#irvine welsh

[butchdeanjohn]

dennis cooper vs. irvine welsh. dazed magazine, 2014

[rottingbabelola]

Nobody is into trainspotting nowdays... I'm going to make fanart for myself then huh....

[chippedcupwrites]

Margaret Atwood || Irvine Welsh

[corpyburd]

Choose Scotland🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

[inthemoodforblastt]

Idk if u answer hp related questions, but what books do you think Snape would read? (Specifically adult Snape)

Ive seen a lot of ppl hc that he'd read books like Lolita, Bell Jar, American Psycho, and so on

Of course I answer! I mean, what I really want with this blog is for it to be multifandom and not centered on just one topic, while also getting rid of all the noise from the other blog, which is basically anons being a pain in the ass. But obviously you can ask me questions like this freely. Actually I appreciate it, because lately I wasn’t getting questions on the other blog, just endless opinion messages about the Marauders fandom.

So, about Severus, I don’t see him reading Sylvia Plath, because Severus is a guy born in 1960 in a deeply industrial area with no money. And Sylvia Plath is very much for the girls who hate men and want to kill themselves, and I understand projecting onto a character and that’s lovely, but I insist: Severus is a MAN born in the 60s xdd. American Psycho doesn’t fit him either, that’s much more of a Sirius book. Actually I think Sirius would jerk off to that book and then to the movie, because he’s exactly the type to be obsessed with cool macho-men fiction. He’d be a Fight Club fan for sure.

But no, no, Severus for me goes in another direction. I think that in his early years he’d be interested in the classics because he has that drive to improve himself, to rise above his status. So I see him as a kid reading Dickens, Shelley, trying out Byron, Wilde, and actually I see him deeply enjoying Oscar Wilde during his early adolescence. I also very much see him reading Kafka (The Metamorphosis or Letters to Milena are extremely him) and being absolutely enchanted, and later discovering Dostoyevsky (his canonically literary teenage moment, honestly) and losing his mind over it. I also really see him reading stuff like The Count of Monte Cristo (fits him so much omg), Les Misérables, The Hunchback of Notre-Dame, The Man Who Laughs (this one fits him SO well too) ugh, Victor Hugo in general is peak Severus.

And well, after reading classics, as he grows and refines himself, I think he’d adore Hesse, Severus is EXACTLY the type to feel like the most special guy in the universe at 17 reading Steppenwolf, fight me lmao. Along those lines, Sartre’s Nausea too (although I see that more around his Hogwarts years in 1991/92), and The Stranger or The Fall by Camus completely fit him. In general, Camus is extremely on-brand for him. Yukio Mishima also fits him a lot, and even for lighter moments, Murakami, because he writes so much about nostalgia and youth mistakes, so that too.

And honestly, on a more personal level, that working-class part of him, because Severus Snape is a guy raised in a slum with no money for clothes in an industrial 1960s city, and who has a muggle side, but not just any muggle side —a working-class pub-factory-grimy-neighborhood kind — I think he’d love Irvine Welsh’s novels (Trainspotting), John Fante (especially Wait Until Spring, Bandini and Ask the Dust), Raymond Carver; and if we’re talking poetry, I’m sorry, but outside of classical poetry, if Severus Snape enjoys contemporary poetry, it is NOT Sylvia Plath, he is undeniably a Charles Bukowski guy.

[shiftingmuse]

Trainspotting - Francis Begbie

[film-favourites]

Trainspotting (1996)

[bowlinggwithmargo]

Bruce Roberston (Filth by Irvine Welsh - 1998) x Ogata Hyakunosuke (Golden Kamuy)

Some quick thoughts under the cut

This is really only a shred of the similarities between Bruce and Ogata, but I decided to narrow my focus for space and Tumblr’s image limit. But here are a few more thoughts from the top of my head:

In Filth, Bruce Robertson is vying for a promotion to detective inspector in the Scottish police force, hoping that once he secures his position, his wife will see the “error of her ways” and return to him with their daughter. Ogata aims for the position of first lieutenant to prove his mother’s assertion that he must become a fine officer like his father to be deemed just as good as those with status/wealth. At the same time, obtaining this position would make her proud/happy, thus he would also gain his mother’s love. To accomplish this, both men sow seeds of doubt amongst those who stand in the way of their goal. Bruce pits the other candidates for the promotion against each other, just like how Ogata picks off Tsurumi’s inner circle until he is the only one left.

Both men are severely disillusioned with the systems (the police/the military) they are part of and abuse the authority granted to them by those systems. They take great pleasure in breaking down and mentally destroying others as a way to reaffirm their sense of moral nihilism.

Ian Robertson isn’t actually Bruce’s father. Bruce’s biological father was a mentally ill serial rapist who targeted his mother right before she was set to marry Ian. Due to his mother and the village’s catholic faith, she kept the child (Bruce), but he was uniquely shunned/bullied by everyone in his village, including his stepfather, for being a product of rape. (That’s also why Ian tries to keep Bruce away from Stevie and Bruce’s half-siblings because he views Bruce as an inherently corrupting force, spreading his filth to his other children.) It’s not that dissimilar from Ogata being bullied by his supposed “comrades” in the military because his mother was a geisha (sex worker). Now I wouldn't say Tome was anywhere near as abusive as Ian was, but they do share some similarities regarding food and neglect that impacted Bruce and Ogata in the same way.

After killing their younger brothers, Bruce and Ogata both project Stevie and Yuusaku onto other people. In Bruce’s case, Clifford Blades’ morality, status, and privilege subconsciously remind him of Stevie in the same way Asirpa’s moral purity reminds Ogata of Yuusaku. Both seek to impose their own lack of morality on the people they project onto, as Bruce and Ogata goad Clifford and Asirpa into being their worst selves/giving into immorality.

Asirpa’s persistence in finding the good within Ogata is similar to Bruce’s dynamic with a woman named Mary. Bruce tried to save her husband, but ultimately failed. Mary never blames him and instead views him as an upright “good” cop. It’s the discrepancy between how horrible Bruce is as a person and who he is in Mary’s eyes that causes him to have a severe mental breakdown, just as it did for Ogata due to Asirpa’s care for him. It’s because Mary sees the good in him that she forces him to confront his guilt/pain over killing Stevie, just like Asirpa does with Ogata.

The text within the bulging line is actually dialogue from a tape worm in Bruce’s stomach, which he has unknowingly anthropomorphized and serves as his conscience. As the book progresses, it takes up entire pages, pushing Bruce’s internal dialogue to the background, which marks a fascinating parallel to Ogata’s conferring with multiple versions of himself right before he dies/hallucinating Yuusaku whenever he feels guilt.

I would have added screencaps from the 2013 adaptation of Filth, but alas, I ran out of space. But I do want to note that Bruce is a horrible, irredeemable person in the book who commits every crime imaginable, alongside being a horrific racist, so like... don’t feel bad for him lol (and I wouldn't recommend reading the book or watching the movie unless you can stand like horrific behavior/aren't grossed out easily). He is marginally a better person in the movie, but not by much.

I could go on, but I’ll likely save that for an essay or something, who knows. Toodles!~