So, I had a review on ffnet that made me wonder.

[of_anoesis]

It wasn't a nasty review, by any stretch. I was just someone giving their opinion about how Severus Snape would act. An opinion which was was different to my own - shock horror - but the examples they used...

They said: "I can see Snape as a spy, I can see him as a killer, I can see him writing sonnets to Lily and then tossing them in the

Comments

[teddyradiator]

Um, he's Mancunian, or at least Northern...his dad was a millrat. He is my age, and he would have listened to the Sex Pistols and Ian Dury and the Stranglers and he would have been a Manc boy. Yeah, he would swear. Oh fuck yes, he would swear. I think it's practically on the school curriculum

[of_anoesis]

I can go either way with smoking. Much of my Snape headcanon is based on my experiences of men of that age in this country. I've not lived in Manchester, but I've known similar, dying towns on the Yorkshire side. The men all smoked, they all drank. Most of them were unconsciously sexist and had dodgy tattoos. I won't allow Snape to be sexist, but otherwise, I can see him doing all the other things... if the character development in the story allows it.

Oddly, all I can see is naked Snape doing the willy dance. Dammit, Teddy!

I'm with you on most of those. I can occasionally see slash tendencies, but they have to be incredibly well written. I can never see him with Harry *ducks* He loved Lily, whatever he found wouldn't be love. It would be like when Sirius calls Harry James. Unconscious substitution.

Kids swear to fit in and seem older. Snape was befriended by Lucius - he would have had an awful lot of older-seeming to do.

I think.

Ooh, there's so much to think about!

[teddyradiator]

I know what you mean about the Northern men. It's very possible Snape would have been a smoker. Again, that's a personal yuck with me, and one that is probably the most likely he would do. I just don't want him to! ;)

Slash to me has to be under very strange circumstances. Harry? Oh, hell no. *shudders*. I think if he had sex with anyone, it would be with someone more like himself. That's why I've never had any problem with slashing Snape with Filch. I know I'm way in the minority here nowadays, but I just think of him as straight all the way, really.

Now Harry and Draco? I think they would go at one another like rabid bunnies.

[jenidralph]

Perhaps he smoked in his youth but gave it up... like other stupid choices he chose to fix as he aged. ;)

[of_anoesis]

I should probably add that I don't like the thought of Snape smoking. It's just another thing for Hermione to work on!

[reynardo]

Yeah, but you haven't faced the serious issue. The one that divided families, households, whole neighbourhoods...
City or United?

[arynwy]

Oh, City - they have the right colors, LOL!

[juniperus]

I was just going to post that comment on being a Manc of a certain age - you've beat me to it.

Fuck, yeah he swears. He'd be picky about when and where, and I don't know that he'd allow himself to relax that much all that often, but yeah. Even were someone trying to make an argument that as an adult he refused to let his roots show (as it were), were Peeves to drop a 300lb weight on his foot an explosion of swears would result -- we carry our childhoods with us, always... and even when we actively attempt to bury accents, vocabulary, and phrasing, in moments of great pain or stress all bets are off

[of_anoesis]

those fluffy post-war-butterfly-chrysalis-ex-spy-'he can finally be himself' stories ring false to me, always.

Completely! He wasn't a karaoke singing lothario before the war, I can't see why he could suddenly become one afterwards. I'm pretty sure that was the real Snape we saw all along.