From Anthony Bourdain:

Hi! I'm very interested in attempting to write a disabled character (not for this blog, I assure, for an book I'm writing) in which the story doesn't fetishize/objectify her prosthetic limb. I'm in many writing circles and have been for a long while, but I've never seen this issue brought to light which I realise is a very important one. I have much to change in my thought process, and thank you for bringing this issue to attention.

I'm curious, and I apologise if this has been asked before, but what sort of design could you see for a functional prosthetic that doesn't go for a plainly aesthetic appearance, or is soully to please others? I do note that you said prosthetics are generally... not that helpful. So is there a way that it could be? Or do you think it would always generally be better to not use a prosthetic, as its mostly for aesthetic purposes, as you said?

I apologise if this ask is too outright or anything, and I don't mean to intrude. Thank you for your time and have a beautiful day!

okay, i want to answer this as in depth as possible, because whenever i talk about having a prosthesis, someone will always tag some variation of "#writing reference" and i do wonder what message they're taking away, and i want to get as much of my experience out as possible to maybe help shape how this is all portrayed in the future. and yeah… this is gonna be one of those rambly smg posts that the expand feature was invented for, so i'll start with the very abridged TL;DR:

if you're writing a character with an upper limb prosthesis; don't. arm amputees are unicorn level rare even compared to leg amputees, and i've never interacted with or even heard of an upper limb amputee that regularly uses a prosthesis, let alone relies on one. fiction has lied to you for the sake of cool aesthetics, don't repeat the cycle. more in depth writing advice including nuance and "but i waaaant to" will follow.

that said, grab your donning parachute and let's get started...

context for everyone involved: i am an upper limb amputee that rants a lot about how prostheses suck, i lost my right hand roughly five years ago at roughly the age of 30 after a very rough decline in health… it was pretty rough. this question is being asked in the context of a previous rant post of mine, and i checked that the ask is about an upper limb prosthesis in particular.

the situation regarding the usefulness of lower limb prostheses is totally different; i am definitely no expert, but by all accounts, prosthetic legs are incredibly useful for many people. getting a good leg can be absolutely life changing and more or less necessary for day to day life for some; mostly because infrastructure and society is just so fucking hostile to wheelchair users. being able to walk - at the cost of pressure sores and rashes and increased residual limb pain - is a preferable option to many people than being unable to fit through a doorway or in a bathroom stall or find out that the key to unlock the only elevator is in the admin office up three flights of stairs (true story).

but upper limb prostheses… see, the thing is, hands are incredibly complex organs that rely on a lot of immediate haptic feedback to work at all. hand dexterity is all about control, you need fine granular movements of the digits yes, but you also need the subtle sensations of pressure and proprioception in order to adjust your movements on the fly. i speak from experience, in the years leading up to the full loss of my hand, i was slowly losing function of it, usually swinging between numbness that made it clumsy at best, or screaming overstimulation from moving it at all resulting in unpredictable spasms… and let me tell you, a half working hand is infuriating to try and deal with. you can never know if you have a good grip on something or if it's slipping because of the wrong amount of pressure, and there's only so many smashed bottles of pickles on the floor before you give up using it all together… so amputation wasn't a great loss there, i had time to adapt.

a prosthetic hand of any kind has all of those issues and more. they're heavy and bulky, the cosmetic faux fingers or gripping claw have crude movement at best, and there's zero feedback (put a pin in this). 100% of the time you're using a prosthetic hand you have to keep your eyes on the grip and visually guesstimate whether or not the thing you're carrying is held tight enough but not too tight, that is if your "heavy duty" prosthesis can even support the weight without the servos disengaging or the wrist attachment socket just busting loose. i dropped a whippersnipper on my foot last week when my socket couldn't take the weight and i think that was the final straw in me desperately trying to prove to myself that there is a single task my prosthesis actually helps with.

this is usually where fully two handed people start talking about bleeding edge DARPA tech, and how we just need to invest more,research more, develop more. better tech, more tech, neural integration, more more more. okay i promise the writing advice is coming! for starters on tech, my experience is already with a mid-to-high end ottobock terminal device: i've got a myoelectric nerve-signal operated proportional control heavy duty greifer; about the only upgrade left for me to get would be a rotating wrist joint if i could coflex. it's not military, it's not "rockclimber that owns a prosthetic company", but it's quality tech. it still fucking sucks. secondly, that high level military tech exists primary for PR purposes so they can say they treat their discarded casualties well, "we can rebuild him, we have the technology" style. every war vet i've read about or heard from that's been gifted that high level tech also abandons it for the same reasons; it's imprecise, there's no feedback (or the haptic interface has to be fully recalibrated every time they put it on), but mostly they're more capable without one.

okay, the transhumanist ableds say (i should know, i used to be one), what if we did more ~research and development~ and got that neural feedback working? then we could have fireproof superhumanly strong robot arms to fix up everyone! here's where i take out that pin we put up before and i tell you that a class of prosthetic arms/hands already exists that has perfect proportional control, fine motor control, and physics perfect pressure feedback piped directly into the patients' existing sensory systems! they're called body-powered prostheses, and they were invented in like the 1600s. you strap a whole bunch of stuff to your arm and shoulders shoulders, and control the operation of the terminal device and elbow through cable tension by flexing your shoulders. they do take a considerable amount of training to operate - though hell i spent 18 months training to use my myo - but based on everything i've read, body-powered prostheses are the best option if you're an upper limb amputee and absolutely need a second hand for some reason.

but they don't look cool and futuristic, and according to my prosthetist, most people give up on using them too. we all give up on our prostheses, no matter the type. my rehab OT was impressed i lasted the 18 months of my training. towards the end, they even asked if the clinic director could drop in to one of my sessions to see my progress; he expressed genuine amazement at me casually using my bulky robot claw to use a brush and dustpan, and made an offhanded (hah) comment about what someone can achieve "if they stick it out to the end", implying it was somewhat of a rarity for me to have done so. several years on, and yesterday i wedged the dustpan between my ankles to sweep up into it, awkward but exponentially less effort than putting my dusty robot arm on. which, by the way, is a whole thing. look up some videos, they're all awful to don. i don't actually know the official technical name of what my clinic calls a "parachute" but it's a bitch to use! have you ever tried to pull back with your arm whilst also pushing it forwards at the same time, and simultaneously lean in to and away from an external force pulling on you? that's how you get a myo socket on.

bare with me, i promise writing advice is coming, and i promise it's more than the tl;dr. but. remember when i said a half working hand is infuriating to deal with? any prosthesis, from fancy myo tech to pirate-era body powered, will only ever be half as good as a working hand, and being juuuust within capability to do something but not quite able to is maddening! but you know what works way better than a half working hand? no hand at all. using whatever residual/vestigial limb you have - whatever "stump" you have, i hate that word - is pretty much always better than trying to use a prosthesis. i can use the inside of my elbow to grip and carry things, i can use the nub of my arm to apply pressure to hold things, open doors, use a computer mouse, turn on taps and lights, if i put a glove over it i can use it to prep for cooking. i have full proprioception and pressure feedback with skin contact, i don't think i've ever dropped and broken anything from my elbow, unlike countless things slipped from my greifer - which, by the way, absolutely will start clenching as tight as it can if i get even slightly too sweaty around the electrodes, which has both broken things i'm holding and also injured me, because surprise surprise but servo operated robot claws have pinch points on them right near the "emergency disengage" lever for some reason!

but i am exponentially more capable without it on than with it. no, i'm not fully independent, i rely on housemates and loved ones to help me out with some tasks that simply just need two handed dexterity, but none of those tasks are things a prosthesis makes me able to do anyway. i used to imagine my prosthesis would be like a bra; a bit awkward and uncomfortable, but i'd wear it throughout the day because it's helpful and take it off in the evening to decompress. in reality it's actually exactly like a bra: an absolute bitch to put on one handed, unbearably uncomfortable because it never sits right, ugly af unless you're a millionaire, and absolutely useless except for the fact that i get gawked at and judged by strangers if i leave the house without it on.

and if you really want to discover how far "no hand is better than a half working hand" goes, brace yourself, and look up the patient's stories (not medical system stories) of people that have had hand transplants. the first man to receive one hated it, he was promised a return to normal function, and what he got was a nightmare worse than being one handed; he wanted it removed again but the doctors refused because it would undermine their grand achievement of the first hand transplant. the doctors and society wanted him to be fixed, they wanted him to be normal, they wanted him to be abled. they failed. they made him less able to do things, denied his autonomy, and left him with someone else's hand slowly rotting on him, prioritising the idea of "scientific progress" and "two hands good" over the physical health, mental health, and ability to function of this man.

he's not alone; every story from the patients' perspective about hand transplants that i've read goes this way, including a woman who was born quad limb different and was promised hands would improve her life, pressured into a double hand transplant, only to find herself after the surgery essentially experiencing disability for the first time ever, because she had lived her whole life getting by just fine with her 'underdeveloped' limbs, but half working hands are worse than useless. you can try to find these stories yourself, but i'm not going looking for sources on any of these cases, because if you look back through enough of my posts you'll get a glimpse of the horrors and abuses that i too was put through by doctors who prioritised trying to "fix" me at any cost, rather than providing me the best quality of life, and in turn traumatised me and left me more broken than any loss of limb on its own could. dear goddess, i promise the writing advice is coming.

so. why do upper limb prostheses exist at all? if they're so terrible and useless, what is their function? i want to borrow something someone else left in the tags of a previous rant here, from someone who i believe works in prosthetics and/or rehab, cleaned up and anonymised at their request:

"upper limb functions are wildly more complex than: 1) bear weight static, and 2) bear weight moving. but every single upper limb amputee i know has a fancy expensive prosthetic just gathering dust in the closet because there is literally nothing it can do like a few years of adjustment and if needed non-dominant hand retraining can't do. the existence of forquarter prosthetics to begin with is just kind of silly and useless and entirely to make OTHER people feel comfortable, especially considering they universally are UNcomfortable for the amputee. i hate the notion that as soon as you get the amputation the prosthetic is The Thing That Will Fix You And Make You Feel Normal again because it universally isn't! but every forequarter person i know had like this ideal of Being Fixed By Magic Prosthetic that they were then obviously wildly disappointed by and had to do yet another grieving process with, versus if the dominant narrative were just one of: yeah. it'll take time, there is no magic fix."

and i think that really nails down what the actual purpose of upper limb prostheses is: they're not for the user, they're for the sake of other people. and not just their comfort when looking at our bodies, although based on the pressure for both amputees and people born limb different to get functionless cosmetic plastic hands, there is a lot of that. but it's not just that.

i fully believe that the reason prosthetic hands exists is to comfort the fears of the two handed. "don't worry", they say, "we can fix you again. you don't have to fear becoming Disabled, you don't have to worry about adapting or your life changing. we can make you Normal™ again."

you would not believe the number of people that have approached me to shower me with pity, to tell me how horrific my life is, how they can't imagine it. people have told me, apropos of nothing, that they'd kill themselves if they lost a hand. indirectly, that my life isn't worth living. unless, of course, i happen to be wearing my cool as fuck looking robot prosthesis! then they tell me how wonderful it is, how lucky i am, how glad they are that we have the technology to fix me. that's what a prosthetic hand says, what all the happy fishing photos on limbs4life posters at the rehab clinic say: don't worry, we can fix you. that's what the bleeding edge DARPA flexi-whatever fully articulated neuro-feedback hands say: don't worry if you get IED'd while hunting civilians for us to drone bomb, if you get hurt, we will fix you, we will fix the fuck out of you, we will motherfucking adam jensen you into a cool as fuck cyborg that your son will idolise; come on boys, don't you wanna enlist just for the chance at being as cool as this? join the bomb squad for a ticket to the upgrade lottery.

and so we arrive at fiction. as much as his dialogue options protest, adam jensen loves his robot arms, they punch through walls, turn into fucking swords! they make him the most special man in the world. what would he do without them? learn to cope? grieve? practice acceptance? take up poetry? just, be disabled? there's no power fantasy for ableds in that.

in fact, can you think of a single fictional character that's an upper limb amputee that's, well, just an amputee? they all have robot arms. not realistic prostheses, not medical devices; robot arms. sleek or bulky, top of the line or broken down self built, steampunk or nanomachines or magitech automail; they're never without them. never just an amputee. never born limb different either! there's always that element of tragedy to overcome, always suffering and misery porn, always focus on the pain and the helplessness without the absolutely vital robot arm that makes them Normal and Whole. the closest amputee example i can think of is furiosa from mad max, who iirc fucking punches max in the face with her residual limb like a motherfucking badass! i can barely lean on mine wrong and she punches a guy! but she still apparently needs a dieselpunk robot hand to drive a truck, something you can do one handed so easily most drivers don't even notice they're doing it! please don't, by the way

and so many disabled fans love to point to robot armed characters as disability representation; the winter soldier, luke skywalker, edward elric, misty knight, that genderswapped furry girl from ratchet and clank, jet cowboybebop, finn the human, and yes, adam jensen…. these are all characters that someone disabled i know has told me they love because they "represent disabled bodies"…. and i know nobody wants to hear this, because i've been screamed at for saying it before, but… they do not. they are not disabled, functionally or within fiction. they are either perfectly able bodied Normal people with chrome paint on an arm, or tortured misery porn we are supposed to pity and feel lucky we're not them. sometimes both!

also you ever notice how it's basically always arms? lower limb amputations are orders of magnitude more common than upper, my prosthetist said i was probably only the 4th or 5th upper limb she'd worked with in her career, with literally hundreds of lower limb fits. but fiction doesn't seem to reflect that, huh? or any other part of the reality of disability. it's always cool as fuck robot arms, never cool as fuck wheelchairs or crutches or dialysis machines or colostomy bags. a fair few "i was blind but now i can see with Robot Eyes and also infrared and xray" around, which again, plays into that "we can fix you and make you cooler" propaganda.

by the way, up above when i was describing body powered arms, if you wondered to yourself why i went with a myoelectric one instead when i clearly believe body powered is better… yeah. i am not immune to propaganda! i too wanted to be cool as fuck. i spent years with deteriorating function in my hand for reasons that are still unknown, was misdiagnosed and medically neglected to the point that removing my hand seemed to be the only option left to offer some relief, and even that was a clusterfuck that left me worse than ever… of course i wanted to believe in the power and prestige of a cool robot arm that fiction promised me.

but fiction promises fantastical lies. and so.

we get to the writing advice portion of the novella that is this post. you asked for advice on how to write a disabled character with an upper limb prosthesis. you've read the tl;dr, you've read everything above i assume, you know i don't want you to do it. the obvious twist is that it's been writing advice all along, me trying to share my perspective on what it's like being an amp with a robot arm and how shitty it is, implying how almost any fully realised and realistic character that's missing an upper limb would give up on a prosthesis at all. you can already tell that every value judgement in me says "don't give her a prosthesis, no matter how functional or cool you make it. don't try to make the tech better to justify it, just let her be one armed, one handed. just let her be disabled, but not helpless. let her show off her elbow or underarm carry strength. let her love interest appreciate how soft and squishy her residual limb is in a moment of tenderness. let her natural disabled body be respected and valued."

but that's a personal value judgement from me, and you are the author of your own work. i know it's trite to say, but you are! even the act of deferring to someone with lived experience in the hope of doing a better job at representation is a value judgement, a good choice in my opinion, but one you needn't necessarily take. maybe you do want to write a character that has a cool as fuck unrealistic robot arm as a power fantasy, or a comfort blanket… i did.

i've been slowly writing my own probably terrible scifi epic for over a decade now, and when my arm was giving me hell back then, i'd take great comfort in this fantasy of my protagonist with her chunky robot arm, the terrible traumatic suffering of her loss, overcoming, the power and ability her advanced prosthesis gives her over others, that she alone has access to, because others are not willing to make the sacrifices required. inspiration porn. awful stuff to me now, but empowering to me then. as i grew and gained direct experience, i slowly reimagined her, rewrote her, ship of theseus'd her into an entirely new character; a reflection of me now, bitter at the whole thing, spiteful that her natural flesh arm evokes fear and distrust, but unwilling to suffer the pain and frustration of her unnatural prosthesis just to make others comfortable and respect her as "whole", however artificial that whole is. and as with the ship of theseus being two ships, once i realised the transformation, i re-added the old protagonist back in whole cloth as a separate character; proud of her robot arm and its power, but in new context, as a foil and antagonist, an in-universe military prosthesis propaganda figure to reflect how i now feel characters like her exist to us, the readers.

i'm not just sharing that as egotistical self promotion, but to highlight that, even if i sit here begging you all up and down not to write characters with robot arms for how bad and unrealistic they are; there's still something genuine and true that their inclusion can say. the great thing about the story that you're writing is that only you can write it, as they say. but i whole heartedly believe that to write to your best, you have to be aware of what you're writing and why. as tempting as it is to feel these characters form naturally in us and therefore we're averse to changing traits about them that feel organic and self evident; as authors we have omnipotent control over the text, every trait and detail is a reflection on us, so we'd sure as hell better understand why we're choosing to write a character with this trait. because anything you write without being aware of intent will take on its own meaning in the space between.

and on that note, if i don't say this, i'm leaving it to be inferred: i definitely don't want to appear to come down on the side of saying "you cannot write an amputee unless you are one", because we are rarer than single young bisexual unicorns! and it would be a tragedy if anyone read through all this and then turned away in fear, deciding to never write an amputee character (with or without robot arm) because they feel they can't do it justice… believe me, no matter what anyone says, some hack writer somewhere is going to keep writing adam jensens and winter soldiers. don't let them be the only voices in fiction! just try to do your best.

so my ultimate advice on the topic of writing a character with a prosthetic limb is to ask yourself one question in two different frameworks, and meditate on what you feel the answer is:

why does she have a prosthesis?

from a doylelist perspective as the kids say, as an author with omnipotent control, why are you choosing to write about this topic? why are you choosing to give this trait to this character? what does it say about how you view ability and disability, what makes a person normal, and what our society values? will you let her be in her natural body? or will you give her a prosthesis, force her to wear it by authorial fiat, or author her a meaningful reason to choose to? if yes, be sure you know; why did you give her a prosthesis?

and from a wastonian perspective, diegetically, inside the story, why does she choose to wear a prosthesis? what does it say about her inner character, and how she interacts with the world? how does she feel about doing it, is she prideful and loves the attention she gets, or does she resent whatever necessitates its use? how do people in this world view ability and disability, what does this society value? and above all, whatever the answer to these questions, whether or not she uses a prosthesis or is badass without one, how does she deal with the eternal freezing cold that every amputee ever feels constantly in their residual limb and why does nobody make a heat pack that fits over a nub without drafty gaps???

i can't outright tell you how to write a good upper limb amputee, but if you at least know why you're writing one and for what purpose, you're on track to write the best character that you can. that's the best advice i can give… other than, like, this whole rambly mess.

and, as a reward for reading this far, please have a very blurry cryptid photo of my cat doing his old man sit:

Why do we love Snape, or the character who was unkindly written

Claire Jordan in one of her Quora essays said that she’s been in fandom for decades and has never seen a character so loved as Snape. I concur. Excluding some recent trends that purposefully misinterpret Snape by projecting onto him a set of stereotypes he was never supposed to embody, Snape remains one of the most loved characters in the Harry Potter universe. Every poll on Harry Potter’s favourite characters confirm that Snape is always on the top 3, sometimes reaching first place.

This is not some “bad boy syndrome”. There are two main reasons for readers to have latched onto Snape so furiously, for Snape to have been so ardently discussed and defended after HBP – and these feelings only intensified after the 7th book. The reasons, I would posit, are:

1.      Snape is a character that the narrative portrays as ambiguous.

2.      Despite this, the narrative is often, objectively, unfair to Snape especially in favour of other characters.

Let’s address the first point. Snape is ambiguous because he has to be. There are two big plot-twists in Harry Potter: Harry is a horcrux and Snape’s loyalties. These two end up closely connected because it is through the knowledge of Snape’s loyalties that Harry discovers he must die to kill the part of Voldemort that is inside him. Snape is therefore largely written as a suspect in a murder mystery. Several commentators have argued that the structure of a Harry Potter book resembles a crime novel, and I agree. Snape has to appear guilty, but the books have to give enough clues to the reader as to his true loyalties. Independently of authorial intent, this is what makes Snape so compelling. Because:

a.      Snape is cruel to his students but he constantly protects them (Harry, Draco, Katie Bell, Luna and Hermione, Neville and Ginny).

b.      Snape is described as ugly but his use of language is the most sophisticated of the series to the point it becomes sensual. Just consider his first speech in class about the beauty of potions and how they “ensnare the senses” and “bewitch the mind”.

c.      Snape is mean and petty but these characteristics are often accompanied by sarcasm and irony which make some of his most awful comments quite funny, such as him telling Crabbe not to suffocate Neville because he would have to mention it in a reference letter if ever Crabbe applied to a job. There is also a lot of incongruent humour in play with Snape. For example, him reading about Harry’s love life is hilarious because Snape and teenage drama are two irreconcilable dimensions.

d.      Snape is cruel and bullying but the narrative offers several reasons for this. While Dumbledore’s past is revealed mostly through conversation, Snape’s past is slowly revealed in images which makes it much more vivid. Snape getting a glimpse of a werewolf at the end of a tunnel. Snape’s father yelling at his cowering mother. Snape upside down and petrified by Sirius and James. Petunia calling him “an awful boy”. More than any other character, Snape is rooted in a social context that brings with it inescapable references: poverty, domestic abuse, neglect, bullying.

e.      Snape is often ridiculed (by Neville’s Boggart and by the map) but he is also given the title of “Prince”, a character with whom Harry sympathizes. He is also one of the characters who carries a sword, and whose love is presented as “the best part” of him. These are characteristics that ennoble Snape.

f.       Snape is dismissive of people’s feelings but he is also the character who is defending children because of their mothers. Lily because of his guilt, and Narcissa whom he allows to trap him in an unbreakable vow to protect her son.  

g.      Snape is taken as evil but the character whom the narrator uses as a morality mouthpiece – Hermione – often defends him.

h.      Snape kills a man but the narrative is quick to add that his soul would likely remain intact as it would be an act of mercy, arranged between the victim and the perpetrator as Harry reinforces. Harry goes as far saying that Snape “finished him” instead of using the verb kill or murder. Furthermore, we know remorse is something that mends the soul and Snape’s whole arc is about guilt and remorse – immortalized in the scene where Snape weeps at 13 Grimmauld Palace.

i.       Snape is apparently a murderer but the narrative goes to some lengths to show that just like Harry Snape has a thing for saving people. “Lately, only those I could not save” and him risking his cover to save Lupin.

j.       Snape’s trauma is often discredited but the narrative allows part of his tragedy to come at the expense of the hero’s father whom Harry spent years admiring. A relevant part of James’s goodness is sacrificed in favour of Snape’s own character construction.

k.      Snape’s trauma in relation to having been bullied is more often discredited by the narrative, although Fudge’s comment “the man is quite unbalanced” and the comparison established between James and Sirius’s use of Levicorpus and the Death Eaters using it on a muggle woman shows that it is something to be taken serious, although never acknowledged.

This last point leads me to my second assertion that the narrative is fundamentally unfair and cruel to Snape. For two main reasons:

a.      Snape’s trauma in relation to the Mauraders is discredited by everyone that counts, namely, Lily and Dumbledore. Only Harry comes closer to understand its dimensions. We can argue as to why this is, and as to whether there was authorial intent or it is simply that JKR didn’t realise how it would sound. Lily nearly smiles when Snape is being bullied which puts in question Lily’s character as well as her friendship with Snape. Both in Snape’s Worst Memory and in the conversation about the prank, she also fails to show concern that her friend was being bullied by the boy she liked.

b.      The second instance of unfairness is more serious because it is far more insidious. A careful reading of text will tell us that Snape was set up for death by Dumbledore. That Dumbledore planted the Elder Wand on Snape while thinking its power had died with him and while knowing that Voldemort would eventually reach conclusions about the Elder Wand and wish to possess it, thus killing its current owner. Not only Dumbledore never tells Snape, but he plans it beforehand. This is why he “admits” to Harry that the intention was to let Snape have the wand. Harry understands exactly what this means, and in the Final Battle tells Voldemort that Dumbledore intended the power of the wand to die with him.

This is so insidious – and cruel – that it is never openly acknowledged. Dumbledore betrays Snape, showing an impressive disregard for his life – far more than he showed for Harry’s because he knew Harry had a good chance of survival. But Snape is never given the satisfaction of having this acknowledged in the text. Snape yearned for Dumbledore’s affection but not only Dumbledore denied him that, he also denied him the truth of what he really wanted of him. Snape is betrayed by both his masters at the end. But we are never explicitly told this. This happens because the narrative is unwilling to portray Dumbledore in a truly badly light. His apparent sorrow (“poor Severus”) and his “admission” of guilt are not enough to show him remorseful because the narrative cannot bring itself to say: “I set Snape to die by planting the wand on him so Voldemort would come to possess a useless weapon”. This would change the readers’ view of Dumbledore, especially after Prince’s Tale. Remark on how cruel it is: Snape had to agree to kill Dumbledore in “good faith” so the power of the wand died with him, but all the while Dumbledore knows that Snape would get a target on his back and die from it. Dumbledore manipulates Snape into – possibly – ripping his soul and tricks Snape into his own demise. Snape thought Dumbledore was raising Harry as a pig for slaughter, but he is wrong. It is him whom Dumbledore is raising to die. The fact that this is never openly stated, and is purposefully obfuscated by the language, is somewhat cowardly. Dumbledore barely apologises, he barely recognizes it. If he did, the readers would be horrified. As with Lily, Snape is again sacrificed in favour of apparently “better” characters whom the narrative wants the readers to like more.

However, the flaw in the plan is that…readers aren’t stupid. I caught on to this when I was a teenager, and it has only intensified as I grew older.

Even at the end, Snape understands from the moment Voldemort mentions the wand that he is going to die. JKR said in a tweet that Snape could’ve saved himself, presumably by setting Voldemort straight, and so his silence ensured Harry’s victory. It is a possible interpretation. More possible still is that Snape accepted death after giving Harry his memories. The fact that he stops trying to staunch the bleeding once Harry appears shows it. His “look at me” is the request of a man who knows he’s going to die and just wants to do so by looking at the eyes of the woman he loves. In this sense, following Dumbledore’s words that “there are things far worse than death” and that for an organized mind death is “the next big adventure”, Snape showed far more courage than both Dumbledore and Voldemort who on several occasions tried to fight the inevitability of death.

It is true the narrative offers some vindication for Snape. Harry tells Tom Riddle of Snape’s true loyalties. Riddle is not allowed to die before knowing that Snape had betrayed him and colluded with Dumbledore, all because of a power Riddle doesn’t understand – love. Harry also names the son with his – and his mother’s – green eyes Severus. Finally, Harry tells him that Snape was probably the bravest man he knew.

But still, Snape is not kindly written. There is an underlying cruelty in how Snape is treated throughout the books. Because he is so profoundly unloved, because he is barely shown kindness and because no one ever takes responsibility for what happened to him, the readers feel compelled to do so. That, I think, explains why Snape is so widely loved, and why people are so ready to defend him in unprecedented ways.mak

Being into podcasts and having s*** voice recognition means

- not being able to differentiate between Jon and Elias who are played by two different people

- Not being able to differentiate between Sasha and not Sasha who are played by two different people

- Not being able to differentiate between Alice and Norris who are played by two different people

- And being able to distinguish Arther, John, Kellen, Eddie, Dr Jeffrey, Kayne, The trader, Faust, Wallace, The Butcher, Oscar, and MARIE??? from eachother DESPITE ALL OF THEM BEING PLAYED BY THE SAME PERSON

“He’s my bbg”

And then it’s a man with PTSD, war crimes, a 50,000$ bounty, and if you even touched him he’d beat you violently to death

Hozier b like "hey girl what if the ceaseless battle between unconquerable suffering (as a consequence of existence), and the indomitable human spirit, was just. in ur earphones. What if the constant tug of war between the limitlessness of love and inevitability of heartache was literally injected into u via sound. Like. just playing in ur ears for an hour. Take my hand. Let's take a stroll through hell, baby :) wouldn't that be gre- why are you crying"

Arthur got: stabbed in the abdomen which put him in a coma for a month, shot in the abdomen twice and in the chest once, both of his legs broken, his throat slid open, stabbed in a shoulder and the abdomen, stabbed twice in the neck, bitten by a monster, his ear torn off, starved, poisoned, burned, punched…

If Daniel won’t get up after being shot once then he’s a fucking loser

Crowley + power

You were an angel once. That was a long time ago.

Modern AU where Joe is a secret agent who keeps thinking about backer Nicky because during a very dangerous mission he had to hide in Nicky’s bakery and the other, after seeing him with a knife in his hand and a gun in the back pocket of his pants, only said: “Please do this outside of my shop.” No “What are are you doing with a gun?”, or “Please don’t kill me.” Joe can’t stop replaying in his mind Nicky’s blue eyes looking back at him levelly as he said he didn’t want murder in his establishment. Nicky must be insane, he decides.

He goes back to the bakery and becomes a silent regular (Nile thinks he’s trying to woo Nicky by staring at him very hard) until he snaps and asks: “Would you have been ok with me killing someone outside of your bakery???” And Nicky, hands still covered in flour because it’s 5am and Joe is there, part of the fam by now, says: “First of all, you didn’t kill that man. You preferred keeping your knife with you for self defence and kept the gun in your pocket. You also seemed very nice and good with kids, so I thought you must have good reasons for running away from that man. I figured if I was wrong and you were a bad person you would have killed me anyway, the blood on the wall would have been my last problem. And you did listen. I heard you hit the man in the back alley and it was a good punch. Is he still alive?”

Joe blinks. Is this how Quỳnh felt when Andy told her what her real job was? Like meeting an entirely new, very intriguing type of human being? “He is in jail. He’ll stay there for a long time.”

“Okay,” Nicky nods. “So you won’t bring crime or violence to my establishment?” He asks again. His accent jumps out when he’s hiding that he’s nervous. He looks.. hopeful, Joe decides. Very interested in Joe’s answer.

“I’ll try to clean my shoes from the blood next time.”

Nicky slowly smiles. It’s like watching a new type of natural phenomenon occur in front of his eyes for the first time. Incomprehensible, awe-inspiring, overall beautiful.

“You guys are so weird,” Sebastien says. He’s the regular coming to the bakery at 6am every day and Joe suspects he’s a hacker wanted in more than 26 countries. That, or he’s B00ker’s law abiding doppelgänger. Nicky never fails to have some croissants ready for Sebastien.

“Good luck with your big job,” Nicky tells Sebastien as he hands him the baked goods. “Just don’t use the shop’s wi-fi, last time was a nightmare.”

Joe wants to study Nicky with a microscope. (Or kiss him. Or both.)