a wolf!

okay but @prongsyouignoramus and i really neeed to know. where did the sexy severus snape come from. why. he’s actually described as this in the wiki - 

Severus Snape was a thin man with sallow skin, a large, hooked nose and yellow, uneven teeth. He usually dressed in flowing black robes which made him resemble “an overgrown bat”. He had shoulder-length, greasy black hair which framed his face in curtains, curling lips and dark, penetrating eyes that resembled tunnels. As a Death Eater, he bears the Dark Mark on his left inner forearm.

The younger Snape had a “stringy, pallid look”, being “round-shouldered yet angular” and with a “twitchy walk that recalled a spider”, as well as “long oily hair that jumped about his face.”

how is this?? attractive?? why is there so much fic about it???? who decided that was a good idea?? i dont undersTAND can someone who was around when that started pls explain im begging u

I’m going to… jump on this, here.  I cannot explain anything to you about Harry Potter fandom since about 2008, but I can tell you about what it was like when the books were still being published, and why the openness of canon left a lot of room for being interested in Snape. 

After GoF (2000) left us with that cliffhanger where Snape swept out of the hospital wing on Dumbledore’s “if you are prepared…” and nothing more; and before The Prince’s Tale (*spits on ground*) and that Lily backstory (*spit*spit*) happened in 2007, there were two widespread, fairly equally canonically supported theories about Snape’s primary motivations:

1. Snape was working for Voldemort.  Motivations for him doing so would include all sorts of shit supported by his nasty behavior at Hogwarts: he believed in the cause of blood purity, he enjoyed torturing people, he got off on being more powerful than other people.  Before 2005 (HBP), you also saw a lot of Lord Snape of Snape Manor fanon in this version of characterization: old wizarding family, hobnobbed with the Malfoys, blind ambition/thirst for power and influence, etc etc (BUT WHAT ABOUT MY ORDER OF MERLIN).
   
   This characterization also includes a strong component of Snape being ballsy and clever as hell to be double-double crossing Dumbledore, who he had made believe he was “reformed” or “safe” at the close of the first war.  He would need to be very cunning indeed to be running this game from inside Hogwarts.
   
   
2. Snape was a spy for Dumbledore.  Motivations for him usually included him realizing the violence he had been doing as a Death Eater was wrong and seeking redemption (perhaps after a single event against A Friend); or maybe just realizing that Team Dumbledore would be harder but safer for him personally in the long run.  Importantly, even in versions of the story where he’s secretly noble and penitent, none of this made him a nice guy.  This supposes he was all these things and a complete bastard to Harry and co. in class and in life all day every day.  There’s a duality here (unless you were a Snapewife. then, you know, he suffers so beautifully, he’s probably a demigod).
   
   This scenario also requires a lot of cleverness, as well as bravery, to be running this against Violent Madman Voldemort and turning against the friends of his youth, “a crowd of Slytherins who nearly all turned out to be Death Eaters.”
   

So, okay.  In either situation mentioned above, 

• Snape is up against a whole bunch of push-back as he stands his moral ground in one direction or another (or, if he’s only looking out for himself, kind of selfishly guarding himself against anyone else’s judgement)
• He’s a genius for duping practically omniscient characters
• Day-to-day he’s either being purely, delightfully evil to children or struggling with his Evil Impulses and silently suffering while being evil to children
• Either way he’s definitely Seen Things and Been Places that most people don’t get to go, even the other wizards who inhabit his fictional world.
  

You can definitely primarily characterize Snape as a Tortured Soul, before (*spit*) That Backstory (*spit*spit*) is revealed.  And he wears a lot of black; and lives in a dungeon; and likes careful, fiddly magic best, quietly and intensely carrying out subtle operations under everybody’s noses.

He’s Byronic.  He’s like 3000% Byronic.  It doesn’t actually matter what the textual description of his appearance is, because this is fandom, and we ignore shit we don’t like all the time (*spits on that chapter one more time*) – and Harry P is one Unreliable Narrator in other regards, amirite?  When you don’t know Snape’s backstory is (*spit*spit*) it doubles how Mysterious and Secretly Badass he could be.  Both on a textual level – He’s The Spy – and on a metatextual level – This Character Is Contentious And Hotly Contested, I Better Double Down On My Theory – he is Mysterious and so, Powerful As Fuck.

There’s also of course, how Alan Rickman Is Hot.

I can’t tell you what’s happened in the last ten years.  But my guess is that people who love that (*spit*) backstory (*spit*spit*) take our second “spy for Dumbledore” theory and just woobie it up to like 13 or so, our poor misunderstood LOVESTRUCK antihero.  And everybody else who doesn’t love it still acknowledges The Chapter (*spit*) exists, and are left having to react to how textually gross and frankly boring that canonical backstory left Severus Snape.

• ( Dating! )
  
  
  
• ( Why the strictly magical education? )

• ( Horcruxes in book 1. )
  
  
  
• ( Unicorn blood and other magic to cheat death. )
  
  
  
• ( Miscellaneous character notes. )
  
  
  
• ( A reminder of why I don't want to see OotP. )