#snames
I hate how the snames tag on ao3 is filled with fic where onlySnape is turned into a girl. It’s as if snames can only exist if Severus turns into Severina. Let Snape be a boy or turn James into a girl too ffs.
I hate the whole trope of taking a gay ship and genderbending ONLY one character (and it’s ALWAYS the gender nonconforming one) while changing absolutely nothing about their dynamic so it’s… exactly the same ship but heterosexual. Leaves a bad taste in my mouth. I’m not shitting on people for thinking Severa Snape is a cute concept (I do too) but Jamie/Severa is objectively superior to James/Severa and that’s a hill I’m dying on. Gay Jeverus (as boys and girls) ftw
btw if you’re looking for an ao3 Jeverus fic rec the Prince Prongs series by Anonymous Creater has both He’s All That (gay, my personal favourite for the ship on ao3) and Dandelions and Asters (lesbian Jeverus oneshot)
While we’re on Jeverus tropes
Huge thanks to all creatives, artists and writers alike for sharing your work. You didn’t need to, and even if I don’t personally enjoy it I can respect it
But when I say, my soul fucking withers just a little bit each time I read a fic where Snape self-deprecates about his looks, his house, himself like he’sunworthy of someone like James
I only liked this ship cause they were both formidable. Snape is brilliant and he has that sharp humor, he’s reliable, fierce, unique and interesting. He does not need to blush and cry and pout cutely for James to pay attention to him.
Put Snape in his own right, I beg. Let him (or her) be ugly, unpleasant, sharp, brave, skilled, uncompromising, ambitious and gay. If James can’t recognize or respect these qualities then he doesn’t need to be there
This, all of this.
I don’t mind self-deprecating Snape in general, especially when he keeps it internal, but the idea that Severus would ever think that the things he dislikes about himself (especially the things he has no control over) make him somehow inferior to James Potter just makes my eye twitch. Canon teen Severus has CHEWY beef with James (judging by the incoherency the topic reduces him to), because ‘everyone thinks’ he’s wonderful while Severus knows that he isn’t, and he hyperfocuses in on James’s ‘hero’ reputation and how unearned it is. What springs to mind mid-word vomit as he’s trying to convince Lily that James is awful is that James is going to make a ‘fool’ of her, that any relationship between Lily and James will involve trickery, deceit, and dishonesty on James’s part (and ironically, Severus himself ended up being the reason he was right about that). He takes pride in things that disadvantage him (this book is the property of the Half-Blood Prince), rather than shame. As an adult, his go-to insult for James is arrogance, how much better (in Severus’s eyes) he thought himself to be than he actually was. Nothing Severus has done ever implies that he thought James was anything other than trash with a tragically convincing paint job (I recognise I am not making a strong case for my ship here).
And, although Marauders fandom is like 90% fanon anyways, I don’t understand why people think that Severus needs to become more attractive, more palatable, more deferent, in order for James to pay attention to him. James ALREADY pays a weird amount (considering that James risked his years-in-the-making relationship with the girl of his dreams in order to hex specifically his Special Case when he, as the can-take-points-and-give-detentions Head Boy, really did not need to, but that’s a post for another day) of attention to him and has since the day they met, because Severus, instinctually, does not behave like that. Severus doesn’t love and hate the houses James thinks he should; snorts at James for wanting to be in Gryffindor and like his father; is rude to him while being visibly poor, weird-looking, and unfriendly - unlike Sirius, who also bristles when James shits on Slytherin but gets a significantly less escalatory response. Which are the things that make James pay attention to him, long before Lily is in the picture; James recognises Severus for the walking insult to his view of the world in literally every aspect of life he is the day they meet, so like. He’s already invested; there’s no need to force it on James’s end by cutesying Severus up. It’s out of character for them both and just feels like it’s trying to establish James as the top/‘man’, in the most heteronormative way possible.
(I will say I don’t mind when James changes his opinion of Severus after seeing a new side of him; I did just rec He’s All That, and the carnival in Chapter 15 skates pretty close to everything I just shat on. It doesn’t 180 their relationship and Severus never feels OOC in that, though, which is why I think it’s a pretty good example of how that concept can be executed without ending up gross.)
Now, I know this might sound controversial and low-key problematic but…why aren’t there more Severus x Sirius full length fanfics?? Like??? I know most of us in the Snapedom loathe the Marauders but man you can’t tell me that’s not good material? Bruh I fucking love Snupin but Snack is other worldly. Bitch the tension, the angst, the SMUT!!! That’s some real enemies to lovers shit right there. Same goes for Snape and James. It’s basically Drarry but for the Marauders generation and cant nobody tell me differently.
