characters who are deeply flawed and insufferable and written in a way that’s so unlikeable they become likeable, I love you. my poor little comedic traumatised meow meow who’s also a piece of shit.
you've mentioned that you are a huge movie buff, so I gotta ask.. if he did, what kind of films do you think snape would watch and enjoy?
Honestly, I think Severus would be really into classic cinema, horror films, and social-realist cinema, so a bit of everything. Here are some films that I can very easily imagine him liking:
The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (Robert Wiene, 1920)
M (M – A City Searches for a Murderer) (Fritz Lang, 1931)
Faust (F. W. Murnau, 1926)
The Seventh Seal (Ingmar Bergman, 1957)
Hiroshima Mon Amour (Alain Resnais, 1959)
Seven Samurai (Akira Kurosawa, 1954)
Johnny Guitar (Nicholas Ray, 1954)
In the Mood for Love (Wong Kar-wai, 2000)
Kwaidan (Masaki Kobayashi, 1964)
Throne of Blood (Akira Kurosawa, 1957)
The Exterminating Angel (Luis Buñuel, 1962)
The Night of the Hunter (Charles Laughton, 1955)
Sabrina (Billy Wilder, 1954)
The Devil's Backbone (Guillermo del Toro, 2001)
Stalker (Andrei Tarkovsky, 1979)
Crimson Peak (Guillermo del Toro, 2015)
Let the Right One In (Tomas Alfredson, 2008)
Barry Lyndon (Stanley Kubrick, 1975)
The Lives of Others (Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, 2006)
Léon: The Professional (Luc Besson, 1994)
This Is England (Shane Meadows, 2006)
The Remains of the Day (James Ivory, 1993)
Rumble Fish (Francis Ford Coppola, 1983)
Once Upon a Time in America (Sergio Leone, 1984)
Made in Britain (Alan Clarke, 1982)
Scum (Alan Clarke, 1979)
City of God (Fernando Meirelles and Kátia Lund, 2002)
The Outsiders (Francis Ford Coppola, 1983)
Mean Streets (Martin Scorsese, 1973)
Taxi Driver (Martin Scorsese, 1976)
La Haine (Mathieu Kassovitz, 1995)
Quadrophenia (Franc Roddam, 1979)
My Name Is Joe (Ken Loach, 1998)
Kes (Ken Loach, 1969)
Sorry We Missed You (Ken Loach, 2019)
Stuart: A Life Backwards (David Attwood, 2007)
Fish Tank (Andrea Arnold, 2009)
Giant (George Stevens, 1954)
Lovers of the Arctic Circle (Julio Medem, 1998)
1900 (Novecento) (Bernardo Bertolucci, 1976)
Anyway, I'll stop there because this is already getting too muchhahahahaha
the longer I sit with obsession the more empathy I start to feel for entity!nikki. this creature that was created solely to love one person with this all-encompassing intensity that needed to be stronger than anything anyone felt in the entire world. entity!nikki whose entire world was just one single focal point; she'd do anything for bear to love her. she didn't know anything when she came into existence, but she was willing to do anything to get this man to fall for her.
it must have been equally terrifying for her as it was for the real nikki to have someone else fight for control over what she perceived as her body. the scene where she's sobbing in the corner, terrified of her dreams is now more sad than terrifying to me. real nikki, who has just been raped by her once best friend hurting so badly that it seeps into entity!nikki's nightmares. entity!nikki who doesn't understand why the thing she wanted so badly is causing her so much pain. why she can't bring herself to lie in bed next to the man who is the center of her world.
and the worst part is bear doesn't even seem to like her. she's trying so so hard; she made a lovely memorial for his dead cat, she waited for him to come home all day without moving an inch, she made sure to be the most doting girlfriend at the party, and he's not pleased by any of it. he seems disturbed and angry and scared and she has no idea what to do to make it better. to make it worse, he keeps asking her to behave like the original nikki but he was the one who wished for her!! she can't be like nikki because nikki was simply not capable of loving bear even a fraction of how much she does!
she can't seem to reconcile it; he wanted her so badly he conjured her into reality and now he doesn't want her anymore. she doesn't know what to do. she tries everything. she obsesses over him, she threatens to hurt herself, she gets rid of that bitch sarah who keeps distracting him and trying to steal him away, and then dresses in her clothes for good measure and he still doesn't want her.
and then finally in a fit of desperation, she makes the wish and for one beautiful moment its all perfect. he's finally looking at her the way she looks at him. and then he's dead and she's lost everything.
her entire existence, from the moment of her conception to her death was painful, and confusing, and so very sad.
i've been trying to understand why the director said that nikki wasn't possessed but your explanation of an entity being created, which is very different than demonic possession, makes complete sense. a life created solely to fufill bears wish, fighting for control over a body she shares with the real nikki. literally learning as she goes and the center of her life constantly meets her with discomfort or anger. reminds me a lot of frankenstein and the creature.
If you do this with my fics, or anyone's fics, please know I HATE you. I hate you more than every troll comment, every "your writing sucks kys" comment, every "update soon" comment. I hate you. Other authors hate you. If you want my fic, you either WAIT for it or you pay me for it. And if you won't do one of those things, you don't deserve my fic or anyone else's.
More spoilery/analyzing thoughts on Clark in Backrooms (2026)
You have been warned!
Brief note: before I saw this movie, I saw a very bad faith review of it. The person basically suggested that the tone of the movie is too hopeless and bleak to possibly enjoy it, which is funny considering they made some very edgy jokes bookending both ends of the review. I’ll spare you those, but I’ll show you what else they wrote.
“1/2 out of 5 stars.
F*** this movie. Everyone dies, life is meaningless, you're a failure and it's your fault. I saved you ten dollars. You're welcome.”
Very lame. Honestly, with this as my first impression, it allowed me to go into the movie with my mind actually turned on, because I didn’t want to have this experience, and I was determined to get more out of it.
With that out of the way…
First, I didn’t quite see the race angle of the criticism until I looked up the movie on Tumblr, probably because I’m not black myself. I personally never made any sort of connection between Clark being somewhat aggressive and self-centered and the fact that he’s black, I don’t think the movie ever wanted us to feel that way either. I just figured the actor they casted happens to be black, and that this character could feasibly be played by anyone. Maybe some of my own ignorance is showing here though.
As far as his actual character, I think he’s fascinating. I don’t feel like we know enough to judge fully whether he is a full-blown abusive husband or if he just has anger management and alcohol issues. Many people have said that the Still Life behind him in the dinner scene is of Barbara, his wife, but I don’t remember well enough what Barbara looks like to confirm or deny that. I think he’s kind of just setting up his ideal life down there, because the Still Lifes aren’t “real people” anymore, so he can make them do whatever he wants.
I’ve seen some people suggesting that Clark is a narcissist. I’m not exactly sure. While I don’t want to vilify a psychological disorder, I could see the evidence for that, to tell the truth. He does not want to take accountability for his actions, the way in which he has hurt people, and he is thriving in a world where nobody can argue against him and he has complete control.
I don’t see Clark as a full-blown villain. I see him as an antagonist, potentially even an anti-hero. I think he was a very insecure and anxious man who was unable to accept the fact that he was insecure and anxious, and when he found a world where he could take complete control, that warped his mind further into his own flaws because it was a place where he didn’t have to take accountability or challenge his viewpoint.
As somebody who’s studying to be a therapist, I was analyzing him like crazy during the therapy session with Mary. He struck me as somebody who wasn’t going to therapy because he genuinely wanted to improve, he was going to therapy to try and prove everybody else wrong about him. Some people have suggested it might’ve been court mandated, I don’t know enough to judge that. I could see that he wasn’t willing to fully emotionally engage, and I thought that was going to be his main problem. I was right.
I absolutely love the imagery and symbolism that we see in the dinner scene.
He’s got these two people in his “house”, perhaps visitors, perhaps intended to be the “children” Barbara wanted. The placeholder for Barbara herself is standing directly behind him, inanimate, simply staring at the floor. She doesn’t even get to sit at the table with him and Mary, because he only wants the essence of her. He quite literally mutilates her just to get a life that is better suited to him down here. I know the entities here are called Still Life… I can’t think of a better term to describe the life that Clark has crafted for himself here. There’s no life here, it’s just preserved specimens under a painted veneer. 
He is quite literally feeding off of the people around him, which could serve as a visual for somebody who is all take and no give. Emotional cannibalism, almost.
The fact that he has Kat’s head in the fridge almost makes me think of someone mounting a deer’s head on a wall. True, she’s initially kept out of sight, but I almost feel like he viewed her and Bobby dying as a means to an end. I mean, he heard the footsteps before he brought them in, and had been exploring for quite some time, he knew there could’ve been danger and he brought them in anyway, because he wanted to prove a point to Mary. That to me suggests selfishness and self absorbed thinking as well.
I also found myself sympathizing with Clark though, and I don’t think it was just because he started out as our protagonist. Again, while he does show qualities that suggest he’s very selfish and inconsiderate of other people around him, he also seems deeply insecure and anxious. Him talking about how the Still Lifes can’t feel pain can suggest two things potentially. The first one could be that he doesn’t have to worry about hurting anybody here, which again, fits with the selfishness. But it also suggests that he’s jealous of them for the fact that they can’t feel pain, which suggests that he feels a lot of it and wishes that he didn’t.
He says, for the first time, he feels like he belongs somewhere. As someone who struggles in social situations quite a lot, I do find myself relating to the idea of getting to live in a world where everything goes the way I hope it will go. Where absolutely nobody is out to get me, I can feel safe, and I don’t have to be afraid. But the fact of the matter is, that’s just not reality, and if I stayed in that mindset, in a world of my own creation, I would never get to challenge my viewpoint that the world is dangerous. So neither does Clark. He doesn’t even want to acknowledge that he feels that way.
…I’m going to stop trauma dumping now. 
I find it interesting that he asks her to tell him that this isn’t his fault. He’s looking for an escape, for a reason to stay in this world he crafted for himself. I think he 100% could have gotten out alive. But I don’t think he wanted to.
I found Mary’s rant to be very cathartic. Clark did strike me as somebody who wasn’t willing to engage fully in therapy. And that’s the problem. I would not say that Clark is 100% of his own problem. I don’t think we know him well enough to fully conclude that with absolute certainty, but at the same time, we can see that he does tend to blame everything but himself for his issues.
Mary came down there wanting to save him, but he didn’t want to be saved. He came to therapy, but he didn’t want to get better. We don’t get to choose what happens to us, just like Clark didn’t choose to discover the Backrooms. But we do choose what we do with it. Instead of moving on from a distorted and broken down past, Clark decided to live in it. To literally settle down and make a home there. He didn’t want to be saved, so he wasn’t. A big part of therapy is acknowledging where you may be contributing to the problem. That doesn’t make you evil, but we all have some degree of control in our lives, and sometimes you need to learn how to use it healthily if it’s been taken from you. Clark used it in all the wrong ways.
Then we get to Pirate Clark. The Pirate embodies all of the worst attributes of Clark. I love the symbolism with the fact that he literally begins to eat Clark alive after Clark says that they don’t have to change. This man completely misses the point.
I think Pirate Clark taking a bite out of his real self is a visual for the idea of someone being completely consumed by their flaws because they refuse to change. His own demons literally ate him alive. If you want to take a more sympathetic route, you could say that not dealing with his issues led to the end of himself.
If I remember correctly, Pirate Clark isn’t actually all that mutated. As far as his body goes, sure, his head is a little bit distorted, and he’s missing a leg, and he’s ginormous, but many of his facial features are much more intact than a lot of Still Lifes that we see. It could be because he’s a recent addition, so he’s not quite as distorted, but at the same time, comparing him with Mary’s Still Life, he’s not as warped.
I think it’s possible the Backrooms also reflects the way in which people recall their own memories. The ending, in my opinion, is meant to show the fact that Mary has been reflecting on her experiences, and while they are forever going to be a part of her, the memories are gradually breaking down over time. Every time you recall a traumatic event, you process it a little bit more, but you also remember it a little bit less as it actually was. It sort of becomes a new memory every time you think about it.
I’ve heard people say that the dog you feed is the one that wins, and I don’t think it’s any coincidence that Pirate Clark is as enormous as he is. I think his mostly overall human anatomy suggests the fact that Clark hasn’t been reflecting on his past. So the bad has remained intact. I think the fact that he bleeds and even seems to maybe feel pain also connects to that.
I don’t really have a good conclusion for this, I think this is all I wanted to say. Maybe I will reblog with more later. If you’ve made it this far, I wanted to say thank you for reading. 
It’s not that I hate it per se, but I don’t think it’s necessary.
I don’t think Snape performs classical masculinity or conforms in any way to heteronormative standards of masculinity. I actually think he’s a character who can be read as quite feminine if you’re approaching him from a gender analysis perspective. So I just don’t see any need to turn him into a femboy. I really don’t.
It’s not even as if he’s a character who embodies this stereotypical, traditional masculinity where you’d think, well, I need to feminise him to subvert that. He doesn’t even fit into that category to begin with. And, honestly, I know this is an unpopular opinion, but femboys as a concept often strike me as a very archaic and harmful gender stereotype. Generally speaking, they just don’t do much for me. If it’s a performative identity that certain people genuinely choose to adopt, then fair enough. That’s a different conversation entirely. But when we’re talking about fictional characters, I think it’s much more interesting — and much more disruptive — for a character who doesn’t adhere to heteronormative standards or hegemonic ideals of masculinity to still remain masculine and still be understood as a masculine figure despite not fitting those expectations.
To me, that’s far more subversive than simply saying, well, let’s turn this man into something built around stereotypes of femininity. I just don’t see it.
Arrest me and sentence me for it if you must, but no, I’m sorry, I don’t like it. And it’s not even specifically about Snape. I feel this way about characters in general. Because if we’re going to talk about dismantling gender and challenging rigid ideas of gender performance, then I think part of that disruption also lies in the possibility of existing as a masculine person, identifying with masculinity, without having to perform the hegemonic version of masculinity we’ve all been taught to recognise.
At the same time, I think it’s important that those non-hegemonic forms of masculinity have a place within the masculine spectrum without automatically being recategorised as feminine. Because masculinity shouldn’t have to resemble dominant, socially sanctioned masculinity in order to be recognised as masculinity. And I think there’s something genuinely radical in allowing male characters to occupy that space without feeling the need to redefine them through femininity in order to legitimise their deviation from the norm.
thoughts on book snape? & (if you read the books ofc) which one do you prefer more?
Guys, this isn’t even a question. My Snape is Book Snape, always. One hundred percent. A million percent. Book Snape is incredible.
As for Movie Snape… this is something I’ve said many times before, and I’ll probably repeat another 25000 times. I have a huge amount of respect for Alan Rickman as an actor, because I genuinely think he was phenomenal. I’ve seen him in loads of things — I’m a massive film buff — and I think he was wonderful. But his Snape, to me, feels like a man who walked out of a Brontë novel, whereas Book Snape feels like someone straight out of an Irvine Welsh novel. And I will take the Snape who reminds me of Irvine Welsh a thousand times over. It’s not even a debate.
I have absolutely no attachment to Movie Snape. Whenever I talk about Snape, write about him, or come up with headcanons about him, I’m never thinking about the version from the films. I’m thinking about Book Snape, because he’s magnificent. He’s a working-class man, raised in a shitty neighbourhood, who spends years trying to become part of a reality that fundamentally doesn’t belong to him: the ultra-elitist, aristocratic environment embodied by Slytherin House. But at the same time, traces of that working-class upbringing are still deeply ingrained in him, and he can’t help it. It comes out. Whenever something triggers him, it comes out. When Severus gets triggered, you see that kid from a rough, working-class neighbourhood emerge again. Because that’s where he comes from. He grew up in an industrial town in the 1960s, and even within that industrial town — which in itself is significant — he came from one of its worst areas.
He’s someone who is perpetually socially displaced. He’s constantly trying to belong to a sphere that isn’t truly his. At the same time, he has this fascinating duality: he was raised entirely within the Muggle world, essentially as if he were a Muggle himself, and yet he’s also a wizard. His upbringing was completely Muggle, and that’s not something you can simply erase. It’s wonderful.
I mean, this is a man who referees a Quidditch match and, when things aren’t going the way he wants, starts spitting on the ground. Is there anything more stereotypically working-class-bloke-from-a-rough-neighbourhood than that? It’s basically: I can’t swear because I’m a teacher, so I’ll just spit on the grass instead. It’s glorious.
Rickman’s Snape is sophisticated. Book Snape is not sophisticated at all. He’s someone with massive triggers, who behaves like a brat, who’s incredibly immature at times, and while you can understand why because of the trauma, that doesn’t change the fact that he often acts like a child. He stoops to the level of the students he’s teaching, despite being twenty years older than them. He’s marvellous. He’s like an angry, feral cat.
So yes: Book Snape. Always. I honestly don’t think there should ever be any doubt about that. And he has a sense of humour! Movie Snape comes across as this untouchable figure who’s somehow above it all. Book Snape is an absolute bastard, but he has this awful sense of humour that’s genuinely fantastic. His humour is incredibly dark, deeply ironic, and dripping with sarcasm. Honestly, he’s wonderful.
what i loved about Obsession is that I went in knowing basically nothing, other than having watched a trailer, and it framed the movie as "poor guy too shy to admit his feelings makes a wish that turns the girl he loves into a monster" and as the movie went on i kept feeling more and more uncomfortable with his reactions but, naturally thinking i was supposed to be sympathetic to him, i was trying to rationalise his reactions. thinking that maybe he's in denial about what has happened and that's why he keeps pretending everything is fine. that maybe he's too scared to act out in case the monster inside nikki freaks out and tries to kill him. maybe he doesn't tell anyone because he knows noone will believe him.
and then the real nikki speaks to him. and she begs him to kill her. she is so scared. don't wake her up please dont wake her up just kill me. and bear gets angry. he doesn't even apologise. he doesn't care about nikki's true feelings. he WANTS her to be obsessed with him, he just doesn't want her to do it in such an ugly and inconvenient way. he lashes out at her. "What would be so bad? What's so bad about being with me?".
it has never been about her. if it was, bear wouldn't have been satisfied about living with a girl who's only resemblance to nikki was her body. he turned her life into a living hell. in fact, he turned TWO girl's lives into a living hell. because the entity was miserable too. she was created exclusively to love a person who would never love her back. who never cared about her.
and he never once considers how it affected nikki. he gets scared of the entity acting weird and creepy but the moment the real nikki begs him for a shred of sympathy, for just a bit of mercy. he doesn't care. he only cares about the fact she won't reciprocate his feelings. he only cares about how she can satisfy him.
it was the turning point of the movie that made me realise that there was never any justifying his actions. it re-contextualises everything. he was content with nikki's suffering as long as it brought him pleasure. as long as it soothed his ego. as long as it was convenient. and for as much as he talked about being in love with her, all he cared about was her body. the entity was an entirely different girl, all she had was nikki's face and body. if he ever truly loved nikki like he claimed, he would have been deeply disturbed by the personality change. but he never was. he was only ever disturbed by the creepy things specifically. but the palatable changes? the way she talks, the way she expresses herself, what she does in her free time, how she dresses? all of that was gone. different. a whole new person. yet he didn't give a single fuck.
up until that point in the movie, i thought that maybe he was acting weird because this was an extremely abnormal situation that he didn't know how to get out of. that he was scared. that maybe there's an explanation there. but no, there isnt. the only explanation is that bear was the real monster all along.
am I like the only one who thinks Snape is so obvi a fucking sub like no I don't want him to pin me over a desk or pull my hair while I suck him off or maybe I just like submissive men
Clark saying the creatures don't feel anything and then later in the same scene the woman anomaly is seen attempting to run away from the pirate, seemingly in fear. Something something devaluation of life seen as different than him.
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