Overanalyzing My OCs' Relationship At 2AM Just Because I Can

Overanalyzing my OCs' relationship at 2AM just because I can

I know no one you'll read this but I wanted so bad to make a character analysis of the characters of my latest book series, so I'll just do it and leave it here for anyone who might be interested,

So, one of the things I love about Khaos and Amalie's dynamics (and something that is vital to understand about their relationship) is that they don't fall in love with each other until the third book because the romance is not what their stories are about.

Of course, they feel attracted to each other but they really, really don't like each other in the first two books. The thing about Khaos and Amalie's relationship in the first book (Prison of Darkness) is that they are learning to trust each other as people who can do the job they are assigned to in their mission - the one thing they do share and are obliged to in the story, the thing that brings them together.

The first book (for them) is about establishing Amalie's trust in Khaos' ability to lead and to actually respect those who are below him in this group's hierarchy, and about Khaos' ability to actually trust that Amalie will go through with her promises and stay by their side even when she has such a strong set of morals. Once they recognize that the other has the capacity to be and do what they need them to be or do, they realize they can trust each other to be a reliable part of the same team.

That's the point of the first book in regards to their relationship - to establish trust, not between romantic partners, but as part of the same team.

Then, by the first book, once Khaos is forced to confront the worst demons of his childhood, Amalie is forced to see the humanity of Khaos. And it's in this context the base of their romantic feelings will be set later on in the third book, but I digress: the point of the second book is that Khaos is not a good person and that's not supposed to be ignored by the readers - Khaos is not a good person and he isn't a good person by choice.

Amalie sees that, and she despises him for it, and she is right to do so because Khaos is aware of the pain and suffering his actions as well as his inaction put people through, and he still chooses it every time. And unlike some dark romances would make us believe, it's not actually sexy, healthy, or even healing to not give a damn because of trauma. It's actually the opposite of it.

Of course, Khaos has his reasons, he has deep-rooted trauma to overcome on the path to becoming a better person than he chooses to be but what Amalie is forced to see in the second book (Crown of Death) is that, deep down, he's not cruel or vindictive or insensitive for the sake of it. What she is forced to recognize and accept throughout the second book is that Khaos is very much human just like she is, and he has the same complexity she has.

It happens with Amalie's perception of other characters as well but especially when talking about Khaos, the second book forces her to see him in a new light so that the pot twist in the ending lands more heavily on her. The story of the second book will reveal to Amalie that even through his cruelty, Khaos is capable of not only caring but also capable of choosing better options, choosing to do better by himself and the people around him.

And for Khaos, the second book is about showing him that he can do better without losing himself like he fears will happen because of his trauma. It's about his understanding that change can happen and as such, forcing him to recognize that his perception of Amalie is jaded, is tainted by his trauma's lenses. For him, the development of his character gives Khaos the chance to look at Amalie as someone who can not only rival his intelligence but also push him in the direction he not only needs to be pushed but also wants to be pushed to, just by her personality alone.

It's about him understanding that Amalie was right, and being humbled by it, and accepting that he was wrong in his choices - albeit justified - and thus opening a path for him to change in the ways he needs to.

And that's the point where we reach the third book (Treason of Blood) and I absolutely love that Amalie and Khaos just start to sincerely love each other in the last book because it's only then they actually become the people they would fall in love with.

I could never have written Amalie falling in love with Khaos before because I could never fathom loving a person who thinks so little of my principles and morals, so little of my capacity to understand the world around me, like Khaos does for her. And for Khaos, I could never convincingly write someone falling in love with a person who thinks so little of me, of the person I am, who judges me even though she knows nothing of my struggles or my past or the things I've been through.

So the third book is about change, it's about becoming better versions of ourselves, and more than that: doing right by the rest of the world because of it. The third book is about forgiving bad deeds but demanding change for them, accepting traumas but also holding themselves and others accountable for their own choices (even when guided by these same traumas), it's about falling in love with a person because they're trying to do better (not for you but just because they realized they had a shitty attitude) and falling in love because of their capacity to forgive, to be kind and amorous even when we can't forgive ourselves.

I just love their dynamic so much, I wish more people knew about them.

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 😭

As I previously stated somewhere on this site, I would 100% go full-on Joaquin Phoenix's Joker if the love of my life called me as boring as a beige pillow

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.

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

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?"