I’m just thinking about how much fanon and fan fiction can change people’s perspectives of actual canon.
As an example, a while ago, I was writing a fic with a sister, and wanted to check and see exactly what Lupin and Sirius said to Harry when he asked them about the memory he saw in the pensieve. It had been a few years since I’d read Order of the Phoenix, and I’d somehow just gotten convinced that Lupin had been very regretful of what his friends had done to Snape, blamed himself for letting it happen, and didn’t try to excuse it or victim blame Snape. And then I actually read it over again, and… it’s not that way. Lupin excuses it. Lupin doesn’t express more than casual, absent regret, and minimizes the entire event, acting like it was just a joke that went too far.
I read what he said and I was actually shocked. I had a completely different idea of Lupin than the one actually presented in canon. My version of Lupin was sincerely sorry for what had happened and took full blame, and was very aware of how horrible his friends had been. And the actual, canon Lupin thought of what had happened as James and Sirius - who were the height of cool - just getting a little bit carried away, that’s all. He didn’t say anything when Sirius made the entire event out to be Snape’s fault and went on about Snape being jealous of James and how he was involved in the dark arts, which James hated (when James in the memory made it clear he was tormenting Snape only because he existed and not because of any affiliation with the dark arts.) Lupin even made it seem like it was fine that James continued to torment Snape up to his seventh year and kept that fact from Lily, because Snape ‘never lost an opportunity’ to curse the boy who tormented him for years and likely stripped him naked in front of a crowd.
I had spent so long writing my own versions of things and consuming fan fiction, that I had literally twisted the story in my mind without even realizing it wasn’t canon. I try to consult the actual text before I defend anything now. But I don’t say anything when people hate Lupin, because I like the twisted, headcanon version I invented that deeply regrets what happened, but I understand that some people didn’t reinvent the character in their head and only went by canon and there’s a lot of things to dislike in canon, or some people just reinvented the character in a different way. And I don’t say anything when people hate Snape, because there’s a lot to dislike in canon, for him, and not everyone reinvented him in their heads like I had, or maybe reinvented him a different way.
But it’s so weird when I see people insisting that liking Snape is just wrong, when many of the reasons they give for hating him are twisted, fanon versions that are just highly popular, who then get angry when people tell them that it isn’t canon. Or sometimes they say that liking Snape is wrong for this or that reason, and then get mad when people tell them that what Snape did is comparable to things the marauders did. There’s not canon evidence that Snape was an incel, but there is canon evidence that James tried to coerce Lily to date him even after she made it clear that she wasn’t interested. Snape mistreated Neville (although you could argue that he did that under his role as a spy, there are lots of people who still can’t get past that or viewed that differently and that’s understandable,) and Lupin didn’t take his wolfsbane and almost murdered three children due to it, and let someone he thought was a serial murderer wander around Hogwarts at will, because he didn’t want to admit his own flaws. Snape shook Harry hard and threw a jar at his head, and Lupin slammed him into the kitchen wall in Deathly Hallows, making Harry feel like he’d been punched. Snape had once been a willing Death Eater who turned spy, but it can’t be denied that he once wanted that position and held those views. Despite canon suggesting he tried to get out of his Death Eater duties, and canon suggesting he changed as a person, Snape having been a Death Eater is understandably very hard for people to get past. But many Snape haters also love Sirius, who died an adult slave owner, who mistreated Kreacher, or many of them love Regulus, who also willingly became a Death Eater and supported those ideals.
Honestly, I’m not trying to say that people can’t like the Marauders and hate Snape, that’s perfectly valid. But it’s just… bizarre, how people will actively go out of their way to ignore the canon things the Marauders have done and will go by only their twisted versions of them, and then pretend it’s canon. And then those same people get angry at Snape fans even when they actively acknowledge the bad things Snape did in canon. They make all these posts about how horrible people are for liking Snape, and get angry when they make posts describing why they hate Snape and they’re told that some of the things they said aren’t canon, they put it in the Snape tags or even the pro Snape tags because ‘Snape fans need to hear it,’ and get mad when they’re asked to use tags people can filter. I get how hard it can be to remember exactly how the books went years later, I get being confused because the idea of the character you have in your head is different than the actual canon character, and I literally thought Lupin was better than he was and would actually get annoyed when people acted like he was a bad person, I can get how weird it can be. And there’s nothing wrong with reading Snape in all these ways, ‘incel, never changed, only did good things for selfish reasons, outside of the norm in his treatment of the students,’ people can feel free to headcanon that. But it just isn’t canon. And I just really, really want the fandom at large to please stop acting like people shouldn’t be allowed to like Snape, when most of the fandom is operating with fanon ideas at this point, and we’re all picking and choosing and going by our own interpretation.
If someone writes a fan fic where Remus is a totally mature and not at all petty person who would never endanger or hurt a teenager, that’s great for them, canon is dead, they’re very valid. If they write a fan fic where Sirius and James were anti-House Elf slavery, were feminist icons, were only Fred and George level pranksters, and only hated Snape for very good reasons, that’s great for them, canon is dead, they’re very valid. If someone writes a fan fic where Snape was heavily coerced into joining the Death Eaters, deeply regretted the way he’d treated Lily, and changed as a person… Eh, that doesn’t go against canon, actually. Let me try again. If someone writes a fan fic where Snape never mistreated his students, acted as a parental figure, and loved Dumbledore, that’s great for them, canon is dead, they’re very valid.
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