Hated headcanons
What headcanon about Snape that you don't like, or even hate?
Maybe less of a headcanon and more of an overall attitude of certain fans trying to overly justify Severus' poorer actions, such as his bullying of students.
Severus says mean things, let him be mean.
Generally speaking, I dislike headcanons that don't seem to fit his personality and/or are actively contradicted by canon. For example, it doesn't make any sense to assume he was gay or bisexual. He never demonstrates even a hint of being attracted to men, and his only truly close relationship was with a girl/woman whom he loved for all of his life.
I also dislike headcanons that ignore the context of who he was/the world in which he lived, attempting to define him according to 2023 trends, labels, and standards. This especially bothers me when people claim he was asexual… that is highly unlikely to the point of being absurd.
I'm not saying that asexuality didn't exist in the 70s/80s/90s, but it was much rarer than it is today. We can speculate about the reasons for that (internet has a lot to do with it IMO), but the fact remains that there is a significant generational difference. It's also worth pointing out that Snape does show signs of being attracted to Lily. Some people jump through hoops to try and explain this away, claiming his feelings were platonic, but that's quite a leap given the circumstances. The vast majority of teenage boys are intensely sexual creatures, and Lily was a beautiful girl whom he also had an emotional connection to. Of course, people can interpret their relationship however they want, but in terms of sheer probability, it's pretty much a foregone conclusion that he was romantically/sexually attracted to her.
Point being, Snape doesn't need to have some alternative sexual identity. This is fine with characters where there's some evidence to back it up, but with him, there just isn't. Again, people can imagine him that way if they want… I'm just saying that to me, it's nonsensical and feels very much out of character.
What bothers me most aligns with @bitterbrit I don't like it when his behavior is excused too much but I also hate it when he's demonized and made out to be worse than Voldemort, Umbridge and the Carrows combined.
He was an asshole but that's what makes him lovable to me in the first place. His snark, his at times mean attitude and the fact he's neither entirely good or bad. Please don't turn him into a flawless angel but also don't turn him into the devil himself.
I otherwise don't really care about other people's headcanons. Though there's the tendency to make Snape's homelife exaggeratedly horrible and after reading a bunch of fics, it just becomes tasteless. There is no proof of sexual abuse or extreme physical abuse in the Snape household, hell, we never even have Rowling describe Snape as bruised or trying to hide a bruise let alone having been beaten within an inch of his life. Yes, there's a memory of Eileen cowering but that could imply that Tobias slaps her around from time to time, it doesn't necessarily mean he beats her half dead every single day. The same goes for Severus, I imagine that he has experienced some harsher form of corporal punishment but that wasn't out of the ordinary back in the day, especially in households of lower socioeconomic background. The whole idea that he has been through extreme physical abuse and at times even sexual abuse is too much in my opinion.
I agree about extreme abuse case @darkangel. I imagine Tobias as an abusive parent but it was a norm in the low socioeconomic households where extreme corporeal punishments were justified, of course it was wrong considering current times but somewhat normalised in those times. I've seen real life people of that generation talking how modern children need more firm hand to keep them disciplined which included corporeal punishments by both teachers and parents.
So making Tobias an extreme monster who lives on making his son's and wife's life hell is sort of similar to fanon abusive Dursley syndrome in the fics which I don't like.
Quote from Dark Angel on November 28, 2023, 11:40 pmWhat bothers me most aligns with @bitterbrit I don't like it when his behavior is excused too much but I also hate it when he's demonized and made out to be worse than Voldemort, Umbridge and the Carrows combined.
He was an asshole but that's what makes him lovable to me in the first place. His snark, his at times mean attitude and the fact he's neither entirely good or bad. Please don't turn him into a flawless angel but also don't turn him into the devil himself.
I agree with this when it comes to things he actually did in canon. There were times when he was an absolute shit to characters like Harry and Neville, and while we can empathize with his reasons for behaving that way, he was still nasty and hurtful. It's good to recognize that, while not blowing it out of proportion or assuming that was his entire personality.
On that note, I really dislike it when people treat headcanons as canon (e.g. "Snape hated everyone" or "Snape bullied all his students"). If people want to incorporate those ideas into their own version of Snape, that's fine, but there's a difference between individual perceptions/common tropes and actual canonical facts.
I was going to say the same. I don't dislike the Severitus trope for example, but when people act as though it's canon, it really bugs me. Same goes for different interpretations of the characters which are supposedly the only correct ones. Especially when the proof for that characterisation is another headcanon (e.g. "Snape was horrible even as a student, he attacked muggle-borns for fun.").
But to answer the question, I don't like the headcanon that the questions Snape asks in Harry's first Potions lesson form "I bitterly regret Lily's death". It feels very farfetched and perhaps falls into the category @darkangel and @heatherlly discussed earlier. Snape didn't want anyone to know about Lily, why the hell would he "say" that in front of an entire class, a Gryffindor–Slytherin one no less. Half of them he hates and some of the kids from the other half are the children of Death Eaters in the Inner Circle, some of whom still at large. Snape wasn't sentimental in that scene, he was being an arsehole.
Quote from Salvyus on November 30, 2023, 7:46 amBut to answer the question, I don't like the headcanon that the questions Snape asks in Harry's first Potions lesson form "I bitterly regret Lily's death". It feels very farfetched and perhaps falls into the category @darkangel and @heatherlly discussed earlier. Snape didn't want anyone to know about Lily, why the hell would he "say" that in front of an entire class, a Gryffindor–Slytherin one no less. Half of them he hates and some of the kids from the other half are the children of Death Eaters in the Inner Circle, some of whom still at large. Snape wasn't sentimental in that scene, he was being an arsehole.
It's possible that JKR knew the translation and dropped it in as a clue, but that doesn't mean that Snape himself intended the statement to have a double meaning. I agree that that would be very much out of character for him, even if he was 99.99% sure that none of the students would ever figure it out. We're talking about his most closely guarded secret, one he was only willing to reveal under extreme duress. Dropping random hints in an ordinary classroom setting? Yeah, that makes zero sense.
I bet that most people who take that headcanon seriously are basing it on Movie Snape, not Book Snape. I guess it is slightly more believable in that context, as the movies never show just how desperate Snape is to keep it a secret.
I agree that the flower language apology, if deliberate, was meant for astute readers and not for Harry as a character. The readers would know something very important or at that point ask important questions: Why does he regret her death? Does he have an emotional connection to her? Is he involved in her death and feels guilty?
If the hidden message was intended for Harry, it wouldn't make any sense because on one hand he is essentially apologizing for orphaning Harry and on the other he is in the middle of humiliating him, what kind of apology is that?
You guys did remind me of another headcanon though which bothers me: the claim that when Lily died, she was pregnant with a girl and intended to make Severus her godfather. Nice idea for fanfics but completely unrealistic. Snape and Lily don't seem to have ever reconciled and I think Snape would be the last person to be chosen as the godfather to any child of hers. Then, the Potters were already quite stupid to have a child in the middle of a war and went on to make another? For God's sake, are they rabbits?
Quote from Salvyus on November 30, 2023, 7:46 amSnape wasn't sentimental in that scene, he was being an arsehole.
Yes, I think Snape is the last person who would try to give some kind of coded message about Lily to anyone, let alone Harry. In his memories, we see him telling Dumbledore "This must be between us! Swear it! I cannot bear . . . especially Potter’s son ... I want your word!” And then, the first time he meets Harry, he just forgets all that ?
I will, however, disagree with you about him being an arsehole in that scene (this is one of my headcanons that some people might hate). I think it was just Snape's way of trying to find out if Harry was more like Lily or James. I can imagine Lily and Snape being a little like Hermione and reading all their first year books cover to cover multiple times before they got to Hogwarts. And from his point of view, not only has Harry not been reading his books, he even talks back to him - "Hermione knows, why don't you ask her" - which confirms his impression of Harry being just like his father.
