The Secret Lives of Snape Wives [from Very Special Episodes]

If you were around in the early 2000s, you were likely spellbound by a wizard. Not just any wizard, we are talking the boy who lived. The kid with a lightning-shaped scar. The youngest seeker to play for the Gryffindor Quidditch team in over a century. You're familiar with him? Seven Harry Potter books launched a massive fandom that brought the wizarding world into the homes of millions of people.

Fans bought wands and robes. They waited in line for hours at midnight release parties for each book and cosplayed as their favorite characters at movie premieres. The whole world was struck with Potter mania. But for a small group of fans, the Harry Potter series was more than make-believe magic. It was real. An alternate universe that bled into our own.

Controlled by Harry's least favorite professor, Severus Snape. To these fans, Snape was more than a character. He was a god. He was their religion. Severus Snape was their reason to live. These fans found each other online, built a spiritual community, and wrote wedding vows to marry Snape. According to their posts, he possessed their husbands' bodies for sex. Nothing in the world could stop them from worshiping Snape. Until their sisterhood imploded.

Welcome to Very Special Episodes, an iHeart Original Podcast. I'm your host, Dana Schwartz, and this is The Secret Lives of Snape Wives.

Welcome back to Very Special Episodes. I'm Jason English. With me, as always, Dana Schwartz.

Hi, hi.

Zarin Burnett.

Yo.

Took a little break, but we're back. And a lot has happened. Zarin, you're a pilot now. Is that right?

Correct.

Yes.

What?

During my summer break, I did all these cool little trips. I went to Carmel. I went to the Marin. I went to Jackson, which is up in Gold Country. But my favorite thing is I started taking flying lessons. And you guys, in my first flying lesson, my instructor, who was an Aussie, which kind of matters in this story, he had me taxi the plane out onto the runway.

which was cool, right? And then that's how I could get the handle of controls. He does the takeoff. And remember like 600, maybe 800 feet up. He just gives me the controls. I have no idea what I'm doing. And from that point on, he just starts telling me like, yeah, let's do a corkscrew. And I do a corkscrew down to the ground. And then he's like, you have to pick something else to turn around. And then I'm doing dives.

And then at one point he shuts off the engine so we can stall the plane. He's like, you need to know what happens when the plane stalls. And then he's like, oh, by the way, the warning is going to go on. And it does. It's like, and I was like, dude, bro, are you kidding me? Then I kept going the whole hour. I got to fly with absolutely no experience, didn't crash the plane. But now I am absolutely loving flying and I'm going to keep doing it because it was incredible to see the world from up there.

Terrifying, terrifying, and I hate it.

At one point, Dana, I turned the plane on its side, and I looked down, and the ground was straight out the window, my side window. I'm looking down at the ground, and I asked the guy, I'm like, have you ever had to take the controls from somebody because they were about to crash the plane? He's like, only once.

I was like, okay. We'll have to record one of these where you're up in the air.

Yeah, we have to throw back to the Amelia Earhart episode if we're ever at a boring dinner party.

And Dana, I see you've written Netflix shows. You've got books coming out. What's the latest there?

Oh, I'm very busy is how it goes, but in a good way. Yeah, there's a new animated Netflix movie coming out November 20th. It's called Steps. It's like a family movie about Cinderella's stepsisters. I was part of a great team that wrote it. And then now I'm writing on Matlock on CBS with Kathy Bates. So tune in to wherever you get your CBS.

Incredible.

I love that.

We got some news about the show this morning, which is that we were nominated for two Signal Awards, which is, I call it the Grammys for podcasting. Now, this show has won Signal Awards in the past, so it would have been a disappointment to not be nominated this time. But we are in the Best Commute Podcast category and the Best Road Trip Podcast category. So if you're in a car. Yeah. Not a plane, but maybe next year.

That is so cool.

Turning back to today's episode, I love stories about extreme fandom. I love stories about the early internet. So this is right up my alley.

I love it. I mean, I was on some Harry Potter message boards back in the day.

Were you?

Not quite in this realm. I was about 12, but this is fascinating.

This story is exactly what it says on the tin, but then you open it up and it goes in so many places you absolutely never expect.

I mean, I really do think at the end of it, this is just a story about how the Internet has allowed specific people to find each other and how everyone wants belonging. You know, everyone wants to feel a part of something.

Yes, that's well said. And I'm so glad that they did find each other, both because we get this story, but also just for them.

Now, I just have to point out there are some Harry Potter spoilers. So if you have not read all seven books and you want to go read 4000 pages, then come back. you know, unpause it and listen to the rest.

And I also just want to be on the record to say that just because we do an episode about a fascinating Harry Potter subculture does not, I will say explicitly mean that we condone the opinions of the.

Author of Harry Potter.

Yes.

A hundred percent.

Well said.

Let's turn back time to the Harry Potter era. Back when everyone was struggling with T9 texting, before there was Reddit, Facebook, or even millennials ranking their friends on MySpace, people created usernames to post on LiveJournal. LiveJournal wasn't just a blogging platform. It was a confessional booth for millions of people.

In the days of LiveJournal, a lot of people came together and became friends because they shared.

A love of Harry Potter, but also a real.

Need to discuss it and to guess what's happening in the next book.

That's Dr. Zoe Alderton. She researches religions at the University of Sydney. In the early 2000s, she noticed a strange one forming on LiveJournal.

So there was a whole lot of people very invested in some of the characters who were a little bit more ambiguous and who have a bit more of a twisting plot narrative, like Snape himself.

Severus Snape was the brutal, dungeon-dwelling potions master at Hogwarts. His hobbies included calling Harry lazy and arrogant like his no-good father, taking points away from Gryffindor when he wanted to punish Harry, and threatening to have Harry expelled. You know, things that any protective teacher would do. And Snape developed, shall we say, a cult following.

And a few members of the Snape fandom started to have romantic feelings for Snape. For some people, it was just sort of like a fictional crush, not much of a big deal.

But for other people.

It became something that was so serious that it ended up being what I would deem religious.

Enter three women named Tanya, Rose, and Conchita. At least that's what they said their names were online. They used various usernames on different websites.

Rose, Tanya, and Conchita came up with this idea of Snapism and the Snapists, which is what they called themselves. And they outright said, this is a religion to us. They came up with different creeds, different prayers to Snape. And they really felt as though Snape was there in their life, doing things.

Like guiding them, changing the world around them.

As a teen, Dr. Alderton bore witness to all of the Snapist's confessions on LiveJournal. She learned Conchita was from the Netherlands and Rose and Tanya were American.

Single for the entire duration of this.

But Rose and Tonya were both married to men, and they both had children, and they both had what seemed to be pretty standard domestic lives. And you get the impression that their children were teenagers, their marriages were longstanding.

To them, Snape wasn't confined to a fantasy series. He was a supernatural figure who existed on another plane. And sometimes he crossed over.

To give you a sort of general idea, they believed that we all live in our reality and that Harry Potter is a separate but equally real reality and that because Snape is a magician, he should actually kind of have the powers to be able to transcend into our world and bring some of his magic with him. He could kind of touch and feel things in our world.

He could do things like push over a laundry basket or give people ideas and feelings and sensations, but never really be physically present.

To Snape's most intense fans, the Harry Potter series was written by a scribe who could channel the entire Harry Potter universe.

J.K.

Rowling was documenting everything she was interpreting from Snape, Harry, and the other characters. But if you think the Snapists were enamored with Rowling's interpretation, think again.

There's the Snape in the books who's described as extremely physically unattractive, like he's just physically unwashed, and he's a very kind of mean-spirited person who's quite hostile to others. Throughout the entire book series, there's clearly no intent for Rowling to make anyone have a crush on Snape as a character.

There was a very specific person who made Rose, Tanya, and Conchita's love for Snape intoxicating. Someone who could tap into his own source of magic. Hollywood magic, that is. When the first Harry Potter film was released in 2001, the universe was forever altered.

Snape was cast as Alan Rickman.

So the character of Snape went from someone who was, like, greasy and unpleasant to someone who could be imagined as sort of dark, handsome, brooding figure. Having Alan Rickman in the mix did an awful lot for people kind of realising that perhaps Snape was an attractive character after all.

That had a huge amount of changes afterwards.

To the way that he was received within the Harry Potter fandom.

To be clear, the Snapists knew that Alan Rickman was an actor portraying Snape. But Rickman was the most realistic depiction of what the astral plane Snape looked like. His followers had a face to worship. Their god was hot, and they wanted people to know it. Rose made photo collages of Alan Rickman dressed as Snape, often with photos of herself beside him. In October of 2009, she posted the first picture released of Rickman playing Snape and wrote on her LiveJournal account, I.

Had fallen in love with Severus, first through the books in 2000. Then in 2001, when I saw this pic, I refused to give in. Until two days later. And the rest is history. His hair and his face drove me absolutely wild.

Still does.

Conchita's mission was to spread the gospel of Snape and grow his fan base. She ran a forum worshiping Snape under a pseudonym. She asked her followers to burn candles for Snape's birthday on January 9th, followed by a happy birthday post to Alan Rickman. And Snape's congregation grew. Tanya, Rose, and Conchita found people who believed in what they did, no matter how absurd it may seem. All because they could confess their deepest, darkest secrets in their live journal diaries.

I think a lot of what they were looking for was a sense of emotional fulfillment. So they seem to be people who struggled with feelings of intimacy and connection in their everyday lives. It seemed to be something that was lacking with their husbands, something that was lacking in their workplace, their friendship circles. And so by connecting to Snape on such a deep level, they were able to get this really like intense, transcendent, emotional fulfillment from him.

For the first time, the Snapists felt understood. Their newfound sisterhood made Snape even more real. Rose shared her love poems to Snape with her followers.

Roses are red. Black ones are too. Love and obsession, that's what we do. Love and trust, unity and support with family and friends is a must. Guiding and loving each other on this way. Listen to what all have to say. Master's hand is strong and solid. Abide, obey, do as he says. Life and eternity will be a success.

J.K.

Rowling wasn't the only person Snape could talk to. Rose said she could summon Snape's touch by touching the tattoo of a rose on her arm. But Rose could do more than feel Snape. She and Tanya, they tried to channel Snape. When they called, he answered.

So a lot of the channeling was something that was quite imaginative. And so someone like Tonya would kind of feel that she was in a trance state where she would receive messages from Snape or that he would use her body to communicate.

With other people. But it would sort of be a feeling that.

Her body was being taken over by these external messages. So Snape was either completely physically using her or he would give her really, really strong instructions about what to say or do.

According to Tanya, Snape told her, I.

Am unlike anything you have ever known previously or will know. I will not be just another passing fancy that you put aside when you see something new. Do not make me jealous. You will regret it. Try my patience. Go ahead. I am waiting for your next mistake.

If you're getting the hint, Snape wasn't an all-loving, benevolent god.

Snape's personality to the Snapewives was a.

Very harsh one. He's a very domineering master.

He doesn't cooperate.

He doesn't compromise. He just presents the world as he sees it.

He can be quite abrasive. And you've really got to accept that about him.

So a lot of the discourse that the.

Snape wives had was how much they found his domineering personality really attractive and exciting, how they would do anything for him. He was right to be so arrogant because he was so intelligent and powerful.

Severus Snape was cruel. He was demanding. and his followers wanted to make their love for him eternal.

So they created marriage vows where they devoted themselves to Snape with this understanding that they weren't just marrying a fictional character.

They were actually marrying.

This spirit who could come through from the Harry Potter universe and and in some sort of disembodied, transcendent way, could come and influence our universe.

With their vows, Tanya, Rose, and Conchita would forever be remembered as the Snape Wives, although they hated being called Snape Wives. It felt derogatory coming from people who mocked their beliefs.

Dr.

Alderton documented all of their religious beliefs in her publication, Snape Wives and Snapeism, a fiction-based religion within the Harry Potter fandom. The Snape Wives posted their vows on LiveJournal.

Conchita vowed, I promise to be always faithful in body and mind and never love another man. I promise to protect and guard you and to prevent you from any harm. I promise to obey you no matter what. I solemnly promise all of this to you, Severus Snape, my only love. May these words create a strong, loving bond, which can only be broken by death. If I break the promises made, or treat you not in the manner I should be, I'll make sure I'll die. May all the good forces and spirits bless our love eternally.

Beyond the alluring mysteriousness of Snape, there's a glaring red flag to reconcile with. Until the series finale, no one knew if Snape was good or evil, including the Snapewives. Fans on LiveJournal were debating.

Is Snape a good guy or a bad guy, which is a real cliffhanger that we were left with with the penultimate book, where it looked as though he was quite an evil character who caused some pretty horrible things to happen.

We were left with him having killed Dumbledore.

And so there was a whole lot of people who were saying, no, it's got to be more complicated than that.

Snape claimed to be a reformed Death Eater, one of the followers of the evil Lord Voldemort, which meant he had done deeply cruel things in his past. He was a bigot who had been part of a group that hunted and murdered muggles. Why were these fans drawn to a man who had gone to the dark side in his youth?

The more we find out about Snape, the more we found out in the books about Snape's childhood, about his father being abusive, about him really struggling to make friends, and about this quite tortured relationship that.

He has with Harry's mother, Lily, as they grow up together. And the fact that he is in love.

With her for the rest of his life and his final thoughts are about Lily. For a lot of people, that really did lead to an examination of Snape as someone who was perhaps a bit more complex and a bit misjudged.

Snape's one and only love was Lily. But Lily only ever saw him as a friend.

I think a lot of people, beyond just the Snape wives, their hearts went out to him, particularly seeing him as a younger boy who was so alone, who was very intelligent but very.

Misunderstood and didn't.

Have anywhere safe or special in his life other than this sort of string of a relationship with Lily. And then comparing that to the fact that Lily was quite a popular, well-adjusted young woman who made lots of different friends and who started to become connected to people like James Potter, who had been horrible to Snape. A lot of people spent a great deal of time reflecting on those dynamics and really thinking about what it meant to be someone who was on the outer, someone who was a victim of bullying, someone who was a victim of domestic abuse.

Rose, Tanya and Conchita saw Snape as someone who had gained strength and power when the world cast him aside. It was something they identified with.

I'm fairly sure that a lot of the Snape wives had felt in their own lives rejected or felt like outsiders or felt misunderstood. If you have any of those experiences, Snape can really function as quite a sympathetic character. And when we look at the way that the Snape wives interpret him, it's very much like in that sense of he was wronged and they're trying to correct that. They're trying to save him, to rehabilitate him. And they understand him because he's very dark.

The Snape wives loved his tortured soul. In return, Snape yearned for his wives, yearned for them beyond their unyielding devotions. Snape sent them a message from the astral plane. His wives had to experience everything in the universe with him in mind, including sex. And so began their erotic channeling sessions with Professor Severus Snape. Infatuation turned to love. Love turned into desire. Desire turned into sex with a god.

This wasn't erotic fanfiction for Tanya, Rose, and Conchita. Their wildest dreams about Severus Snape became the focus of their lives.

I think some of the biggest impact that Snape had on the actual lives of the Snape wives is that Rose and Tonya were both American and they both must have lived in a fairly similar region because they ended up moving together into the same trailer.

Park and living as immediate neighbors. So they had such a strong connection that when it.

Came time for one of them to have to move, they decided to move in together.

Rose and Tanya weren't just growing closer to Snape. Their sisterhood became their spiritual fortress. No one else understood them on such an intimate level.

There's a huge amount of evidence that they were really bringing up Snape a lot, decorating their house with Snape. And they make quite a few references to the fact that their husbands and children are sick to death of Snape and they're waiting for them to get over the phase and move on to something else.

And Snape had room in his heart for all of his wives, so long as they abided by his rules.

So he wanted them to dress a particular way, act a particular way, present themselves to him whenever he wanted them. And also he made it very clear that he was to be their only focus. You couldn't make demands of him, even though he could make demands of you. And they really celebrated that idea that he's not an easy master and everything is on his terms. They could be absolutely on their knees in worship of him and he would pay them no attention. But sometimes he would decide to do something like make a poster flicker to show that he was present. Or perhaps he would give them some useful advice, help them flesh out a shopping list or something like that.

For Rose and Tanya, fantasizing about Snape could have filled a void in their marriages.

They also make quite a few references to how much their husbands aren't as interested in them as Snape is, how boring their husbands are.

You know, comments about putting on.

Lingerie or posing up to them naked and the husbands just being like, yeah, whatever. Whereas they go off and have these vivid sexual fantasies with Snape, which are a lot more fulfilling and exciting.

It was easy for Tanya to invite Snape in and decode his messages. She offered to channel him in erotic encounters for the other Snapists. She had taken on a leadership role by running different pages, like her Yahoo group Snape's Castle. But the closer Tanya and Rose grew to Snape, the more distant another core member of Snapism felt.

Conchita always had a lot of trouble with that kind of connection. She just doesn't seem to have been able to tap into Snape's voice. And there's a point in time where she becomes very distressed because she just can't hear him or feel him at all.

At first, Conchita's inability to channel Snape brought the wives closer together. Under her pseudonym, she would ask Tanya to reach out to Snape for her. Tanya was happy to help. Until worship turned to war. An alliance within the sisterhood had formed. Tanya and Rose believed that if Snape wouldn't talk to Conchita, then there was something deeply flawed with her character. Conchita didn't have a connection to their master.

She felt close to a different spirit. Rose and Tanya taunted Conchita that... even Lily Potter's spirit wouldn't speak to her, whom they had retconned as one of Snape's wives. Conchita fired back that Rose and Tanya were channeling the wrong Snape. It left the congregation wondering... Will the real Severus Snape please stand up? There was only one person who could bring the core group of Snape wives back together. The person whom they all worshipped. Rose swore that Snape spoke to her while she was listening to a CD by the band Kiss. She wrote on LiveJournal that Snape said, I.

Will deal with each of you all different according to your needs.

Rose posted her apology to Conchita in November 2006. So just because Tanya and I experience him the way we do doesn't mean he isn't different with others.

So Conchita, there truly is hope. Hope that you can look forward to. Believe me or not, that's your call. But I do feel there is happiness in your life, your future. And as you've already found out, he will make himself known to you. Somehow. Somehow.

Conchita was welcomed back, but the first cracks in their religion had formed. There would be several battles between the main Snape wives. A lot of their fighting was done over instant messenger and never posted publicly. Their live journal accounts were mostly deleted, but some relics from their digital lives remain. For people who were creative in how they worshipped, they were creative in how they fought. On her forum, Conchita created a wall of shame. She posted things that Rose and Tanya had written using various Snape-related usernames. Conchita professed to her followers.

Lately, I've discovered some people take the liberty of speaking for Severus. As that is actually none of my business, I should let them be and do their thing. But sometimes the words that are put out there on the free internet are so spiteful and unlikely, I have to tell the world. This is not Severus Snape, nor will he ever be. And the one who wrote this should seek professional help immediately.

Conchita posted a Snape channeling session that Tanya and Rose held on Instant Messenger. They claimed Snape warned.

I fully expect my ladies to stand with me with their entire convictions agreeing with mine. In other words, my enemies had best become your enemies.

Tanya described what Snape was showing her. Snape dressed in a frock coat with a top hat and onyx cane, going to confront Lucius Malfoy, the father of Harry's school nemesis, Draco. Snape was at the Malfoy Manor. According to Tanya, Lucius Malfoy was.

Speaking of a matter concerning the dark side, where spirits are angry because they have been misplaced by Severus.

Lucius was warning Snape of an evil spirit.

This spirit wants revenge for a certain spell Snape performed in Holland. And that spirit, whom was attached to a certain person that we visited, wants to cause damage on our group.

It was a veiled shot at Conchita, saying she wanted to hurt the Snapeism community with an evil entity. Yet another claim she was worshipping the wrong Snape. Conchita responded on her wall of shame post to her followers.

For all clarity, the vindictive woman from Holland, that will be the Netherlands. Holland is just a small part of it. That is, of course, me. Read and giggle or burst out laughing if you will.

I know I did. In another post, Conchita doubled down that Tanya was channeling the wrong spirit. Fake Snape. She said Tanya used fake Snape as a gimmick to get attention in her Snape's Castle Yahoo group.

Conchita vowed, I will haunt her for that until the end of days.

A stronger entity did, in fact, wage spiritual warfare on the Snapewives. But it wasn't Conchita.

The Harry Potter fandom as a whole really did not like the Snape wives. They didn't like people who were too obsessed with Snape. And they obviously thought that the idea of channeling Snape was just stupid at best or something that needed prompt medical intervention at worst.

The Snape wives' critics united on fandom wink. an online community where users trolled fans for what they deemed to be overzealous and absurd beliefs. A person who went by the username Narcissm shared Conchita's posts, exposing the drama within the Snapism community to thousands of fandom-wank users. Harry Potter fans piled on with their judgment in the comments. Hundreds of comments. Many said the wives needed to get their heads examined. Others wrote poems and wedding vows mocking the wives.

Some said child protective services should be called on them. The Snape wives laid down their weapons against each other to face their spiritual foes.

And they spent quite a lot of their time online fighting with people who said that they were weird or stupid or.

Deranged in some kind of way.

I actually think the kind of internal hatred in fandom was probably pretty good at keeping the Snape wives together because it gave them a common enemy and a common focal point.

The camaraderie wouldn't last. The cracks in their sisterhood were deepening. The Snapewives were turning on people they once embraced. An excommunication was in order. The first Snapewife to fall from grace was the person rooted in Snape's origin story. Harry Potter's mom, Lily. If you're confused by the Snapewives' relationship to Lily Potter, you're not alone. At first, to them, astral plane Snape and Lily were in love.

As the Snapewives were working on their doctrine and sharing it with the world, you can see them shifting and deciding that Lily was actually someone who broke Snape's heart and And that they needed to swoop in and love him and protect him.

The Snape wives reinterpreted the fact that Lily and Snape's relationship deteriorated as he became closer to future Death Eaters. They minimized the fact that Snape called Lily a mudblood. the Wizarding World's most infamous slur. They sidestepped the fact that Voldemort killed Lily and James because he thought that Harry was the infant boy prophesied to kill him someday, a prophecy that Snape had warned Voldemort about. Blaming Lily for the collapse of their friendship was sexist. With Lily out, Conchita, Rose, and Tanya were focused on the bigger picture— like whether their master was good or evil. Book six, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, ended with Snape murdering Dumbledore. The

world would have to wait two long years to find out if Snape was Voldemort's loyal servant or Harry's true ally. The countdown for the Snape wives began. Conchita posted several times.

Our Christmas present from J.K.

Rowling!

Thank you, Joe!

As from today, her last great work will no longer be just Book 7. It is called Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Bloomsbury confirmed it online, so we can be sure it is indeed the right title.

Also.

now is the time the grand speculating probably begins I don't really mind we all are entitled to our own opinions only I still hope JKR will let Professor Severus Snape live and improve the quality of his life.

At long last JK Rowling revealed the truth behind Severus Snape he may have been cruel he may have made Harry's life at Hogwarts miserable but he had been protecting Harry all along Snape had killed Dumbledore at Dumbledore's request in order to spare Draco Malfoy from having to carry out Dumbledore. Voldemort's command to kill him. Snape had vowed to always protect Harry, fueled by his love for Lily and his lifelong regret for betraying her. It was all revealed to Harry after he watched Voldemort kill Snape with his snake Nagini. So Snape had died a hero. But his death was odd. The head of the Slytherin house, the Potions Master, was killed by a snake. Snape didn't have an antidote for an attack by a snake he

knew Voldemort kept at his side. And Harry hadn't tried to stop Voldemort from killing his professor. Snape's gruesome death was a crisis of his wives' faith.

Why didn't anyone step in to help him? But he was left alone to die? Did the fact that Severus saved Harry numerous times not count this time? Without Severus, Harry wouldn't even be alive, right?

Conchita rallied the Snapeism troops against their enemy, the woman who had introduced them to their god. She called, rolling out in a letter online.

Did you ever stop to think even an outcast has feelings and so can be feeling actual hurt? Do you know how many people see his pain and recognize it? So many people have been through something similar and get strength from Severus, seeing him deal with it. The way you killed him killed their hope. Severus Snape deserved so much better. What did he ever do to you that you seem to hate him so much?

Desperate for answers, Tanya turned to the only person who could overrule Rowling's ending for their master.

They actually stepped into the Harry Potter world where Snape proved to them that he didn't actually die.

And it was J.K. Rowling who was wrong.

And that she'd sort of told the story wrong and he was actually dead. completely okay and his body in the coffin was somehow.

A decoy they were part of.

This sort of broader canon skepticism movement where a lot of people who didn't like the direction the books had gone in were thinking oh well maybe the books were wrong maybe the author's wrong maybe the version.

Of the harry potter universe as i see it might actually be more correct.

The Snape wives leaned on each other for support. Their sisterhood and love for Snape were stronger than a scribe who misinterpreted their master's fate. Or so they thought. Snape's death cut Rose to her core, cut her so deep she was lovesick. In 2010, she posted on LiveJournal. Rose said that the Harry Potter fandom was dying due to J.K.

Rowling's lack of attention to the adult characters, and that Rowling enjoyed making Snape's life pure misery. Rose asked Rowling, How.

Can you keep a flame burning when you starve it? So fans will find other fandoms such as Twilight or NCIS or any other stuff out there. Because they're the need, the demand is being met thoroughly. I do love Severus Snape. I love him with all my heart and I always will. No one can take him away from me. But even I have to say I found someone who is pretty much just like him. And my passion, obsession, need is being met there.

A bomb detonated in Tanya's life. How could Rose have fallen in love with someone else? She was one of the founders of Snapeism. The one rule above all else was that Snape was to be their only focus, their only god, their true love. After years of loyal devotion, who could compete with Severus Snape?

For some reason, Agent Gibbs had an awful lot to do with the breakdown of the Snape wives.

That's Agent Gibbs from the TV show NCIS, played by silver-haired fox Mark Harmon. For Tanya, Rose didn't just have a crush on another character. She was breaking a cosmic vow. Not just to Snape, but to her favorite sister-wife. From the doctrine Rose and Tanya created together on the internet, to growing Snape's fanbase, the erotic channeling, targeting Conchita, moving in together, growing closer to each other and to Snape as they lost connection with their husbands, falling for Agent Gibbs was a knife to Tanya's heart and all she and Rose had built together.

Not only do they have a falling out between each other, but it really.

Seems to be the end of the Snape Wives movement as a whole because one of the core members who'd been so instrumental in talking about how Snape needed to be the centre of her world and the centre of everyone's world, all of a sudden this person started having connections with another fictional character and it really blew their whole relationship apart in in a way that they never really recovered from.

The Snapeism community collapsed. The wreckage from Rose's betrayal lay scattered across hers and Tanya's live journal pages. Over time, Tanya took down her posts, erasing proof of their connection to each other and to Snape. In the end, it wasn't Snape who abandoned his wives. His wives abandoned each other.

It left the internet wondering, was Snapeism defined by his wives' connection to each other more than their worship of Snape? If the congregation falls apart, does the religion matter? Is Snape now alone on the astral plane without anyone to talk to, trapped in an early 2000s void? As wild and chaotic as the digital lives of the Snape wives were, Rose made a good point in her post to J.K.

Rowling.

They're not the only people who have found faith in fandoms. Jediism was born from the Star Wars series, where real people swore oaths to become Jedi and live their lives according to a set of principles based on the films. The Twilight series inspired Cullen-ism, Cullinists believe that Edward Cullen's vampire family is real. If a person is good in life, they'll spend an eternity with the Cullens in the afterlife.

If a person is bad, they'll spend eternity in one of the Twilight Villains' caves. It might seem far-fetched how people find this level of meaning in novels, movies, and TV shows. But finding faith in fandoms is a modern way of seeking answers to life's age-old mysteries.

A lot of people throughout humanity's history had a dominant culture placed upon them and they didn't have that idea of strong individualism and individual choice like we do. So when we look at how contemporary people construct their identity and the way that they just sort of make meaning out of a confusing world is they often do it through processes of consumption.

Dr.

Alderton, who is now a learning experience designer at the College at Western Sydney University, encourages people to look inward when it comes to defining their belief systems.

I would really like to challenge people who have that belief.

Feeling to really look at how they do actually define religion and where they do draw those lines. So how do you actually say how big something has to be, how old something has to be? Are you actually going through and rating the sincerity of every founder? Are you making sure that nothing fictionalized has into any belief system.

So I think it's an interesting opportunity to kind of reflect back on what you believe a religion to be if something like Snapism feels like it's impossible or wrong.

Snapism may seem like a punchline, but it asked real questions about faith, loneliness, imagination, and how far we'll go to feel understood. With all of their flaws, the internet gave these women a temple, a god, a sisterhood. And then it left them where it found them.

Alone.

Okay, so you guys are younger than me, but can you remember those insane Harry Potter book release parties from the early 2000s?

Are you kidding me? Remember them? Jason, I was at them. I have a photo of me. I swear to God, when I was in third or fourth grade, I had dragged my dad to the midnight release party of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. And there's a photo of the two of us wearing like fake Harry Potter glasses.

That's awesome. I was in high school and working at a bookstore. And I remember the book releases, the lines outside of the bookstore at midnight with all these parents and their kids so excited to get the book. We had to stay open late. It was nuts.

But for anyone new here. What we do after each episode, we turn to our resident casting director, Zarin, and ask if you were going to cast the movie version of the story we just told who would star. So, did you?

I did.

I managed to cast this one, and I had some fun with it. Obviously, with Severus Snape, it's only Alan Rickman. I mean, you can't do better than that. And as this story proves, he is Snape, and casting him as Snape changed who Snape was in the books. So, that was it. It's Alan Rickman.

He is Snape. Yeah, right?

So.

Other than that, for Tanya, Rose, and Conchita, I had some fun. I thought for Tanya, go with Haley Stanfield. For Rose, go with Millie Bobby Brown. And for Conchita, go with Jenna Ortega. And I thought that they could have some cool witchy vibes, and I could see them all eating those rolls.

That's great.

Sometimes we also award a very special character, and sometimes it's obvious, and we kind of go off the rails a little bit. I'll throw out as a nomination... Mark Harmon, who if I was going to worship a TV character the last 20 years, why not? He's played several.

That's great.

Yeah.

He was mine as well. I mean, like Agent Gibbs from NCIS. When I saw that he had a major part in the story, I literally spit my coffee. I was like, you gotta be kidding me.

Handsome guy. Handsome guy.

Silver Fox. Did you guys, when you're reading this, could you anticipate where it was going next? I could not.

No, absolutely not. I do think the internet subcultures are some of my favorite rabbit holes to go down because it always is wild and unexpected. So anytime anyone has found like a niche community drama, please send it, email it to me because I want to know.

Yeah, this should be one of our pillars.

Yeah.

Random Richard Nixon stories, internet subcultures. Yeah. extreme fandom and belonging. I think earnestly, like that is what a lot of these episodes are people looking for something to latch onto.

And also like when they made the point, maybe the author is wrong about like why JK Rowling, I was like, I think the culture would agree with you. And you know, this also speaks to like our modern reading of culture where people are like, no, I own this more than the author. I'm sorry. They stopped when they stopped typing.

So now it's ours.

Very special episodes is made by some very special people. This show is hosted by Dana Schwartz, Zarin Burnett, and Jason English. Our senior producer is Josh Fisher. Today's episode was written by Katie Maddy. Our story editor is Virginia Prescott. Editing and sound design by Jonathan Washington. Additional editing by Josh Fisher and the Mary Dew. Special thanks to our guest, Dr.

Zoe Alderton, author of Snapewives and Snapeism, a fiction-based religion within the Harry Potter fandom. If you enjoyed today's episode, you should go check that out. Gotta give some love to our voice actors. Jonathan Washington as Snape, Josh Fisher as Lucius Malfoy, Bea Haskins as Rose, and Katie Maddy as Conchita. Mixing and mastering by Jonathan Washington. Original music by Elise McCoy. Show logo by Lucy Quintanilla. Executive producer is Jason English. Very Special Episodes is a production of iHeart Podcasts.

The Secret Lives of Snape Wives [from Very Special Episodes]

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