geri_chan asked how I got into Snupin and ended up as a mod for
lupin_snape.
I think I've sort of told this story in bits and pieces in different places over the years, but to have it all in one place....
Once upon a time, I was a fandom lurker. I'd drifted into HP from XF and after a couple years of lurking, some LJ friends were pimping a new RPG on their journals...over and over again. I started to wonder if I shouldn't give an RPG a try. I wanted to write again and I'd been reading an RPG avidly, so why not try it myself? From my reading experience at my fave RPG and checking out a few others, I was sure putting in an application so late in the casting period would net me a super-minor, low-maintenance character like Hannah Abbott or Stephen Cornfoot (remember him?); a student character not close to the main action. I said I'd take anyone. I received back: Snape.
Severus Snape? Are you kidding me? I don't care about the adult characters?! Arrgh!But I said I'd take anyone, so I went on a research bender for Severus Snape. O....k. You know, when you bother to look beyond the surface, there's something
up with Snape. He's not just the year-long red-herring; he's Albus' right-hand, he's powerful, he sees
through Harry and when Voldemort comes back, Albus sent him off to re-join the Death Eaters (this RPG started in the weeks before OotP was released). I came to respect Severus Snape while looking at the facts. I fell in love with him when I started reading the fan fic.
RPGs are all about the shipping, did you know that? (*snicker*) I started to wonder with whom I could possibly ship Snape (even in a longing, unrequited way in the RPG). I ruled out the kids right away (I didn't even know what "cross-gen" was back then, but I don't like unequal relationships), and I realised there were no developed women in HP that were Severus' age either. I'd
just had the slash light turned on by Aragorn/Boromir -- surely I could slash Snape! There were at least a few candidates around his age. With those limitations in mind, I hit the
Snape FQF archive.
I read several pairings for Snape, but the character that I kept going back to was Remus. I read some great stories in many pairings, don't get me wrong. But much of the Sirius fic was hatesex or I didn't recognize Snape or Sirius in them, and Harry fics bothered me as much as I thought they would. Albus usually involved power games, the Weasleys weren't really in play back then, Kingsley wasn't on the horizon, James was dead, Lucius was a married bad guy and I wanted my Snape to secretly be good, etc.
Severus had real history with Remus. They were the same age, had held the same job, had gone to school together, had darkness tinging their souls. Snape had followed Remus' gang around school, Remus had almost killed him and Snape still made him Wolfsbane. Severus and Harry have history, but it's convoluted and uneven at best. Same with Albus. And Sirius, not so much. In fact, I've always found it hard to believe that Snape/Lupin wasn't a popular ship right off the bat. Maybe it seemed too easy to some people, I don't know.
ANYWAY, the more I explored Snape/Lupin, the more in love with the idea I fell, until Snape/Lupin was all I wanted to read. The problem I had was that there wasn't a whole lot of Snupin out there. After I went through the FQF, I found
lupin_snape, which, at the time, did not have much activity, and I scoured the journals and archives from there. Once I'd exhausted all the resources I could think of, I knew there was only one thing to do:
Go on an Epic Campaign to encourage more Snape/Lupin.
To Be Continued in the next post. I started this late for a reason....
love, lore