Resubmitted because I just noticed that some of my sources contained personal info.
TL;DR: There was an actual religion centering on Severus Snape, who was portrayed as an eternal and divine being similar to the Christian God. It had theological arguments, early schisms, and its own vows and prayers, which were all taken completely seriously by its followers, the Snapeists.
I keep saying I’m going to finish my YA literature drama post next, and then I keep getting distracted by other, even more insane fandom nonsense. Don’t blame me, blame the women who think they’re married to Severus Snape the God in an alternate universe.
When I posted my first writeup about Andrew Blake, a Harry Potter/LoTR fan who started a cult based off his delusions of being able to mind-meld with fictional characters, I remember people commenting that there was no way anything could top this. I got a similar reaction when I did my second writeup, this time about a small group of women competing for the title of Claude Frollo’s favorite concubine. But what if I told you that you can have the best of both worlds: the legions of fans obsessing over a guy who is, by most people’s definitions, not that great, combined with an aggressive cult-like mentality and the formation of an actual religion? Swap Claude Frollo with Severus Snape, and that’s basically what you get.
The Snape Fandom
Before I delve into the Snapeism religion and its many followers, I should first talk about Severus Snape the character. If you’ve ever set foot in the Harry Potter fandom, you already know that Snape is notoriously controversial. The prevailing opinion nowadays seems to be “he wasn’t really evil, but he was still kind of an asshole,” but things weren’t that simple back in the early 2000s. The last Harry Potter book had just come out, lots of beloved characters—including Snape himself—had just met their ends, and the fandom was going absolutely wild, writing fix-it fanfiction and happy alternate universes a mile a minute. Some fans loved how Rowling ended the series, some hated everything about the last book, and people were fighting about just about everything. Ships, characters, plot threads—you name it, and you could probably track down someone who hated it. Even then, though, Snape had a precious, special place in the fandom as that one character you really don’t want to bring up around people you aren’t friends with, lest the whole conversation devolve into meaningless bickering about whether or not he’s a good person.
That being said, despite all the controversy, some people really latched on to Severus Snape, probably because they thought he was “misunderstood.” Characters with ambiguous allegiances, tragic backstories, unrequited romances, and dark aesthetics are very, very beloved in fandom, regardless of whether they’re traditionally desirable. I did a whole post about how Marvel fans are ridiculously dedicated to Bucky Barnes, and at least part of that is because of the whole Winter Soldier thing. He was brainwashed by an evil organization, he went through some traumatizing experiences, he wore a scary mask and had a metal arm, and a lot of fans choose to see him as secretly in love with Steve Rogers, who is, of course, pining after Peggy (the unrequited Stucky romance is definitely more fanon than canon, but at a certain point, it doesn’t really matter anymore.) And, yes, a lot of that is also because the actor who plays Bucky is attractive, but he’s really not objectively better looking than any other guy in the MCU. It’s Bucky’s characterization and arc that makes people love him, and the obsessions with Severus Snape and Claude Frollo are just extensions of the same mentality that makes people go wild for Bucky Barnes instead of any other Avenger. There’s this idea that “he is tragically broken and the person he loves doesn’t love him back, so I can step in and shower him with the affection he desperately needs, which will fix him and make him adore me.”
It should come as no surprise, then, that early Harry Potter fangirls latched onto Snape the way modern MCU fangirls latch on to Bucky. Snape also fits the whole checklist: he may or may not have been a good guy, he was bullied as a child, his crush fell in love with and married his bully before dying very young, and he looks and dresses like the undead. Sure, he’s repeatedly described as greasy and gross, but the Harry Potter books were just that—books. It’s not hard to say, well, Harry thinks of him as disgusting, but Harry is a straight male child, and it’s possible that an adult would see him differently. And, all that aside, some people liked his general unwashedness and the fact that his hair was constantly described as needing a good shampooing. To each their own, I guess (or, more accurately YKINMK.)
Anyway, Snape fan groups sprung up with relative ease, and fan fiction and art of him quickly started to proliferate. Most of these fan groups were what you’d expect—lots of petty arguments over stolen OCs and traced art and copying ideas—but they didn’t get any worse than any other fan group to ever exist. If you went into a Ronmione forum or a Drarry forum, you’d see the same type of toxicity. It wasn’t good, but it wasn’t distinctly horrible, either.
But there are always people who take fandom too far, and it was bound to happen with the Snape fangirls. The Harry Potter fandom is absolutely massive, and pure statistics meant that at least some of its fans were the type to become obsessively dedicated to a particular person or concept. Crazy stans just sort of happen once you reach a certain amount of fans. It happened to Bucky, it happened to Frollo, and, naturally, it happened to Snape, in the form of the Snapewives.
Snape as a Religion, or Snapeism
Well, calling them Snapewives is probably not incredibly accurate, because they referred to themselves as Snapeists—that is to say, members of the church of Snapeism. If you’re wondering if this is just a joke thing, like how Star Wars shippers in the ‘80s said they were members of the Church of Ford or Cathedral of Luke, you are sadly incorrect. The religion of Snapeism had vows, sacraments, prayers, worshippers, and theology, and it apparently had enough of an impact to warrant peer-reviewed scholarly articles being written about its inception (you think I’m kidding? Search “snapeism” in MDPI’s Religions journal.) People took it completely seriously. You know the incredibly overzealous Christians that share Chick Tracts with one another and think Halloween is Satanic? Replace Chick Tracts with fan fiction, and you basically have Snapeists.
To an extent, Snapeism actually mirrored elements of Christianity. There is a Christian belief that the Bible is somewhat flawed—its authors were inspired by God, but God did not literally write it, and so it is marred by human flaws, which is why there are passages that just talk about irrelevant things that modern Christians don’t believe. The Snapewives had the same philosophy about the Harry Potter books. They were written by J.K. Rowling, who was inspired by the spirit of Severus Snape just as the authors of the Bible were inspired by the Christian God. This gave the Snapewives a justification to disregard the parts of canon they didn’t like or agree with, because, after all, J.K. Rowling is not Snape. She was merely channelling his spirit.
There are other aspects of Snapeism that kind of fall in line with parts of Abrahamic religions. There were certian Snapeists that had a “special connection” to Snape, who were specially chosen by him to lead the others. Snape was as omniscient and immortal as the Christian god, and just as real. Snape is called Master like how God is called Lord. And, finally, and most importantly, Snape is the One True God. You cannot be a Christian and a Snapeist any more than you can be a Catholic and a Protestant at the same time. Snape is all and Snape is everything, and Snape can control your destiny.
Theological Arguments
With Snapeism so closely mirroring elements of more traditional religions, it’s to be expected that Snapeists had theological arguments amongst themselves. One of the main arguments was over whether Snapewives should be allowed to have “Earthly” significant others, i.e. real-life boyfriends and husbands.
Significant Others
See, a core aspect of Snapeism is that Snapeists are married to Severus Snape, all acting as his sister-wives. This is, like other aspects of their belief system, taken extremely seriously. It is ceremonial, it is very religious, and it is very much a real marriage in the eyes of the wives, who wrote their own Snapeist vows for their Snape weddings:
I promise to be always faithful in body and mind, and never love another man. I promise to love and cherish you all of my life. I promise to respect and honour you all of my life. I promise to dedicate all of my life to you. I promise to stand by you in good times and bad times. I promise to protect and guard you, and to prevent you from any harm. I promise to provide anything you need for you. I promise to take the best care of you. I promise to use your name with the respect it deserves. I promise to always wear the ring with your name in it, as a symbol of my love. I promise to obey you, no matter what. I promise to respect your wishes and not to be selfish. I promise to look after you in sickness and in health.
I solemnly promise all of this to you, Severus Snape, my only love. May these words create a strong loving bond, which can only be broken by death. If I break the promises made, or treat you not in the manner I should be, I'll make sure I'll die. May all the good forces and spirits bless our love eternally…. So it will be done...
The above is just one example of a vow written by “Lady Darkness.” If you were wondering if she was being serious, don’t worry: she posted several pictures of her Snape shrine in response to queries about whether she actually worshipped Snape or not. (Sadly, those photos have been deleted, but there are threads referencing them on archive.org archives of fan forums.)
Anyway, you can clearly see how dead serious the Snapewives were about their faith and their fictional husband. They absolutely considered their marriages legitimate, and wanted them to be treated like any other marriage to exist. This begged the question, then: should Snapewives have to divorce their real-life husbands to marry Snape? The majority of the Snapewives were middle-aged women who had been married to real men for years, and yet… this is a wedding after all. Weddings can’t happen if one party is already married to someone else. Snape himself gets a pass because all of his wives are “on the astral plane,” whatever that means, but the women’s husbands are physically real.
People did all sorts of mental gymnastics to justify being married to their husbands and Snape at the same time. One woman claimed Snape regularly possessed her real-life husband, especially during sex. Apparently Snape’s spirit would just take over his body, so whenever he was being particularly affectionate, it wasn’t him—it was just Snape showing how much he loved his wife. Others claimed that if Snape could have multiple wives, they too could have multiple husbands. Still others broke up with their boyfriends and fiancés in exchange for Snape’s love. The majority just kind of hand waved it.
Other people simply could not justify being married to two people at once, even if one of those marriages was “on the astral plane,” and decided to stay essentially celibate, only having sex with Snape’s spirit (don’t ask me how that’s supposed to work.) This divide did cause arguments that almost eerily mimicked early Christian schisms, and they were one of the reasons Snapeism eventually died.
Erotica and Fanfiction
Some of the Snapewives wrote about having sex with Snape’s spirit in detail, then treated their written erotica as religious material because Snape inspired them to write it. Other wives said that Snape “likes his privacy” and publishing porn of him is disrespectful and fundamentally against the theology of Snapeism. Nearly every wife wrote extensive amounts of fanfiction, but just how explicit that fan fiction could get was constantly up for debate.
The Role of Sexism in Astral Projection
Some of the wives reported being visited by Snape on a daily basis; i.e. being contacted in their dreams by his spirit. However, not every Snapewife had this gift: some of them struggled to make Snape appear in their minds and homes. The specifics of why were a constant source of drama.
One of the reasons some were listed as being unable to contact Snape was because their hearts weren’t pure enough for him. All of the Snapewives who were not regularly visited in their dreams had some sort of character flaw that made him not want to come. Perhaps they simply weren’t attractive enough, and they should start wearing sexier pajamas and lose a few pounds. Or perhaps they had “ugly” hobbies, like swearing too much or biting their nails. Or maybe it was just their personality–they were a gossip, they were too nosy, or they were too crass.
Or maybe it’s just that they were too independent for a woman. The same obey-your-husband doctrine that certian fundamentalist sects push on young women was very visible in Snapeism, except instead of just obeying husbands in general, it was obeying Snape. If you weren’t being visited by Snape, you didn’t obey him enough. To be a good Snapewife, you had to let him do whatever he wanted to you and listen to his every command. After all, he is a man, and you are a lowly, lowly woman, and thus he is your Master.
Don’t ask me how you were supposed to obey Snape or let Snape have sex with you whenever he wanted. I have no idea how that’s supposed to work.
Does J.K. Rowling Really Know Snape?
You may be thinking that if anyone knows Snape, it’s the woman who created him, but you’d be wrong. The Snapeists did not see Snape as a fictional character, but as an omniscient being who possessed J.K. Rowling so she could write Harry Potter—except something happened, and J.K. Rowling screwed up. It was generally agreed upon in the Snapewife community that the Harry Potter books were all wrong—they didn’t portray Snape accurately, and they, in fact, were sacrilegious.
According to Snapeist theology, the way Snape is portrayed in Harry Potter is all wrong. Snape the character is just a shadow of Snape the deity, who is omniscient, eternal, and impossible to kill. Snapeists were, in general, unaccepting of his fictional death:
I love you Severus, i know you can stop death, you\'ll be in my heart forever, i am yours, you deserve all the best, JK doesn\'t understand you, but there are many people who loves you and support you. Honor to our potion master, a great teacher and an admirable person, loyal and brave, i believe he is still alive.
Aside from denying that Snape was dead, Snapeists also continuously insulted Rowling, and eventually settled on the idea that she simply wasn’t good enough to deserve Snape, who had abandoned her and shacked up with the Snapeists instead. It’s not like Rpwling ever mattered, though—Snape is a divine being, not a fictional character, and he can do what he wants. “--I BELIEVE THAT SEVERUS SNAPE EXISTS INDEPENDENTLY OF JKR,” claimed one Snapeist. “HE IS A LIVING, FEELING SPIRIT. I BELIEVE ANYTHING IS POSSIBLE AND THAT SEVERUS DOES VISIT THOSE HE CHOOSES TO!”
This, predictably, caused problems when they engaged with other Harry Potter fans, who usually reacted to the claim that Snape is a real god who can stop death by asking the Snapewives to get mental help and/or therapy.
And, finally, the drama that tore apart the religion:
Is Snape Really Perfect?
After a good few years of Snapeism, one of the Snapewives apparently got fed up with her astral plane husband, and posted a list of his perceived faults on her LiveJournal. This, predictably, caused just as much ire as a Christian criticizing God would. Lady Darkness, the same person who wrote the marriage vows above, responded to the post by declaring her love and dedication to Snape once more:
I am so sorry these fans even dare to speak your name..obviously this one is not loyal or even trying to understand what makes you you… I feel ashamed some speak like this about you, as I feel you deserve better.. Please note there are fans that do accept you as you are, and not all find more negative sides to you than positive ones.. I felt tempted to react, but as I don't want to start another war, and as you would probably tell me to put my energy in things that do matter, I decided to place my reaction to this insanity here. I feel disgusted by this, as you probably would too.. Severus, all I can say is that to me, all of this rubbish is just what it looked like: rubbish and lies. To me, you are perfect the way you are. The 'flaws' mentioned are not flaws as such, but merely fantasy made up by the writer, and for the other part just characteristics..the ones some claim to like, but in fact don't have a clue as to understanding why you are as you are.. I do..as you know I share many of your 'flaws', which kept us alive and with our noses up all of these harsh years. Be well Severus, and know I will always be right beside you, loving and loyal..no matter what happens..
Many other Snapeists followed suit, and this resulted in a loud and tearful fan war, which eventually resulted in the Snape Critic packing up and leaving her astral plane husband, apologizing for daring to criticize him and claiming she’d realized she was no longer deserving of his eternal love. Though many Snapeists continued to worship and adore Severus Snape, this fallout between two of the most well-known Snapewives in the community resulted in a lot of infighting that pitted people against one another, which made them reluctant to continue interacting.
The End of an Era
After the fan war, community participation slowly dwindled. Snapeism was still going strong, though—just not as strong as it used to be. The real nail in the coffin didn’t come until later, when something terrible happened: one of the wives fell in love with someone else.
If you’re wondering if one of the Snapewives realized that this was all insane and found herself an actual, physical significant other, well… I respect your optimism. Unfortunately, that’s incorrect. By “fell in love with someone else,” I mean “stopped worshipping Snape so she could worship Jethro Gibbs from NCIS instead.” After all, this is a religion we’re talking about. You can’t be a Catholic and a Protestant at the same time, and you can’t worship Snape and Gibbs at the same time.
With all of the big-name fans gone or fighting with each other, Snapeism kind of fell apart. To Snapeists, it was kind of like the Pope suddenly converting to another faith. The Jethro Gibbs incident was the nail in the coffin for the religion, and with all the important leaders gone, the others just kind of stopped caring. There may be one or two wayward Snapeists out there in the labyrinths of LiveJournal, but they certainly don’t have half as much of an impact now as they did back then. The church of Snapeism is, for all intents and purposes, gone. Bad photoshops of Snape with his astral-plane lovers are still scattered across the Internet, laying amidst prayers and fanfiction and strange combinations of them both, but the church itself has faded into obscurity like some pagan religion of old.
The death of Snapeism has been attributed to numerous things. Some Snapeists blame J.K. Rowling for handling Snape’s spirit so poorly and not writing the truth. Still others say that it was all Snape’s plan—he is omniscient, after all. Snape created the world, and he can end it, too. But most Snapewives just vanished quietly into the background without saying anything, deleting LiveJournal pages and frenzied fanfic as they left and leaving only archive.org pages in their wake. Maybe some realized that the whole thing was insane and culty in the absence of big-name fans to guide them. Maybe people started seeing the consequences of using one’s real name and photos on an online group dedicated to sharing porn of a Harry Potter character. Or maybe, like the woman who had criticized Snape, they were experiencing astral-plane marital problems and decided to get an astral-plane divorce. Who knows? Only one thing is for certain: Snapeism is dead, and Harry Potter fans everywhere are breathing sighs of relief.
Submitted September 16, 2019 at 09:37AM by iwasonceafangirl https://ift.tt/306fRUI
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