I’m Reading The Essay On John Nettleship, The Character Whom Snape Was Based On, And Some Parts Are

love ur hk designs! how did u come up w/them? do u have any notes?

aww thank you so much anon !! i DO in fact have notes but theyre a lot so [cracks knuckles] lets go thru this --

i love designing and humanizing characters as its a real fun brain exercise and such, but humanizing the hk characters has really given me a lotta gusto that perplexes even me ?? either way im not complaining its very fun and im glad to elaborate on all (bc its a bit much) the thought that went into these!!

Image Description: Digital art of humanoid Hollow Knight Characters. Quirrel, Hornet, the Knight, and the Hollow Knight are all hanging around a bench and looking at the camera. The Knight is sitting on the bench, their legs dangling off, and holding their helmet. The Hollow Knight, all bandaged up, is sitting on the ground but leaning their head on the back of the bench. Quirrel is standing and leaning on the bench back, making a thumbs up and smiling a big smile. Hornet is also standing, though she rests three of her hands on the bench with an unimpressed expression. End ID.

in this post i’ll be talking about inspirations and show off the designs of the knight, hornet, quirrel, thk, the dreamers, and some less polished higher beings designs -- and go over it all with my neverending commentary! everything's under the cut in order to spare y'all's dashes LMAO

one must begin with groundwork. try to figure out what aspects of the character you want to be most important. do you want their silhouette to be immediately recognizable? are you inspired by a particular time period or region, or want to set it in that time period or region? do you want to prioritize colors? are you willing to let go of silhouette / direct visual relatability in lieu of emphasizing personality in the little details of appearance? try to strike that balance and see what is to your taste.

you should also consider how seriously you want to take things. will you consider things down to material and essentially fabricate hallownest's textile economy or do you just want to ball off of vibes? (i like incorporating historical garments and feels into things because i think they're neat, but i do get silly here. maybe i'll bow to my inner desire to ground everything some day and take another stab at, well, all of this.)

there are some things you can easily render turning bug to person (as i love diverse face shapes so you’ll see a trend of pointy in game, pointy here) and some that are much harder. either you can go for what is straightforward and easy for someone to be like “oh hornet head shaped mask! that must be hornet!” or you can not do that! your humanizations, your rules. hollow knight has a very simple, curve and shape-based art style, so you can incorporate a lot of subtle details on that! you can also do any other motif and really lay into it -- if you look at my monomon i have all these that are jellyfish-esque: her gown shape, her choker, her braids, the embroidery on her gown, etc.

or you can ignore all my advice and do what you want! i’m not the boss of you.

so , FIRST THINGS FIRST: aesthetic inspirations ! i did a few passes based on a variety of regions but i decided go with a pre-modern era european influence, largely because of the general influences and vibes i saw in the in-game architecture and appearances for things and places. i decided to land my inspirations anywhere from the 1500s to late 1700s / veery early 1800s, though im just aiming for fantastical with a heavy side of inspiration.

i decided to have individuals from before the fall of hallownest have look inspirations from Later in this time frame with those after being Earlier to get this kind of ‘technology and society has backslid’ idea. that, and because i thought the aesthetics of later monarchist europe -- l’ancien regime and all that, if you will -- quite fitting with hallownest right before its fall. because of this extremely broad time frame (300 years!) and also me just generally not trying to be concerned with ‘historical accuracy’ as this is both non-historical and very fantastical, there’s going to be a mess of silhouettes and such -- though i do love a rich deep dive into history, this is a time for fantasy fun and nonsense :-)

i decided to constrain myself with a few internal rules: one being the inspirations i draw on, and another main one being regarding masks. i decided to restrict mask wearing to as little as possible -- no shade to people who include masks in their gijinkas! i think they look wonderful with them And are lore relevant! but i felt like me, personally, using masks would keep me at times from being at the very top of my design experimentation game. so, as a little sort of fun challenge, i’m keeping away masks as much as possible in these people’s everyday wear. this means it is harder to keep silhouettes, but my priority is less 100% sticking close to silhouettes (though that is something to consider) and more evoking enough motifs and such to where they’re recognizable.

SO LET’S BREAK DOWN SOME DESIGNS!

Image Description: A reference sheet with various views of a humanized Knight. They’re a pale little humanoid thing armed with a shortsword, their skin and hair that same color of off-white, and always maintaining that same wide-eyed, small-mouthed, and neutral (yet almost determined?) look. They’re dressed in virtually rags from neck to boots, and all dark colors - navy blues, greys, dark brown leather, and even the deepest blacks. Charms are studded to their outermost cloak (and there seems to be a pair of vestigial, black-soaked wings under said outer cloak). They have a flat, square face, and a flat, square nose, though their corners are blunted. Their hair should be straight but it has gone long unbrushed; it stops in bangs at their forehead then cascades to their chin, where it hugs their jaw, especially at two points on the left and right where two ticks stick out on each side.

They can be seen also wearing headgear: a chainmail hood with old, yellowed horns poking out at either temple. They are also shown with their hair up in a little bun, or in two pigtails remniscient of their canon horns (one can thank Mato!). There is a little drawing of their exposed arm, showing how all their joints are harshly segmented, as if an insect or porcelain doll. In the corner, their dark shade chases after them. End ID.

an idea i wanted to play with for the knight -- and any of the vessels, for that matter -- is that of the uncanny. they are almost human! (as im approaching these humanizations with the idea of ‘human au’ and less so ‘everyone must be humanoid’, the higher beings are markedly less human here. ill get to that in a bit.) i decided to go for the concept that the knight is a living porcelain doll -- hollow, white, uncanny. they’re probably not shiny -- their surface probably feels like it was once porcelain smooth but is now ever so slightly abraded -- and theyre also not LITERALLY a doll. they do have a crackable exterior, yes, and are hollow, yes, but their segmented joints and such are less ‘doll’ and more ‘insect exoskeleton segments’. thank their dad (though i always thought he was more of a tapeworm / platyhelminth. but that aside--)

them being this humanoid non-human lends to some fun details! this is an example i like but is extraordinarily hard to communicate thru just stylized art: their eyes cannot close as they have been ‘carved’ that way & their pupils are just a hole into their void interior, and thus if you look at their face at an angle or profile you can see a little ridge / rim of the thin layer of their eye-white ‘porcelain’. they are also virtually dressed in rags, though the bottom cloak layer of those rags are wing-shaped, but still vestigial w/o the monarch wings, like in-game. and the two little hair-ticks on either side of their chin are meant to evoke their horns! :-)

Image Description: Various views of a humanized Hornet. She’s a thin, lithe person, with a long thin face wider at the top than the bottom and a thin chin. She has four eyes, and four arms. She has brown skin, with the exception of a patch of pale skin in the shape of her canon head right over her nose, with the ‘horns’ extending up into her scalp. There’s a flash of white coming from her forehead amongst her curly black hair, which is tied back into a bun by a hairtie shaped like two lightly curving pale horns. She has a long and pointy nose with a thin bridge, but it is crooked slightly. She largely has an unimpressed and stern look on her face.

She wears a bright red cloak with three weaverling buttons on the front, and white embroidery on the collar, back, and hem. The design on the back is a heavily stylized spider: a round body of eyes, with floral arms extending out from the junction between the body and the curving leaf-mandibles. Underneath her cloak she wears a white top with gold embroidery down the center (that goes up her neck to the underside of her jaw, and can be optionally decorated or plainly wrapped in white) and a bodice that is black on the sides but gold and white in the center at her torso. Tied to her belt is a silver chatelaine with sewing supplies. She has red puffy sleeves, slitted to show white fabric showing through, and black forearm-length fingerless gloves. There are a few more sketches: one of her with a double-horned hennin (her formal wear, maybe she wore when young), one of her as a child shouting excitedly for her ma, and a tiny her standing unimpressed next to a wide-eyed Knight. End ID.

hornet was kind of difficult, particularly because… of her head shape… but i fired out several solutions! the double-horned hennin (the funny two-cone hat) is from history, though the idea was scrapped as i imagine hornet in the present, as you see her, would not be of a mind to wear such finery. thus, i decided to give her a hairpiece shaped into horns, to evoke that silhouette. much more practical. (same idea goes with her patch of pale skin.)

as i mentioned this is a not-strictly-humans scenario, so i decided to splurge on the weavers and spiders and give them some differing anatomy, ie some extra arms and eyes. as a treat. i havent entirely sussed out (lol) the exact logic of her wear -- turns out making real things fantasy makes them, construction-wise, rather odd -- and is always subject to change. hornet wears things rather simple, for practicality reasons; and though her outfit is highly fictionalized (lmao) her garments under her cloak are somewhat based off of the portraits by cranach the elder. (all weaver clothings generally would feature repeating shoulder puffs. not leg-of-mutton style, but moreso in the image of the 1530s-40s. you'll see this more on herrah.)

the knight is a bit too ’young’ to have these features be quite apparent so they are the exception, but the trend with the ‘pale lineage’ is that of very pointed chins, long faces, and thin long noses. you'll see this on the hollow knight and the pale king, and you almost see this with hornet. she is still somewhat her father's creature, though he was never quite in her life.

Image Description: Various views of a humanized Quirrel. He's a portly brown man (with warm-toned skin) with a squat (but not comically so) face, a pointy and stick-out nose, freckles concentrated around the top of his nose and where his eyes meet, relaxed, monolidded black eyes, and straight black hair. His hair falls short onto his forehead and comes down his cheek in sideburns, but is pulled back into a low bun -- though it is usually covered by a dark grey-blue headscarf. He has silver plate armor on his upper body, upper arms, and over his thighs, with a sash winding 'round his waist and holding up his scabbard; he too wears long black gloves, and thigh-length leg gaiters over brown breeches. Covering his neck is a white neck stock. He has a bit of a hunched posture, his hips and neck both leaned forward; his belly is well-rounded, and his long legs are rather spindly.

He is also seen younger, before the fall of Hallownest. Here he has less wrinkles, though his face is much the same. His black hair is tied back in a headscarf (though actually short here); and he's clad in a segmented grey coat, high collar with a white cravat, green vest with rich gold embroideries, high knee stockings covering brown breeches, and over all that a segmented cropped tailcoat. He dresses pretty well, as befitting his station -- but not as well as he could (science gets messy!) End ID.

Image Description: Various views of a humanized Quirrel. He's a portly brown man (with warm-toned skin) with a squat (but not comically so) face, a pointy and stick-out nose, freckles concentrated around the top of his nose and where his eyes meet, relaxed, monolidded black eyes, and straight black hair. His hair falls short onto his forehead and comes down his cheek in sideburns, but is pulled back into a low bun -- though it is usually covered by a dark grey-blue headscarf. He has silver plate armor on his upper body, upper arms, and over his thighs, with a sash winding 'round his waist and holding up his scabbard; he too wears long black gloves, and thigh-length leg gaiters over brown breeches. Covering his neck is a white neck stock. He has a bit of a hunched posture, his hips and neck both leaned forward; his belly is well-rounded, and his long legs are rather spindly.

He is also seen younger, before the fall of Hallownest. Here he has less wrinkles, though his face is much the same. His black hair is tied back in a headscarf (though actually short here). He has a couple possible outfits: a more realistic one, a dark greatcoat with multiple capelets over a sky blue waistcoat, high collar with a white cravat and pin, high black hosen with brown breeches; and an alternate one: a segmented grey coat, high collar with a white cravat, green vest with rich gold embroideries, high knee stockings with brown breeches, and over all that a segmented cropped tailcoat. He dresses pretty well, as befitting his station -- but not as well as he could (science gets messy!) End ID.

quirrel was both easy and hard. to mimic his segments i decided to give him plate armor -- reasons for this are fairly obvious i imagine LMAO (segments!) (though his armor isn’t based on or accurate to any particular armor style. this is because i do not like drawing armor.) for his outfit pre-fall of hallownest, i gave him some breeches and leggings, as is typical for his very regency / turn of the century inspirations, but those give him the effect of white legs. to sort of mimic the black legs he has in-game, i instead gave him black thigh gaiters! i could have gave him long boots (and i imagine he did have a pair) but 1 i liked the gaiters more 2 i forgor :(

a fun little add-on eagle-eyed viewers (?? i feel like a youtuber saying that) may spot is that the brooch on his neckcloth is an isopod shell! in some illustrations i draw this brooch directly on the cloth / above the knot and not on the draped part. no man would wear a stickpin / brooch like that on his tie in real life. i just don’t like drawing knots. younger quirrel also features more teals and greens in his design, along with gold accents, to fit more with the archive’s colors. (even in the present day, hidden under his headscarf, he uses a green ribbon to tie his hair back.)

honestly, he and monomon were the main reasons i decided to extend the period outside of late medieval. it’s their fault! not only did monomon fit really well to the dress silhouette of one of these later decades, but i really wanted quirrel to have a napoleonic / regency feel. this is largely because with the enlightenment there came the rise of natural philosophers and the scientific sorts of fellows, which have become sort of their own iconic archetype in the public consciousness (and in fiction. stephen maturin my beloved.) i thought that would fit him well, and so i went for it.

Image Description: Various views of a humanized Hollow Knight. They’re a very tall and svelte hollow humanoid, almost gangly in their proportions. They have a very elongated face with a straight, aquiline nose, large almond-shaped eyes, and a permanent expression that is all at once solemn, neutral, and melancholic. They look a lot like their father. They’re pale white on their skin and hair -- hair that is parted in the center at the forehead and tucked behind more hair, which cascades down to their torso when not tied up. Framing their face on either side are two slightly shorter bits of hair with three little spikes on each.

As the Pure Vessel, they stand straight and tall, completely cloaked in deep grey cloaks and holding a broadsword in firm gloved hands. Over their cloak is pale silver-white armor, with three-layered spaulders, a cuirass, and a helmet with large horns. Holding the Radiance within them, their cloak is torn and their armor and helmet are gone, with their hair splaying out loose. One of their boots is missing, exposing a segmented leg. Their right arm is gone, and a crack runs down their face down their forehead, into their eye, and down their cheek, exposing a bright yellow light from within. Still, they clutch their sword. In a corner of the image a tiny Hollow Knight looks with wide eyes at an even tinier, shouting Hornet. End ID.

the hollow knight’s design was fairly straightforward as i had figures out their siblings before them. even their armor -- which has been pointed out to be largely ornamental and they do not actually use it when fighting -- was easy to transpose. i was, admittedly, trying to avoid helmets (especially those that completely cover the face, though their’s isn’t) largely because i just dislike drawing them, but i felt i really HAD to with the hollow knight and so i just went for it !

i purposefully gave them a sort of gangly and out-of-proportion feel to them -- i like to think their grace is that of a stick-legged bird, like a heron or flamingo... someone stretched them in taffy help! /j but it also speaks to their true delicacy and fragility - both emotionally and literally. they’re a perfect hollow creation, but could very easily fall... or something like that !

but-- yeah, as i mentioned earlier, their design was a natural conclusion to come to from that of their relatives, so there’s not much new to say about them!

next, let’s look at the dreamers!

Image Description: The three dreamers, standing primly. In order from left to right there is: Herrah the beast, Lurien the watcher, and Monomon the teacher.

Herrah is a tall brown and broad-set, wide-shouldered woman. She has six eyes and an aquiline nose, and curly hair; on her head she wears a horned metal helmet and a dark blue bandanna covering the lower half of her face. From her neck there is a waist-length dark blue-grey cloak that cascades out behind her back. She wears a pale grey-blue doublet with a full skirt; on her arms there are rows of pinched pale fabric to look puffed, and her forearms are covered in dark grey fabric to the knuckles. She has striped grey spanish breeches and black hosen and shoes. One pair of arms is crossed, the other pair of arms rests on the hilt of a thin sword.

Lurien is a short brown man with an upside-down droplet shaped head. He has very short wavy hair and a long straight nose; a large teardrop shaped mouche is placed at the bridge of his nose and between his eyes. He has a navy blue cloak draped over his entire body; underneath he has a white circular millhouse ruff that hugs close to his neck, a black doublet, black breeches, and white hosen. He has two strings of beads: around his neck with a king’s idol, and in his hands -- which hold each other -- with a silver pomander.

Monomon is a tall black woman with an oval-shaped head, a wide nose, and a long, thin neck. She wears a rather unadorned teal gown with a wide, almost bell shape skirt, split down the center. At the top of the bell meeting the waist are two layers of teardrop shapes in light cyan fabric emitting out, similar to those on a jellyfish. At the bottom of the bell are more cyan embroideries, this time of floral motifs in the general shape of jellyfish. Her sleeves can either be puffed (for inaccuracy but design fun) or unpuffed (for accuracy) and then drape to the elbow, and she wears forearm-length white gloves. Her stomacher is green, with lighter green designs: four eye-like ovals, two smaller ones on top of the larger ones, with floral decorations around them. She has a dark blue headscarf, but seen coming out of it are four braids. End ID.

first to clarify: monomon’s braids are floating so you can see her gown easier! it’s not literal :-) second to clarify: in this sort of little half-baked au-thing i decided to make their masks a part of the spell. that is, their mask is one of the seals binding them to their slumber, and all that good rot. this means they follow my no-mask rule when not sleeping AND their masks remain relevant (namely, quirrel taking monomon’s mask to her.)

the dreamers are all based off of different centuries and it is pretty easy to tell with them standing side by side, hah! hell, they even go in order: herrah i largely based on the 1500s, lurien the 1600s, and monomon the 1700s...! that was unintentional.

herrah largely has this kind of puffiness to her body segments in the game, and so my first thought was immediately: 1500s style puffs. the sleeve puffs (as also seen on hornet, and they were often slitted. think the og disney snow white!) and also the very wide and puffy breeches (which i always thought were hilarious). unlike hornet’s hairpiece, i gave her a helmet to show her horns! i felt it fit her more than it did hornet -- maybe it’s just me, but i feel like hornet wouldn’t be one for metal armor. in formal or dressy wear she likely switches the helmet for a headdress like a hennin or escoffion.

however, i am feeling not 100% satisfied with her design as it is right now, though i do think it works on the levels of thought i put into the other designs. i dunno! i’ll change it when i feel like it -- such is the nature of these :-)

ngl i put the least effort into lurien out of the 3 dreamers… sorry king i just don't care much about you comparatively… im pretty content with his design though! i decided to base him off of the more subtle and understated north europe fashions, as i felt they’d fit him. however, the bigass ruff is the biggest staple of this design for me (in my mind at least!) it’s drawn from the period and it also introduces a big round shape into his general design (when his in-game design is literally Round + drapey cloth LMAO)

i decided to have him wear largely black to show status! normally in this time period richer folks would wear black - which may seem odd and plain to us but is rather telling of status as rich, deep black is quite hard to dye. however i still gave him a dark blue cloak to more allude to his ingame design.

i imagine he is devout from the few bits of in-game characterization we get -- hence the idol. he also has a pomander! they were medieval scent-objects thought to keep away miasma, or plague air. (they contained strong scents! it was for the same reason plague doctors stuffed their beaks with herbs: good scents keep away bad air! or so they thought.) i draw people with them a lot -- i just think they’re neat things and one of my favorite medieval objects :-)

as for the thing on his face - a mouche! what are mouches? i recommend you watch mina le's wonderful video on the subject -- she could explain it far better and in a more entertaining way than i.

i had SO MUCH FUN with monomon! (and i think that’s easy to see, hah!) dresses and gowns from the latter 1700s (though not yet regency like quirrel is -- dresses got kinda tube-shaped in regency) really do give the look of a jellyfish bell. a thin waist (comparatively speaking from the wideness of her dress -- though one can also look to the corset) would mimic monomon’s sort of thin neck (??) you see right before the grey-blue cloth in her in-game design. and since she isn't wearing a mask here, i put the imagery of the two pairs of eyes on her stomacher instead! wide puff and then pinching / thin segments is kind of the theme of her entire design - in her dress, in her sleeves (though it's innacurate and also optional tbh), even in her neck and head. sort of bowling ball -esque i suppose! (sorry monomon.)

her braids being similar to her tentacles was an idea i believe inspired by @valdotpng​ 's depiction of her, and it's a great idea ! another allusion to jellyfish is the four little oval shapes i put on the skirt of her dress, to mimic that on jellyfish. (those are, in fact, their gonads.)

i haven’t drawn them, but if you or i were to draw them while in sleep then there would be cloth completely covering their shoulders and up, and the mask over where their face would be. just like in game !

last but not least i have some tentative sketches of some higher beings !

Image Description: Sketches of some higher beings.

The Pale King is a segmented worm with several rows of arms; he wears a rather simple white robe with embroidered trim. He has a svelte, high-cheekboned face, with a long aquiline nose and long straight hair with some pulled back in a bun -- his entire surface, skin and hair, is entirely pale white. Atop his hair he has a spiked crown. However, that human face is a false magical add-on; this ‘face’ is detachable, with the true head and mouth at the ‘crown’.

The White Lady is a large tree-woman; she has a oval face and delicate, pointed nose, but out of where her hair would be if she were a human extends out innumerable tree branches out in every direction. from the branches and to her face and downward are dignified wrinkles of bark. She is, however, restrained and bound in magical cloth.

Unn is a large hunched woman, her form covered almost completely in water plants that droop down to the lake she comes out of. Amongst the shadows of the fronds peeks a weary smile, though all else is covered. However, out of the plants peeks out two eyes on stalks. She is smiling down at a very small Knight.

The Radiance’s face is entirely obscured in darkness, and long hair flows down from her sun-ray crown. Out of her back come countless moth wings, large and small, each one covered in countless eyes of various sizes, though the lower wings turn into longer ray-like fronds. From under the wings comes a long-nailed hand, which is held up to her hair-covered chest. End ID.

outside of the pale king and mmmaybe the white lady im rather unsure about these...!!! radiance i’ve barely thought about -- so ill have to work on her a bit more ! this is more of a sketch of general motifs and the direction i wanna go in

as aformentioned i wanted to take more non-really-human designs for the gods. they’ve just got a different spin on their in-game motifs, with ‘humanoid’ added to the blender as well. for example-- the pale king is still the rather insectoid-wormoid-wyrm that he is in the original, but what he is trying to do here is appear like that of a man and not a common bug. (an extra thought tidbit: the lines on his face and wyrm body are meant to evoke the seals of binding, though they’re rather simplified here they’d be more detailed in an actual polished picture.)

since they aren’t meant to be human we get fun stuff like literal tree woman white lady, and all that !! it’ll be fun to think some more on it.

NOW, that’s it for the characters for this post! i’ll go over more if people want ‘em lmao but i cant let this post go on forever HAH....

a few more scrap thoughts:

1 there is a common thread amongst Hallownest clothing, despite the decade differences, that i want to keep in mind when drawing these characters, to maintain consistency and believability that they're from the same region. the main thing is embroidery and just general decorative choices! i’ve tried to involve a mix of straight and curvy lines (heavy emphasis on lines in these designs in fact) along with floral motifs. though not a direct inspiration, try thinking about the motifs of real life period decorations, paired with the swirling curves balanced with geometric / curved / straight lines of the ui menus and such in the game !

2 hallownest would still have insectoid iconography in its art and its architecture -- the gods they worship are still rather insectoid, after all. and there is still no reason they wouldn't use insects in their iconography the same way european cultures have historically used bird and mammal motifs. as for what their architecture would be -- i think in game is a perfectly fine, but also i’d tentatively throw the dart at gothic with some dashes of late romanesque.

3 my art, me drawing these designs, is horribly inconsistent. that’s fine with me!! these are all for fun -- i think putting metric tons of thought into these are fun, as much as i think making tweaks depending on how i’m feeling is fun.

with ALL OF THIS IN MIND… i bid thee, reader, adieu! i hope you enjoyed my ramblings! id love to hear your own thoughts about all this and feel free to ask me questions about characters i haven’t mentioned here, an aspect you’re curious about, or anything at all! hopefully it made sense! (and if you wish to and are feeling either exceptionally charitable or exceptionally inspired, i give my express permission to draw all these, just please @ me so i can see it! i’m bad at social media so i don't like, check tags and stuff.)

:-) <3

I have a theory about Rincewind. We all know that Esk is the female Wizard but narritive convention would dictate that she have a counterpart. What if the reason Rincewind isn't good at wizard magic is because he's more suited to witchcraft then wizardry? Has anyone talked about this before? I want fanfiction of this...

“I can’t be having with this,” Granny said, each word sharpened to points and enunciated with the accuracy of a champion knife-thrower outlining an unlucky target. Her glare was focused like a laser. It looked as though it could shatter rocks and burn cities to the ground. It was only slightly undercut by the enormous array of novelty candles that adorned Nanny Ogg’s mantelpiece. Rincewind, the unfortunate soul in her cross-hairs, shrank a little deeper into his armchair. He rather felt he couldn’t be having with this either, and tried to say so, but the old woman’s look seemed to have fused his tongue to the roof of his mouth.

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Costume. Chitons.

Honestly, if Severus had had emotional maturity, he would have realized that Lily always minimized his harassment by the marauders, like "boys will be boys." If I were Snape, I would have cut off the friendship a long time ago. What would you do in Severus' position?

The problem with Severus and Lily's relationship is that it wasn’t built on equal footing. Lily made a friend, possibly like many others in her life, because she came from a structured family with a solid foundation in interpersonal relationships. Despite her issues with Petunia, we know her parents adored her and were thrilled to have a witch for a daughter, so we can assume her emotional role models were quite positive, which helped her build relationships at school and even become somewhat popular. For Severus, though, Lily wasn’t just a friend. Severus came from a poor and dysfunctional family, his father was abusive, and his mother didn’t seem to do much to protect her son from that abuse. His view of relationships and affection was already deeply distorted by the environment he grew up in. For him, being with Lily, playing with her, was a way to escape what was happening at home. It was a moment of peace, of stability, something he wasn’t familiar with. I genuinely believe he developed a very strong emotional dependency on her and her attention, because, from childhood, Lily represented everything good, everything that made him feel safe and important to someone.

Then adolescence hit, and they had very different interests and goals. I don’t hate Lily, but I do think she was a bit shallow. I mean, ending up with a rich, socially successful bully is pretty shallow. And it fits her character, because at the end of the day, she was a lower-middle-class girl in the Muggle world, and a Muggle-born in the magical world—she didn’t belong to any relevant social class in either. So, being pursued and courted by the most popular guy in her year, who was also super rich and from an important family, must have appealed to her. J.K. Rowling said in an interview, when someone mentioned that Lily supposedly hated James, that “Lily never hated James. You, as a woman (to the interviewer), should understand or know that.” She hinted that all the hatred towards James was an act and that she was actually attracted to him, which tells me a lot about Lily as a person and her values. I would never date a bully, whether or not they had attacked my friend. If I saw someone constantly abusing others at school, I wouldn’t date that person, but Lily did. And I don’t think it was because James made her believe he had changed, manipulated her, or any of the nonsense people say. I don’t think Lily was stupid. I think she knew exactly what she was doing by getting involved with someone who could give her social status, a life of comfort, and a position she didn’t have in either the magical or Muggle world.

Severus clearly went in a different direction. He wasn’t doing well at school, and the rich, popular kids decided that picking on him was easier than going after their rich, pure-blood classmates, because those pure-bloods could get them into real trouble, so it was easier, more comfortable, and safer to go after the weakest link—the poor half-blood. They made life unbearable for someone who already felt that life outside of school was equally unbearable. They bullied someone who was already being abused outside of school, and that’s probably what pushed Severus—if he already had an interest in the Dark Arts—closer to more negative influences.

Lily and Severus grew apart as they matured, and this is completely normal. It happens to all of us as kids. We all had those close childhood friends who took different paths during adolescence, and that’s okay. The problem is that, despite everything, Severus still saw Lily as that symbol of his childhood happiness. She was his happy memory (which is why the whole Patronus thing makes a lot of sense), because he probably didn’t have happier moments than the ones he shared with her. And in the midst of all the bullying and questionable influences at Hogwarts, during the early years, Lily was probably also his safe space. But Lily didn’t see Severus in the same way, and I’m not talking about romance, but rather that she didn’t see their friendship as something necessary, something emotionally vital for her. Severus was dependent; she wasn’t.

In a way, I think that, beyond emotional immaturity, Severus also lacked healthy emotional role models, and therefore he didn’t realize that Lily was actually kind of a jerk. Add to that the fact that he was blinded by her, considering her his emotional anchor, and he probably wasn’t able to see her negative traits. That’s also very common.

I believe that if Lily hadn’t died and Severus had had the chance to have a life of his own without sacrificing all his autonomy and independence to serve Dumbledore, over time he would have matured and gained perspective, because despite everything, he was a smart guy. He would have realized that his relationship with Lily was always one-sided, and I think he could have started fresh and become a functional person. But he never got that chance. It’s been proven in psychiatry that abuse victims who don’t process their traumas remain stuck in the time period when the abuse occurred. In Severus’ case, the abuse started in childhood and continued throughout adolescence, so it’s logical and normal that he ended up being a very dysfunctional adult, unable to manage his emotions properly or set limits for himself when situations triggered him too much. In some ways, he acts like a child. The comment about Hermione’s teeth is childish—it sounds like something Draco would say, and Draco is a teenager. The same goes for many of his remarks to Harry or Neville, which are basically sarcastic jabs from a bratty kid being a jerk. I think we see this best (because it happens between equals, interestingly between two people with significant emotional issues) when he has several confrontations with Sirius. Maybe Sirius’ immaturity is more obvious because he’s a loudmouth and pretty extroverted, but Severus also behaves like a brat, which shows that despite not spending 12 years in Azkaban, he hasn’t grown either. If we think about it, Severus had his own Azkaban: Hogwarts. He had to return to the place where he had a terrible time and experienced several of his worst traumas, to teach, even though he didn’t even want to be a teacher, and he had to adopt that jerk persona to mask all the emotions and insecurities he felt being there. You can’t heal in the place where you were hurt. You can’t heal by giving up your life for a greater good. You can’t heal while feeling guilty over the death of someone who was once the most important person in your life. Severus was stuck in adolescence mentally, even though he was an adult. And this happens a lot with victims like him.

Honestly, despite everything, I think Severus was quite level-headed and pretty decent. Or maybe I’m saying this because I’m more of a jerk than he is, but I would have made James Potter and Sirius Black suffer a lot. I would have found out all their secrets and made them public, putting all my efforts into making them wish they were dead and even have suicidal thoughts. And if a friend of mine had acted like Lily, who kind of laughed when Snape was being abused, I would’ve beaten her so badly she’d lose her nose. But well, I have less ethics than Severus and maybe more temper.

Severus Snape

This is an Anti Snape rant. I was to preface it by making it clear that I appreciate Severus Snape as one of the most interesting, important and well written literary figures of our time and possibly in history. I respect anyone who says that Snape is their favorite. That’s perfectly fine. Harley Quinn is one of my favorite comic book characters. She’s bubbly and funny and intelligent and strong…that doesn’t mean I don’t recognize that she’s criminally insane and that her relationship with the joker is in fact terribly abusive from both sides. These multi-dimensional characters become our favorites BECAUSE there are so many sides to them. Harry Potter happens to be a series where nearly every primary character is several layers deep. To quote my own personal problematic favorite; “The World isn’t made up of Good People and Death Eaters.” - Sirius Black, Order of the Pheonix, Chapter 15, Percy and Padfoot.

 Snape is a bad person. I don’t care what he did to “redeem himself”. You can die to save the world, that doesn’t mean years of verbally and emotionally abusing children just didn’t count. I know plenty of people who served in the military and fought for the country but they abuse their families…does it not count because they fought a war? 

 FACT: Severus Snape was interested the dark arts from an early age.

 FACT: Severus Snape had other friends besides Lily Evans. 

FACT: Severus Snape provoked James Potter and Sirius Black, often spying on the Marauders to try and find out Remus Lupin’s secret and also hanging around with Slytherin Pure Blood Supremacists who bullied other students. He was not an innocent unpopular kid that the big, mean popular boys picked on. He wasn’t. Stop victimizing him. He was just as much at fault as they were. 

FACT: Severus Snape created his own spell by the age of 15 that was potentially lethal and used it on James Potter…reason? Well, James pantsed him….

are…you…kidding…me…?

FACT: Lily Evans ended her friendship with Severus Snape because of his affiliation with these other students and his interest in The Dark Arts. She did not end the friendship in favor of James Potter. She didn’t even start dating James for AT LEAST another year after ending her friendship with Severus. He called her a racial slur and his friends physically attacked one of her friends. 

“I never meant to call you a Mudblood. It just-” 

 “Slipped out? It’s too late! I’ve been making 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. See? You don’t even deny it! You don’t deny that that is what you’re aiming to be! You can’t wait to join You-Know-Who, can you? I can’t pretend anymore. You’ve chosen your way and I’ve chosen mine.”

“No, listen, I didn’t mean-”

 “To call me a Mudblood? But you call everyone of my birth a mudblood! Why should I be any different?” - Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Chapter 33 The Prince’s Tale.

FACT: Severus Snape never got over his romantic feelings for Lily Evans and was angry that she married his school rival, James Potter.

“After all this time?”

 “Always.”  - Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Chapter 33, The Prince’s Tale.

This is actually creepy. One of my biggest qualms with The Harry Potter Fandom as a whole is how infatuated people are with this quote. James and Lily died at age 21, a good 6 years after Lily ended her friendship with Severus and he’s still holding a torch for her? This isn’t love, it’s obsession and it’s unhealthy. He harassed her after she ended things, too. He threatened to sleep outside the Gryffindor common room until Lily agreed to speak with him (See: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Chapter 33, The Prince’s Tale). It’s not sweet that Severus was still in love with Lily after all this time. It’s scary. Severus’ patronus being a Doe is CREEPY, not a sign that they are soulmates.

FACT:  Severus Snape joined the Death Eaters BECAUSE HE WANTED TO ALL ALONG. Upon learning that Lily Evans had been targeted, he ran to Dumbledore, begging him to protect her. Only Her. 

“If she means so much to you, could you not ask The Dark Lord for mercy for the mother in exchange for the son?”

 “I’ve tried!” 

“You disgust me. You do not care then about the deaths of her husband and her son, as long as you get what you want?” 

Snape said nothing. - Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Chapter 33 The Prince’s Tale

If Lily Potter hadn’t been on Voldemort’s death list, would Severus have switched sides? It didn’t have to be Lily. It could have easily been Alice Longbottom instead. Had Neville been The Chosen One, Severus Snape would have remained a Death Eater. He only became a double-agent to repay Dumbledore for protecting Lily.

After Lily dies, Dumbledore has to bribe Severus to help him keep Harry safe.

 “He has her eyes, Severus. Her exact eyes. Surely you remember the shape and color of Lily Evans’s eyes.”

 “DON’T!” Bellowed Snape. “Dead…gone…”

“You know how and why she died. Let it not be in vane. Help me protect her son.” 

 “He doesn’t need protection! The Dark Lord is gone-”

“He will return.”

 “Very well. But never tell, Dumbledore! I cannot bare it…especially Potter’s son!” - Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Chapter 33, The Prince’s Tale.

Yikes, Severus. You loved this woman so much, or so you claim, but the idea of helping to protect HER CHILD, for whom she gave her life, is so unbearable to you because his father, who died trying to protect both of them, was mean to you in grade school? That’s…pretty messed up. 

FACT: 11 years later with a nice cushy job and protection at Hogwarts, Severus Snape continues to be a bitter adult man who is still not over his school yard crush, a woman who has been dead for over a decade and refused to speak to him for six years prior to that. He is in fact so bitter about it that he frequently takes it out on her prepubescent son.

Why? Because he looks a hell of a lot like James Potter.

 “-Mediocre, arrogant as his father, a determined rule breaker, delighted to find himself famous, attention seeking and impertinent -” 

 “You see what you expect to see, Severus. Other teachers report that the boy is modest, likable and reasonably talented. Personally, I find him to be an engaging child.” - Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Chapter 33, The Prince’s Tale.

But Snape doesn’t only pick on Harry. He picks on many of his young students just because…well…Because he’s an asshole, really! Honestly, the man humiliated 13 year old Neville Longbottom in front of the entire class for messing up on his potions assignment and then attempted to murder the kid’s pet. (See: Harry Potter and The Prisoner of Azkaban, Chapter Seven, The Boggart in the Wardrobe.)

Not to mention this lovely scene 

Ron forced Hermione to show Snape her teeth. She was doing her best to hide them with her hands, though this was difficult as they had grown past her collar.

 Snape looked coldly at Hermione and then said, “I see no difference.” - Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, chapter 18, The Weighing Of The Wands.

I could name probably a dozen more times that Severus Snape abuses his position as a Professor and treats his students with disrespect and potentially damaging behavior, but we would be here all day and there are other points I’d like to move on to. 

FACT: Severus Snape was uninterested in the possibility of Sirius Black’s innocence and overjoyed at the idea of being the one to turn him over to the Dementors. 

“Two more for Azkaban tonight,” Said Snape, his eyes gleaming fanatically. I shall be interested to see how Dumbledore takes this. He was convinced you were harmless, you know, Lupin…a tame werewolf.” 

 “You fool.” Said Lupin softly. “Is a school boy grudge worth putting an innocent man back inside Azkaban?” - Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, chapter nineteen, The Servant of Lord Voldemort.

 Okay, look, Sirius did try to kill Snape when they were kids. That’s a thing that happened…although there are not enough details of The Willow Incident known in canon to explain exactly what happened and why Sirius would do such a thing knowing that he could have potentially gotten James and Remus killed in the process…but that’s beside the point. What really gets me is that not only did Snape want to have Sirius given the Dementor’s kiss, but Remus also.

 BANG! Thin, snakelike cords burst out from the end of Snape’s wand and twisted themselves around Lupin’s mouth, wrists and ankles, he overbalanced and fell to the ground unable to move. With a roar of rage, Black started towards Snape, but Snape pointed his wand straight between Black’s eyes. 

 “Give me a reason and I’ll do it, I swear.” 

…

“I’ll drag the werewolf. Perhaps the dementors will have a kiss for him too.”  - Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, Chapter 19, The Servant of Lord Voldemort.

And it doesn’t stop there. Unable to get what he wanted and have his school rivals killed or imprisoned for absolutely no reason, Severus Butthurt Snape decides to just ruin Remus’ life instead and tells the entire school about his Lycanthropy - oh, wait, I’m sorry…did I say the entire school? I meant the world. 

“Amung these ‘eccentric decisions’ are undoubtedly the controversial staff appointments previously described in this newspaper, which have included the hiring of werewolf Remus Lupin.” - Harry Potter and the Order of the Pheonix, chapter 15, Hogwarts High Inquisitor. 

 …

“I know she’s a nasty piece of work though- you should hear Remus talk about her.” 

 “Does he know her?” 

“No, but she drafted a bit of anti-werewolf legislation two years ago that makes it almost impossible for him to get a job.”  - Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, chapter 14, Percy and Padfoot.

Two years ago, you say? What happened two years prior to this? Remus was working at Hogwarts and Snape outed him. 

No where in canon does it say that Remus ever did anything to Severus Snape, when honestly out of all the Marauders, he had the most reason to. Snape was always spying on them to get to him, after all. There is no reason for Severus to hate Remus enough to completely destroy his life like this. Only the fact that Severus Snape is without a doubt the biggest grudge holder to have ever lived.

FACT: Severus Snape is a war hero. 

Yes. He was. He was a key player in the defeat of Lord Voldemort, though not necessarily by his own choice. He was dragged into it by Dumbledore and by his own guilt, feeling this was the only way he could truly make amends for what happened between him and Lily when they were fifteen. 

So does begrudgingly becoming a double agent in the war as payment for Dumbledore’s attempts to keep Lily Evans safe for his own selfish reasons really negate every awful thing this man did from the time he was a young child to his guilt-driven ‘heroic’ death? 

No. It doesn’t. 

Severus Snape is a bad person. 

frank, how did you readjust to the world after being freed of the well? that must’ve been really hard on you

< I was a child. >

< And then suddenly. I realized I was old. The house was mine. >

< They took pictures of me. Talked to me a lot. >

< Everyone spoke to me like I was still a child. But they also pushed me to make adult decisions. >

< Rose. >

< Rose handled everything. It would have been. Worse. Without her. >

I'm always shocked when I see canon art where Reed is just... ripped. Like, I fully expect him to have at least SOME muscle (he's been a hero for a long time after all) but then there's art where he's just a svelte muscle man and I'm like W O W

Personally, I prefer my Reed very tall and very, very slender, with like…hardly any muscle at all. Looking very much like the nerdiest professor on Earth. Ben, the former football jock turned test pilot and wannabe astronaut, is the one who should be built like a brick house, even before the cosmic rays, not Reed. I wouldn’t mind buff Sue either — she was a jock in high school and on the swim team, and she has her own pool in the Baxter Building where she swims regularly. And she’s an expert martial artist, trained by Danny Rand himself. So she should have muscles. I just don’t really buy that Reed would, like…work out. Or care about his appearance at all. I don’t know if he even technically has muscles anymore, so working out wouldn’t help him at all anyway. I honestly just HATE IT when he’s really buff — I despise Eaglesham’s Reed (from Hickman’s run), who looks like he has Clark Kent’s body type, which…Reed should never look like that.

This is more like what I picture Reed looking like:

TALL AND SKINNY. YES, THANK YOU.

He CAN actually make his body look however he wants it to, though. So if he wanted to have giant rippling muscles, he technically could fake it. Personally, whenever I see him looking very buff, I imagine he’s doing this:

And Sue, Johnny, Ben, Val, and Franklin are all just giggling quietly to themselves because Reed just showed up to breakfast one morning with bulging muscles out of nowhere. And then they disappear just as abruptly after Sue has a talk with him.

The Enterprise’s menu!  From Lora Johnson’s Mr Scott’s Guide to the Enterprise (1987)

it’s very wild to me that people can earnestly and sincerely say shit like “well snape fought back, so was it really bullying?” and not just like… hear how utterly gross they sound tbh. like do i have to use the “think about if this was an actual, real kid” argument to get people see that fighting back doesn’t erase victimhood or magically turn bullying into rivalry or friendly roughhousing?

idk. i feel like people say that shit really never experienced bullying in their whole damn life. bc how could they truly think that fighting back against bullies, shoving back, throwing back insults and punches, is anywhere near making things “equal”? defending yourself is not nearly the same thing as starting a fight for fun. protecting yourself is not the same as hurting someone else. like do they just like… forget how to use empathy and critical reasoning skills when it comes to snape or are they just really that clueless??

anti-papyrus-babyification brigade forever but you can tear sans' mom moments from my cold dead hands