"It's fun to write about Snape because he's a deeply horrible person." —J. K. Rowling
Welcome to deeply_horrible, a community devoted to characterisations of Severus Snape as—for lack of a better word—a bastard. (Oh, all right, we have many good words: ambiguous, ambivalent, annoying, appalling, arrogant, bitter, brilliant, brooding, brusque, bullying, calculating, callous, capricious, childish, closed-off, cold-eyed, crafty, creepy, cruel, dark, deceptive, demanding, determined, eerie, elusive, explosive, ferocious, frightening, greedy, grudging, hardened, inscrutable, insecure, insulting, irrational, jaded, jealous, loyal, maddening, malicious, masochistic, melodramatic, morally dubious, nasty, obsessive, obstinate, oddball, oily, passionate, petty, petulant, proud, possessive, repellent, rude, ruthless, sadistic, sarcastic, savage, scruffy, selfish, self-punishing, severe, shady, shallow, shifty, shrewd, sly, sneaky, spiteful, stingy, sullen, temperamental, tyrannical, unfair, unnerving, unpredictable, unreasonable, unsporting, vengeful, vicious, volatile, volcanic, vulnerable, wild...)
Snape in canon proves to be a hero, ultimately on the side of good. But this fact doesn't cancel out or compensate for his thorny and sometimes bizarre behaviour. Severus Snape can be an absolute arsehole while saving your life. He's malicious and whispery, cold-eyed and passionate, a professor who delights in making his students squirm. As a teenager, he possessed a gift for inventing dangerous Dark spells; as an adult, he lurks in the shadows.
According to JKR, "Snape is a very sadistic teacher [...] He's ... spiteful. [...] He remains rather cruel, a bully, riddled with bitterness and insecurity—and yet he loved, and showed loyalty to that love and, ultimately, laid down his life because of it."
We acknowledge and honour Snape's bravery and self-sacrifice, but are equally keen to preserve his darker side, those aspects of his character that are not nice or pleasant. We're fascinated by the fact that Snape is profoundly flawed, and we find his flaws worth exploring. We enjoy playing with the less than savoury aspects of his personality.
Our main fest is Bring Back the Bastard. (See our 2012 masterlist.)
The community also hosts discussion posts and recs. You needn't sign up for the challenge to participate in the discussions or to contribute recs. Please read the rules for posting discussions here. The recs post, along with the rules for contributing recs, can be found here.
We have mirror communities at dreamwidth and insanejournal, but fest posting will primarily take place here on livejournal (unless it goes berserk, in which case we shall move to dreamwidth).
Come celebrate Snape in all his flawed glory! Let’s examine how "deeply horrible"—and how truly complex—he can be.
Community Affiliations snapedom - A Snape meta discussion community, who were endlessly helpful in setting up Deeply Horrible. dysfuncentine - The dysfunctional relationships Valentine's Fest, who are wonderful partners for our Sloppy Seconds Fest.
Contact the Mods Questions? Feel free to PM dhorrible_mod or send us an e-mail at deeplyhorriblemod [at] gmail [dot] com.
Disclaimer deeply_horrible features fan works based on characters and situations created by J. K. Rowling, and owned by J. K. Rowling and various publishers, including but not limited to: Bloomsbury Books, Scholastic Books, Raincoast Books, and Warner Bros., Inc. No money is being made and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended by the posting of these fan works.