Snape fans, I need your help

[rm]

Are you a woman who cosplays Snape?

Are you someone of any gender who cosplays Snape in any sort of intentionally genderqueer way?

Are you a fan-artist who has done drawings of Snape scenes from JKR's book in which he is described with traditionally feminine adjectives or attributes (i.e., that thing where he's wearing a blouse when he first meets Lily as a little kid)?

Are you a fan-artist who has done drawings of Snape with some degree of feminine presentation and those drawings are general audiences (i.e., not cross-dressing erotica)?

I'm giving a paper (a draft version of it was presented at a Harry Potter con a few years back) at the Dragon*Con Comics and Popular Arts Conference on Beyond Queering the Villain: Severus Snape, Gender and Heroism and I have been asked to do a powerpoint presentation to accompany it.

If you are willing to let me use images of your art or cosplay, with full-credit, solely for the purposes of this powerpoint (not published, not a hand-out), please get in touch through comments or email me at racheline AT gmail DOT com.

Thank you!

Comments

[tdanaher.livejournal.com]

Is "blouse" a traditionally feminine, or traditionally/contemporary *American* feminine, way to describe a shirt worn by a male? I ask because I've seen more references than I can count to people like Charles Dickens describing men as wearing blouses. I've come to see it as one of those words like "jumper" that British writers use which paints a different picture to an American reader than it would to a British audience.

[rm.livejournal.com]

The line explicitly states that looks like an old/worn women's blouse. So the issue is not a jumper = sweater in Britain and a type of dress in America thing.

OT

[bethynyc.livejournal.com]

Just letting you know that I friended you. I've seen your posts in friendsfriends for a while, and really enjoy your writing.

[smirnoffmule.livejournal.com]

I believe blouse originally was a less gendered term, but in contemporary Britian, a man's shirt would certainly not be referred to as a blouse. And I'm just reading the scene, and the context for the line is Petunia challenging him "What's that you're wearing, your mum's blouse?" Outside of dialogue, JKR calls it a smock, which I believe is closer to the sense in which Dickens would have used blouse but obviously less loaded to modern ears.

rm, I am totally hooked and inspired by the idea of this presentation. Is this one of the ones you're hoping to get recorded?

[rm.livejournal.com]

Yup. It's actually a more refined version of something I gave a draft of a few years ago, but basically if I mention it in the same breath of any other scholarly work I'm remotely interested in doing, people are like "GIVE THAT ONE" so, you know... getting it together now.

[smirnoffmule.livejournal.com]

Awesome. I vicariously can't wait. And you're totally making me want to cosplay, which is a completely new sensation for me.

[chibitoaster.livejournal.com]

Lemme find it. I actually drew Snape as a little girl. Oh, and where's that fic where Snape is a girl and Sirius finds out his secret, they fall in love, etc. It was awesome!

I'll look for it and let you know

[eumelia.livejournal.com]

Sorry to do this on someone else's journal, but do you have a link to that fic by any chance?

Thanks in advance!

[dsmoen.livejournal.com]

I can't wait for this, it sounds awesome.

[chibitoaster.livejournal.com]

Here's one of them: Sexing the Pumpkin.
http://community.livejournal.com/temple_of_rbr/2327.html
(there's also a part 2 and a part 3, and a sequel)

There was another one that I remember, but I can't seem to find it. :P

[eumelia.livejournal.com]

Thank you muchly!

If you do recall you can PM me and not spam rm, unless zie would also like a link to the fic :D

[rm.livejournal.com]

As much as the paper isn't about fannish representation, the way fandom glommed onto Snape was sort of how I got thinking about this stuff in the first place, so I'd be curious as well.

[eumelia.livejournal.com]

Snape is such a fascinating character. JKR perceives her characters in such a weird way... I remember her calling Dumbeldore "the embodiment of good" or something similar and all I could think is "Is she smoking her excess Pound Sterlings or something".

Anyway... obviously we could both go on and on about all that.

[worldof-wonders.livejournal.com]

I will email you.

[shipchan.livejournal.com]

That's such a great fic.

[meirion.livejournal.com]

Probably no use, but you're free to use http://pics.livejournal.com/meirion/pic/000d1e0g if you like.

[pennswoods.livejournal.com]

chaeche was/is at a vidding con this weekend and probably didn't see your post, but I think her cosplaying of Mpreg Snape and Latex!Snape would be wonderfully illustrative of a female cosplaying Snape with deliberate feminine aspects. I believe there are images that have been made available on snapecast.com

[sinick.livejournal.com]

Actually, if "deliberate feminine aspects" is what the OP is interested in, that's going to be quite hard to find.

Sure, a lot of women (myself included) cosplay Snape, and in a lot of cases have done so for years.

But does the gender of the cosplayer per se make the portrayal genderqueer, when the portrayal is almost invariably done in such a way as to minimize the femininity of the cosplayer (since said femininity moves the portrayal further OOC)? droxy is of course the most outstanding example of the lengths female Snape cosplayers go to, though many others do things like lower their voices, bind their breasts, wear lifts in their shoes etc etc.

The only Snape cosplay I've personally seen in five years of HP cons that doesn't downplay the cosplayer's femininity chaeche's Latex!Snape. (I never saw her Mpreg!Snape, but it certainly sounds like a second exception to the rule.)

[timelady.livejournal.com]

Another you could try talking to is brewingtrouble, though she usually cosplays him as straight. And I know she's a fan-artist.


(We were just joking around on that one. My friend Jen suggested that the waist bag I had made me look like a pregnant Harry, so we figured it looked like an m-preg Harry by Snape -that's brewingtrouble as Snape.)

[anotheranon.livejournal.com]

I think I know someone meeting your description, but they're not on LJ. Can I forward?

[jinian.livejournal.com]

That was marvelous, thank you!