The Story Of Snapewives 

None of you will be laughing when the Snapture happens and you're left behind with Harry

The amount of willpower it probably took to not name this video “Snapewives And Their Snapelives”

I'm laughing at the idea of this poor womans husband pulling out all the stops in bed, and her being like "oh that could NEVER be my husband, he's been taken over by Snape, my husband could NEVER do anything like that"

This just goes to show that not everyone peaks in their 20s. These ladies were living their best lives in their 40s.

The fact that a fictional character was able to lead a cult without even physically existing shows you the power and weakness of the human mind

Imagine being the husband of one of these women and slowly realizing that her obsession with Snape isn't just weird, but is getting *religious,* and then realizing **you're stuck here**

these people would be SO into reality shifting if this had all happened in the tiktok era

There is so much here to boggle the mind, but the standout for me is why anyone would think "Snapists" sounds better than the wonderfully druidic "Snape Wives."

Imagine being a living, breathing 60 year old, who wrote a LiveJournal about how you married Snape in your 40s

God I wish I could dissociate hard enough to legitimately believe I was married to a fiction character. I feel burdened with normalcy

Snape as alpha? He spends his life being bullied by rich kids, exploited by rich kids, enslaved by the Dark Lord, forced into a job he hates so he can spy for Dumbledore, tortured and used by the Dark Lord, and then forced to murder Dumbledore for political reasons, regardless of his own wishes. All while taking his impotent rage out on small children. That these women perceive him as alpha tells me they see themselves as the children... i.e. the only characters he actually has power over.

Long before the Snapewives, this happened with Jareth from Labyrinth on two email lists in the 1990s, Labyfic and LabyficRP. Two women were spiritually married to Jareth and would argue over which one was his REAL wife, with one demanding that any fic featuring Jareth had to feature her, his queen, as a character or else she would throw the most ungodly, weird tantrums.

snapewives was like the predecessor to draco malfoy reality shifters

4:42 I love how this feels like internet archaeology. "We don't know what they called themselves in their own language, but contemporaneous cultures knew them as 'Snapewives'."

I'll say this about the Snape Wives: They were sexualizing a character who was a grown ass adult instead of the children. 2000's HP fandom scarred kid me fr with how many adults were writing erotica about 13 year olds.

important confession: my mom was one of these snape appreciators in like....2009 maybe....she wrote nsfw snape fanfiction and i never knew about it until a few years ago when i was checking her email for her and saw some recent comment on an old fanfiction in her email feed💀 she wasnt popular or anything just some mid 40s lady writing harry potter fanfic like thousands of others but damn finding that was lifechanging

"erotic dancing for Snape" is just the most sentence of all time

I think it's fascinating how, even as these women were founding a new religion, they were carrying into it the baggage of existing cultures and religions. They formed a community entirely of women, and yet they carried into it patriarchal and monogamist expectations and roles when there was no corporeal man to benefit from their subservience and insecurity. It's like they built a new cage for themselves based on the ones they knew, and there was no warden but themselves, and yet they didn't even make the cage a little more comfortable by allowing themselves guilt-free crushes

Snapewives, aka “A housewife realizes she’s polyamorous and possibly queer, but can’t fully process it, so she starts a cult with her crush instead.”

"The physical bodies of these husbands do have benefits" needs to be part of all cishet marriage ceremonies from now on.

Imagine your mom being one of the snapewives and having snape be the reason for your parents divorce

I do have to wonder if they ever collected together their writings about Snape into some sort of religious compendium, a Snospel if you will-

Hearing the phrase "But yes, they were married to Snape on the astral plane" cooked my brain a little.

Honestly, the idea of a being or force that possesses an artist in order to force themselves into existence is pretty rad. Very Stephen King.

honestly the idea of a writer as a scribe for a real being and then betraying them with their writing is a fascinating story concept in an if itself

It baffles me that they chose Snape specifically. He's just so.. weird? Sirius is right there lmao

they’re literally a case study of how religion can be formed

Do these girls know how easy it is to find a grumpy emotionally broken man irl

Snape didn't call Lily a slur because she was going out with James, he called her a slur 2 years before she went out with James after she stood up for him and yelled at James for bullying him. Before that, he and Lily had already been fighting for a while over the fact that Snape kept hanging out with other would-be death eaters, and this was the final straw that ended their friendship. Even before they went to Hogwarts, Sirius says that Snape came in already obsessed with the dark arts and when Lily asks him if it matters that her parents aren't wizards, he hesitates before saying no. Snape doesn't turn to the dark side because Lily rejected him, if anything, she rejected him because he turned to the dark side. Which is not to say that it would be Lily's fault if he did, obviously it isn't, but I really don't see how anyone could read Lily as the bad guy here.

Ok, but... Snape isn't "borderline" abusive, he's just full-on abusive. He bullied children, he threatened the life of one of their pets, ridiculed Hermione when she was under the effect of a spell and desperately needed medical attention, and was committed to sentence an innocent man to a fate worse than death over their bad history. What books have those Snape simps been reading to perceive him as an appealing brooding bad boy with a heart of gold?

i feel like this all couldve been avoided if rose and tanya fused their marriages into a polycule

"Tanya is the Regina George of Snapewives" is such a goddamn fever dream of a sentence. Edit: "She does not resume her erotic dancing for Snape until her husband leaves for a walk" made my brain hurt. Edit 2: "If your husband doesn't think you're sexy anymore maybe Severus Snape will...on the astral plane" MY SOUL IS LEAVING MY BODY!

The "Oh, it's an actual cult" moment really sneaked up on me.

Your thumbnails and titles invoke a visceral fear and sadness in the pits of my soul, like I've heard a lover's name from a past life

When I was a kid, I thought the Valar, the godlike beings from The Silmarillion, were communicating through me. It was very silly, but it did help me to stop self-harming. Specifically Nienna, the Vala of cathartic weeping, was really meaningful to me.

i love the consistently observable phenomenon of "if you leave a group of people alone they will spontaneously form a religious framework and burn through it without prompting"

this video made me realise that 'snape' is an incredibly funny collection of sounds and it deserves the morbius treatment

i think its interesting that that one woman says "As someone who comes from an abusive household as well, you can either continue the cycle or do what you can to break it" except that. Snape didnt break it? he did continue the cycle? he was very abusive to his students? literally he threatened to kill eleven or twelve year old Neville's pet just bc he could. Snape literally is a racist and abusive bully.

I have known multiple sapphic couples who started out as very intense and sexual roleplay partners for multiple years before they finally accepted they were gay and could fuck as themselves. At least three couples, who do not know each other and are from different places.

Imagine if they made a season 4 of American Gods but instead of focusing on any of the main gods or minor gods it's just a biopic of Snapewives and their history

Rose’s son needs to write a memoir. We need to know what it was like to have your mom be the OG snapewife

born too late to be a snape wife born too early to witness The Snape Resurgence Of 2109

The whole Snapewife concept is facinating to me because I knew a person that fit the bill perfectly- she wasn't a Snapewife but she would get fixated on a character and then base her whole religion at the time on them. In the time I knew her she went from thinking Khan from Star Trek was her guardian angel watching over her since childhood to being sure that Loki from the Avengers was appearing to her in the form of melted cheese on a burger wrapper. I later learned that before that she was in an astral plane relationship with Jareth from Labyrinth and she would comsummate their love via a homemade sex doll. That person in question was actually pretty awful and manipulative, but people like that in general are goddamn wild. I love hearing about them so much.

i knew a Heathenist irl (reconstructed Norse neopagans who worship the quirky gods) who was a Godspouse (astrally married to one of the gods) and was also a "pop culture pagan" who saw her chosen god (Loki) embodied (astrally, through the power of collective belief, like an egregore) by characters like Snape & the Joker, so she was technically indirectly a Snape Wife

It's incredible with the Conchita stuff how the sneligion (Snape religion) independently evolved a snatholic (Snape Catholic) and snotestant (Snape Protestant) schism, complete with it's own snartin snuther (Snape Martin Snape Luther) figure

honestly, the fact that the oncler fangirls _didn't_ turn into this is a miracle, but i'm glad because can you imagine?

This video really has some choice lines 🤣 "Tonya is by far the top bitch when it comes to channeling the spirit of Snape." "For Thanksgiving Snape helps Rose to thaw and tenderize her turkey and gives Tonya inspiration with seasoning." "The physical bodies of these husbands do have benefits." "Tonya's husband offended him by saying he's not real. Now George is not invited to be part of her sexual adventures with Snape." "If your husband doesn't think you're hot anymore, maybe Severus Snape will. On the astral plane." "At some point you've gotta ask yourself, is the Snape cult *really* worth it?"

this video is incredibly interesting to me because growing up snape was actually my first male crush (I am a queer transmasc person) however, unlike these snapewives I realized it wasn't actually snape I liked but the actor Alan Rickman. I proceeded to watch almost every film and tv show he has ever been in and I was completely torn apart while I was in middle school when he passed away in 2016. Anyway Alan Rickman is forever one of my favorite people and my heart goes out to his widow

Imagine being an academic and saying "I'm going to write a paper on the Snape Wives" Imagine being that same academic, going to your peers and asking them to review your paper on the Snape Wives. Imagine being an academic and being asked to review a paper on the Snape Wives. idk the whole situation is just so wild to me

It's too bad that after Snape stopped possessing JKR she got taken over by the TERF demon instead. Should've stayed in there Snape!

During the first two-thirds of this, I kept going "Schism! Schism!" at my screen. Then, when the (spoilers) schism actually happened, I squealed with joy.

this is funnier knowing that jk rowling based snape off of her chemistry teacher that she disliked. all these women were really just thirsting for john lawrence nettleship

Even as a Snape "fan" growing up, I've always been like "oh this character did not unravel the way I expected him to" and never did I once think "I'd love to marry someone who is obsessive and uses his obsessions as an excuse to abuse children".

imagine talking to someone about how much you both hate jkr and you think you’re on the same page but then they reveal that they only hate her because she ‘misrepresented’ snape

this could be considered a way for these women to escape the monotony of their daily lives. a form of esnapism, if you will

22:18 "Someone's pajamas were not sexy enough to attrackt Snape into their dream" is a sentence I didn't expect to hear in my life. And right after a story about imaginary Snape helping a woman roast a turkey...

Love the fact that I can ask people “what do Severus Snape and Gadget from Chip and Dale have in common” and the answer would be: a literal cult following

Full props for reading that entire vow all the way through without hysterically laughing 😂

Honestly, I feel so sorry for George and Kevin. Like, we can see from the study linked in the description that that Kevin isn't the best husband - that Rose felt tired of the married routine, while he tended to neglect her - but then, imagine, the dude goes an extra mile for once, in bed, but nah, too late, that's regarded to be Snape now. And George really seemed to care for Tonya - if I understood the study right, when Rose and Tonya fell apart, he pulled her over to Rose's place so they can talk, because he noticed Tonya was down. Like, I dunno, what do I know about the guy from the few things the internet gave us, but... It feels to me like he deserves someone who will not be doing erotic dances for Snape while he's napping or out on a walk. Also, regarding that some people seem to root their dislike of this in disgust at middle-aged women having hobbies with a sexual nature - that's the smallest thing. Like, if this was just some sexual roleplay, this wouldn't be nearly as weird, like, yeah, have fun boning God Snape in your dreams and fanfic. The Snape religion, cult-like to me, is the weird part.

I feel so bad for Lily (in the books/movies/fanfic snapewives narrative) she didn't deserve that at all.

I feel like I've heard the term "snapewives" many years ago, but i never knew it went beyond thinking they were married to Snape

This man outed Lupin as a werewolf out of spite. Chose Lilly over her baby. Destroyed kids with insults to the point of becoming one's boggart. Unforgivable. And I am not even counting joining the death eaters or guilt-tripping Sirius into leaving the safety of his hiding place (who is an adult and should have known better).

As far back as middle school in 1990 - so as far back as I was writing - I realized that if there was a world-wide culture-stopping catastrophe at that point, a post apocalyptic society hundreds of years later could easily interpret archaeological evidence to mean that our gods were Leonardo, Donatello, Michaelangelo, and Raphael.

Rose's husband, busting out the black Party City wig: "I feel the Snirit comin' over me!!"

I'm not surprised people made a religion about Snape, at this point fandoms are getting to be more like modern day religions every single day

I'm glad that you brought up that their image of Snape is specifically the Alan Rickman incarnation of him. I've never seen one of the edits with an illustration from the books. Makes you wonder.

this is so random but when you mentioned 50 shades of grey i thought of it- i was like 11 when that book came out and i was obsessed with the color grey and i heard my stepmom and stepsister mention the book and got excited because i literally thought it was just something to do with 50 different shades of the color grey

Snape is a fascinating character, and from a psychological perspective, a great character. But in order to appreciate his character, you need to face the facts: Snape was racist, and abused his power towards his students to make them fear him. He is not a good person, he called Lily a slur because she was upset that he was hanging out with future death eaters, and she defended him from James. Severus Snape is a fascinating character, and a great way to practice deep diving into a character. But that's it. He's not a good person - and if you consider everything he's done, even just one book at a time, he's not even decent. You can like a character, but you don't need to bend them so you can justify finding the character interesting. In fact, that takes why the character is interesting nd destroys it. This got sidetracked, but I had a point. I'm sure if you squint, it's there.

I had such a weird relationship with Snape's character in high school, I read the books, but I held the movie / fandom interpretation of him in way higher regard and it pretty much replaced the book version in my head. I was totally a person (not in the snape wives community) who thought Lily chose wrong, she should have dated snape, loved all the art of Lily marrying him instead. As an adult I reread the books (before we knew JK was a massive terf) and was so shocked by how utterly horrible Snape was in the books. This man was a child abuser, literally attempted to get Harry to drink poison in class, and literally a wizard na/zi. Any of his redemption scenes were of him still hating other people and non purebloods but being like, I guess I'll do things for Lily's sake and that's it but I'm still racist. Like, she didn't even bother to be like, oh he didn't actually believe any of that, but he has a weird creepy obsession with this woman that he will do certain things for. I still cannot believe how Alan Rickman just injected so much charm into the character that it entirely replaced how I even read the book.

i was a huge snape fangirl in like 2014 when i was 12 and i found a website they had and i was so confused and TERRIFIED EDIT: also as a snape fan i just wanna say i'm insanely uncomfortable with other fans' treatment of lily. that girl owed him nothing and was right to cut him off after what he did to her. i do not claim them lmfao.

“they considered every image of Snape to be sacred” that means at some point in the late 2000s there could have been people using Potter Puppet Pals as religious imagery unless they considered it blasphemy, but Potter Puppet Pals Snape actually seems a lot like how they considered Snape to be so i think it’s extremely likely that someone used it

My grandmother is a huge Snape fan, speaks praise, all of this, she said she could ditch everything and everyone to date Snape she would at the speed of light. She had his picture everywhere when possible

I never was a Snape wife and never liked him as a character because he's a pathetic little man and I don't vibe with those. But in the early 2010s I wanted to join a text based rp community and rp as someone interesting. I had my eyes on Remus Lupin as any self respecting person with father issues would, but he was already taken. So, I took the one that would be the most fun and challenging: Severus Snape. Game admins wanted to weed out weak players, so they kept making the minimum post length longer, we ended up writing paragraphs and paragraphs just to keep a dialogue going. I dove deep into Snape angst, it was great playing him as I could interact almost with anyone, it was also hard to balance playing an asshole without ruining relationships with other players. I had fans, I had haters, it was awesome. Then I cosplayed Snape and started really living with it. I became a Snape connoisseur. I didn't like him or found him hot, but I loved him as an actor loves his part or as one might love a character they deeply understand, but in a bad way. So, yeah, I'm ready to watch this video and die a thousand deaths.

Dale: "Excuse me, are y'all with the cult?" Snapewives: "We're not a cult. We're just channeling daddy Snape on an astral-" Hank: "Yep this is it."

I have never experienced a single piece of media that has made me feel even a fraction of what Harry Potter apparently made these people feel, and I'm honestly jealous.

Watching this I realized I actually had a close call with these women. I was in my early twenties though and I had met a woman who back then was in her 40's and I was on one of these sites. They were very dedicated and I was crushing on Snape for a short time and then I started having a thing for Lucius and this woman said that they don't allow other ships and that basically you cannot like others at the same time. And not to mention Lucius and Snape are friends and this is weird. I remember this in particular because it was so weird to me how I was afraid to tell her that I wasn't that much into Snape anymore.:))) Also, I remember mentioning that we actually like how these characters are portrayed in the films and especially the actors playing them, because otherwise only based on the books they wouldn't be all that attractive. Snape would be greasy and ugly and Lucius would just look like a boring, middle aged banker. I specifically remember that this was the last straw and she dropped me afterwards. I still prefer Luci to this day, so I suppose I was quite loyal in the end, as they said I should be.lmao As an end note, we have a similar situation nowadays with the Cyberpunk 2077 game fandom. Holy ffff!! Believe me, if you ever want to do a deep dive into that, I highly recommend it, though the fandom is still alive and thriving and relatively new, but the drama and the possessiveness over certain NPCs has really shocked me to my core. Dunno how I always end up in such unhinged fandoms.

There's an alternate universe where Conchita split off into her own sect of Snapism (ala Protestant reformation) and the whole religion continued into the modern day, with these two warring factions fueling the whole thing through discourse instead of falling apart. After all, having an enemy to fight against, a FALSE PROPHET no less, could've made people even MORE devoted to Snape. There's another alternate universe where the whole phenomenon was Snape HUSBANDS, but that's almost too powerful to even consider

Modern religions be WILD, man. Their drama 100% parallels the reasons Christianity separated into so many sects???? Wild Also, I really appreciated the tangent into questioning the tastes and (more or less) harmless activities of women of all ages. Happiness is already hard enough to find in this silly universe

You know, I never really thought about how that fandom cringe culture never really DID make fun of male fans in any notable way

for any witches that were on tumblr this reminds SO MUCH of pop culture paganism where people were worshiping like loki from the mcu and sailor moon. this is so fascinating to me and not even in a disparaging way but in a sort of "wow human beings can make a religion out of anything" sort of way. makes you think.

I’m in a long distance relationship, and the way these women write about an entirely fictional character with as much passion and longing as I feel for my girlfriend is the most surreal shit ever.

I think that a huge part of the answer to the "why him??" question here is definitely the Alan Rickman of it all. I don't think he's handsome as Snape, but I can get why other people might feel that way. His voice and all of the good looking normal pictures of Rickman add to it. I think if the movies never got made, this would never have been a thing at all.

I was very active on LJ back in 2005 and Snapewives actually came up pretty early, they just didn't like it at first because it was an insult. Basically if you hung out in any kind of shipping or fandom based community on LJ back then you were aware these people existed, but you didn't want to be lumped in with them. Hence the term "Snapewives" as a derogatory short hand for that level of nutter butters. In retrospect, isolating them away from the rest of the fandom zeitgeist probably helped the cult stuff flourish.

As a Hellenic polytheist I find Snapewives' worship practices very interesting, because they're very similar to lot of Hellenic polytheists'. Things like writong about your god(s), making art of them, making playlists, posting prayers and experiences online. Like I don't know, I think it has become surprisingly common in small religions. I don't really have a point, I just think it's interesting.

My university uses 'Snapewives and Snapeism' as the example text in our referencing guide. It even has quotes from it to show how to do in-text citations. Sometimes life is good.

I know fandom has a tendency to twist characters around, but how on earth did these women take the pathetic, abusive sadboy Snape and turn him into this daddy dom bad boy raw force of sexual energy

Honestly, this points to one of the biggest problems of fandom, people specifically focus on the aspects of a character they like/dislike and then ignore anything that goes against their narrative.

The book "This is not a book about Benedict Cumberbatch", digs into the ideas that came up in the end of this video. The way that female fans are treated and why female fans act the way they act. Its a really funny book and the writer really explains and gets into the heads of these women and lets them speak for themselves.

I was big into the Harry Potter fandom on Livejournal back in the day. I was never involved with the Snapewives, I only knew about them very vaguely, they were considered fringe even in the crazier parts of the fandom but one of my closest internet friends at the time was a woman who literally believed she was Snape. She dressed like him and spoke like him and viewed him as a religious figure who she channeled to become a better person. And honestly, in all my years of being involved with various fandoms, she was one of the nicest people I've ever encountered. Fandom is notoriously overdramatic and toxic, and this woman was the opposite of that despite being very far removed from reality. I hope she's doing well wherever she is.

Alan Rickman absolutely rocked the role, bringing just the right amount of charisma and pathos. RIP, gone far too soon.

I still find Snape the most interesting character J.K. Rowling ever managed to write, because he was such a gray area. She REALLY could not write morally ambiguous characters worth a goddamn, but he was the closest she got. He fit firmly into the 'horrible' box until it'd turn out he was doing something badass in the background. It was a hint of three-dimensionality that was otherwise mostly lacking in the story's cast. By the time I was halfway through the series, his was one of the few plotlines I was still interested in following, just to see where it was going. Like this guy is problematic af, but at least he's interesting. I didn't know about Snapewives in those long-ago days. I must've missed that phenomenon. Learning about them in hindsight - after having personally known people who had a similar relationship with Norse gods but like, specifically the Marvel depictions of them - is a lot less jarring than it would've been then. This is thing in a ton of fandoms, apparently. It's weird, but it's honestly not much weirder than thinking a character from an ancient book of fables is personally helping you with your problems, and we as a society accept that as pretty normal. I think it says a lot about why people want/need to believe these things and what exactly they're looking for in a faith. Apparently, for some, what they're looking for is 'Christianity but horny, and your savior is played by Alan Rickman'.

Personally, I think the sad part of this whole thing is the husbands that have to deal with their wives lusting after a fictional character and are role-playing that you are possessed by Snape when having sex with her lkasdjflkdjf- I do get why they do this, I just feel so bad for the people that have to deal with it that are in a romantic relationship with them. Then again, it does sound like the husbands aren't giving these women enough attention so...uh well I guess that's why. Still can get over that one husband that's all "Snape isn't real" and imagining the wife going "Snape/Master didn't like that" like that's gotta be depressing because it's being cheated on...by an imaginary fictional person that as far as you know, isn't actually there. You screwed up so hard in the relationship that they made up another man lksdjafldskjf-

Starting at 0:26 those vows got super chilling really quickly. The next minute made me imagine you snapping awake, eyes wide, going "Snape...to the sacrifiicial altar I must go..." and just levitating out of bed while still horizontal and floating out of the room in which you slept. ...I think I need more sleep.

“Does this mean Jesus is a polygamist?” is not something I expected to think today, but now I’m wondering it. Thanks, internet. Also for the curious - there’s a cool article called “Fictosexuality, Fictoromance, and Fictophilia: A Qualitative Study of Love and Desire for Fictional Characters” by Veli-Matti Karhulathi and Tanja Valisalo that looks at the uh… more sensible (and common) version of what’s going on here.

We can't all be snapes wives, we must fight for his love.

Can you imagine the late Alan Rickman's fanmail and fan encounters? Dear Lord.

I might have nearly died when the erotic dance was brought up. I can't help but imagine George settling in for an afternoon nap, only to be stirred from sleep by the first few notes of Usher's Yeah!. Turning over, he's met with the sight of his wife gyrating aggressively over a dining chair. A closer inspection reveals a picture of Snape taped to the backrest. Looking back, he'd recall this as the moment he realized being married wasn't for him-followed shortly by an admittance that his wife repurposing his office into a shrine for Snape should have been confirmation enough.

Back in the 90s I had a friend who believed she was having a romantic relationship with Trent Reznor on the astral plane. This went far beyond a crush and became a severe mental health issue that required extensive hospitalization. I can't help but see the parallels and wonder if this phenomenon has been going on longer than we thought, but just didn't have the appropriate platform to publicize it (ie the internet). Maybe the Snapewives are just the latest wave of something far bigger.

"Problematic Snape porn" is a phrase I never thought I'd hear. 😂

Rewatching after Kurtis Conners latest vid