Married to Severus Snape on the Astral Plane: The Story of the Religion of Snapewives

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Title:
Creator:	iwasonceafangirl
Date(s):	2020
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Fandom:	Harry Potter
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External Links:	Married to Severus Snape on the Astral Plane: The Story of the Religion of Snapewives; archive link
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Married to Severus Snape on the Astral Plane: The Story of the Religion of Snapewives is a 2020 essay by iwasonceafangirl, posted to Reddit.

Some Topics Discussed

• Snapewives
• Harry Potter
• erotica and fanfiction: "Some of the Snapewives wrote about having sex with Snape’s spirit in detail, then treated their written erotica as religious material because Snape inspired them to write it. Other wives said that Snape “likes his privacy” and publishing porn of him is disrespectful and fundamentally against the theology of Snapeism. Nearly every wife wrote extensive amounts of fanfiction, but just how explicit that fan fiction could get was constantly up for debate."
• MsScribe

From the Essay

The Snape Fandom

Before I delve into the Snapeism religion and its many followers, I should first talk about Severus Snape the character. If you’ve ever set foot in the Harry Potter fandom, you already know that Snape is notoriously controversial. The prevailing opinion nowadays seems to be “he wasn’t really evil, but he was still kind of an asshole,” but things weren’t that simple back in the early 2000s. The last Harry Potter book had just come out, lots of beloved characters—including Snape himself—had just met their ends, and the fandom was going absolutely wild, writing fix-it fanfiction and happy alternate universes a mile a minute. Some fans loved how Rowling ended the series, some hated everything about the last book, and people were fighting about just about everything. Ships, characters, plot threads—you name it, and you could probably track down someone who hated it. Even then, though, Snape had a precious, special place in the fandom as that one character you really don’t want to bring up around people you aren’t friends with, lest the whole conversation devolve into meaningless bickering about whether or not he’s a good person.

That being said, despite all the controversy, some people really latched on to Severus Snape, probably because they thought he was “misunderstood.” Characters with ambiguous allegiances, tragic backstories, unrequited romances, and dark aesthetics are very, very beloved in fandom, regardless of whether they’re traditionally desirable.

[much about Marvel, Bucky Barnes... snipped]

It should come as no surprise, then, that early Harry Potter fangirls latched onto Snape the way modern MCU fangirls latch on to Bucky. Snape also fits the whole checklist: he may or may not have been a good guy, he was bullied as a child, his crush fell in love with and married his bully before dying very young, and he looks and dresses like the undead. Sure, he’s repeatedly described as greasy and gross, but the Harry Potter books were just that—books. It’s not hard to say, well, Harry thinks of him as disgusting, but Harry is a straight male child, and it’s possible that an adult would see him differently. And, all that aside, some people liked his general unwashedness and the fact that his hair was constantly described as needing a good shampooing. To each their own, I guess (or, more accurately YKINMK.)

Anyway, Snape fan groups sprung up with relative ease, and fan fiction and art of him quickly started to proliferate. Most of these fan groups were what you’d expect—lots of petty arguments over stolen OCs and traced art and copying ideas—but they didn’t get any worse than any other fan group to ever exist. If you went into a Ronmione forum or a Drarry forum, you’d see the same type of toxicity. It wasn’t good, but it wasn’t distinctly horrible, either.

But there are always people who take fandom too far, and it was bound to happen with the Snape fangirls. The Harry Potter fandom is absolutely massive, and pure statistics meant that at least some of its fans were the type to become obsessively dedicated to a particular person or concept. Crazy stans just sort of happen once you reach a certain amount of fans. It happened to Bucky, it happened to Frollo, and, naturally, it happened to Snape, in the form of the Snapewives.

Snape as a Religion, or Snapeism:

Well, calling them Snapewives is probably not incredibly accurate, because they referred to themselves as Snapeists—that is to say, members of the church of Snapeism. If you’re wondering if this is just a joke thing, like how Star Wars shippers in the ‘80s said they were members of the Church of Ford or Cathedral of Luke, you are sadly incorrect. The religion of Snapeism had vows, sacraments, prayers, worshippers, and theology, and it apparently had enough of an impact to warrant peer-reviewed scholarly articles being written about its inception (you think I’m kidding? Search “snapeism” in MDPI’s Religions journal.) People took it completely seriously. You know the incredibly overzealous Christians that share Chick Tracts with one another and think Halloween is Satanic? Replace Chick Tracts with fan fiction, and you basically have Snapeists.

To an extent, Snapeism actually mirrored elements of Christianity. There is a Christian belief that the Bible is somewhat flawed—its authors were inspired by God, but God did not literally write it, and so it is marred by human flaws, which is why there are passages that just talk about irrelevant things that modern Christians don’t believe. The Snapewives had the same philosophy about the Harry Potter books. They were written by J.K. Rowling, who was inspired by the spirit of Severus Snape just as the authors of the Bible were inspired by the Christian God. This gave the Snapewives a justification to disregard the parts of canon they didn’t like or agree with, because, after all, J.K. Rowling is not Snape. She was merely channelling his spirit.

There are other aspects of Snapeism that kind of fall in line with parts of Abrahamic religions. There were certain Snapeists that had a “special connection” to Snape, who were specially chosen by him to lead the others. Snape was as omniscient and immortal as the Christian god, and just as real. Snape is called Master like how God is called Lord. And, finally, and most importantly, Snape is the One True God. You cannot be a Christian and a Snapeist any more than you can be a Catholic and a Protestant at the same time. Snape is all and Snape is everything, and Snape can control your destiny.

Is Snape Really Perfect?

After a good few years of Snapeism, one of the Snapewives apparently got fed up with her astral plane husband, and posted a list of his perceived faults on her LiveJournal. This, predictably, caused just as much ire as a Christian criticizing God would. Lady Darkness, the same person who wrote the marriage vows above, responded to the post by declaring her love and dedication to Snape once more:

I am so sorry these fans even dare to speak your name..obviously this one is not loyal or even trying to understand what makes you you… I feel ashamed some speak like this about you, as I feel you deserve better.. Please note there are fans that do accept you as you are, and not all find more negative sides to you than positive ones.. I felt tempted to react, but as I don't want to start another war, and as you would probably tell me to put my energy in things that do matter, I decided to place my reaction to this insanity here. I feel disgusted by this, as you probably would too.. Severus, all I can say is that to me, all of this rubbish is just what it looked like: rubbish and lies. To me, you are perfect the way you are. The 'flaws' mentioned are not flaws as such, but merely fantasy made up by the writer, and for the other part just characteristics..the ones some claim to like, but in fact don't have a clue as to understanding why you are as you are.. I do..as you know I share many of your 'flaws', which kept us alive and with our noses up all of these harsh years. Be well Severus, and know I will always be right beside you, loving and loyal..no matter what happens..

Many other Snapeists followed suit, and this resulted in a loud and tearful fan war, which eventually resulted in the Snape Critic packing up and leaving her astral plane husband, apologizing for daring to criticize him and claiming she’d realized she was no longer deserving of his eternal love. Though many Snapeists continued to worship and adore Severus Snape, this fallout between two of the most well-known Snapewives in the community resulted in a lot of infighting that pitted people against one another, which made them reluctant to continue interacting.

The End of an Era:

After the fan war, community participation slowly dwindled. Snapeism was still going strong, though—just not as strong as it used to be. The real nail in the coffin didn’t come until later, when something terrible happened: one of the wives fell in love with someone else.

If you’re wondering if one of the Snapewives realized that this was all insane and found herself an actual, physical significant other, well… I respect your optimism. Unfortunately, that’s incorrect. By “fell in love with someone else,” I mean “stopped worshipping Snape so she could worship Jethro Gibbs from NCIS instead.” After all, this is a religion we’re talking about. You can’t be a Catholic and a Protestant at the same time, and you can’t worship Snape and Gibbs at the same time.

With all of the big-name fans gone or fighting with each other, Snapeism kind of fell apart. To Snapeists, it was kind of like the Pope suddenly converting to another faith. The Jethro Gibbs incident was the nail in the coffin for the religion, and with all the important leaders gone, the others just kind of stopped caring. There may be one or two wayward Snapeists out there in the labyrinths of LiveJournal, but they certainly don’t have half as much of an impact now as they did back then. The church of Snapeism is, for all intents and purposes, gone. Bad photoshops of Snape with his astral-plane lovers are still scattered across the Internet, laying amidst prayers and fanfiction and strange combinations of them both, but the church itself has faded into obscurity like some pagan religion of old.

The death of Snapeism has been attributed to numerous things. Some Snapeists blame J.K. Rowling for handling Snape’s spirit so poorly and not writing the truth. Still others say that it was all Snape’s plan—he is omniscient, after all. Snape created the world, and he can end it, too. But most Snapewives just vanished quietly into the background without saying anything, deleting LiveJournal pages and frenzied fanfic as they left and leaving only archive.org pages in their wake. Maybe some realized that the whole thing was insane and culty in the absence of big-name fans to guide them. Maybe people started seeing the consequences of using one’s real name and photos on an online group dedicated to sharing porn of a Harry Potter character. Or maybe, like the woman who had criticized Snape, they were experiencing astral-plane marital problems and decided to get an astral-plane divorce. Who knows? Only one thing is for certain: Snapeism is dead, and Harry Potter fans everywhere are breathing sighs of relief.

Fan Comments

God. I miss Fandom Wank SO MUCH. This post took me right back and I love it.

I feel like the Oxford Dictionary is unworthy of any word that could possibly be invented to accurately describe what the fuck I just read.

I mean, I'm a huge HP fan but........just......WHY?

This is absolutely wild. The human mind is one hell of a thing.

Snape is a redeemable character, jk just did a shit job

Right?

He thinks he’s the nice guy. But he’s just the creepy dude who can’t let the girl from his childhood be a woman who married someone else. And her kid is this person he sees as a shitty copy of her husband that is technically related to her.

I cried for Snape when I read the book, mostly because I cry at everything (see: every time I watch Home Alone, no joke), but he was never my favorite character.

I think I liked him well enough because of who played him in the movies rather than who he was in the books.

Nah hes just a dick

As a religious studies scholar who wrote her thesis about Christian reactions to the Harry Potter series - w o w.

I might have to look into this. Fascinating! Also, OP, love your style of writing!

Theology student dropping a quick side note related to your work.

It amuses me greatly that, in the end, Harry Potter has a more accurate portrayal of substitutionary atonement than Narnia.

Thank you for that tl;dr at the top. That's a hell of a way to start a thread.

This is an absolutely amazing write-up/peek into a literal cult that had me hooked from beginning to end. It literally reads like an award winning documentary, no sarcasm, I lost my shit at so many points and now I'm completely emotionally spent at the ending. I love it.

I feel like someone in the story should be awarded an Oscar, I just don't know who, for all the scenes you just made me witness. It at least deserves a fully-fledged BBC documentary with lots of riveting camera cuts and possibly an end note at the end by J.K Rowling herself who then promises to start a charity drive or organization dedicated to the well-being of Snapeists and all their affected family members.

That was seriously amazing, thank you.

Wait...are you telling me that Snape is single now?!

Has to be a joke. Juat a big, complicated fan fiction roleplay where people were playing snapewives

Welp. That's enough internet for me!

May Snape bless you for writing this.