Character Study - Tumblr Posts

Classes started so I'm more productive, have another character study, this time, matt!! 💼

Day 8: Matt Murdock

The pain is depurative. More than any number of 'hail mary's could be. This is a true penance, action without the self-pity of words. Without the excuses.

Matt takes his punishment as he has earned it, with a bloody smile.

It hurts, of course it hurts. It's supposed to hurt. Each blow tastes sweet, like pennies on a rainy day. Feels jagged and jittery like something close to love. The caress of something bigger than him.

This fight only ends one way—Matt, standing, bloodied over a pile of unconscious thugs—but first, he has to earn it. Spit enough blood on the concrete to pay for what drips down his knuckles.

Words: 110

Getting a jump on today cuz i have work- decided to do another character study! Link this time :)

Day 16: Link (Legend of Zelda)

There is a toll that heroism takes. No good act stays unpunished. Every life Link takes, no matter how evil, is a strike, and the tallies build.

He can't not do as he is destined, but sometimes, when he's alone, mopping his own blood from his skin, he wishes he didn't have to. Surely, this cannot be all there is.

Is it so wrong to want peace? To hope, each time a blade makes it past his armor, that it will be the last? He has done nothing but fight and bleed and kill for his people. For Zelda.

When is it enough?

Words: 103

The last one isn't even a finished piece, it's a throwaway ballpoint pen doodle with some cel shading slapped on. For serious.

Anywho, here's Eymweth. I thought it might be nice to trace her journey. I created her in seventh grade, and look where she's gone. Sometime in 2009, I decided that short, straight cut hair was boring, and she eventually ended up with spiky bangs and a long, thin ponytail.

She was buff for a period of time, which is confusing, considering she's a ranger with pretty much no skill in hand-to-hand combat. I finally brought back the flask at her waist, which is supposed to contain poison for her arrows. I'm kind of sad that I did away with her cloak entirely--while it was cliché and out of place on the character, I just love cloaks.

For a while I gave her armor an intricate design and such, but that just doesn't fit her either, so I've discarded it. Though probably impractical, I am fond of her breastplate-and-pants style with the two-finger gloves. The main goal was flexibility and not having to draw shoulder armor, which I was completely terrible at at the time.

Now go back in time and show seventh grade me this when I was first designing the charrie. xD

Updated: 2012 versions of Eymmy on the end.

Updated: 2013 versions on the end (I have now reached image limit haha)

Fics

I love writing, and even more so when it comes to fanfiction! I have a lot of stories stuck in my brain and stuck as unpublished in my docs…

So, keep in mind that the stories listed below are only the ones I have already published, or am soon going to publish. Also, a lot of these (more like all of them…) are ongoing; that is to say, they are not completed.

Most of them are standalone, meaning they’re like a novel, but a few are part of a series. If they are a series, it will be labeled like so: “Series’ Title” [series]. The series' stories are right underneath, in numerical order. And, as you can see, I have them labeled in alphabetical order, by fandom. (Crossover(s) is at the top because, despite starting with a C, it has more than one fandom involved; as such, it is considered “other,” so to speak.) (As for Character Studies, they are separate from the rest of my stories, which is why I put them above Crossover(s). The order for this is "Title" [Character Name; Fandom Name].)

This list is constantly being updated. As such, more fics will be added, and a key/legend may appear soon.

Character Study(ies)

flash of lightning (white teeth biting) [Hatake Kakashi; Naruto]

my body was for giving (to those that wanted) [Meng Shi; MDZS]

you told me to quiet down (because my opinions make me less beautiful) [Luo "MianMian" Qingyang; MDZS]

but I was not made with a fire in my belly (so I could be put out) [Wen Qing; MDZS]

Crossover(s)

syndrigasti (such peculiar, old souls) [Twisted-Wonderland x Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children]

Demon Slayer

burning star, burning passion (careful now) [series]

Astraios [main story]

Ardor [companion piece]

Fairy Tail

life is a faerie tale

Haikyū!!

Serendipity

Jujutsu Kaisen

Honor to Us All

Reflection

MXTX

Tales of a Bright Moon [series]

Chilling Roars (of a Bright Moon’s Mind)   [SVSSS]

Beautiful Whispers (of a Bright Moon’s Soul)   [MDZS]

Hidden Desires (of a Bright Moon’s Heart)   [TGCF]

oh golden child, promises were made [series]

yī nuò qiān jīn (a promise worth one thousand in gold) [main story; SVSSS & MDZS & TGCF]

Naruto

for memory to the sky-born king (was but the mocking shadow of past magnificence)

Record of Ragnarok

teoyeliztli

Riordan-verse

state of being [series]

Tokyo Revengers

Tranquillity

Twilight

home is where the heart is

Twisted-Wonderland

the inevitability of us (of a heartbreak)

Barriss Offee Day - Character Study

Sorry for the wonky format - it's because I'm too wordy for Tumblr's limits to have all my notes formatted like I want them to be!

This is rough and not really edited (the title is just a working title right now!), but I'm posting now because it's Barriss Day today!

I feel as if I can't say this enough: please be aware that this character study piece is meant to go along with a SW AU series of mine that I've been writing in, off and on, since the same summer that RotS came out in theatres! This is my headcanon Barriss for that specific AU series, which is my main SW AU series, so she's based mostly on the old SW EU (or Legends, as DISNEY calls it) with some of the newer DISNEY!SW canon adapted enough to be useful to me/make sense given that she's a Jedi Healer, but she's still an AU version of both versions of the official SW Barriss Offee character!

Title: “Barriss Chanah Offee: Jedi Healer and Jedi Commander”

Pairing: None as yet, though Kornell “Uli” Divini definitely has an enormous crush on Barriss during their shared time at Rimsoo (Republic Mobile Surgery Unit) 7, on Drongar, during the Clone Wars.

Rating: Uhm, probably a borderline PG-13, maybe (?)

Disclaimer: I do not own any of the characters from Star Wars, more’s the pity! What I do have is an extremely contrary muse that refuses to shut up and leave me alone . . .

Summary: This is thirty-three random but chronological moments from the life of Barriss Chanah Offee, a strongly Force-sensitive Mirialan given to the Coruscanti Jedi Temple for training as an infant. Barriss is technically not quite an agemate of Anakin Skywalker’s, though she’s often grouped with those who are. She becomes close friends with Ahsoka Tano over the course of the Clone Wars and is generally known for her empathetic heart, her healing touch, her calm and grace, and her unshakeable loyalty to her friends and Jedi family. There is an actual story here – one small thread among the vast woven tapestry of life that is the living history of the galaxy, stretched out and twisted, knotted into the whole, curled down among the roots of time, connecting various moments together – but one must read between the lines to capture it. It is not precisely the truth, for the subtle story of these moments is sketched out here in words, and, in the sin of writing down a life, it inevitably changes the shape of things. But it is nevertheless a form of truth. (From a certain point of view . . . )

Warning: This story functions as a sort of compressed codex for Barriss Chanah Offee’s life, as she has been and is going to be written (or at least referred to) in my not even nearly complete AU Star Wars series You Became to Me. If anything doesn’t make sense, please, feel free to ask!

Author’s Notes: 1.) For anyone interested, this not-quite-a-story is compatible with my SW AU series You Became to Me, including the trilogy Thwarting the Revenge of the Sith, if you squint at a few things sideways and view a couple others solely through the lens of Barriss’ eyes. This is probably also technically compatible with a lot of other potential AU ’verses where the Clone Wars do not, ultimately, end up going like Sidious plans, but the majority of it should be at least mostly consistent with the old EU (barring what I’ve altered about Ferus Olin, etc.), at least up until roughly the Battle of Coruscant during RotS.

2.) My Barriss is and has always been based on the version of the character as she originally appeared in certain scenes/cut scenes for AotC and RotS and was initially written in the old EU, prior to the reboot for the Clone Wars period associated with the animated film and TV series. Thus, she’s closer in age to Anakin Skywalker than she is to Ahsoka Tano, a natural Jedi Healer, and does not end up falling prey to despair and the Dark Side and bombing the Coruscanti Jedi Temple, as is portrayed in Star Wars: The Clone Wars. I have made some concessions to the version of Barriss found in Star Wars: The Clone Wars and the current DISNEY!SW version of canon – she is about a year younger than in the old EU, for example, and does take part in some missions/battles that also involve Ahsoka and Anakin – and I am technically in the midst of revising/expanding Thwarting the Revenge of the Sith to include some more characters from the show, but please be aware that my main SW series is an AU and so certain characters and events and the timeline for the prequels/the war in general involve a slightly different/longer timeline as well as multiple changes from what’s depicted in the show (and even in the old EU, occasionally).I’m aware that Barriss is considered a Muslim-coded character, in large part due to the show, though it’s rather horrifying for me to consider that Filoni et al apparently made the choice to present her as being coded this way and yet still deliberately turned her into a terrorist bomber.

Please be aware that, since I first started writing what would become my Thwarting the Revenge of the Sith trio shortly after Revenge of the Sith first came out in theatres and I saw it and read (as fairly new hardbacks) both the novelization for RotS and James Luceno’s Labyrinth of Evil (which, for those who don’t know, acts essentially as an immediate predecessor for RotS) and I had it in my head from fairly early on that my AU ’verse would (eventually) involve the survival of a useful version of bota and, thus, Barriss Offee as a Jedi Healer (as I’d already read the MedStar duology by this point), a lot of my personal headcanon for Barriss (and also, by extension, for her Jedi Master, Luminara Unduli) and for Mirialan culture in general predates by at least three-four years both the start of the show and my awareness of the fact that she’s considered Muslim-coded. (It took me several years before I ever watched any of Star Wars: The Clone Wars and I am not a techy person, so it’s probably more like ten years plus before I had any actual personal knowledge from watching the parts of the show that include the ret-conned version of Barriss.) If anyone has any questions or is upset or bothered by anything, please let me know!

3.) Although this is technically modeled on part of a prompt set that I found ages ago and made a copy of from somewhere or another on the LJ, it’s not really meant to function as a response to whatever the challenge actually is or was that’s associated with said LJ prompt set. I just used the specific prompts to give me a reason to string together a backstory of sorts for Barriss and, since I’m working under a time constraint for the Barriss Day celebration, it’s entirely possible that I’ll come back to this and expand on it at some point in the future.

4.) Readers interested in knowing who the physical models are for EU characters (such as Uli Divini) or for original characters (like Jedi Shadow Knight Leyala Riani), for that matter, should please just probably ask me, rather than consult the latest versions of my posted lists of cast original and EU characters and for handmaid(en)s and other important Nabooian characters, which are available on my LJ, since I need to update all of them and what’s on the LJ (https://polgarawolf.livejournal.com/) is very old! Please note that characters who may be alluded to but not referenced by name (certain family members of original characters, for example) are considered too minor to be cast at this time, and that readers should feel free to imagine them howsoever they wish!

5.) Mirialans are considered near-human (they are cross-fertile with human norms in the EU and, likely, with many other types and/or species of near-humans, as well) and resemble human norms closely enough, physically, that I’ve always considered they may very well have originally evolved from human norms due to specific conditions found on their homeworld, Mirial (many of the “near-human” species in the GFFA seem to be humans with just enough genetic differences – from adapting to living on specific worlds/moons, mostly – and/or just enough cultural differences from more generic human norms to have been given a specific label, based on their homeworld). I mention this here because my headcanon is that Mirialans essentially age/mature like human norms do and also because I believe the tradition of Mirialan Jedi Knights/Masters taking on Mirialan Jedi apprentices is based on wanting to pass on direct knowledge of Mirialan culture and Force-based spirituality, not any form of xenophobia.

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“Barriss Chanah Offee: Jedi Healer and Jedi Commander”

01.) Incidence: Though one would hardly guess it, from the raw numbers alone (evident humans or human norms outnumbering so many other known sentient species in the galaxy by such a large margin), statistically speaking, as an entire species, Mirialans have an even higher overall incidence of sensitivity to the Force than human norms do (most likely due to the fact that survival on Mirial, their largely cold, dry homeworld, requires them to be more naturally in tune with their surroundings – and, thus, more open to the Force and its influence – than most of the worlds and moons where humans have proven both willing and able to settle); this greater percentage of Force-sensitives doesn’t always translate individually to higher levels of stronger Force-sensitivity, though, meaning that there are many Mirialans who make their homes both on Mirial and elsewhere who have midi-chlorian levels that are higher than average and yet still lower than is generally required for admittance to the Jedi Order for training, and so the number of Mirialan Force-sensitives in the Jedi Order is lower than that of human norms (and, indeed, several other types of near-humans, as well), enough so that the Mirialans in the Order thought it would be best to establish a tradition whereby Mirialan Jedi Knights/Masters would, whenever possible, take on Mirialan apprentices to train, so that Mirialan culture and customs could be taught directly from Master to Padawan, along with Jedi traditions and training.

02.) Process: Barriss Chanah Offee is found not on Mirial or any other inhabited planet, moon, or station, but rather on a starliner in deep space, by a Jedi not on a traditional Search but rather simply en route to Coruscant after a successful undercover mission in the Corporate Sector, who is still in the process of settling back into her own skin (after living under a false identity for the better part of four months rather than as Jedi Knight Leyala Riani) and is rather startled to find herself called to the ship’s infirmary, where a routine blood test given to a newborn has yielded a midi-chlorian count easily high enough to justify admittance to the Jedi Order for training (the infant is named by her tearful parents, given a slightly modified traditional blessing, and then promptly given over to the Jedi Shadow, who manages, after only a handful or so of incidences of usual unexpected interruptions, to safely get both herself and the by then several month old baby to the Coruscanti Temple).

03.) Routine: Barriss’ first real memories are of the Jedi Temple’s crèche – of having patient, kindhearted Jedi Carers helping her with her meals and with the layers of her youngling robes, modelled after the traditional Mirilian dress of a Force-sensitive spiritualist leader-in-training and a little more complicated than many of the robes worn by her crèchemates and friends; of accidentally running into a friendly Jedi Tender during a game of tag and being sent laughingly back to the proper Sept or age-group of her Initiate Clan; of going practically everywhere in a crowd of younglings, all in the same age-group or Phratry if not necessarily all belonging to the same Clan; of having a compassionate Twi’lek Docent gently drying her eyes after taking a hard tumble and spilling the contents of her lunch tray seemingly everywhere; of entering the Halls of Healing for a routine inoculation and being drawn to the Healing Crystals blazing with the Force in the hands of a gifted Jedi Healer, who, noticing her rapt attention, promptly made a notation in her permanent file indicating an interest in and likely proclivity towards Force healing – and of Master Yoda, watching her with a pleased, benevolent smile as she uses the Force to retrieve a favorite toy (a blue ball, just the right size for her small hands and exactly the same vivid color as her own eyes) gone astray, bouncing from the crèche out through an antechambers and into one of the main large open spaces of the Temple proper.

04.) Manage: Crèche Masters and other Jedi whose calling place them either exclusively in the crèche or else mainly in the Temple as trainers and teachers – the Jedi Carers and Tenders who specifically look after the younger Initiates; the Clan Leaders who are in charge of the various Initiate Clans and the Sept Heads who manage the specific Septs or age-groups of those Initiate Clans; and the Jedi Instructors and Pandits, as well as certain Jedi Artisans, who lead specific classes, training courses, and hands-on modules for both younglings in the crèche and Padawans who’re still in training – routinely go out of their way to offer both methods and means by which individual Initiates and Padawans can learn about and even (to an extent, at least) incorporate the cultures of the specific peoples and species from which they hail in their day-to-day activities and lives, though of course no one is ever forced to learn or to do anything in regards to such a culture if that individual finds a tradition or custom uncomfortable: Barriss thoroughly enjoys such cultural seminars (including almost all of the more generic modules that cover other near-human and humanoid cultures), though she takes it for granted that, if she eventually trains as a Jedi Knight (and eventual possible Master) instead of joining one of the branches of the Jedi Service Corps, she will eventually be taught more about Mirialan culture and spirituality when she’s taken on as an apprentice by a Mirialan Knight or Master.

05.) Path: Her personal path forward as a Jedi – whether as a Knight and possible future Master or as a member of a branch of the Jedi Service Corps – would be easier (or at least more assured) if she were only drawn towards healing or if she were only drawn to the path of Knighthood, since then she could either declare for the Medical Corps or else focus more on what would make her more likely to be chosen as a Padawan; however, she feels equally drawn towards both callings, which is somewhat problematic, given that all of the Mirialans currently in or associated with the Order are either younglings like her or else they’re members in good standing of one or another of the branches of the Jedi Service Corps or Knights or Masters of the Order, meaning that there are currently no Jedi Healers who are either Knights or Masters who are also Mirialan.

06.) Honor: When Luminara Unduli – a Mirialan Jedi Knight and a Master by courtesy (given that she is currently helping an orphaned Commenorian Padawan by the name of Suanne Tephee through what should, hopefully, be the last handful or so of years of training and preparation necessary to make her ready/able to pass the Trials of Knighthood) – approaches her, Barriss fears, at first, that she will be forced to make a decision between eventually training towards Knighthood and training as a Jedi Healer that, in her heart, she knows she cannot make and does not feel as if she should be forced into trying to make, either (she understands, logically, that, since the annihilation of the Sith and their Brotherhood of Darkness and the consequent end of the New Sith Wars, the so-called “restructuring” of the Galactic Republic and the Jedi Order by the Ruusan Reformations essentially dissolved the Jedi Army of Light and stripped the Jedi of much of their authority and power in the galaxy just when the Jedi would be most needed, out in the greater galaxy, in order to help heal the wounds of that disastrous and exhaustively extensive conflict, meaning that the pathway of Jedi Knights all but instantly became much more important than it had been even at the height of the war. That Barriss can understand it rationally, though, does not mean that she has to like the fact that, in almost thousand years since then, the prestige of being a Knight has grown so much that the pressure on Jedi Initiates to choose that particular pathway [whether it would suit them as individuals or not] has concomitantly increased, too, to the point where younglings consider themselves to be failures if they aren’t chosen as Padawans and instead end up in one of the branches of the Jedi Service Corps, such as the MedCorps, even though Jedi likely to be injured in combat logically would need trained Healers to tend to their injuries and Jedi Healers are, frankly, able to do things with the Force to help preserve life and speed healing that even the most gifted and experienced of non-Force-sensitive Healers simply cannot do); happily, though, Master Unduli indicates that, if Barriss continues to show excellent progress in her training as an Initiate and she is willing, Luminara will happily arrange for her to have further training in the healing arts with Jedi Healers if Barriss will do her the honor of one day becoming her apprentice.

07.) Attention: Although Barriss normally tends to listen to others more than she talks (except for in classes when she knows the answer to whatever the instructor happens to be asking and she’s not sensing anyone else particularly wanting to be the one to be called on to answer, of course), the Jedi Order is essentially one enormous extended family of choice made up of many, many generations of interlinking lineages of trained Force-sensitives and many more who might, one day, be given the choice to join and extend those lineages, so there actually are very, very few real (serious) secrets among its members (it’s not so much that Jedi are prone to idle chatter as it is misleading to claim that Jedi are too good – or too snobbish and self-important – to gossip when, at least most of the time, there’s simply no need for idle chatter or rumormongering when it comes to the vast majority of incidences that happen both in the Temple and during mandated missions since both any official reports and private, individual deductions and conjecture about such occurrences tend to all quickly become known by virtually everyone who’s paying even a modicum of attention to the Force – which, after all, is naturally constantly being influenced and shaped by the thoughts and actions of basically all living creatures, especially those strong in the Force, and also frequently quite deliberately being outright given strong emotions, both negative and positive, by Jedi who want to establish better control over themselves – and/or what’s going on around them in the Temple, including what individual Jedi are actually physically telling the High Council about their specific missions, when they return from them, and what those same individuals are also either gleefully spinning stories about or else quietly complaining about outside the Council Chamber) and, since scandals (or even just possible indignities or outrages) tend to spread at a speed easily comparable to that of light, especially when a Temple favorite or a favorite of Yoda and/or one of the other High Council Masters is involved, she’s well aware of (and has opinions about) Qui-Gon Jinn and his tendency to essentially blame everything on the will of the Force (often quite blatantly in order to win arguments or to get away with doing or not doing something he really shouldn’t be allowed to do or to shirk doing) long before he brings an almost ten-year-old boy by the name of Anakin Skywalker to the Temple and shocks everyone by telling the High Council that he ought to be allowed to take the youngling on as his apprentice (even though he already has a perfectly wonderful Padawan, one who, so far as Barriss can tell, most of the residents of the Temple all agree Qui-Gon Jinn does not deserve. She’s heard so many incredible stories about Obi-Wan Kenobi that, if she weren’t Mirilian, if Master Unduli hadn’t already spoken to her about becoming her Master, and if she weren’t aware of the fact that there’s at least one youngling, just enough older than her to be in the next age-group up from her, who’s made it extremely well known that he believes himself destined to one day become Obi-Wan’s Padawan, Barriss might actually be tempted to try to catch Obi-Wan’s eye, in hopes of eventually being asked to be his apprentice) because the boy’s midi-chlorian count is supposedly so high that (according to Jinn, who’s widely known, much like his former Master, Yannis Dooku, to be just a little bit too interested in Force prophecies, to the point where some claim that they’re both obsessed, to unhealthy degrees, with Jedi mystics and the records of their so-called “visions”) it must mean that he’s the Chosen One.

08.) Potential: Anakin Skywalker blazes in the Force like a star that’s somehow continually going nova – there’s no disputing this fact and Barriss honestly doesn’t see the point in even trying – but he’s simultaneously far too old for the crèche and both too untrained and too young to become the Padawan apprentice of anyone expecting to go on any active missions outside of the Temple for likely several years to come, and, from everything she’s heard, he also pretty clearly doesn’t have the right sort of temperament to become a Jedi (he’s afraid, but he not only won’t admit to it, he refuses to acknowledge his fear and even outright lies to the Council about what he’s afraid of/for and why; he’s unabashedly angry when the Council Masters try to point out that he’s not telling the truth about his fear and, worse, he behaves as though the Council Masters are the ones at fault for pointing out his lie, rather than him for his dishonesty; and he’s undeniably all too attached to the single parent he’s ever known, who has, for some reason, been left behind – in slavery, as it eventually comes out, months after the fact, when it also becomes widely known that Skywalker’s mother was left behind due to the fact that, even though Qui-Gon Jinn apparently thought nothing of gambling with the lives of others and even the potential wellbeing of an entire system’s worth of imperiled people, if it meant that he could legally take Anakin with him, even if it meant that he would have to take him as a slave, he evidently didn’t quite care enough to cheat on the bet that he made with Anakin’s owner sufficiently to include the boy’s mother in his potential winnings, along with the boy. There are many people in the Order, besides Barriss, who are quite upset, if perhaps not necessarily all that surprised, to learn about these facts, and many of them also feel sorry for the boy, though it’s difficult to maintain much empathy for someone who so clearly has a chip the size of a Hutt on his shoulder about his background – on Tatooine, a Hutt-controlled world in the Outer Rim Territories that Barriss is fairly certain she’s never even heard of, before, and which turns out to almost be far enough out to qualify as bordering on Wild Space), so she honestly doesn’t understand why it’s ever even a question whether or not Skywalker should be accepted for Jedi training (either with or without Qui-Gon Jinn), high midi-chlorian count or not and prophecies of the Chosen One or not, not when, if anything, Skywalker seems far more suited to something like the Exploration Corps.

09.) Secret: Barriss honestly can’t decide which piece of news from Naboo is more shocking and upsetting – that the Sith not only apparently survived Ruusan, somehow, but have continued to survive in secret for almost a thousand years and have not only revealed themselves now, in the process all but proving that they’ve been involved in some way with the Naboo Crisis, but have also killed a Jedi Master in the process, or that, following the death of his Master at the hands of one of those Sith, Obi-Wan Kenobi evidently not only swore that he would fulfill his Master’s dying wish and take on Anakin Skywalker as his Padawan, with or without the approval of the High Council (and, thus, the legitimacy and backing of the Jedi Order), but that he essentially told Master Yoda this (in effect essentially blackmailing the Grand Master of the entire Jedi Order into allowing him to apprentice Anakin, once he’d been acknowledged as a Jedi Knight, for having defeated and slain the Sith Lord who’d just murdered his Master) – but she knows that she’s not the only one who thinks that Knight Kenobi has gone from somehow having a Master who definitely didn’t deserve him to having a Padawan who almost certainly doesn’t deserve him, either, and she finds herself in the rather unexpected position of feeling sorry for Ferus Olin, currently one of the most popular and widely respected younglings near to her age in the crèche (even if, to be honest, she’s always felt somewhat ambivalent towards the slightly older boy. Ferus generally gives every indication of being a good sort, but everything always seems to come awfully easy for him, in a way that doesn’t feel quite right, somehow, and the way that some of the other younglings act around him – like they’d cheerfully do anything he might ever even think of asking them to do – makes her feel weirdly almost vulnerable, in a way that both bewilders her and makes her want to avoid him altogether, which makes it strange to feel sorry for him now), since a Jedi can only have one Padawan at a time and this means that (short of Anakin Skywalker somehow dying in the next two years or so, which she would never want to happen, no matter how messed up the whole situation with him and newly Knighted Obi-Wan Kenobi might be, and which seems extremely unlikely to happen, anyway, since he’s not likely to make it back out of the Temple again until he’s made a serious effort to catch up on all that he’s behind on, from having come to the Order so comparatively late in life and from almost certainly having a less than thorough education on Tatooine, even if that’s not exactly his fault) Ferus Olin can never become Obi-Wan Kenobi’s Padawan.

10.) Sense: One would think that a boy from a desert world would know better than to allow himself to be goaded into accepting a challenge involving swimming, of all absurdly unsuitable things for him to try to do, but then, Skywalker does seem to be rather more emotional than any Jedi with sense would ever allow themselves to be, so perhaps the overly emotional numpty will prove her wrong and actually manage to get his fool self killed at some point while essentially confined to the safety of the Temple and Obi-Wan Kenobi will once again be free to choose his apprentice by himself (rather than being stuck with his former Master’s choice, which is just so many different levels of wrong that it makes her want to grind her teeth down to dust for sheer frustration over the fact that Qui-Gon Jinn is dead and now she’ll never have a chance to get away with telling him to his face that he’s an arrogant, self-centered twat) and Ferus Olin will prove to have been right all along and will become Knight Kenobi’s new Padawan.

11.) Behind: Skywalker may very well be behind on essentially everything except for anything having to do with mechanics, droids, maintaining all sorts of different kinds of vessels (from basic skimmers to advanced starship fighters), and piloting in general – the stories about how he managed to accidentally destroy the Trade Federation’s Lucrehulk-class Droid Control Ship are entirely too crazy to be made up and actually makes Barriss want to like him, despite everything else (the Trade Federation did horrible things to her homeworld: as a Mirilian, she feels all but honor-bound to side with someone who’s had such an important role in thwarting their plans to do the same sort of awful things to another inhabited world and system, even if she’s starting to wonder if the High Council Masters only allowed Knight Kenobi to take Skywalker on as his Padawan learner just to keep him somewhere they could keep an eye on him and be sure that the Sith would have a hard time trying to get to him. Knight Kenobi might have killed the one Sith, but the general consensus is that there should have been two of them, meaning that the surviving Sith would have multiple reasons to be interested in a boy like Skywalker, who’s so strong in the Force, so emotional, and has the kind of traumatic background he has, especially since the Sith were so clearly involved in the Trade Federation’s plans for invading and conquering Naboo) – but it seems as though he’s a natural with a lightsaber and, much to her surprise, she finds herself enjoying the times when she’s practicing in the salles at the same time that he is, in part because it’s astonishingly fun to see how quickly he picks up many of the different formal katas meant to help students master some of the different forms of lightsaber combat and partially because he’s such a shockingly unpredictable fighter, when turned loose to spar instead of just practicing basic katas, that he seems determined to combine apparently random bits of various katas from entirely different combat forms (so it’s always interesting to see which combination of moves he attempts will or won’t actually work together, whether she’s the one who’s been tasked to spar with him or not, though some of his more disastrous efforts make her very, very glad that training ’sabers aren’t actually strong enough to do much worse than singe fabric. Sometimes, it’s even more fun – and even instructional, when some combination of moves that doesn’t seem as if it ought to work actually does – to watch than to be the one trying to match his unpredictability. They don’t really talk, much, but it doesn’t truly bother her, since she’s of the opinion that sparring partners are actually more useful when they aren’t also friends who might be tempted to hold back out of fear of hurting each other’s feelings), which tends to make sparring against him a nice challenge, even if he does tend to win a ridiculous number of bouts for someone so new to Jedi training.

12.) Fear: Her Healer training is going well – in addition to the more basic courses required of basically all Jedi Padawans, she studies under a handful of different Healers, based on who’s available when and who specializes in or knows more about what, all of them operating under the oversight of Master Healer Vokara Che, who’s already made it quite clear that she expects Barriss to one day join the Circle of Jedi Healers, which is simultaneously both a wonderful and a mildly terrifying thing to know, since the Circle is comprised of the most gifted and powerful and absolute best of all Jedi Healers – she’sfound her kyber crystal in the ice caves of Ilum and successfully built her own lightsaber, and Master Unduli is evidently so pleased with her overall progress that she’s already talking about how best to coordinate things so Barriss shouldn’t fall behind in her Healer training when they undertake her pilgrimage to Mirial (a time-honored sort of rite of passage generally undertaken around fifteen or so standard years of age), but Barriss is beginning to fear that her apparent inability to keep ahold of her new lightsaber long enough to truly master even the most basic of katas is going to end up rendering the entire issue moot and her apprenticeship with Master Unduli void when a Jedi Knight, noticing her struggles with her lightsaber in one of the smaller, less often frequented training salles, introduces himself as Tutso Mara (actually Tutsoded Bayardeth Mara, though few refer to the half Kiffar and half Chalactan Jedi by his full name, at least according to Knight Mara) and then kindly shows her the proper hand grip for her lightsaber (after which, with her permission, he physically adjusts and readjusts and keeps on readjusting her grip until Barriss finally has it down pat and her grip – evidently adequate enough for a training ’saber but not at all sufficient for the power of a real blade – is no longer throwing her off, no matter which training kata from which form of lightsaber combat she attempts), sparking a mentorship and eventual friendship that will push her to learn a Jar’Kai version of Djem So (a combat form using two lightsabers or a lightsaber – be it a single or a double blade – along with a shoto) as well as the Soresu and Shien that Master Unduli favors.

13.) Return: The traditional pilgrimage to Mirial (which is both colder and drier than the norm for most inhabitable planets/moons with Type I atmospheres and sentient populations, in ways that make the more customary sorts of Mirilian costumes, with their layers, long lengths, and head-coverings of one sort or another for essentially everyone, make all kinds of practical sense. Much of the land is either desert or tundra, with some taiga towards the far northern and the far southern tundra and some grasslands at the borders between the taiga and the deserts, much of it occasionally broken up by high plateaus and mostly extremely tall, jagged mountains. Though Mirial has technically been known to much of the greater galactic community and considered part of the Galactic Republic’s Outer Rim Territories for approximately four thousand years, when the Trade Federation “rediscovered” it some two hundred years ago, in one of the Great Reunification’s last pushes to supposedly “reconnect” with and discover more about the Outer Rim and Wild Space, its greedy representatives pillaged the entire system of much of its natural resources, often using crude, cheap strip mining techniques to get at precious ores and carelessly discarding slag and poisonous wastes without bothering to treat any of it, to the point where the planet is still recovering from all of the habitat destruction and environmental contamination. Truthfully, Barriss finds Mirial rather sad and, afterwards, is not entirely sure that she’s felt a real connection with either the planet or its people, even after all of her cultural studies and even though she truly does respect the traditional Mirial view of the Force and their widespread belief that each individual’s actions contribute not only to that specific person’s destiny, building on both past successes and failures to ultimately drive those beings towards their fates, but that such actions also ripple throughout the Force, affecting the destinies of not just the individuals directly involved but of whole peoples and, at least potentially, in some cases, even species all across the galaxy, which, to her, seems like a somewhat simplified version of the Jedi understanding of the Cosmic Force) goes well enough, but she’s both more tired and more glad than she’s expected to be, when they finally return to the Temple.

14.) Master: Luminara Unduli is, in many ways, a wonderful Jedi Master – she’s very grounded and steady, a formidable fighter who’s also a highly respected diplomat often called upon to act as an advisor to several high-profile system and planetary leaders and politicians, many of them in the Galactic Senate, meaning that she’s well-suited to understand the needs of an apprentice who’s drawn to what, to outsiders, might seem very opposing ways of being a Jedi – but she’s also downright tricky, sometimes (Barriss isn’t entirely sure she’s ever going to completely live down the fiasco of trying to force herself to master Floating Meditation in the space of a single afternoon, so she could rise high enough to accurately count the number of pastries in a bakery’s window across the way, when, at any time, she could’ve simply stood up on the balcony Master Unduli had brought her to in order to see them), often in ways that seem embarrassingly obvious after the fact and remind Barriss almost painfully of Master Yoda’s particular brand of teaching by trickery in order to fully and memorably drive a point home, and, though she’s increasingly sure that she wouldn’t ever want any other Master, sometimes Barriss can’t help but wish that her Master would spend just a little less time being cleverly oblique and a great deal more time just straight out telling her whatever lessons she’s trying to teach her, if only so she wouldn’t feel as if she’s wasting so much time failing to immediately grasp whatever moral or object lesson has been so cunningly hidden in or only hinted at sideways by whatever random task or strange, rambling story Master Unduli has decided to indulge in using to teach her by first tripping her up or otherwise tricking her.

15.) Hair: It takes multiple cups (and pots) of nice, calming teas and more than a few cups (and pots . . . and jugs) of tea bracing enough to (as Knight Suanne Tephee [“Suanne, please! Really, just Suanne is fine. You’ll make me feel old, otherwise, Barriss!”] would jokingly phrase it) put hair on one’s chest, but eventually, with some help from her not quite older sister in lineage (but not quite not, and so they all basically act as if she is, including Knight Suanne, on the rare times she’s in the Temple and not so exhausted or so injured, following a mission, that she’s stuck either in her rooms all the time or else in the Halls of Healing and so not up to visiting) and, shockingly enough, some really useful tips from Skywalker (who very nearly physically trips over her in the Room of a Thousand Fountains one day and ends up earnestly explaining that she’s focusing on the wrong bit of the exercise – the meditation part, not the floating, which, as Knight Kenobi has explained it to Skywalker, basically translates to a kind of very personalized field of antigravity – and that she should be thinking of it less as something mental or spiritual and more as something that can be physically done with the Force, closer to telekinesis than to actual meditation and strong enough, in an emergency, to help either save a Jedi who’s falling from a dangerous height or else to rescue someone else falling or about to fall from a potentially lethal height); much to her satisfaction, though, she does eventually manage to properly learn (if perhaps not to completely master, as she’s eventually capable of using it to keep herself from a bad end, after flinging herself – under Master Unduli’s watchful eyes, of course – multiple times out of various windows and off of several balconies in the Temple Council Towers, but isn’t entirely sure she’d be able to use it on someone else in a true emergency) Floating Meditation.

16.) Information: It’s next to impossible to truly keep secrets in the Jedi Temple – in terms of knowledge for training, information can be restricted to things like Jedi Holocrons, datachips, info crystals, and even old-fashioned books that are themselves regulated, so that only certain kinds of individuals can access them, but in terms of what happens in the Temple or what is spoken of in the Temple, well, it’s difficult to all but impossible to keep things a secret from individuals strong enough in the Force to not only regularly use it to help augment their senses and abilities but to be able to sense things (such as the thoughts and emotions of others) through their connection to the Force – which is why (even if impossible and improbable aren’t quite synonyms) it’s so weird that no one seems to really be talking much, afterwards, about the disastrous mission to Korriban, to apprehend dangerous criminals Jenna Zan Arbor and Granta Omega, even though four Masters and their Padawans were sent there but only the Masters and three of the Padawans returned alive . . . at least not until after Ferus Olin has been dismissed from the Order for intentionally manipulating the minds and wills of Jedi (from Masters all the way down to Initiates, apparently) and not only purposely causing a mechanical defect in the lightsaber of a fellow Padawan (Tru Veld, a fertile unfixed hermaphroditic metamorph Teevan – meaning that Tru can and often does phase from male to female and back again, basically at will – who’s apprenticed to Jedi Shadow Master Ouwain-Kli Ry-Gaul. Barriss isn’t much more than vaguely familiar with either one, since Jedi Shadows tend to keep to themselves and Veld’s nature has all but guaranteed that the Teevan would become a Shadow since the moment Veld first came to the Temple) that would directly lead to the death of another Padawan (the apprentice of Master Soara Antana, Darra Thel-Tanis, who apparently threw herself in the pathway of a deadly blaster shot, even though Tru almost certainly could have survived being struck by it, given the ridiculously rapid rate of regeneration Teevans are [in]famous for. Barriss is a little more familiar with Thel-Tanis, but can’t imagine why she’d ever do something so foolish, which makes her wonder, a little sickly, just how much influence Olin might have had over her, at the time), but attempting to conceal his actions by deliberately, maliciously shifting the blame for the lightsaber’s failure at the critical moment to yet another Padawan (Anakin Skywalker, whose Master evidently had to all but break down the doors of the Jedi High Council Chamber – and is rumored to have called on the Force in a way that somehow instantly shattered all of Ferus Olin’s manipulations – to save his apprentice from being wrongfully accused of negligence and being at cause for Darra Thel-Tanis’ death, which likely would’ve resulted in Skywalker being unjustly cast out of the Order), and then she’s left at least halfway wishing that the relative silence about the mission had never been broken, even though she knows, logically, that nothing good could have come of keeping Ferus Olin’s perfidy (which apparently even extended to his own Master, Siri Tachi, who’s such a wreck, afterwards, that the Council orders her on a five-month spiritual retreat, to recover) a secret.

17.) Help: It’s not exactly fair to feel wary of Skywalker, after the mess on Korriban and Ferus Olin’s banishment from the Order – Barriss knows that, even if it only serves to make her feel frustrated with herself for being overly cautious and even less inclined towards thinking all that kindly of (must less trusting) him – but she’s still not completely sure that having Skywalker on Ansion is going to be all that much help with the mission (even if it means that Obi-Wan Kenobi will also be with them) until after she’s been knocked off of her suubatar into Torosogt River, Skywalker’s immediately leapt into the water to try to save her, and they’ve both managed to survive their dunkings none the worse for wear (at which point she starts to think that it might actually be possible for them to become good friends, if only Skywalker will prove to be even halfway as willing to open up and speak honestly with her as he has been to fling himself – however wholly unnecessarily, if undeniably gallantly – headlong into danger on her behalf).

18.) Horror: Geonosis is . . . unspeakably terrible, so much needless death and suffering (and for what? For the pride and satisfaction of a former Jedi like Yannis Dooku, who deserted the Order after the murder of his former apprentice, Qui-Gon Jinn, during the Naboo Crisis? The traitor is essentially endorsing those responsible for the situation that allowed his former Padawan to be cornered and slaughtered by the Sith! If not for the greed of the Trade Federation, Master Jinn would [probably] still be alive, for pity’s sake!) that she’s quite certain that she’s going to have nightmares about it for the rest of her life . . . though the news, shortly afterwards, that the battle is only going to be the beginning and that the Republic is now officially at war with the self-declared Separatists is so awful that it very nearly eclipses even the horror of Geonosis.

19.) Fire: It’s not very Jedi-like of her, but after the third time that she essentially almost dies because of Geonosis and the second time that she’s only survived because of Ahsoka Tano’s ingenuity (and sheer stubborn refusal to ever give up) and just the absolute horror of one of those times involve parasitical brain worms that burrow into a host and essentially turn said host into a mindless zombie at the control of either the worms or the Geonosian Queen, Barriss believes that she should be forgiven for feeling as though they should just gather every ship they can get their hands on and have them all open fire on that entire blasted world from high orbit until there’s not a single living thing left alive on the entire accursed planet and it’s all reduced down to slag!

20.) Fortune: She honestly doesn’t expect to like Ahsoka Tano as much as she does – the young Togruta is almost painfully brash; she has no concept whatsoever of subtly; she’s so blasted busy rushing headlong into everything that she wouldn’t recognize the concept of strategic thinking if it became embodied and bypassed her two side lekku to deliberately bite her on her rear head-tail; and she quite clearly feels no loyalty whatsoever to her original Master, Togruta Jedi Master Yrannia Tey, since she’s thrilled when the idiots in the galactic press start calling her the Golden Child of the Golden Team (though, to be fair, as Barriss eventually finds out, there’s a very good reason for that. Xenophobia to the point where one believes that only a potential apprentice of the same species as one own self is not a good reason for taking on a Padawan, no matter what Master Tey might believe. Meanwhile, Master Kenobi and Knight Skywalker would literally give their lives for Ahsoka’s and she would do the same for either one of them in a heartbeat, so obviously she knows how to be faithful and she’s just as patently chosen the correct Jedi to give her devotion and allegiance to): on the other hand, she’s one of the most constant and reliable Jedi (if also easily one of the most stubborn, which is saying something, given she’s essentially been apprenticed by the Golden Team while her so-called “real” Master recovers from all of the damage she took at the First Battle of Geonosis. Master Unduli is right: those three Jedi truly do deserve one another, no matter what anyone else might seem to think on the subject, and they would all do anything and everything in their power to keep each other safe, just as they’d do all that they could to help a friend in need, as Barriss herself has had reason to learn, Ahsoka having saved her on more than one occasion that otherwise likely would’ve been hopeless) Barriss has ever had the good fortune to meet – but she trusts her to a degree that, rationally speaking, likely should be frightening, and faith, like friendship, is something that is not easily won, in these dark days of war, so Barriss fully intends to keep that trust and so remain worthy of their resultant friendship, however unexpected it might’ve initially been and however occasionally frustrating it might occasionally be.

21.) Fall: Umbara is such a complete horror show and Barriss is just so messed up from it (not only because of Jedi Master and General Pong Krell’s treachery and fall to the Dark Side, but because she can’t help but realize how much worse it could have so easily been, if Commander Rex had simply obeyed orders from Krell and hadn’t had the courage to contact Master Kenobi and, thus, discovered General Krell’s duplicity before he could deliberately pit unwitting clones from the 501st against clones of the 212th Attack Battalion. Krell still lost far too many men and slaughtered still more, when he was revealed as a traitor, but things came so appallingly close to being so much worse that Barriss feels sick whenever she thinks about it) that, afterwards, she barely even knows what she’s doing, much less what anyone else is saying or doing around her; that’s really no excuse for taking so long to realize that Letta Turmond (the wife of an Abyssin Temple worker and a self-professed pacifist who keeps trying to strike up a conversation with Barriss about why the Jedi aren’t doing more to end the war and how Barriss could be doing more to help stop the fighting) is a liar or just how conniving, hypocritical, and homicidal she actually is, though at least Barriss and Ahsoka manage to contain most of the explosions from the nano-droid bombs, even if they do kill both Turmond and her seemingly unwitting dupe of a husband and inflict enough damage on that specific Temple hangar both to injure a few dozen nearby Temple workers, clones, and even Jedi and to kill more than a handful of other innocent bystanders (though, thankfully, no Jedi die as a result of the only mostly thwarted bombing, or else Barriss honestly doesn’t know how she’d ever be able to live with herself, afterwards).

22.) Demand: It is not just and it is not right that the Jedi High Council should essentially punish Ahsoka for her efforts to help Barriss fix the mess that her distraction and failure to see what was directly in front of her nose so very nearly caused and, in some measure, did still cause, even with the both of them doing their utmost to try to either keep the explosions contained or else to channel them somewhere that they couldn’t cause any (measurable, irrevocable) harm – Yrannia Tey has no right to demand that Ahsoka be given back to her as if she were nothing more than a thing the Togruta felt she owned, as if she were a child throwing a tantrum because someone else has been playing with one of her toys while she’s been indisposed! Ahsoka may have said that she will go back to her old Master and Knight Skywalker and Master Kenobi may have allowed her to make that choice, but anyone who knows anything about any of the three Jedi involved in the decision must know that they have only done so because all of them are unwilling to be the cause for the High Council has a reason to issue the kind of formal censure and reprimand that would just end with all three of them being ordered apart from each other – and Barriss feels so betrayed by Yoda and the majority of the other High Council Masters (nine of whom have, like the Grand Master, backed Master Tey’s demand that her apprentice be returned to her) that, for a few moments, she almost wishes that she could just be selfish enough to simply turn her back and leave the Order that is so clearly failing three of the absolute best of its members behind.

23.) Bribe: Knighting Barriss so soon after Ahsoka has been ordered away from her true Masters and back to Yrannia Tey feels awfully like a bribe for not raising a fuss about such a perfidious act; Master Unduli insists that she deserves it (that what Barriss still has to learn of the Force can only be learned by taking on the duties and responsibilities of a Knight who might, one day, be both able and willing to take on an apprentice of her own), though, and, when Knight Skywalker and Master Kenobi (who know about it because Master Kenobi is a member of the High Council and apparently voted in favor of her being Knighted) take the time to comm and congratulate her on her Knighting, Anakin earnestly adds that, if she were able, Ahsoka would absolutely be the first in line to tell her that she deserves it, so, after most of a day and a night of quiet reflection, Barriss decides that she’ll allow herself to accept the honor, even though (in her heart of hearts) she’s still not entirely sure that she deserves it or that she even truly wants it, any longer.

24.) Chaos: Drongar somehow seems to evoke all the chaos and all the energy of the Living Force all concentrated into one bizarre planet of adaptogenic, mutagenic insanity and, if not for the bota fields (which both sides covet for its miraculous medical properties, though there are other forces at work – criminal cartels – who’d gladly steal the bota out from under them both if they could. No one has actually come out and said so, but she’s fairly certain that part of the reason why she’s been assigned here, to Republic Mobile Surgical Unit 7, is because someone in a position of power here is highly suspected to be working with one of those cartels and the High Council would prefer, if possible, to put an end to such nonsense without having to involve any military tribunals. Given what Tarkin almost managed to do to her and Ahsoka – which was only stopped because of the support that Master Kenobi and Knight Skywalker and, by extension, Ahsoka have in the Senate, not because of anything that the Council Masters did or said – she finds it almost painfully ironic that the Council has chosen to send her, rather than someone else, more likely to still feel strong bonds of trust and loyalty to the High Council), Barriss honestly isn’t sure that anyone would find the myriad (and often changing, usually for the worse) risks involved with trying to establish a military presence there at all worth it, particularly given the fact that almost everything else on Drongar except the bota seems designed to make trying to live on Drongar in any kind of safety as dangerous and close to impossible as is at all possible.

25.) Wrong: It is an injustice so great and so unequivocally wrong that a vicious, sadistic thug like Phow Ji should be reported as a hero, when he’s been caught on cam outright murdering Salissian mercenaries employed by the CIS who’ve already surrendered and has essentially deliberately suicided by Separatist drop ship and thermal grenade in order to escape the so-called dishonor of having to live with the knowledge that he not only owes his life to a Jedi Healer like Barriss, but that he owes his life to her specifically because she’s used the Force – which he’s always loudly claimed does not exist – in order to heal him, that she’s not at all surprised that Den Dhur (the Sullustan reporter who’d written an exposé about the Bundukian mercenary and Teräs Käsi champions murderous ways) ultimately refused to have his name on the story at all, after his editor essentially changed everything in it, with the excuse that the Republic needs more stories about heroes during such turbulent times (and not, apparently, hard-hitting exposés about war crimes being perpetrated by mercenaries on the Republic’s payroll).

26.) Amateur: Healer and specialist surgeon Kornell Divini of Tatooine – Uli Divini, as he smilingly insists on being called – is both younger than Barriss has expected (she knows that Jos Vondar, the Chief Medical Officer and another Healer who’s specialized in surgeries of all sorts on multiple kinds of sentient beings, likes to complain that Healer Divini looks as if he’s about fourteen, but that’s clearly an exaggeration – or even a complaint – and not to be taken seriously. She’s been expecting someone in his early- or even mid-twenties, given the sort of education and training he must’ve had, to be stationed on a Rimsoo, but “Uli” looks like he’s very close to her own age, meaning he’s almost certainly not even twenty standard years of age yet. He reminds her of Anakin Skywalker, in a way, and not just because of his accent or his fair hair and blue eyes, though his skills as a surgeon, however phenomenal, can’t quite compare with Skywalker’s prodigious strength in the Force), and kinder than she quite knows what to do with, particularly when he somehow charms her into letting him see to an injury she’s accidentally inflicted on her right foot that she could have dealt with entirely by herself, with the Force, explains that he’s out in the swamps of Drongar in the first place (after she challenges him about being in the swamp) because his mother (renowned mudopterist Elana Divini, as Barriss eventually realizes) collects Alderaanian flare-wings and he’s interested in seeing what sort of comparable insects might call Drongar’s jungles home, smiles in a way that makes her realize that, once he’s old enough to have laugh lines, he’s going to be stunningly handsome (though why such a thing should ever even occur to her – why she should be looking at the young man closely enough to ever realize something like that – completely escapes her ability to understand), and leaves her so unbalanced that she feels even more like a rank amateur pretending to be something/someone she’s not than she had when, only moments before, she’d somehow managed to let herself be startled enough by an unexpected, brief but strong shift in temperature to lose control in the midst of a routine kata to the point of hurting herself with her own lightsaber (even though she hasn’t fumbled her lightsaber badly enough to injure herself since she’d been nine, and then it had only been a small nick to her left wrist, far less serious than the puncturing gash she’d inflicted on her poor foot).

27.) Precious: Bota is known to act as a potent broad-based antibiotic on humans and to have similar effects on several kinds of near-humans, as well, and the clones, being based on the genetic profile of Jango Fett (a registered genetic [if borderline] human norm Mandalorian originally from Concord Dawn, according to the Bounty Hunters’ Guild, which keeps track of such things), qualify as human norms (for the most part, anyway, though the few truly obvious aberrations tend to number among those the Kaminoan cloners categorize as genetic deviants only worth decommissioning, so they often end up – occasionally after being literally rescued by Master Shaak Ti or another Jedi stationed on Kamino if Master Ti cannot be there, even though Knight Kenobi demanded that all such decommissionings stop when he “accepted” the clones from the Kaminoans and every Jedi on Kamino since then who’s been there long enough to speak to any of the Kaminoans about the progress of the clones still in training has reiterated this order – in support positions in the Temple, rather than in the fighting forces of the GAR), which is almost certainly why Zabrak Healer and specialist surgeon Zan Yant had gone to the trouble (prior to his tragic death, during a Separatist attack on the Rimsoo) to seek out patches of bota growing wild and to (illegally) process it (bota being so prized that all of it is supposed to be shipped offworld, for sale, the harvested and stabilized/processed bota being considered too valuable to “waste” on mere soldiers) and put the results in muscle-poppers in the first place, which is why (after Jos Vondar admits what he’s found, when gathering up and clearing out his friend’s belongings from their shared quarters, and they take the risk of trying it – to miraculous effect – on a dying clone soldier) Barriss thinks of attempting to use one of the precious few bota poppers on a Rodian lieutenant with chronic smashbone fever, in hopes it will help (she’s already decided that, if Healer Yant could be brave enough to find and illegally process wild bota, so he would have some on hand to use on the worst cases in the medical wards, then she can and must do the same. Bota grows wild in many places in and around the swamps and jungles. There will be more poppers, if this one is ineffective. It won’t be a waste to try it, and it could very well help with a disease that, as yet, has no cure), and why, when caught by surprise by a particularly strong muscle spasm, she ends up accidentally injecting herself with some of the bota.

28.) Unique: Bota, like basically all known lifeforms native specifically to Drongar, is naturally both adaptogenic and mutagenic and always has been, at least to some extent – though it’s not (yet) been proven so, logically speaking, it’s adaptogenic properties likely have a great deal to do with the fact that bota has different kinds of effects on and medical uses for so many different species and no known negative side effects to any of those species, even though they use it for such wildly different reasons (from narcotic painkillers to powerful stimulants to broad-based antibiotics) – so it probably shouldn’t be so surprising that the plants (which technically aren’t exactly plants, being instead a unique type of lifeform somewhere between a mold and a fungus. Since no one has yet bothered to try to formally classify what bota exactly is, yet – it being more important to protect it and harvest it so that it can be dispensed or tested further on new/different species – most beings refer to bota as a plant, anyway, for simplicity’s sake) are mutating (and apparently have been for some time, though someone with deep pockets – most likely hoping to profit from the information somehow – has apparently been going to great lengths to try to keep this fact from getting out) towards the likelihood that bota might, one day all too soon, become, for all extents and purposes, inert and therefore useless (and worthless) as any sort of drug; given the reactions Barriss has had both to her unintended injection and the injection she’s deliberately given herself, to see if it would replicate the effects of her accidental dose, though, the fact that they could lose bota before ever discovering what it could mean, to Forceful individuals like the Jedi, it means that she has to contact the Council of Reassignment and, thus, the Circle of Jedi Healers and the MedCorps, as well as the High Council, at once, so that the Masters will know what bota can do to strengthen/deepen one’s connection with the Force in time to try to do something to save it.

29.) Communiqué: She is, in all honesty, shocked to see Master Kenobi (he isn’t a Healer, after all, though he is known for being an excellent emergency battlefield medic and it is, thanks to the war, increasingly becoming obvious that he’s among one of a handful of the most powerful Jedi currently in the entire Order. He explains, only a little sardonically, that he has contacts with the AgriCorps and, since the hope is that a fixed or stabilized version of the most potent remaining extant strain of bota [which, hopefully, will be unlikely to ever mutate to an ineffective form] can be successfully transplanted to at least a few suitable planets/moons known only to members of the High Council and a few high-ranking [and/or sworn to secrecy members] of the ExplorCorps and then raised and harvested by highly gifted and thoroughly vetted AgriCorps members for processing by the MedCorps and use by them and Jedi Healers, he’s here at the request of both the Council of Reassignment and the rest of the High Council), among the various Jedi Healers and Jedi Service Corps members who’ve stealthily responded to her communiqué (she’s even more astonished to see him without Knight Skywalker at his side, though the explanation that a majority of the High Council has decided that his friendship with Chancellor Palpatine – who, after all, is responsible for the policy that forbids the Healers on Drongar from using bota on their patients – makes him too much of a security risk to know about what they’re trying to do here); ultimately, though, Barriss ends up being extremely glad that he’s come, as she’s almost certain that they wouldn’t have succeeded in their aims without Master Kenobi’s raw strength in the Force and his startling ability to persuade the bota to grow in a way that should make it much hardier (and, thus, more likely to survive being transplanted) and perhaps even more potent, in the long run, since its nature should now be prone to adapt only to make it harder to kill and not to keep wildly mutating until it share so few similarities with what it is now that it will no longer be effective as a drug.

30.) Traitor: To keep their actions (which are illegal according to the Chancellor’s policies and Republic law, though she would argue that it is the laws that are immoral, not the actions of the Jedi, especially not once she learns that the hope is that the transplanted bota will thrive so much that the MedCorps will be able to experiment a little and perhaps come up with a bacta-bota mix that can surreptitiously be added to every Jedi’s standard field pack and be regularly provided in bulk to clone medics and other such doctors and healers in the field, with the explanation that it’s an experimental Force-enhanced strain of extremely effective bacta, for emergency use. Bacta technically is also legally restricted – Chancellor Palpatine has, over the course of the war, quite foolishly limited its production even further than it used to be, instead of expanding it so that the GAR will be guaranteed more than enough supply, supposedly to make it harder for Separatists to get their hands on any of it – but it’s always been something of an open secret [among Jedi, in any case. It’s not their fault if the politicians and the corporations have forgotten!] that, because of their Service Corps, the Jedi can and do produce their own bacta, and frankly Barriss regards the decision to secretly try to save and transplant an effective strain bota as an extension of the same policy that’s seen the AgriCorps and the MedCorps producing bacta for Jedi use for the past four thousand years or so), a secret, she must act as if she’s dismayed when the secret comes out, about the bota mutating to uselessness and the order comes that the Republic is abandoning Drongar; she doesn’t expect another traitor (Eqani Minder Klo Merit, of all beings! The loss of his homeworld has evidently driven him mad – after all, the Jedi have no records of a Republic weapons test, such as he claimed destroyed Eqanus, and they would surely know, if it were true – as well as driving him to betray the Republic to the CIS) to be exposed and shot by Jos Vondar in the chaos of the Separatist attack that very nearly derails the Republic retreat, though!

31.) Two: Barriss knows that the High Council have been assigning both orphaned Padawans and Padawans whose individual Masters have been injured to the point where they can no longer adequately do their duty by their apprentices and continue see to their training to other available Knights and Masters without waiting to see if anyone will volunteer for such a responsibility or even bothering to ask, first, if anyone has a particular preference – she’s friends with Ahsoka Tano, so she cannot help but know how Master Yoda persuaded (most) of the rest of the High Council to assign Ahsoka to Knight Skywalker and Master Kenobi – but she’s barely been a Jedi Knight for two standard months, so the absolute last thing she’s expecting, when she returns to the Temple after Drongar, is to be summoned to the High Council Chamber and informed that she’s doing such an excellent job that the Council Masters are assigning her Selonian Padawan Zonder – whose Master, Armann Asantuen, one of the two dozen Corellian or Green Jedi who decided to fight with the Republic, even after Senator Garm Bel Iblis invoked Contemplanys Hermi and the entire sector technically closed its borders, back when the war was just beginning, is currently missing in action – until either Zonder’s Master can be found or else definitive proof the man’s demise is discovered.

32.) Awkward: She and Zonder are doing their utmost to try to make the best they can out of a truly awkward situation (though neither one of them is really all that comfortable with the High Council assigning them to one another. Zonder insists that his bond with his Master is unbroken, meaning the man is alive [a fact that she likely finds entirely too reassuring, given the likelihood that the High Council will just assign someone else to her if Zonder’s Master turns up and is able to take Zonder back on again], and that he should be out there looking for him, which Barriss can understand, even if she doesn’t quite agree with him. There are Jedi Shadows who are looking for Master Asantuen, after all, and Shadows are far more suited for such work than any Padawan could hope to be) and she’s tentatively beginning to think that they might be starting to find a rhythm together that works when the Separatists suddenly invade Coruscant, General Grievous kidnaps Supreme Chancellor Palpatine, and things proceed to pretty much try to go to the lowest levels of Sith hells in a bloody handbasket.

33.) Attack: They were supposed to be dispatched to Felucia, but the unexpected invasion of Coruscant and all of the chaos surrounding that derailed those orders long enough for Master Kenobi and Knight Skywalker both to discover that Palpatine, the Supreme Chancellor of the Galactic Republic, is actually the mysterious second Sith Lord (Sidious, according to what little they’ve been able to uncover, since the Naboo Crisis) and has quite deliberately been playing both sides of the war all along and to then confront and defeat (and, in the process, dispatch) him, after which there was the attempted attack on the Temple to deal with (because, apparently, the clones all had biochip implants in their brains that could be triggered to force them to follow certain commands and the cowardly, traitorous Sith attempted to trigger Order 66 – labelling all Jedi traitors to the Republic and calling for their immediate execution – when confronted by Kenobi and Skywalker), and then, well . . . the war may essentially be over with, but Barriss is a Healer, so she’s going to be needed to help deal with both the problem of those Sith accursed biochips and the fact that the Kaminoans so cruelly designed the clones to age at twice the speed of average human norms, so no one can possibly ever highjack the free will of any of the clones ever again and the clones can hopefully still have long and productive lives as free citizens of whatever it is that the Republic is reorganizing itself to become, now that the Sith have been exposed and dealt with and their plans have also been exposed and ruined.

If you were the 7 deadly sins, what sin would each one be?

That's why it's so painful. He's TRYING to be good but he's so wrong about it all and that does makes sense; after all, he's just another spiderman, he's not a man who knows everything. One thing people forget is that he's only acting irrational and lashing out at Miles because he truly thinks he's correct -NOT IN AN EVIL WAY-. Even though there's so much proof that he is wrong, he's not being ignorant on purpose. He wouldn't actually harm him if he didn't think he was right and that's where I'm looking forward to his character development. He NEEDS to apologise to Miles and admit he was wrong and to better his knowledge on the multiverse and learn to not act so rash.

also rewatching the miguel scenes reaffirms my belief that he isn't a pure asshole like some people think in the movie. he genuinely felt bad about doing what he was doing to miles- you could see when he reaches out to touch his shoulder, when he puts his hands up when miles turned on him because of that. his tone was gentle and his demeanor was calm... until miles threatened all of the multiverse itself. then he got mad. but even then, underneath it, you could tell he felt bad while he was sending gwen home and she said "we're supposed to be the good guys" and he tries to say that they are, before he takes on his strong front on again. he's not just an angry man- he's *trying to be nice*. that's why he was so mad when he said "he didn't listen to me!" because he was trying to be nice and reasonable while explaining things

The story of Jonah Marshall is one of rose colored glasses and loneliness, and it feels like the more we learn more about Adam and the formation of the modern iteration of BPS his story gets sadder.

It's easy (and fairly understandable) to typecast Jonah as the cowardly stoner, and that's largely to do with the way his character is framed by a primary character in the story. Much of what we know about Jonah is informed secondhand through Adam. It is also abundantly clear that Adam has a strained relationship with Jonah, and only seems to want to describe him as unserious, cowardly, and a stereotypical stoned slacker. And while I don't think any of that is necessarily wrong, there is potential for there to be more to his character than just a surface analysis.

I'd ask that you consider an alternate framing of Jonah, informed by some of the canon we learn from Adam's diary, Vol 2, and Vol 4.

Jonah gets a message from someone online asking for help with his ghost investigations, likely because of Jonah's interest in the paranormal or filming (probably the latter if we're considering his popularity on the BPS YouTube channel and his tendency to be the one operating the camera equipment). The opportunity is advertised as dangerous and potentially threatening, but at the intersection of living in your successful father's shadow and needing the chance to make something of yourself in a backwater town, any opportunity is a good one. This portion (to the next line break) is informed mostly from personal experience rather than canon, but this sort of willingness to take even the most dangerous opportunity with a complete stranger screams lonely, ignored teenager. The way he interacts with Adam in a potentially annoying, jokey sort of way is exactly how I tend to act when trying to make myself seem more fun while making friends, or how my siblings and I acted when we wanted our busy parents' attention.

Perhaps instead of just being a bored teenager who needed a way to pay for weed, Jonah used the new opportunity with BPS to make something for himself and to not be in the same lonely, isolated space as before. He tries to be friends with the person he works with, joking with Adam at any opportunity. For Adam, these investigations are extremely serious and has a lot of personal importance. But for Jonah, BPS doesn't have the same personal stake, rather it's an opportunity to do something he enjoys (to some degree) with people he's friends with. Specifically referencing a line from Vol 4, Jonah views himself and Adam as best friends, which is telling to how attached he is to Adam: even if the friendship is, in actuality, only one way. Jonah sticks with Adam during the more alternate-centric investigations because he truly wants to believe that Adam is his friend and the investigations will help him find/cope with the loss of his mother. It paints their Vol 2 argument in an entirely different light: instead of it being strictly about Jonah being cowardly during the entire investigation and not wanting to confront the truth/alternates (as Adam seemed to believe), it's Jonah's final attempt to reason with Adam. The rose colored glasses are off, and he's finally understanding that Adam will do whatever is necessary to know the nature of his mother's death and his own existence, and Jonah was just a stepping stone to get there.

Part of what made Jonah's character so effective to me is because he is such an everyman. Instead of staying and witnessing the existential horrors locked away in the basement, he does his best to convince his friend to choose self preservation and their friendship over a veritable death sentence. and when that doesn't work? He leaves. Presumably both with the intention of saving himself and to tell Sarah and any BPS associated party what happened, maybe to get help in some way and dying enroute (which is what occurs in Jonah's biblical counterpart's story). But what makes Jonah's death via M.A.D. so punchy is what he's torn up about: leaving his friend behind. This links directly back to what I mentioned about the argument as a last effort to get make his friend understand the danger he is in, but the way the alternate preys upon him? The most effective way to make Jonah succumb to madness, given the extent of existential terror a being like an alternate is capable of reaping on someone? The guilt of losing one of the only friends he had—and by extension one of the only things he cared about. That he would be all alone again through no fault other than his own.

okay. sarah heathcliff. the floor is yours

you've given me such an honor and i appreciate your generosity

sarah heathcliff is such an enjoyable character to me. she's blunt with her words, she can say unkind things in the heat of arguments ("no wonder evelin left you"), but she is passionate and she cares. she is passionate about justice for her brother, someone whom she likely has few coherent memories about because of how old she was when he died (around 3/4 - how old were you in the earliest memory you can recall?). but she likely knows that he suffered before he went, and she knows that no one came to help her brother. and she is livid. she makes her animosity known through her voicemails to the mcpd and her emails to the department. i have thoughts about thatcher but i saw your second ask and i'll get to those thoughts in that one :^]

remember that argument with adam? about how he didn't care about jonah's sudden death?

(sidenote: i wonder if that argument struck a nerve with her not just because of adam's odd behavior and the fact that jonah died, but also because of her relationship with her brother. someone who she didn't know very well before he died, but she is so very passionate about getting justice for his untimely and undeserved death. compare that to adam, who shows no regard for jonah's death, someone who he was around a lot and who sarah thought adam was best friends with. i'm not saying it's true, but it's something i think about sometimes.)

despite such a heated and intense argument between the two, sarah heathcliff interrupts 6 while he is talking with adam to ask him, panicked, what is going on and to "don't make [her] worry about [him]." she's very clearly already worried about him. she recognizes in their initial argument that he is acting off already, and she is very clearly uneasy by everything that is going on by the time she calls adam. i find it amusing that she says "don't make me worry about you" when she is clearly already worried about him.

she still worries. she cares for her friends and acquaintances, and she still mourns the death of a brother she knows only through images and vague recollections of the past. she expresses this grief and general stress in her life through unconventional methods, but she is living and she is learning and she is experiencing such new events in her life that will likely throw her for so many loops. i hope she's not prone to motion sickness.

as a little note: i enjoy the sarah-evelin friendship idea very much. i'm not sure how sarah found out about evelin's concern about not seeing dave, but she helps her anyway. she uses her odd knowledge about hacking security cameras to give evelin some of her own security in finding where her boss went, even though the two of them have no idea he's already dead. evelin very likely appreciates the gesture. i hope we get more interactions between them in the future; their characters are amusingly different yet similar in some ways.

tl;dr: i like sarah heathcliff.

Sometimes I can't tell if a character is coded or I'm projecting...

With that in mind, let's talk about The Spot!!!

Ok so, I think Spot is coded to be disabled. Specifically a newly physically disabled person.

My main reasons to call this coding is because of Spot's lines like "I can't really get a job anymore being like this." "My family won't even look at me."

He can't get work anymore and his family has disowned him. An unfortunate reality for many disabled people.

Of course this could also fit with some other types of coding but I think it's for disability this time around because his body literally went through a change. He has to relearn how to do basic things like eat for example. He has to learn how to navigate his body again.

Another fun point I want to bring up is his character's gothic horror aspects! (This is related I swear).

Again could just be my personal biases (I just had a gothic horror hyperfixation). But I think it's partly intentional.

The Spot reminds me a LOT of The Invisible Man. Both are scientists who have undergone a painful horrific body horror transformation that has led them to be outcasts. They are both silly at times but angered easily to the points of world domination. (Also Spot's outfit in the store is a reference to The Invisible Man)

Now The Invisible Man (story) has a lot of gothic horror aspects. Most importantly a monster who has undergone a transformation that has led him to being outcast by society. He's othered.

Same thing happens to our boy Johnathon! The reason I wanted to bring this up is because gothic horror tends to be relatable and loved by lots of queer and disabled people.

The reason is a big theme is said othering of the monster. In an effort to other the monster from "normal" people you accidentally (or intentionally) end up making something relatable to lots of people, typically queer and disabled people! Hence why many villains in pop culture are queer and disabled icons, while not actually being stated as such in canon explicitly.

Ok sorry for rambling lol but this has been on my mind since I saw the movie. Anyway The Spot is disabled bye.

Some destiny alien explorations

First time painting them

A plant kept in the dark

In my opinion, one of the most beautiful symbolic descriptions of Snape is found in The Deathly Hallows: “A plant kept in the dark.”

It's fascinating to me how such a small metaphor can add such depth to his story. When I reflect on his fate, I see that his entire life, from childhood to his death, can be encapsulated in this single image: he is always, until the moment of his death, that plant trapped in darkness. Deprived of light, his potential for growth and flourishing is wasted, never to be seen.

His childhood passes with the hope that one day he will find the light. He is a small plant, hungry for sunlight, full of potential, believing that Hogwarts might be the sun he so desperately needs. But he doesn’t realize that he is destined to live his life surrounded by darkness.

As an adult, he bargains with the light but remains hidden in the shadows. He is still deprived of brightness, yet he remains loyal to it. He no longer believes in his own salvation, but over time, he learns that despite the years of solitude and darkness, he can nurture love and sacrifice within himself for the sake of saving others.

His death, too, is steeped in this metaphor. He is killed in a derelict, darkened shack—a place filled with secrets and echoes of his shadowed past—without anyone ever truly understanding his nature or his loyalty to the light.

His death marks the final withering of this neglected plant, and there is a profound sense of wasted potential. A life that, had it been given light and warmth, could have blossomed into something so different.

Severus Snape spent his life surrounded by shadows, his true nature buried beneath years of regret and sacrifice until the moment of his death. He remained forever like a plant kept in the dark, never reaching the light.

What are your thoughts on Lily? I think she recieves too much hate. I get that she’s a flawed character but the way people are discussing her is like she’s a complete bitch and has been thhrougout her friendship with Sev, which I don’t agree on.

Thank you for asking this question. I had written a long meta about the relationship and friendship between Severus and Lily, but it became so lengthy that I wasn’t sure how to post it. Now, I've separated the parts that focus more on Lily’s character and written them here.(Yes, it's still long but it's shareable now)

I enjoy Snily fanfics and absolutely love Lily’s characterization in them, but I have different feelings about canon Lily. I’m not anti-Lily, but I don't think she holds any significant moral superiority or special virtues compared to other characters in the books.

Most of what we know about Lily comes from when she was 15. Yes, it’s admirable that she sacrificed her life at 21 to save her child, but that doesn’t necessarily say much about her character. Many mothers of any age and from any part of the world would do the same for their children. We don’t know how much she matured or grew as a person. We don’t know if she was satisfied with the choices she made as a teenager or what her feelings toward Severus were in her final days. That’s why I base my judgments on 15-year-old Lily.

I see her as a warm, charming, and somewhat immature girl who, coincidentally, really enjoys positive attention (though not to the extent that James does).She tries to be kind to everyone to be liked, yet feels that other girls don’t really like her and are envious. Unlike her son, she doesn’t have a complex moral code, she tends to see the world in black and white like her sister Petunia. To her, you’re either on her side and therefore her friend, or you’re against her and her enemy. She’s the type of person who can easily attract people at first glance but struggles to form deeper, more meaningful connections with them.

I think part of the reason people dislike her is that they see her as more than what she is and have high expectations of her. Fanon often portrays Lily as a girl from a high-status, wealthy family, a feminist, strong, and independent woman, which makes people expect her to have been able to solve many of the issues she faced. However, in canon, she clearly doesn’t have any of these traits. We don’t even know if her family was rich or poor, but since she lived near Snape, it doesn’t seem like there was much of a class difference between their families.

Yes, canon Lily is lively, smart, and kind, and she gets good grades, but that’s different from being ambitious, powerful, or having feminist or progressive views.

Lily marries and has a child immediately after finishing school, before she truly reaches intellectual and emotional maturity. In canon, we don’t see her play a significant role in the war, undertake any special missions for the Order, or even hold a notable job or career before having Harry. She fits more into the traditional role of a wife and homemaker. I think if she had survived and the war ended, she would have lived a life very similar to Molly Weasley (though not with as many children). She’d be a loving wife and warm mother. Of course, she would likely spoil her child more than Molly does, letting him off the hook easily. Like Petunia, she would overlook her child’s mistakes unless it involved dark magic.

I understand that most people in the wizarding world marry young, but we have characters like Minerva McGonagall, who remains independent, even refusing to change her surname after marriage. In Fantastic Beasts, we see women who, despite the war, maintain their roles as strong, independent individuals whose identities aren’t solely tied to being someone’s wife or mother. So, Lily isn’t an exceptional character in this regard. She’s more like the average woman of her time. When we view her as a very average woman, rather than the amazing, powerful, modern figure seen in fanfics, her behavior becomes much easier to understand.

As for her marriage, I can imagine what was going through her mind: everything with James Potter was easier, simpler, and more stable because, from birth, everything was handed to him. He doesn’t need to work hard for happiness or a future, as his high social status and vast family wealth are guaranteed. He probably promised Lily a successful marriage and a sweet and happy family, perhaps even on their first date, filling her with hope for what was to come. It’s only natural that a teenage girl like Lily, who sees the world in black and white and has a fragile social standing in the wizarding world, would quickly decide that marrying someone like James Potter — who is at the pinnacle of her moral scale ( he doesn’t use dark magic) — was the best choice for her future. This pattern of marriage reminds me of Petunia. She marries her boss, who is also much older than her because he can give her the stable, normal life she dreams of, with a secure income.

Sometimes I think the way Lily chose James and how Snape chose Voldemort are similar. Both were teenagers who made these decisions to secure their place in the wizarding world and cover their insecurities. Lily is fortunate to have an easier life than Severus, and as a woman, she can rely on the support of a wealthy and pure blood man. Snape, on the other hand, didn’t have Lily’s privileges. He had to work hard to secure his place, offering his life and loyalty to Voldemort, who promises him acceptance, security, and protection in return.

I also disagree with the idea that Lily is responsible for all of Snape’s problems or that if she had stayed friends with Severus, he wouldn’t have joined Voldemort:

Snape’s life was far more complicated and difficult for Lily’s presence to magically fix everything. Rowling says Snape sought acceptance, security, and peace. Clearly, Lily couldn’t provide those things for him (after all, she was just 15). Snape needed a strong, father-figure type of support at that age. Teenage Snape, contrary to those who want to portray him as obsessed with Lily, had a proud and independent personality. He didn’t base his entire life around Lily’s presence or absence. Yes, he apologized for his mistake, but when Lily threatened to leave him, he didn’t make any effort to change his circumstances. That’s why I don’t believe the people who say Snape only switched sides because of an obsession with Lily. His love for her lit the path for him later in life, but it was Snape who gave that love the power to guide him and help him grow.

As I read this text, the song Forever Young by Alphaville started playing in my mind as if every word echoed the melody. It felt like Snape’s life: frozen in the past, forever young, yet never free.

He carried the weight of lost dreams, never allowed to become the man he could have been. He was always a boy trapped in the shadows of the past.

Something about Snape, 31-38, with pure black hair, not a single sign of white, despite that being the age most people start going grey

Something about how he had the full dark hair of youth and died like that

Something about how he never truly grew up like he should have

Something about how he was always stuck there in the past, stuck as that Snape boy from Spinner's End, stuck as Snivellus the boy who the Marauders hated for just existing

Something about how he died there in the same place he nearly died as a boy

Something about how he died in that place, bloodied and wounded, raven black hair, no difference between him and his boyhood self

Something about how that black hair was perhaps a sign that he was still living in the past, that a piece of him was eternally frozen at 21, at 16, at 15, he died a man yet he wasn't one, he wasn't a boy but not quite a man

Something about how his portrait among all the other heads of Hogwarts is the only one whose hair is fully dark, whose face isn't lined with age.

Next to them, he is a boy. Perhaps he always was.

The Hidden Tragedy of Snape's Sacrifice is He Died at 20, Not 38

Where does the idea of selfish Severus Snape and his possessive love come from? Do people really believe that Snape died in the Shrieking Shack at 38, at the hands of Voldemort? Do they honestly think that, until he was 38, he lived a normal, happy life, full of hope and dreams, right up until that last minute when everything was suddenly ripped away from him?

Snape didn’t just die in that moment. His life ended 18 years earlier, when he was 20 years old, standing on a hill in front of Dumbledore. That’s when he gave up everything—his freedom, his future, and his life—in exchange for the safety of the Potter family: James, Lily, and Harry.

From that moment on, Snape no longer lived for himself. He had no control over his own fate; his life had been bargained away to protect others. Every step he took after that was part of a long, ongoing sacrifice.

People say they don’t like Snape because he didn’t make up for his mistakes the way he should have, that his redemption arc wasn’t complete. Excuse me? I’m not sure what more a person can give than their life. What’s more precious than their time and youth? What’s more important than their freedom? Snape sacrificed all of that—what else did he even have left to give?

He was barely out of his teenage years when he chose to give up everything—his youth, his dreams, his ambitions, even his loyalty—for people who didn’t care about him. Yet, Snape stayed on that path with unwavering courage for the next 18 years, never backing down.

In truth, Severus Snape was a boy who lost his life at 20. The only thing is, they didn’t bury him until he was 38.

This is an excellent analysis. Snape's harsh behavior towards his students didn't lead me to see him as a cartoonish villain; instead, it made his complexities and vulnerabilities even clearer to me.

The way he suppresses and hides his emotions is deeply unhealthy and destructive. There's a quote from Freud that fits perfectly here: "Unexpressed emotions will never die. They are buried alive and will come forth later in uglier ways."

Severus' behavior shows what happens when emotions are deeply repressed. Psychologically, when people suppress their feelings—especially painful ones they don’t go away. Instead, those emotions build up inside and eventually come out in unhealthy ways, like anger or cruelty. Severus didn’t just ignore his emotions; he buried them for survival, but that only made them worse.

People who bottle up their feelings for too long often lose the ability to understand or manage them. This is why Severus lashes out—his pain is still there, but he never learned how to deal with it. Over time, repressing emotions can make someone feel emotionally numb, like Severus seems cold and distant. But underneath that, he’s still full of unresolved pain, and it shows in how he treats others.

Repressing emotions also stops people from growing. When someone can’t face or work through their feelings, they stay stuck in the same emotional patterns. This is why Severus reacts like a hurt, angry teenager instead of an adult because emotionally, he never had the chance to move on from his past.

How can you reconcile being a fan of Snape and defending him so much, while also knowing about the terrible attitude he has as an adult toward his students? This isn’t a malicious question,I’m genuinely curious

I don’t justify Severus’ behavior, I simply understand it. And it’s not for the typical reasons like Harry being a copy of James, or Neville being clumsy, or Hermione being insufferable in class, or just because he can’t stand kids. I understand it because, in my view, Severus is still very much a child.

Take Sirius, for example. We can all see that being locked up in Azkaban for so many years essentially froze his life at a young age, so even though he’s old enough to have grey hairs down there, he still acts like a childish, immature person a lot of the time. And well, that’s exactly what Sirius is—an immature kid. He never had the opportunity to have experiences or grow throughout his twenties. Maturity doesn’t come with age alone but through everything we go through during that time and the experiences that shape us. Without those experiences, there’s nothing to build on.

Severus’ case is different from Sirius’, but it also stems from a lack of maturity and the inability to grow. Severus was a victim of violence from childhood, and that violence didn’t end—it continued throughout his school years. After all that torment, instead of leaving Hogwarts, telling everyone to screw off, and starting a new life where he could rebuild emotionally, he ends up trapped in the same school, playing a role to maintain his cover with pureblood families and burdened with having practically sold his soul to Dumbledore. He has no space to heal, no tools to work through his traumas, and no safe, healthy environment to grow into an adult. Severus is stuck in his adolescence, haunted by his past, his traumas, and totally incapable of managing his most visceral emotions. Sure, he’s great at faking it, acting indifferent, and wearing a mask to hide what’s going on inside. But just because he’s good at repressing doesn’t mean he’s good at managing his emotions, because in that regard, he fails completely. I mean, there are so many moments throughout the saga where Severus gets triggered, and every time it happens, his serious, unflappable façade crumbles, and he acts like a kid throwing a tantrum, someone with unresolved anger issues. That’s when you see that, deep down, he doesn’t know how to handle himself, which makes sense because he never had the chance to do so. We’re talking about an abuse victim who, instead of processing and exorcising his demons, had to lock them away and throw away the key—literally the last thing you should do when dealing with trauma.

What I’m getting at is that, on one hand, it’s reasonable to expect an adult to act like an adult. But on the other hand, as I grew older, went through years of therapy, and worked with people who come from messed-up backgrounds and have lived through terrible things, when I revisited the series and saw certain scenes where Severus is being an absolute jerk to his students, I didn’t just see an adult acting out. I saw the teenager he once was, insecure, feeling worthless, scared in the hallways. And now, for the first time, he’s in a position of power where he can say what he thinks and lash out without consequences. It’s not an adult acting here—it’s a kid who never grew up, trying to have the moment of glory he never had. It’s incredibly childish. And I have to say, I really like this aspect of his character because it’s so consistent with his backstory, even though it’s clearly irresponsible and abusive.

Severus shouldn’t be a teacher because someone who hasn’t matured, grown, or healed can’t be a role model, nor do they have the tools to properly handle situations where it’s so easy to project their insecurities and abuse their authority to compensate for their own shortcomings. But we can’t really expect anything else from him—if he were a well-adjusted adult, it would make him an unrealistic character. It’s impossible for someone with his background, without professional help and many years of personal work, to function properly in an environment like that.

NEGATIVE ENNEAGRAM TEST

Enneagram Tests are often criticized for focusing too much on the positive aspects of a person’s character. Are you ready to face your Enneagram dark side?

Type 2

The Enneagram Type 2, often referred to as "The Helper" or "The Giver," is characterized by a deep-seated desire to connect with others by offering assistance and support. While this personality type is known for their kindness, generosity, and empathy, the negative aspects of their nature can create challenges in both their personal lives and relationships. Their negative aspects tend to take the following forms:

Overly Self-Sacrificing: Strong inclination to prioritize others' needs over their own, often to the detriment of their own well-being.

Validation Seeking: Seeking approval and validation from others by constantly helping and being indispensable.

Manipulative Behavior: Tendency to manipulate situations and emotions to feel needed and valued.

Hidden Agenda: Helping others with the underlying expectation of receiving appreciation or reciprocation.

Boundary Issues: Difficulty setting healthy boundaries, leading to emotional exhaustion and burnout.

Resentment: Developing resentment when their efforts aren't acknowledged or reciprocated as expected.

Ignoring Personal Needs: Neglecting their own needs and desires while focusing excessively on fulfilling others'.

Fear of Rejection: Constantly fearing rejection or abandonment if they don't meet others' needs.

Dependence on Others' Approval: Relying on external validation for their sense of self-worth and identity.

Loss of Authenticity: Suppressing their own feelings and opinions to cater to others' preferences.

Emotional Manipulation: Using emotions to control situations, often making others feel guilty for not complying.

Avoiding Conflict: Going to great lengths to avoid conflict and disagreements, even at their own expense.

Loss of Identity: Struggling to distinguish their own desires and identity from those they help.

Exaggerated Selflessness: Displaying excessive selflessness to the point of denying their own needs altogether.

Emotional Volatility: Swinging between feelings of selflessness and moments of frustration or anger.

Martyr Complex: Adopting the role of the martyr, using their sacrifices to garner sympathy and attention.

Conditional Giving: Giving with strings attached, expecting something in return for their help.

Neglecting Self-Reflection: Focusing so much on others that they fail to reflect on their own feelings and motivations.

Unhealthy Attachments: Forming co-dependent relationships based on their role as the caregiver.

Burnout: Constantly overextending themselves without proper self-care, leading to burnout.

Loss of Autonomy: Feeling trapped by their need to be needed, which can hinder their personal growth.

Fear of Abandonment: Worrying that if they stop helping, they'll be abandoned or unloved.

Validation Addiction: Becoming addicted to the emotional highs they get from being needed and appreciated.

tagged by:

stolen from dash

tagging:

@fiercehearts (carlos) / @txoubledtwxn

@blindbastard

@sxrgeantbarnes / @ncvelty (you choose!)

@burnedbxnesrumlow

@ssolessurvivor

@audaxbellator (grace) / @fireherc

@inkedmuses (carlos) / @princedickhead / @goldenboybarracuda

@shieldretired

@walkedfire

@localwebslingers (you choose! or both?)

@stxrksarc

@stillwcndering (claire)

i know i went wild with tagging y'all, even though i've never interacted with some of you... but i've probably been admiring you from a distance and i'm curious as to what your muse's result will be, so sue me 😌

I wrote a reply to this post but OP has deleted it and even though I should probably leave well enough alone, it got to me that I could have sworn I saw this post months ago and then realized it was actually from yesterday. This is a long reply so I'm putting it under a cut, but after I went to OP's blog and saw a post from them complaining how mean everyone was to them on this post, I replied to say I'm sorry if they got any anon hate I don't know about but otherwise none of the comments on this post were mean or hateful, they just disagreed with OP. I pointed out that this is partly because they cited non-canon events as canon, and OP immediately blocked me (this may be why I can't reblog the post even from another user, though that's not how tumblr usually works so who knows). I can't help but feel that OP's post was made in bad faith, as a result, and I've seen enough people on this hellsite who are more interested in protecting their egos than admit when they could have been approached something more thoughtfully, so I'm diving in. If you're going to say a character "is very interesting to study" while doing the exact opposite, then you'd better have the critical analysis skills and textual evidence to back it up.

I think OP has some misconceptions that are frustratingly common, and seem to stem from people not having read the books, or not read them for a long time, and conflating the movies with canon. While I mostly agree with the replies above, I want to take this opportunity to cite the text to refute some of OP's points. I often forget details from the text, but I choose to either look them up before asserting unconfirmed points as fact (Potter Search is a great tool, or you can just do a ctrl+F search if you have the books digitally), or else I usually state clearly that I'm not sure if I remember something correctly and don't have the spoons to look it up.

I saw OP say in the comments in response to someone arguing their points:

"that's your interpretation, I have mine, I think both can coexist within the material we are given."

It doesn't sit right with me that so many people think that referring to their subjective memory of what the text meant to them is the same as actually citing it and offering an explanation. OP's interpretation can't exist within the material given, because some of it doesn't exist in the material at all, and you can't interpret what isn't there. OP is essentially claiming to have done critical analysis, and although no one is required to always critique a text analytically on a tumblr post, I find it upsetting when people claim to do so while failing to cite a single source to support their argument. To me it sounds like someone trying to pass off a creative writing essay as an academic research paper, and in an age of rampant propaganda and knee-jerk reblogs that eschew critical thinking, I feel an almost compulsive need to go through OP's reply and argue it with the textual evidence they conveniently avoided, if for no other reason than to show why it's important to discern between loosely formed opinions and informed ones.

I also want to explain why I don't accept the films as canon, because while I do think that canon can exist across several mediums (such as with Good Omens, in which at least one of the writers of the text is directly involved in writing the TV series), I don't think that applies to Harry Potter because the original author was only marginally involved in the films, in only a consultant role, and had little input on the writing. The HP films are an interpretation as written from the perspective of Steve Kloves, except for OoTP, which was written by Michael Goldenberg. I've gone into it on other posts, but suffice to say these interpretations did not prioritize story and character development and were often influenced by pressure from the studio to prioritize marketing opportunities over storytelling. Important elements like foreshadowing and themes were not carried over from the text to the screen. These changes affected the storytelling significantly and left out crucial elements. This, combined with the films having been written with little to no involvement from the original author, is why I feel the films can't be taken as canon. This doesn't mean they can't be enjoyed by any means, just that they scenes that appear in the films but not in the text, or are presented differently on screen than in the text, are not a reasonable basis for character analysis.

And now, on to OP's ask:

"I think he is a very good representation of a man who felt insecure in his manhood; his male ego was permanently wounded by James' bullying and he decided to make it everyone else's problem by being the most insufferable teacher at Hogwarts."

The first thing we have to establish is that the books are told from Harry's perspective, so we have to take narrative bias into account. Calling Snape "the most insufferable teacher at Hogwarts" is a subjective statement and I can only assume it's based in Harry's biased perspective as narrator, given that he and Snape have a bad relationship from the outset. I have a brief analysis here about how Snape dislikes Harry because in their first class together he interprets Harry's ignorance of the course material as a lack of curiosity and appreciation for his gifts as a wizard, while also recognizing something of his own experiences with childhood poverty and abuse in Harry. Harry, being ignorant of these factors, just feels singled out for hate by a strict teacher, and their relationship deteriorates throughout the rest of the series, until the end of the final book.

To pull back from the narrative bias, let's look at some of the other teachers are Hogwarts:

McGonagall:

“Miss Granger, you foolish girl, how could you think of tackling a mountain troll on your own?”  Hermione hung her head. Harry was speechless. Hermione was the last person to do anything against the rules, and here she was, pretending she had, to get them out of trouble. It was as if Snape had started handing out sweets. “Miss Granger, five points will be taken from Gryffindor for this,” said Professor McGonagall. “I’m very disappointed in you. If you’re not hurt at all, you’d better get off to Gryffindor Tower. Students are finishing the feast in their Houses.”

Philosopher's Stone, Ch. 10.

“I’m disgusted,” said Professor McGonagall. “Four students out of bed in one night! I’ve never heard of such a thing before! You, Miss Granger, I thought you had more sense. As for you, Mr. Potter, I thought Gryffindor meant more to you than this. All three of you will receive detentions — yes, you too, Mr. Longbottom, nothing gives you the right to walk around school at night, especially these days, it’s very dangerous — and fifty points will be taken from Gryffindor.” “Fifty?” Harry gasped — they would lose the lead, the lead he’d won in the last Quidditch match.  “Fifty points each,” said Professor McGonagall, breathing heavily through her long, pointed nose.

Philosopher's Stone, Ch. 15

In just the first book we see McGonagall punish Hermione for successfully defending herself against a troll and take house points, then sends her back to her common room without getting medical attention, as if a ten year old can be responsible for assessing how badly they're hurt. A few chapters later McGonagall takes several hundred points from students in her own house (more than we see any other teacher do at one time throughout the series), and assigns the students detention on top of it. As we later see in the same chapter, the detentions aren't even served with her directly, but instead the children - again, ten years old - are sent into the Forbidden Forest at night with only Hagrid to protect them, to hunt down whatever creature is vicious and cunning enough to kill unicorns.

Although it's said that Snape favors the students in his own house, he doesn't seem to be the only one:

“Potter's been sent a broomstick, Professor,” said Malfoy quickly.  “Yes, yes, that’s right,” said Professor Flitwick, beaming at Harry. “Professor McGonagall told me all about the special circumstances, Potter. And what model is it?”  “A Nimbus Two Thousand, sir,” said Harry, fighting not to laugh at the look of horror on Malfoy’s face. “And it’s really thanks to Malfoy here that I’ve got it,” he added. 

Philosopher's Stone, Ch. 10

Not only did McGonagall make an exception to school practices and allow Harry on his house Quidditch team despite being a first year, she used either school funds or her own (unclear) to purchase a first-rate broom for him. We know the school has brooms, as first years are not allowed their own and they are provided for flying lessons, and because “Harry had heard Fred and George Weasley complain about the school brooms” (PS ch. 9). And yet, McGonagall ensures Harry has his own broom, and an expensive one, new enough to be the show model in a shop window in Diagon Alley a few months earlier:

“Several boys of about Harry’s age had their noses pressed against a window with broomsticks in it. ‘Look,’ Harry heard one of them say, ‘the new Nimbus Two Thousand - fastest ever -”

-Philosopher's Stone, Ch. 5

If we're discussing which teachers are Hogwarts are the most "insufferable" then we also have to talk about Hagrid, who might mean well and be affectionate, but is also irresponsible and dangerous.

In Philosopher's Stone, Hagrid:

Punishes Dudley, a child, for his parents' offenses, the final straw being his father insulting Dumbledore (Ch. 4). While Hagrid acknowledges that he shouldn't have lost his temper, he also admits that his intention had been to turn Dudley fully into a pig.

Hatches a dragon in his cabin (Ch. 14), tries to raise it illegally and against the animal's need of care, and Harry, Ron, and Hermione (again, ten year olds) have to fix the situation and get Ron's brother to find some friends to take the dragon away safely and prevent Hagrid losing his job (Ch. 14). In the process Hagrid endangers himself as well as the children, and it's because of this that McGonagall gives them detention and deducts hundreds of house points. Hagrid not only allows the children to endanger themselves for his sake, but to be punished and subsequently ostracized by their peers also for his sake.

The reason he even has a dragon is, as we find out in Ch. 16, because he was foolish enough to accept it from a faceless stranger in exchange for unwittingly divulging the secret to getting past the three headed dog guarding the Philosopher's Stone (and the stranger later turns out to be Quirrel/Voldemort).

In Prisoner of Azkaban, Hagrid:

Starts his first lesson with a volatile creature (Ch. 6) and, although Malfoy acted irresponsibly, Hagrid was nevertheless the teacher and responsible for providing course material consistent with the experience level and maturity of his students' age.

Gets drunk and has to be taken care of by Harry, Ron, and Hermione (again, children) (Ch. 6)

Skipping ahead to Order of the Phoenix ch. 30, we find out Hagrid

Compromised his return from the mission Dumbledore sent him on by bringing a giant back to England.

Brought said giant into the school grounds and left him in the Forbidden Forest.

Asks Harry and Hermione (still children) to look after him if Hagrid is sacked.

Although Hagrid means well, his actions are consistently thoughtless and irresponsible, requiring those around him - often Harry, Ron, and Hermione - to fix the damage he causes. Although I think it remains subjective which teacher at Hogwarts is the "most insufferable" I think Hagrid is a strong enough candidate to qualify OP's interpretation of Snape holding that title as extremely contestable. Of course, since the books are presented through the lens of Harry's narrative bias, and he's fond of Hagrid, respects McGonagall, and dislikes Snape, an uncritical reading could lead one to OP's conclusions. However, a more objective analysis of the text shows that many teachers at Hogwarts are strict, punitive, biased, and wreak havoc on students in ways that make the Snape's actions look fairly tame, or at least the norm. And this is excluding an analysis of various DADA professors like Lockhart and Crouch/Moody, who were insufferable in their own rights (Lockhart was smarmy and dishonest to the point it risked students' lives; Crouch/Moodly transfigured a child into a ferret and humiliated him with torture as a disciplinary measure and deliberately triggered Neville's trauma in class).

OP continues their reply to say:

Add to this that he is a halfblood and only his mother was around, iirc?

They don't recall correctly. Snape, whose father was a muggle and whose mother was a witch, was indeed a half-blood (as is evidenced by him being revealed to be the Half-Blood Prince - I assume I don't need to cite a source as this is a pretty well-known fact and the literal title of an entire HP book, but should you need a reference it's in Ch. 28 of HBP). Both his parents were around in his childhood:

Snape staggered - his wand flew upwards, away from Harry - and suddenly Harry’s mind was teeming with memories that were not his: a hook-nosed man was shouting at a cowering woman, while a small dark-haired boy cried in a corner …

-Order of the Phoenix, Ch. 26

‘How are things at your house?’ Lily asked. A little crease appeared between his eyes. ‘Fine,’ he said. ‘They’re not arguing any more?’ ‘Oh, yes, they’re arguing,’ said Snape. He picked up a fistful of leaves and began tearing them apart, apparently unaware of what he was doing. ‘But it won’t be that long and I’ll be gone.’ ‘Doesn’t your dad like magic?’ ‘He doesn’t like anything, much,’ said Snape.

-Deathly Hallows, Ch. 33

We know that Snape's father was around because he's mentioned both in Snape's memories in OoTP that Harry accidentally invades during an Occlumency lesson, and when we see in Snape's memories that he gives Harry as he dies. Lily asks about his home life by referring to both his parents, implying that his dad is a consistent presence at home. We also know from JK Rowling that Snape's father "didn't hold back when it came to the whip" but this is supplementary and not mentioned in canon, so I don't expect anyone to refer to it when analyzing the text, I'm just adding it as bonus material.

Continuing on with OP's reply:

Snape, Voldemort and Harry all act like foils of each other in that sense, but whereas Voldemort fixated on his blood status as the main reason for his insecurities, Snape fixated on Lily.

So much to unpack here. Firstly, all of this should be backed up by examples from the text, as they are subjective readings that have significant bearing on character analysis.

Snape, Harry, and Voldemort don't act like foils of each other. For one thing, a character doesn't act like a foil, a character either is or isn't one. That being said, I don't know OP's background and there could be a language barrier because English isn't everyone's first language, I'm just being pedantic. Even with that in mind, the statement remains incorrect. A foil is a literary device - a character who contrasts with another character, often with the protagonist. It is not a choice a character makes or an action they take.

In Philosopher's Stone Snape is set up as a foil to Harry in order to misdirect the reader from suspecting the real villain, Quirrel/Voldemort. Snape is presented as secretive, sneaky, and nefarious, contrasting Harry's role as a protagonist who is outspoken, honest, and brave. As the series progresses, Snape, along with Voldemort, are eventually shown to have more parallels than contrasts with Harry. Snape and Voldemort were born into muggle poverty, and although Harry was raised in a middle class home by the Dursleys, they thrust poverty and neglect onto him in a way that parallels his childhood of neglect and want with that of Snape and Voldemort. Snape's father was abusive, as was Harry's guardian, Vernon Dursley. Harry, Voldemort, and Snape all had traumatic experiences growing up in muggle environments. If anything, Snape and Voldemort might be foils to Harry in that they both harbored resentment for their muggle fathers in ways that signified the separation between the wizarding and muggle world, while Harry's experiences with the Dursleys didn't color his image of muggles in a comparable way.

The contrast between Harry, Snape, and Voldemort is in the way each of them deals with their trauma. As Dumbledore says:

"It is our choices, Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities."

-Chamber of Secrets, Ch. 18

This becomes one of the overarching themes of the HP series, Harry, Snape, and Voldemort are all examples of how their choices took them to such different places in life from their comparable childhoods.

At school Voldemort was a handsome boy with talent, intelligence, and the recommendations of his teachers, but he chose to pursue power instead of success:

“He reached the seventh year of his schooling with, as you might have expected, top grades in every examination he had taken. All around him, his classmates were deciding which jobs they were to pursue once they had left Hogwarts. Nearly everybody expected spectacular things from Tom Riddle, prefect, Head Boy, winner of the Special Award for Services to the School. I know that several teachers, Professor Slughorn amongst them, suggested that he join the Ministry of Magic, offered to set up appointments, put him in touch with useful contacts. He refused all offers. The next thing the staff knew, Voldemort was working at Borgin and Burkes.”

Half-Blood Prince, Ch. 20

Snape chose to become a Death Eater for reasons we can only assume. We know he was in Slytherin during an era when Voldemort was in power and many of his allies had children in Slytherin house. At least two of Snape's dorm-mates, Mulciber and Avery, are canonically acknowledged to have become Death Eaters (both are present at the Ministry when Harry and his friends fight the Death Eaters in the Department of Mysteries in OoTP Ch. 35). It's unclear whether Snape chose to become a Death Eater out of admiration for them or out of peer pressure, or perhaps a lack of other options, while at school:

'… thought we were supposed to be friends?’ Snape was saying. ‘Best friends?’ ‘We are, Sev, but I don’t like some of the people you’re hanging around with! I’m sorry, but I detest Avery and Mulciber! Mulciber! What do you see in him, Sev? He’s creepy! D’you know what he tried to do to Mary Macdonald the other day?’ Lily had reached a pillar and leaned against it, looking up into the thin, sallow face. ‘That was nothing,’ said Snape. ‘It was a laugh, that’s all -‘ ‘It was Dark Magic, and if you think that’s funny -‘ ‘What about the stuff Potter and his mates get up to?’ demanded Snape. His colour rose again as he said it, unable, it seemed, to hold in his resentment.

-Deathly Hallows, Ch. 33

It's unclear what Snape thinks of Avery and Mulciber, as his reply to Lily is downplaying but doesn't defend their actions. We see Snape's indecisiveness later in the argument he has with Lily after he calls her a Mudblood:

'It’s too late. I’ve made excuses for you for years. None of my friends can understand why I even talk to you. You and your precious little Death Eater friends - you see, you don’t even deny it! You don’t even deny that’s what you’re all aiming to be! You can’t wait to join You-Know-Who, can you?’ He opened his mouth, but closed it without speaking. ‘I can’t pretend any more. You’ve chosen your way, I’ve chosen mine.’ ‘No - listen, I didn’t mean -‘ ‘- to call me Mudblood? But you call everyone of my birth Mudblood, Severus. Why should I be any different?'

-Deathly Hallows, Ch. 33

Although Snape does ultimately choose to become a Death Eater, we see in his reply to Lily about both Avery and Mulciber and later her assumption that they all want to become Death Eaters that Snape doesn't argue for or against her accusations, but instead is evasive and unsure of himself. He opens his mouth to speak when she accuses him of wanting to become a Death Eater, but then closes it again without saying anything - he can neither argue against her point, nor state clearly, let alone with any kind of conviction, that this is indeed his ambition. It can be argued that it's the passivity of his choice that lands him with a Dark Mark on his arm, and it's the active choice he makes to risk his life in order to defect from Voldemort's ranks and turn spy that defines his character and without which Harry could not have defeated Voldemort.

Harry, as the protagonist, is also significantly defined by the theme of choice:

'But, sir,’ said Harry, making valiant efforts not to sound argumentative, ‘it all comes to the same thing, doesn’t it? I’ve got to try and kill him, or -‘ ‘Got to?’ said Dumbledore. ‘Of course you’ve got to! But not because of the prophecy! Because you, yourself, will never rest until you’ve tried! We both know it! Imagine, please, just for a moment, that you had never heard that prophecy! How would you feel about Voldemort now? Think!’ Harry watched Dumbledore striding up and down in front of him, and thought. He thought of his mother, his father and Sirius. He thought of Cedric Diggory. He thought of all the terrible deeds he knew Lord Voldemort had done. A flame seemed to leap inside his chest, searing his throat. ‘I’d want him finished,’ said Harry quietly. ‘And I’d want to do it.’ ‘Of course you would!’ cried Dumbledore. ‘You see, the prophecy does not mean you have to do anything! But the prophecy caused Lord Voldemort to mark you as his equal … in other words, you are free to choose your way, quite free to turn your back on the prophecy! But Voldemort continues to set store by the prophecy. He will continue to hunt you … which makes it certain, really, that -' ‘That one of us is going to end up killing the other,’ said Harry. ‘Yes.'

-Half-Blood Prince, Ch. 33

There's a clear point made by the author through Dumbledore as her proxy here, that choice is what matters, not fate. It's Harry's choices that make him the person he is and lead him to eventually defeat Voldemort. While Snape, Voldemort, and Harry all can be contrasted through the lens of their choices, this does not make them foils, as it is the the theme of choice and how it is exemplified by each character that makes them unique, but their experiences and many of their character traits (boldness, bravery, a personal sense of conviction) that make them parallels of one another. Each of them occupies their own place on the spectrum between the light and dark that the series establishes, Voldemort at the dark end, Harry at the light, and Snape in the grey area between them.

OP goes on to say:

His character is all about male entitlement, he was obsessed with her at Hogwarts and then showed to have no boundaries as he went into her house to cradle her dead body in front of her traumatized kid.

There's a lot to unpack here, and it's particularly challenging because you can't provide textual evidence for something that didn't happen in the text. After the above scene from Ch. 33 of DH in which Lily ends her friendship with Snape, we never see them interact again:

'No - listen, I didn’t mean -‘ ‘- to call me Mudblood? But you call everyone of my birth Mudblood, Severus. Why should I be any different?’ He struggled on the verge of speech, but with a contemptuous look she turned and climbed back through the portrait hole … The corridor dissolved, and the scene took a little longer to reform: Harry seemed to fly through shifting shapes and colours until his surroundings solidified again and he stood on a hilltop, forlorn and cold in the darkness, the wind whistling through the branches of a few leafless trees. The adult Snape was panting, turning on the spot, his wand gripped tightly in his hand, waiting for something or for someone …'

-Deathly Hallows, Ch. 33

The scene in the corridor in front of Gryffindor Tower between a fifth year Snape and Lily leads directly into the scene where Snape begs Dumbledore to protect the Potters (which I wrote an analysis of a few months ago but is too long a subject to derail this post for). We see no more interactions between Snape and Lily, and therefore there is no canonical support for the idea that Snape behaved obsessively or failed to respect her boundaries.

There's also no mention of Snape going to Godric's Hollow at all after her death. Snape holding Lily's dead body is only shown in the film version of Deathly Hallows, and as mentioned, the films are not canon. That moment doesn't exist in the text and can't be considered in an analysis of Snape's character. The scene on the hilltop leads directly into the scene of Snape crying in Dumbledore's office:

The hilltop faded, and Harry stood in Dumbledore’s office, and something was making a terrible sound, like a wounded animal. Snape was slumped forwards in a chair and Dumbledore was standing over him, looking grim. After a moment or two, Snape raised his face, and he looked like a man who had lived a hundred years of misery since leaving the wild hilltop. ‘I thought … you were going … to keep her … safe …’ ‘She and James put their faith in the wrong person,’ said Dumbledore. ‘Rather like you, Severus. Weren’t you hoping that Lord Voldemort would spare her?’ Snape’s breathing was shallow.

-Deathly Hallows, Ch. 33

This is the only depiction of Snape immediately following the Potters' deaths. The scene of him cradling Lily's dead body was Steve Kloves' invention and has no basis in canon. If anything, Snape's actions in canon can be interpreted to show that he respected the boundaries Lily set, and that even when her life was at risk he chose to go to Dumbledore - who he thought might kill him on sight - rather than talk to her directly after she ended their friendship. In addition, in all the information the text gives about the night Voldemort fell in Godric's Hollow and Hagrid collected Harry to take him to Privet Drive, there's no mention of Snape whatsoever.

There isn't much in the text to support the interpretation that Snape exemplified male entitlement either. So far we've seen him being as strict, if not milder, than other teachers at the school, his favoritism is also comparable to that of other teachers - implying it's more of a norm than an example of entitlement - and there are no canonical examples to support the argument that he was obsessed with Lily or violated her boundaries. Snape struggles to argue with Lily when she accuses and berates him, and the usual markers of patriarchal entitlement - silencing women, gaslighting, dismissing women's opinions, talking over them - are all nowhere to be found in any of their interactions. The only time we see him lash out at Lily is when he calls her Mudblood (OoTP Ch. 28) which, while inexcusable, he does under traumatic duress, and is not indicative of his usual interactions with her, as exemplified by the fact that she ends their friendship over it. As cited before:

'No - listen, I didn’t mean -‘ ‘- to call me Mudblood? But you call everyone of my birth Mudblood, Severus. Why should I be any different?’

There's a clear implication that Snape has never called her this before. An argument can also be made that it speaks volumes of Lily's own biases, or perhaps her own affection for Snape (who, not long before this, was still her best friend), that she excused this behavior from him when it was directed at others, and only took issue with it when it was directed at herself. That, combined with Lily's own acknowledgment that they were "best friends" shows that Snape's relationship with her was a balanced, consensual one even when it became strained, up until their friendship ended.

Continuing with OP's points:

He only saw Lily as a trophy to be possessed, which you can see from the way he hated Harry, because Harry reminded him Lily wasn't his and that Lily had sex with another man.

There's no support for this in the text anywhere and is pure conjecture. I can appreciate it being OP's headcanon, but it's certainly not a result of studying the text and relying on it to form opinions, but rather seems to be OP projecting pre-conceived notions onto Snape as a character and trying to find justification for it. I've written a whole post extrapolating Snape's first class with Harry, but the tl;dr is that Snape, who grew up in muggle poverty and knew Aunt Petunia enough to guess that Harry didn't fare well in her care when he showed up at school bearing signs of neglect, likely expected Harry to have the same hunger for learning that he himself did at Harry's age. Instead, Harry couldn't answer a single one of his questions and showed no curiosity or enthusiasm towards being a wizard as far as Snape could tell.

Nevertheless, even though Snape did seem to dislike Harry, hate is an awful strong word given that it is revealed at the end of Deathly Hallows that Snape has risked his own life to protect him. This isn't particularly surprising when you consider that this goal was established as early as Philosopher's Stone, when Snape protected him, which Harry initially interpreted as Snape trying to kill him:

Harry couldn’t take it in. This couldn’t be true, it couldn’t. ‘But Snape tried to kill me!’ ‘No, no, no. I tried to kill you. Your friend Miss Granger accidentally knocked me over as she rushed to set fire to Snape at that Quidditch match. She broke my eye contact with you. Another few seconds and I’d have got you off that broom. I’d have managed it before then if Snape hadn’t been muttering a counter-curse, trying to save you.’ ‘Snape was trying to save me?’ ‘Of course,’ said Quirrell coolly. -Philosopher's Stone, Ch. 17

Again, the story is told through the lens of Harry's bias, but that doesn't mean his opinions of Snape reflect Snape's character. As another example, there's an implication in OoTP that Snape, having seen some of the Dursleys' abuse of Harry through his memories during Occlumency lessons, passed this information on in an effort to protect Harry, and that this is the reason why several Order members (Arthur Weasley and Moody in particular) show up at King's Cross at the end of the schoolyear and threaten the Dursleys to stop mistreating him. There seems to be no other explanation in the text for why these adults are suddenly aware of the abuse Harry experiences, except that Snape, who was abused as a child himself, and who is an Order member himself, is the only adult in the series who we see witness Harry's mistreatement firsthand. At no point in the narrative do we see Harry complain about the Dursleys to the adults he trusts or ask them for help, merely to spend his holidays away from them without explanation.

While Snape did indeed dislike Harry and often compared him to his father, his dislike for James had much more significant roots in bullying and trauma than in his concern for Lily's relationship with him. It's established in canon that James Potter and Sirius Black dislike Snape from the outset (as in the scene on the Hogwarts Express in DH Ch. 33). In their fifth year, Sirius - annoyed that Snape is so curious about where Lupin goes each month - tricks Snape into following the tunnel under the Whomping Willow to the Shrieking Shack, as Lupin tells Harry:

'Professor Snape was at school with us. ... Sirius here played a trick on him which nearly killed him, a trick which involved me -‘ Black made a derisive noise. ‘It served him right,’ he sneered. ‘Sneaking around, trying to find out what we were up to … hoping he could get us expelled …' 'Severus was very interested in where I went every month,’ Lupin told Harry, Ron and Hermione. ‘We were in the same year, you know, and we - er - didn’t like each other very much. He especially disliked James. Jealous, I think, of James’s talent on the Quidditch pitch … anyway, Snape had seen me crossing the grounds with Madam Pomfrey one evening as she led me towards the Whomping Willow to transform. Sirius thought it would be - er - amusing, to tell Snape all he had to do was prod the knot on the tree-trunk with a long stick, and he’d be able to get in after me. Well, of course, Snape tried it - if he’d got as far as this house, he’d have met a fully grown werewolf - but your father, who’d heard what Sirius had done, went after Snape and pulled him back, at great risk to his life … Snape glimpsed me, though, at the end of the tunnel. He was forbidden to tell anybody by Dumbledore, but from that time on he knew what I was …'

-Prisoner of Azkaban, Ch. 18

From this we can deduce that Sirius intended for Snape to die, or at least get severely injured, and that even as a grown adult Sirius doesn't regret trying to mete out this punishment to him as retaliation for curiosity. We can also deduce that Lupin was unaware of Sirius' intention and did not consent to be used as a weapon. For his part, Snape never did reveal that Lupin was a werewolf while at school, or even during that school year, until after Lupin ran amok on Hogwarts grounds, endangering others' lives, including Harry's.

There are other meta posts that go into Lupin's insecurities and vulnerabilities, but in short, he was grateful just to be allowed into the school as a student, let alone to have friends, and was in no position to challenge James and Sirius. Even as a prefect he didn't curb their behavior, as we see when he allows James to bully Snape later that year after their O.W.L.s:

'Leave him alone,’ Lily repeated. She was looking at James with every sign of great dislike. ‘What’s he done to you?’ ‘Well,’ said James, appearing to deliberate the point, ‘it’s more the fact that he exists, if you know what I mean …’ Many of the surrounding students laughed, Sirius and Wormtail included, but Lupin, still apparently intent on his book, didn’t, and nor did Lily. ‘You think you’re funny,’ she said coldly. ‘But you’re just an arrogant, bullying toerag, Potter. Leave him alone.’ ‘I will if you go out with me, Evans,’ said James quickly. ‘Go on … go out with me and I’ll never lay a wand on old Snivelly again.'

-Order of the Phoenix, Ch. 28

James acknowledges that he has no real reason to bully Snape and uses violence as a bargaining chip to coerce Lily into going out with him (James' behavior reflects much more entitlement than Snape's, in my opinion). He also chokes Snape with a bar of soap and then assaults him by dangling him upside down and removing his trousers (threatening to remove his underwear but we don't see it happen).

Lily herself refers to James as arrogant, and it's this trait, along with the trauma from James' bullying of him, that Snape perceives in Harry. He doesn't resent Harry for looking like his father because it reminds him that Lily had sex with another man, he resents him for it because of all the trauma James inflicted on him. The conflict-laden relationship between Snape and the Marauders is a significant driver of the story through several of the books and OP seems subjective to the point of being problematic in ignoring it completely and instead focusing Snape's dislike of Harry onto an invented idea of sexual jealousy that doesn't exist in the text.

It's never stated whether Snape had romantic feelings for Lily, or vice versa, only that they were friends. The closest we see to a hint of this is when “The intensity of his [Snape's] gaze made her [Lily] blush," or when “The moment she [Lily] had insulted James Potter, his [Snape's] whole body had relaxed, and as they walked away there was a new spring in Snape’s step …”

Lily's blush could be interpreted as implying she was attracted to him, or conversely that she didn't and felt awkward thinking he might be attracted to her. Similarly, Snape's relief at her insulting James can be interpreted as indicative of his attraction to her, or of him simply being worried about a friend hanging out with people he perceived as dangerous and was relieved to learn she wasn't putting herself in the way of danger by becoming friends with them. Although JK Rowling has said that her intention was for Snape's affections towards Lily to be romantic, and that she may have returned his affection had he not chosen the path he did, this is - like the note about Snape's father whipping him - extratextual and more of an interesting fact than a bit of canon to be extrapolated from the text.

Finally, OP says:

His interest in the Death Eaters was only secondary to his obsession with Lily and I think Lily rejecting him pushed him toward joining the Death Eaters, because, once again, his male ego was bruised and he needed to replace it with something else.

We've already seen that Snape's interest in joining the Death Eaters was a big part of Lily's reason for ending their friendship. Therefore, logically, Lily's decision didn't push him towards becoming a Death Eater, but rather isolated him from having any support system outside of the DEs. She didn't reject him, because rejection is the refusal or dismissal of another person's advances or proposal. They were friends, meaning they had a mutually consensual platonic relationship. Lily therefore didn't reject Snape, she ended their friendship and, as already stated, nothing in canon implies he didn't respect her boundaries.

As we have also seen in canon, Snape was bullied at school and had, at best, a neglectful and dysfunctional home environment in his childhood. In addition, he shared a dorm with students actively interested in becoming Death Eaters, and his one social lifeline away from them was cut off when he called Lily a Mudblood. What OP interprets as Snape's male ego being bruised is actually a much more complex set of social and emotional factors being described throughout the series to eventually reveal the profile of a character - young Snape - who was a vulnerable youth primed for radicalization by a violent faction of zealots. Although the enforcement and upholding of patriarchal norms is often a huge element of these kinds of social movements, that didn't seem to be the driving force for Snape based on everything we learn about his character. Instead, what we see is a boy who comes from abuse, lives in abuse at school, who loses all the support systems that might give him an alternative to the fascist cult he's being radicalized into which - if it's like most hate groups - would have been more than welcome to both take him in and help him cut his ties to anyone else in his life he might escape from them to.

It also goes against the argument that Snape was sexually obsessed with Lily that he continued to risk his life in order to protect her son an defeat her murderer for almost two decades after her death. He knew it would neither bring her back from the dead nor bring about forgiveness, and it goes without saying that sex was no longer an option. Framing Snape's motivation as obsession dismisses the realities of the complex and meaningful relationship we form as people, and the lasting, transformative influence we can have on each other, which is what Snape and Lily's story illustrates.

Finally, OP concludes with:

He remained mysterious up till the end and his back-and-forth with treason was very compelling to read about. So I hate him (as a "person") but he is such a good character narrative-wise and he is very interesting to study

OP openly admits to hating Snape, ie. having a bias against him, while stating he is "interesting to study" - except no part of their answer has shown that they've actually done so. Their arguments are unsupported in several ways, one being that they don't offer any evidence, and the other being that none can be found in the source text. What's ironic is that OP seems to resent Snape's subjective bias against Harry (and misinterpret his reasons for it in baseless ways) while also showing the exact same kind of bias against Snape themselves. You don't have to like a character by any means, but claiming that the kind of unfounded, superficial, and unsupported opinions that OP stated in their response have a basis in any kind of study of his character is ludicrous and an insult to the intelligence of anyone reading it.

Thinking ‘bout him <3 pt. 1