I'm a Snape-aholic stay-at-home mother of six who has been writing fanfic in my head for decades but only started writing it down this century. In general, my stories are an N/S3 zone, ie, no slash, no swearing, no sex, but there is an occasional kiss and "Dreams" glances obliquely at the marriage bed. I do explore parental-guidance issues like self-harm, guilt and shame, and occasionally find it necessary to lightly touch on violence.
I've noticed that my favourite fandom characters, such as Snape and Percy and Neville, are all under-appreciated and male. Perhaps they symbolise my autistic sons, and society's tendency to dismiss disabled people as being worth less than "normal" people.
What draws adults like myself to Snape is not "bad boy appeal" (I find the very suggestion ludicrous, frankly), but hurt/comfort or identification; we recognised early on that Snape was a profoundly unhappy man, trapped by duty and obligation into a dead-end job/life. "The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation" (Henry David Thoreau) - only for Snape, despair is a more accurate word.
As I wrote back in 2004 in "Everything", ch 5: "Miserable. Yes, that was it, he was miserable. Under that cold, grim mask, he’d probably been grieving almost since before she was born, grieving in silence because whom could a spy confide in? ... Ron wasn’t the only person who wouldn’t forgive him. She was sure he’d never forgiven himself."
The books show him almost entirely through the eyes of Gryffindor students, and even the authorial voice is a Harry-echo - to the detriment of the series, in my opinion. To redress the balance, I tend to give a Snape-eyed view of events and characters. (This leads some readers to assume I'm fully in agreement with him, when all I'm really doing is presenting the opposing argument.) I've extended this to include SSHG romance and mentor-fics because they play well off each other and give me an opportunity to explore unresolved issues from canon or life.
I will not be changing any previous stories to conform to DH. It has now been confirmed which side Snape was on and that some generally-loved characters were indeed grubby-grey, as I believed. Nevertheless, I found the final book a profound disappointment on almost every level - even worse than my rather low expectations - and the author's apparent vision and morality abhorrent. (There is a coherent under-story that tells a better tale, but her interview comments show little awareness of its existence.) I still intend to finish my WIPs, but updates will be irregular and I don't promise to start any new stories.
I'd like to acknowledge some particular influences: Dzeytoun, ReeratheRed and Whitehound, whose fics have strongly coloured some of my Snape-views, Lady Claudia's site, whysnape, for extracting and analysing all the Snape sections part in JK's books, Harry Potter Lexicon, for their vast repository of information, Little Tigger, for persuading me to post, and Bellegeste and Cecelle, my previewers, whose searching questions and criticisms greatly improve the finished product.
A note to flamers: Piggybacking on someone else's reputation is not a good way to get your existence noticed. It works, yes, but only in the way we notice if we step on something stinky in the street. A momentary annoyance as we pull out the scrub brush...
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