Like I do not think JKR is a great and subtle writer but the reason people liked Snape is that of all the major adult characters he's the most complex, he's the closest to being actually 3D His whole thing is failure, self-loathing, contradictory impulses, internal division
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The "Snapewives" thing ignores ALL OF THAT They had this free-floating image of "dark, capricious, dangerous masculinity" in their head and they just projected this character from a popular book onto him even though it sounds NOTHING LIKE HIM
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(If I really wanted to engage my old Potter fandom analysis muscles I'd say the self assured cocky bad boy they're talking about is actually Sirius Black and all the things they like about "Snape" are things the canon Snape loathed about Sirius and James But whatever)
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It's just funny how often this happens Like this guy I knew in college had this weird thing where he thought of Miles Vorkosigan from Lois McMaster Bujold's Vorkosigan Saga was his "spiritual guide" and wrote these lengthy posts on LJ giving himself advice in "Miles'" voice
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And I don't want to be too harsh on this guy who was, after all, only a kid and was going through some shit But those posts were AWFUL to slog through And the voice of the "Miles" character was unbearable It actually put me off reading the books for a long time
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Which is a shame, because obviously the books are nothing at all like those posts Not just that Bujold was, obviously, a better writer But that it felt like he totally missed the point of the character - Miles in the books was the OPPOSITE of the voice of those posts
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Miles in the books is indeed an immensely appealing character and I can see why you'd latch into him This disarming vulnerability and self-deprecation mixed with a harsh, remorseless sense of pragmatism, an uncompromising conscience demanding he do what must be done
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But the "Miles" in this guy's LJ post was the opposite of that, it was the guy Miles spends the story struggling NOT to be Endless meandering rumination and analysis, elaborately parsing other people's motivations, this constant ongoing litigation of who was guilty or innocent
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It's pretty obvious how this works Nerdy kid going through a lot latches onto Miles because he's a smart guy and a "master strategist" born with a disability that makes the world despise him Sees him as a guide because of his ability to overcome self-pity and self-doubt
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Ignores Miles' many flaws in this lifelong struggle, and then projects his own personality onto Miles, hoping that putting his thoughts into the voice of the character will give him abilities Miles does that he doesn't And of course it doesn't work, "Miles" is just him
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I figure this is basically how religion works You ask "What would Jesus do?" but obviously you're not Jesus, and you're not even as clever or as thoughtful a person as the people who wrote the Gospels So you just come up with some bullshit justification for what you'd do anyway
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When I say that when most people who say they've talked to God are obviously talking to themselves I don't just mean I disagree with their God's values, I mean that their God sounds like an idiot Their God is a terrible hack writer prone to trite clichés and spaghetti logic
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You'd think if God were real and were just as much of a homophobic bigot as you were he'd at least be a *smarter* homophobic bigot than you are You'd think Jesus, speaking through you, would show some of that cunning wit and evocative storytelling the guy from the Bible had
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I remember this famous case that made it into David Foster Wallace's essay about the deleterious effects of TV on our society, "E Unibus Pluram", about Larry Linville, who played Major Frank Burns on M*A*S*H, and how he had a stalker who almost killed him
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This guy was clearly mentally ill and sent Linville reams of correspondence accusing him of essentially being the Devil Addressing him as though he were his villainous character Frank Burns, accusing him of spying on this guy and conspiring to destroy his life
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And not just his own life but of plunging the US into the Vietnam War and keeping it there, of causing the stagflation in the 70s, the gang violence in the streets, all the good stuff from that rant in Network
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And it's just like This has nothing to do with M*A*S*H If you actually watch the show, this is not what the character Frank Burns is like He is not a satanic mastermind, he's a bumbling asshole who never gets anything he wants and is terrified of responsibility or power
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(Along with the hints that underneath it all he's a big ol softy) I mean it's a sitcom for fuck's sake Frank Burns getting us into Vietnam? He wanted *nothing more* but to get out of that shithole Army camp to his cushy civilian life!
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Hell, on the show, HE was the one constantly paranoid OTHER PEOPLE were controlling, manipulating or undermining him The idea of him as a puppetmaster is all fucked up and backwards
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And okay, yes, obviously This poor bastard who tried to kill Larry Linville was clearly crazy, and people who are in a delusional or dissociative state aren't inclined to do close reading of the text of a television show But of course DFW had to go and make it a deep thing
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I mean it is interesting isn't it This guy was obviously obsessed with M*A*S*H, arguably more than ANYONE has EVER been obsessed with M*A*S*H - he was going to KILL SOMEONE over M*A*S*H And yet his memory of the show was less accurate than almost anyone else's
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I know more about the actual character Frank Burns than this guy did and I only kind of liked the show, I certainly wasn't watching it over and over again all day while stalking one of the actors and making plans to drive to his house in Ojai with a gun
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DFW made it into this thing about how people who watch TV the most aren't even really watching TV, that the real addicts are just letting TV blur seamlessly with their own thoughts Old TV shows made to be watched while doing laundry are good for that, they just kind of seep in
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Obviously what was going on was this guy had an ongoing problem with persecutory delusions, a free-floating Satan figure in his head, just like the "Snapewives" had this free-floating image of an ideal bad boy husband
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And the character of Frank Burns became an anchor point for the delusion Not because the writers of M*A*S*H were on this guy's wavelength at all, not because the character is actually anything like the Devil in his head But Burns was just there, he was convenient
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He does a lot of "plotting" and "scheming" in the show and if your mind is fixated on the idea of someone plotting and scheming against you, well that's all it takes That and M*A*S*H just being on TV all the time in the 80s and 90s in long syndicated blocks
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Before you know it you're in your car driving to California with the intent to murder Larry Linville over a decade after his retirement in the vain belief it will solve all the problems in the world Or you're making your husband be astrally possessed by Snape or whatever
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It's just funny and depressing, how powerfully our minds bend and distort things to turn them into whatever we need them to be Like I'm absolutely certain this is how religion works and if there ever was a real Jesus he'd be unrecognizable to the one most Christians know
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How we do this to *real people*, how micro-celebrities beset by parasocial relationships talk about the surreal experience of people acting like they know them, having had hundreds of imaginary conversations in their head with someone who sounds nothing like them
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This is ultimately what Freudian psychology is about, telling you the reason your relationships end up dysfunctional and falling apart is you're not really talking to the person in front of you but someone else who hurt you long ago
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