Otto Octavius: You Know, Curt, I Could Just Make You A Robot Arm.

Look, I know we in the Snapedom always talked about Severus as this genius prodigy and all that. We take a hollow comfort in his mastery of potions. He might be a lonely spy. He might not be able to have friends that he didn’t lie to half the time. But maybe he could be at peace while brewing some potions for the medical wing.

But this is sad Snape AU o’clock, so think about this:

As an overworked professor swamped with the mundane work of grading essays and supervising classes, does Severus still have the time to be a genius? To study, research, and innovate?

And if what some have theorised is true, and Severus for one reason or another didn’t publicise his research, imagine his feelings as his school-day discoveries were slowly found out by others and publicised by them.

Imagine him finding out the Ravenclaw that ranked just a bit under him in potion was now in Alaska, working with an international potion organisation to study the property of a rare magical herb in there.

Imagine him having to make the nth batch of headache potion. Gritting his teeth because he knew he could've done better than this.

Imagine him being so tired, stressed, and uninspired that even when he's on break he couldn't maintain any productivity.

Severus who tried to brew a high level potion or write a paper, but failed again and again.

Imagine a burnt out Severus.

Severus who wanted to be a DADA teacher because he couldn't even care about potion anymore.

Severus who lost his passion.

Just like Slughorn, Albus Dumbledore collects people. Only, instead of focusing on those with influence, he looks to the outcasts.

The expelled half-giant. The young werewolf. The repentant Death Eater.

He protects them and gives them a second chance. All he asks in return is their loyalty.

And, if on occasion he requests that they undertake a certain task, invoking their debt of gratitude - well, that is no more than he is owed.

He once thought to add a certain disowned Black to his collection, but quickly realised his mistake.

Sirius is not an outcast, but a rebel. He knowingly chose his path, and chooses what price he is willing to pay for it. He refuses to be used.

So Albus Dumbledore abandons him.

don’t take up smoking it’s very hard to quit

one of sans’ unspoken, but actually rather prominent flaws is overprotectiveness, and I think it shines through exceptionally well in the king papyrus ending.

sans deliberately lies to papyrus about the death of his friends in an attempt to protect papyrus’s innocence.  The problem here?  Well one is that Papyrus isn’t innocent.  He’s a grown adult, a king now, in fact.  He needs to know the seriousness of the situation if he’s ever going to rule properly.  But beyond that,

not telling papyrus that his friends are dead isn’t just irresponsible, it’s downright cruel.  We already know that papyrus had very few friends to begin with, and now?  He probably thinks the one friend he did have has abandoned him.  And while I doubt sans consciously intended this, the fact remains that sans’s overprotectiveness has hurt his brother, in a way that sans doesn’t seem aware of (probably because papyrus purposefully hides this from him, as shown when he waits for sans to leave before he says this).  Sans lies to his brother in an attempt to protect his positive outlook, but in the process of doing it he’s effectively forcing papyrus to internalize his sadness for the sake of what he perceives is best.  He does not allow papyrus to judge for himself what is best for papyrus, because he’s so scared of ruining that positive outlook he relies so heavily on.

and this is not the only instance of sans hiding information in order to “protect” the people he cares about

while maybe this one’s more understandable, it’s still wrong.  Eventually toriel is going to find out what happened, keeping the information from her does nothing except prolong both sans and toriel’s suffering.  But sans doesn’t think about this, because in his mind, he’s protecting her.  He equates keeping loved ones safe with keeping them in the dark about anything that could hurt their feelings.  Which is… not healthy for relationships at all.

Everyone seems to focus on how sans’s lies hurt sans, but it’s also important to acknowledge that his lies hurt the people around him.  It’s why pacifist endings are more important to sans than he even realizes in-game; a chance at the surface means a chance to recover, a chance to recover means sans stops relying on the (not so) blissful ignorance of others in order to deal with his own issues.  It means his relationships begin to be built on trust, rather than lies and internalized emotions.  And I think that’s better for everyone.

Please tell us more about Voldemort's relationship with Severus, and why you think it differs so much from Voldemort's other relationships

Whatever it is that lingers between Tom and Severus—power, manipulation, some dark bond none of us can fully grasp—it naturally ignites chaos in the mind of the beholders. And if you’re eager to feel that burn, I’ll gladly embrace you in it. To you brave, reckless souls, I say this: your wish is my command.

So, here we are, picking apart how Severus Snape—mudblood, poor, and bruised from the heavy hand of a Muggle father—managed to land himself a spot at the table with the most rabid pack of blood purists you’ve ever seen. A table, mind you, he had no business sitting at. The Death Eaters, that tight little clique of privileged purebloods, had no real reason to let in this scruffy little outsider. Sure, Snape was useful. Very useful. His skills were sharp as knives, and he could do their dirty work, get his hands filthy so they didn’t have to. But useful doesn’t mean welcome. Useful doesn’t mean accepted. You know who else was useful? Fenrir Greyback and his mangy lot. They brought terror to the doorsteps of half the wizarding world, and did Voldemort’s cause no small service. But did they get a place at the inner circle? Did they get respect? Hell no. They were the dirt beneath the boots of the real Death Eaters. Useful filth. And then there’s Snape, embodying everything these purists claim to despise—a half-blood with a tainted surname, living in squalor, dragged through the muck by a Muggle brute of a father. By all accounts, Death Eaters should have spat in his face and tossed him out like yesterday’s rubbish. But no. Not only does he get a seat at the table, he rises. He’s placed on a pedestal, standing closer to Voldemort than some of the most loyal, purest-blooded lackeys in the room. Voldemort, in all his cold-blooded glory, didn’t just tolerate Severus. He raised him up, right in front of their sneering, offended faces. Now, here’s where it gets really interesting. If you think Voldemort did this out of some sense of gratitude, you’ve missed the point entirely. Tom Riddle doesn’t do gratitude. That kind of sentiment is beneath him, an alien concept. Voldemort doesn’t reward; he uses. Deeds done in his name are expected, not appreciated. You’re not going to get a pat on the back from a man who thinks the world owes him its loyalty. Snape’s service should’ve earned him nothing more than a brief reprieve from pain. A loosening of the noose around his neck, if he was lucky. That’s Voldemort’s way—keep them all desperate, keep them all afraid. So why did Snape, of all people, get raised up? Why did he, the least likely among them, become a favorite?

Mind, it’s not just me declaring Snape as Voldemort’s favorite. That dark, twisted bond is laced into nearly every interaction between the two, as if something unspoken and festering passes between them. But it’s Narcissa Malfoy who lays it bare. A woman born into the highest echelons of pure-blood privilege, the very foundation on which Voldemort’s so-called supremacy stands, doesn’t hesitate when she calls him “the Dark Lord’s favorite, his most trusted advisor.” Let that sink in.

Here is the wife of Lucius Malfoy, a man whose lineage is steeped in the darkest of traditions. But when her family’s future is on the edge of a wand, when her son’s life dangles by a thread, she doesn’t rely on Lucius, doesn’t turn to Bellatrix. No, she comes to Severus, because deep down, she knows. They all do.

It’s something more insidious, something that slips through the cracks in the floorboards of Voldemort’s ideology. He is the one Voldemort trusts, the one Voldemort leans on, the one whose counsel can shift the dark winds of fate. That is real power, raw and untouchable. Narcissa sees it—how could she not? Even with all her aristocratic pride, even with the weight of her name and her family’s legacy pressing down on her, she understands that none of it means a damn thing next to what Snape has. Narcissa, with her family’s long, proud heritage, has to grovel before someone who, by the very logic of Voldemort’s cause, should be inferior. But Snape is different, and everyone knows it. They may not say it, they may not even want to admit it, but they know. He operates outside the lines, above the fray, immune to the very rules that were meant to keep people like him down. Snape, the half-blood, the one with the muddied past, holds a kind of sway that no one else in Voldemort’s ranks can claim.

Oh, there comes the bitter irony of Peter Pettigrew. After years of scraping and groveling, thinking he’d earned his place in the Dark Lord’s favor, Peter is handed over like a rag for Severus to wring out. Peter, one of the smug Marauders who’d gleefully hounded Snape through school, reduced now to something just shy of a house-elf, bowing and cringing under Snape’s very roof. A cruel twist of fate, no doubt arranged with Voldemort’s signature malevolence. Was this some attempt to plant a spy in Snape's house? Maybe, if you take it at face value. But think for a moment—Voldemort, who couldn’t pry Snape's treachery from his skull with all the power of Legilimency, putting his trust in Wormtail to do the job? The rat that couldn't outsmart a dormitory prank, never mind a master of deception like Severus?

No, this isn’t espionage; this is karma. Cruel, twisted karma orchestrated by the Dark Lord himself. You can almost picture Severus watching Peter scuttle about his house, casting him those withering, superior glances—knowing full well that Tom has given him this indulgence, this little taste of vengeance. Snape treats Wormtail with open contempt, because he knows he can. He knows it’s allowed, expected even. It’s as if the tables have turned in the most bitter of ways, a humiliating reversal of fortune. Pettigrew, who once revelled in Snape’s humiliation, now reduced to the lowest of roles, while Snape—Voldemort’s golden boy—sits at the top. Isn’t it delicious? You’d have to be blind to chalk it up to coincidence. Moreover, Pettigrew’s fate is all the proof you’ll ever need that Voldemort’s rule isn’t founded on something as simple or sentimental as loyalty. Loyalty? Sacrifice? Please. Pettigrew’s life was one long, groveling act of desperation to stay in the Dark Lord’s good graces. You bring your master back from the brink of death itself, and still, all you get is contempt. Voldemort demands service, sure. But service? Guarantees nothing. And when you set Severus and Peter side by side, the question gnaws at you. Why? Why is Snape the favored one, the exception, the enigma in Voldemort’s otherwise brutal, predictable hierarchy? What makes him different? There’s something between them—something that doesn’t follow the usual logic of power and punishment. Voldemort doesn’t just tolerate Snape’s defiance; he rewards it, bends the system to accommodate it. Something unspoken, something hidden behind the masks they both wear, grants Snape a level of favor that Pettigrew could only dream of.

What’s crucial to grasp here is that Voldemort doesn’t spare anyone. His entire ideology is rooted in cruelty, in domination, in the ruthless obliteration of all who oppose him. He doesn’t just eliminate enemies; he obliterates them, wipes them from existence without a second thought. And yet, here’s the anomaly: Lily Evans, mother of Harry Potter, a member of the Order of the Phoenix, and a Muggle-born witch, is offered a chance to live. Live. This decision, however, is directly tied to Snape. Snape had begged Voldemort to spare her, and it is this plea—Snape’s plea—that softens the Dark Lord’s otherwise unyielding cruelty.

To truly grasp the enormity of this act, we need to take a step back and consider Snape’s position in all of this. Remember, Severus was just 21 years old when he found himself pleading with Voldemort, one of the most dangerous dark wizard in history, to spare Lily Evans.

Snape wasn’t the imposing, confident figure we often associate with him thanks to Alan Rickman’s performance—he wasn’t a man exuding quiet menace, seemingly capable of standing toe-to-toe with Voldemort. No, at this point in canon, he was barely more than a boy, a young man fresh out of Hogwarts, with no powerful lineage or wealth to protect him.

And yet, despite this—despite the sheer imbalance of power between them—Snape dared to approach Voldemort. Voldemort. With a plea. Not for himself, but for a Muggle-born witch. At best, Snape’s request might have been laughed off, dismissed as the desperate wish of a foolish young Death Eater. But it wasn’t. For some reason, Voldemort didn’t just tolerate Snape’s plea—he actually acted on it.

Consider how critical this moment was to Voldemort’s larger agenda. At the heart of his entire scheme is a singular, consuming fixation: the annihilation of the child prophesied to be his undoing. Harry Potter is Voldemort’s obsession, the one threat he must eliminate to secure his dominion. The Potters were no longer just enemies—they were the key to his future, and Harry was the focus of his most crucial mission. In this context, sparing anyone even remotely connected to Harry was an extraordinary risk. Leniency wasn’t just unnecessary—it was dangerous. By showing mercy to Lily, Voldemort risked undermining his own carefully constructed agenda. And this wasn’t a moment where Voldemort could afford to make mistakes.

This unprecedented act of “mercy,” this concession Voldemort granted Snape, became the very thing that led to his downfall. Had Voldemort simply killed Lily Evans on the spot, as he did James, she would never have had the chance to sacrifice herself for Harry. The protection her sacrifice invoked—the ancient magic that saved Harry’s life and turned Voldemort’s killing curse back on him—would never have existed. Voldemort, the cold strategist, fell because he didn’t bend for anyone—except, inexplicably, for Snape. And that single, dangerous deviation cost him everything. That’s how it’s all started.

And there it is— how it’s all ends. Voldemort’s final words to Severus Snape before he executes him. But pay attention to how he begins. “Clever man,” he calls him. He suggests that Snape might’ve already known the truth of the Elder Wand’s treachery. Tom would never acknowledge someone’s cleverness if it undermined his own intellectual abilities. If he implies that Snape may have already unraveled the mystery of the Elder Wand, it undoubtedly indicates that Voldemort had recognized Snape’s crucial role in the wand’s problems long before. It’s not just idle chatter or casual flattery. No, it’s a bloody confirmation that Voldemort himself had long ago pieced together the mystery of Snape’s involvement with the wand. This wasn’t some last-minute realization that forced his hand. It wasn’t ignorance that delayed Snape’s death, not at all. It was deliberation. Voldemort, for all his cruelty, wasn’t stupid. He suspected, long before that moment, that Snape was at the center of the problem with the wand’s loyalty. He just chose not to act on it until the very last moment.

He held back from executing him, searching for any other way around the wand’s limitations, trying to find a solution that didn’t involve killing Snape. But when it came down to it, when all other options were exhausted, Voldemort finally made his move.

And what does he do? He delivers a speech. A bloody speech, full of regret and excuses—“I regret what must happen.” Does that sound like the Voldemort we know? The Dark Lord who kills without a second thought, who carves his empire from the bones of the disobedient? Hell no. This is the man who thrives on fear, on swift, brutal punishment. And yet, here he is, delivering justifications like some guilty executioner. This isn’t Voldemort’s usual method. This isn’t the whip coming down fast and hard. This is something altogether more… hesitant.

That speech, soaked in rationalizations, tells us everything we need to know. Snape’s death wasn’t just business—it was personal. It’s a messy, ugly end to the unexplainable dynamic between them. Even at the very end, Voldemort is bending, twisting, trying to justify his actions to the one man who had managed to worm his way under his skin. And in that second, we see something rare—a glimpse of the complexity in their relationship. Voldemort’s usual ruthless efficiency is absent.

His “I regret it,” spoken once more, stands out like a blade in the gut, sharp and unexpected, slicing straight through Voldemort’s usual cold indifference. The Dark Lord, who has never spared a thought for the wreckage in his wake, lets these words hang in the air, unnatural as they are. A man who’s never known the weight of remorse now offers something that almost feels like regret. Not true regret, of course—Voldemort doesn’t have the luxury of feeling something so weak, so human. But still, It’s not a sentiment he offers to anyone else. It’s almost as if Voldemort doesn’t know how to process this lingering attachment, as though Snape’s mere existence demands something from him that Voldemort is incapable of giving. Snape occupies some strange corner of Voldemort’s mind, twisted and dark it may be, that not even the Dark Lord himself seems to understand. Despite the fact that I’ve painted a whole canvas of tangled thoughts on the strange relationship between Severus and Tom, I’ve barely begun to tug at the thread of their inexplicable dynamic. There’s so much more I could unearth, layers of intrigue and tension that ripple through every scene between them, and I could easily go on for hours about the small, delicious details woven into their story. But, as it happens, my full-time job is already sharpening its knife and aiming for my back, so I'll have to bring this whole saga to a close with the following quote:

For me, the intensity of this scene speaks volumes about their relationship, capturing the very essence of what makes these two so bloody fascinating. The way their gaze alone can make Death Eaters flinch under the weight of their unspoken understanding. It’s not fear, not exactly. It’s something colder, something deeper. As though they’re witnessing a bond forged in the dark, a grim understanding that none of them can ever be a part of.

That’s what keeps dragging me back to these two. The tension, the labyrinth of contradictions, the complex tangle of manipulation. I want to look away—hell, I should look away, just like the Death Eaters did. But there’s something about it, something that coils around me, tightening like a serpent’s embrace. Can you blame me?

I cannot properly express my love for the fact that Rincewind is a wizard not because he does magic or is particularly intelligent, which he doesn’t and isn’t, but because that’s who he knows he is, it’s an integral part of himself despite his not fitting any wizardly criteria other than wearing a hat with WIZZARD written on it, and all the other wizards think this is fair and don’t question it.

I've seen so many takes that portray Silco as having bribed Marcus in Act 1, but I think this detracts from Marcus's corruption as well as Silco's intelligence and have some ice cold, rigor mortis takes for you under the cut:

_

Silco invites Marcus to the cannery to offer him information, and the audience can naturally assume that from the money Silco tosses at Marcus after Grayson's murder, there's been a transaction between the two of them.

Marcus, though, has little reason to be interested in money with a position like his. He's in a senior role despite his youth and his personal grooming is off the charts well-maintained, not to mention tasteless almost to the point of opulence. Depending on Ren's age and the timing of his wife's death, he may have a family to support, but he's still Piltovian. He's still a presumably wealthy man.

Indeed, Silco has his own resources behind the scenes, however, he does need to lean into the stereotype Marcus places on fissure folk in order to get what he wants.

Marcus doesn't believe people of the Undercity to be altruistic; he sees them as greedy criminals, and by playing into that bias, Silco is able to secure a higher degree of trust in him. In eliciting a bribe from Marcus rather than simply passing information along for no good reason other than an old grudge, Silco is leading Marcus to consider himself smarter than Silco. He instils false confidence that Marcus is ahead of the game, and in doing so gives him the extra push he needs to challenge Vander without Grayson's authorisation.

When it comes to Vander's arrest, Silco's gang pursues and ambushes the arrest party as a means of killing two birds with one stone. Vander and Benzo have been drawn out into the open, but so has a demoralised Grayson. Attacking this particular group at this particular time secures Silco a victory over both cities, but it also acts as a dialogue with Marcus in that he has been duped — that Marcus is not any more intelligent than a trencher, and that his own prejudice hasn't only allowed Silco to use him — he now owns him.

Failing to honour Marcus's deal is an attack of its own. Marcus's intellect, his ego, his beliefs come under fire when Silco throws his own money back at him and declares a change of plan. All this tragedy came about because Marcus's bias prevented him from ever considering that Silco might be playing him.

All Marcus is left with once Silco gets his way is his own fat tits and the knowledge that this particular moment is entirely his fault, and Silco drives this point home by returning Marcus's bribe.

Vi's kidnapping occurs not only as a last-ditch effort on Marcus's part to do right in a disaster he played a massive role in causing, but also because he himself has just learned how dangerous a man Silco is. Also like idk kind of poetic justice for both of them that the one barely-righteous thing Marcus does in his career before Silco has him 100% under his thumb eventually leads to Silco's total undoing.

holding back the instinct to explode with a screaming half coherent rant about sans

why would you distort “Severus changed sides because of Lily” to “Severus only changed sides because of Lily”? Trying to save someone you care about is a pretty good reason imo.