the book to Jeanne in silence, giving up after a few minutes, but before the delicate hands could hold the book, the front door pounded open with a wicked noise and Maxwell appeared in the opening that led to the living room. 

Different from the days he used to arrive early, his hair was a mess and his cravat really twisted. And his eyes, the one thing father and son shared, shone like crazy, wide. That expression in his usually stoic father made his wife move, standing from the sofa and going quickly to him with her preoccupation printed in her expression. Chris also got up, hesitant and unsure what to do, not linking a bit the change in his routine.

“Max, what happened?” asked Jeanne to her husband with a frown. Chris looked at his father, who was staring at him without even blinking, and put his hands in his pockets, rocking back and forth while trying to ignore the uncomfortable aura of the room. “Max, talk to me.”

“I'll… let you talk,” said Chris when he heard the urgency in his mom's voice.

He didn't want to see Jeanne like that, especially because of his dad, but when Chris motioned to the exit, Maxwell moved abruptly, as if he had just woken up from a dream, and said with a husky voice:

“No, I need to talk with you two.”

Chris felt his body go stiff, resisting Maxwell's authoritarian tone, but the boy forced himself to just nod, clearly uncomfortable, and sat back on the sofa, putting the book in his hand on the table beside it while his father held Jeanne by the shoulders, firmly gentle, and put her in one of the armchairs.

For a moment, all of the three stood there in silence, looking at each other as if they were strangers. Chris was impatient but just vibrated his own leg while massaging his right hand, which was sore. Maxwell's eyes fixated on his son's hand, who recoiled quietly under his stare, ignoring his pity expression.

When he was younger, Chris had an accident and broke his hand, which had never been cured quite right. Maxwell didn't even go to the hospital, although his mother told him he was worried. Not enough to go to a hospital, apparently. The older man didn't seem satisfied when he knew Chris could never be a part of the military like him because of his hand.

“Talk to us, Max,” said Jeanne, taking her husband's hand, while he was standing.

The older man looked at them and sat down, his face frozen in an angst expression made Chris's heart beat faster inside his chest.

"Today by afternoon, less than an hour ago, the prime minister decided we're at war against Germany,” said Maxwell, and Chris almost snorted his disdain if it wasn't the preoccupation he was feeling. 

Different from his friends, he didn't share their arrogant beliefs of England's superiority. Actually, he didn't even understand it, but maybe that was the result of his mother being Scottish, and Scotland, in general, was still sore about England. None of them spoke for a long time, then Maxwell cleared his throat and said, looking at his son:

“You and your mother will go to your godfather's estate at the north of Scotland in a week. It's already decided, Elijah has given his permission…”

“Hold on” Chris got up, his hand in the air, making his father stop. “How come, out of nowhere, I'll go to Scotland? What about school? My education? What the hell am I going to do in the middle of Scotland?”

“You'll be secure!” Maxwell yelled, closing his eyes as if asking for patience Chris also had to control his own temper, but just because of his mom's eyes on him. “And don't worry, Elijah was an Oxford professor, he will be able to take care of your education.”

The last words were said in an impatient tone that made Chris want to continue the discussion, but he was tired of all of this. He knew his father wasn't sending him to Scotland to free him from some responsibility: Chris wouldn't be able to fight in a war even if he wanted to. So that meant England was expecting violent attacks on the capital. Air Strikes, probably, but attacks nonetheless.

“I'll help Chris with his bags,” said Jeanne calmly, exchanging looks with her son before turning to her husband and adding: “But I'm staying here.”

“No, you won't!” Maxwell had an immediate reaction, turning to his wife with an expression nearly panicked. 

Even feeling himself shivering and his body freezing with fear, Chris turned to his mom and stood silent, waiting to hear what she had to say.

“Max, I'm not gonna argue with you. I'm staying and that's final” said Jeanne with a silent firmness, her eyes shining strong to her husband, who swallowed and tried to protest, but the woman was already exposing arguments: “You're gonna need me here to take care of everything. Wars last year, you know that, and we won't leave this house for anyone to enter, we won't leave Nana here alone and in danger, I won't abuse my friend's hospitality, we won't leave our things to thieves and mostly, I won't leave you here alone for the time you'll be in England, even if it is just a little.”

The two adults looked at each other in a silent argument and Chris took advantage of that to climb up the stairs in his room's direction. His mom knew how to take care of herself and, unfortunately, there was nothing he could do or say to convince her to go with him. With Jeanne's stubbornness, there wasn't a soul capable of making her go to Scotland with him and Chris knew it better than anyone.

Sighing, confused, he passed his finger through his hair, feeling the curls straightening in his hand. 

He had a lot to think about.

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