The AU-blog Ankh-Morpork University Is On Summer Hiatus, But I Couldn’t Resist Making Something For

I can’t remember if I’ve said this before but I think that if you make a Batman 1920s AU then you have to take into account that Bertie Wooster often spent time living in New York and Gotham City is just New York Noir and Bruce Wayne would probably cultivate the acquaintance of Bertie Wooster because Bertie is exactly the sort of person Bruce wants people to think he is, so it’s both birds of a feather camouflage and because he wants to observe Bertie for behavioural ideas.

Bertie, ray of sunshine that he is, thinks Bruce is jolly good fun and really quite barmy, but he already has a friend called Barmy and he can’t manage two Barmies so he affectionately dubs him Batty.

Consequently Bruce exists in a state of nagging uncertainty as to whether Bertie is the golden-hearted silly ass he so transparently appears to be, or is in fact one of his villains, knowing who he is and taunting him.

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

Severus Snape

This is an Anti Snape rant. I was to preface it by making it clear that I appreciate Severus Snape as one of the most interesting, important and well written literary figures of our time and possibly in history. I respect anyone who says that Snape is their favorite. That’s perfectly fine. Harley Quinn is one of my favorite comic book characters. She’s bubbly and funny and intelligent and strong…that doesn’t mean I don’t recognize that she’s criminally insane and that her relationship with the joker is in fact terribly abusive from both sides. These multi-dimensional characters become our favorites BECAUSE there are so many sides to them. Harry Potter happens to be a series where nearly every primary character is several layers deep. To quote my own personal problematic favorite; “The World isn’t made up of Good People and Death Eaters.” - Sirius Black, Order of the Pheonix, Chapter 15, Percy and Padfoot.

 Snape is a bad person. I don’t care what he did to “redeem himself”. You can die to save the world, that doesn’t mean years of verbally and emotionally abusing children just didn’t count. I know plenty of people who served in the military and fought for the country but they abuse their families…does it not count because they fought a war? 

 FACT: Severus Snape was interested the dark arts from an early age.

 FACT: Severus Snape had other friends besides Lily Evans. 

FACT: Severus Snape provoked James Potter and Sirius Black, often spying on the Marauders to try and find out Remus Lupin’s secret and also hanging around with Slytherin Pure Blood Supremacists who bullied other students. He was not an innocent unpopular kid that the big, mean popular boys picked on. He wasn’t. Stop victimizing him. He was just as much at fault as they were. 

FACT: Severus Snape created his own spell by the age of 15 that was potentially lethal and used it on James Potter…reason? Well, James pantsed him….

are…you…kidding…me…?

FACT: Lily Evans ended her friendship with Severus Snape because of his affiliation with these other students and his interest in The Dark Arts. She did not end the friendship in favor of James Potter. She didn’t even start dating James for AT LEAST another year after ending her friendship with Severus. He called her a racial slur and his friends physically attacked one of her friends. 

“I never meant to call you a Mudblood. It just-” 

 “Slipped out? It’s too late! I’ve been making excuses for you for years! None of my friends can understand why I even talk to you! You and your precious little Death Eater friends. See? You don’t even deny it! You don’t deny that that is what you’re aiming to be! You can’t wait to join You-Know-Who, can you? I can’t pretend anymore. You’ve chosen your way and I’ve chosen mine.”

“No, listen, I didn’t mean-”

 “To call me a Mudblood? But you call everyone of my birth a mudblood! Why should I be any different?” - Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Chapter 33 The Prince’s Tale.

FACT: Severus Snape never got over his romantic feelings for Lily Evans and was angry that she married his school rival, James Potter.

“After all this time?”

 “Always.”  - Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Chapter 33, The Prince’s Tale.

This is actually creepy. One of my biggest qualms with The Harry Potter Fandom as a whole is how infatuated people are with this quote. James and Lily died at age 21, a good 6 years after Lily ended her friendship with Severus and he’s still holding a torch for her? This isn’t love, it’s obsession and it’s unhealthy. He harassed her after she ended things, too. He threatened to sleep outside the Gryffindor common room until Lily agreed to speak with him (See: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Chapter 33, The Prince’s Tale). It’s not sweet that Severus was still in love with Lily after all this time. It’s scary. Severus’ patronus being a Doe is CREEPY, not a sign that they are soulmates.

FACT:  Severus Snape joined the Death Eaters BECAUSE HE WANTED TO ALL ALONG. Upon learning that Lily Evans had been targeted, he ran to Dumbledore, begging him to protect her. Only Her. 

“If she means so much to you, could you not ask The Dark Lord for mercy for the mother in exchange for the son?”

 “I’ve tried!” 

“You disgust me. You do not care then about the deaths of her husband and her son, as long as you get what you want?” 

Snape said nothing. - Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Chapter 33 The Prince’s Tale

If Lily Potter hadn’t been on Voldemort’s death list, would Severus have switched sides? It didn’t have to be Lily. It could have easily been Alice Longbottom instead. Had Neville been The Chosen One, Severus Snape would have remained a Death Eater. He only became a double-agent to repay Dumbledore for protecting Lily.

After Lily dies, Dumbledore has to bribe Severus to help him keep Harry safe.

 “He has her eyes, Severus. Her exact eyes. Surely you remember the shape and color of Lily Evans’s eyes.”

 “DON’T!” Bellowed Snape. “Dead…gone…”

“You know how and why she died. Let it not be in vane. Help me protect her son.” 

 “He doesn’t need protection! The Dark Lord is gone-”

“He will return.”

 “Very well. But never tell, Dumbledore! I cannot bare it…especially Potter’s son!” - Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Chapter 33, The Prince’s Tale.

Yikes, Severus. You loved this woman so much, or so you claim, but the idea of helping to protect HER CHILD, for whom she gave her life, is so unbearable to you because his father, who died trying to protect both of them, was mean to you in grade school? That’s…pretty messed up. 

FACT: 11 years later with a nice cushy job and protection at Hogwarts, Severus Snape continues to be a bitter adult man who is still not over his school yard crush, a woman who has been dead for over a decade and refused to speak to him for six years prior to that. He is in fact so bitter about it that he frequently takes it out on her prepubescent son.

Why? Because he looks a hell of a lot like James Potter.

 “-Mediocre, arrogant as his father, a determined rule breaker, delighted to find himself famous, attention seeking and impertinent -” 

 “You see what you expect to see, Severus. Other teachers report that the boy is modest, likable and reasonably talented. Personally, I find him to be an engaging child.” - Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Chapter 33, The Prince’s Tale.

But Snape doesn’t only pick on Harry. He picks on many of his young students just because…well…Because he’s an asshole, really! Honestly, the man humiliated 13 year old Neville Longbottom in front of the entire class for messing up on his potions assignment and then attempted to murder the kid’s pet. (See: Harry Potter and The Prisoner of Azkaban, Chapter Seven, The Boggart in the Wardrobe.)

Not to mention this lovely scene 

Ron forced Hermione to show Snape her teeth. She was doing her best to hide them with her hands, though this was difficult as they had grown past her collar.

 Snape looked coldly at Hermione and then said, “I see no difference.” - Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, chapter 18, The Weighing Of The Wands.

I could name probably a dozen more times that Severus Snape abuses his position as a Professor and treats his students with disrespect and potentially damaging behavior, but we would be here all day and there are other points I’d like to move on to. 

FACT: Severus Snape was uninterested in the possibility of Sirius Black’s innocence and overjoyed at the idea of being the one to turn him over to the Dementors. 

“Two more for Azkaban tonight,” Said Snape, his eyes gleaming fanatically. I shall be interested to see how Dumbledore takes this. He was convinced you were harmless, you know, Lupin…a tame werewolf.” 

 “You fool.” Said Lupin softly. “Is a school boy grudge worth putting an innocent man back inside Azkaban?” - Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, chapter nineteen, The Servant of Lord Voldemort.

 Okay, look, Sirius did try to kill Snape when they were kids. That’s a thing that happened…although there are not enough details of The Willow Incident known in canon to explain exactly what happened and why Sirius would do such a thing knowing that he could have potentially gotten James and Remus killed in the process…but that’s beside the point. What really gets me is that not only did Snape want to have Sirius given the Dementor’s kiss, but Remus also.

 BANG! Thin, snakelike cords burst out from the end of Snape’s wand and twisted themselves around Lupin’s mouth, wrists and ankles, he overbalanced and fell to the ground unable to move. With a roar of rage, Black started towards Snape, but Snape pointed his wand straight between Black’s eyes. 

 “Give me a reason and I’ll do it, I swear.” 

…

“I’ll drag the werewolf. Perhaps the dementors will have a kiss for him too.”  - Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, Chapter 19, The Servant of Lord Voldemort.

And it doesn’t stop there. Unable to get what he wanted and have his school rivals killed or imprisoned for absolutely no reason, Severus Butthurt Snape decides to just ruin Remus’ life instead and tells the entire school about his Lycanthropy - oh, wait, I’m sorry…did I say the entire school? I meant the world. 

“Amung these ‘eccentric decisions’ are undoubtedly the controversial staff appointments previously described in this newspaper, which have included the hiring of werewolf Remus Lupin.” - Harry Potter and the Order of the Pheonix, chapter 15, Hogwarts High Inquisitor. 

 …

“I know she’s a nasty piece of work though- you should hear Remus talk about her.” 

 “Does he know her?” 

“No, but she drafted a bit of anti-werewolf legislation two years ago that makes it almost impossible for him to get a job.”  - Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, chapter 14, Percy and Padfoot.

Two years ago, you say? What happened two years prior to this? Remus was working at Hogwarts and Snape outed him. 

No where in canon does it say that Remus ever did anything to Severus Snape, when honestly out of all the Marauders, he had the most reason to. Snape was always spying on them to get to him, after all. There is no reason for Severus to hate Remus enough to completely destroy his life like this. Only the fact that Severus Snape is without a doubt the biggest grudge holder to have ever lived.

FACT: Severus Snape is a war hero. 

Yes. He was. He was a key player in the defeat of Lord Voldemort, though not necessarily by his own choice. He was dragged into it by Dumbledore and by his own guilt, feeling this was the only way he could truly make amends for what happened between him and Lily when they were fifteen. 

So does begrudgingly becoming a double agent in the war as payment for Dumbledore’s attempts to keep Lily Evans safe for his own selfish reasons really negate every awful thing this man did from the time he was a young child to his guilt-driven ‘heroic’ death? 

No. It doesn’t. 

Severus Snape is a bad person. 

My favorite thing about Kim Kitsuragi is that he’s a huge liar.

He describes himself as a fun-hating spoilsport and then he gets overly aggressive about a game of Suzerainty that he said he was Much Too Busy to play, and declares “Nobody fucks with Kim Kitsuragi >:)”.

It turns out he’s in to driving really, really fast and making sure his RCM-issued vehicle is customized to Him, and is Very Pretty and Cool and Fast, and he is So Coy about it.  “I’m really just a professional, normal guy.  Just a really normal button-down cop guy that drives my custom-painted sports car.  do you want to hear about the engine?  It’s got 12 cylinders by the way. Lotta horsies.  Very fast.”

drops my briefcase 💼 oh no my sillies!!

@discordantwords tagged me to post a passage I’m especially proud of. Thank you!

I’ve only written once in Mycroft’s voice, but I loved doing it:

“We did not comprehend our agemates. We did not know why. They were loud and physical and contemptuous of theory; their minds were rooted in the immediate. There was a language of childhood between them which we could not speak. I am given to understand child prodigies are often isolated. Lonely, they say. I taught him how to analyze them, observe and catalogue behavior, comprehend their motivations. It was a game, at first, a way for us to try to understand. Then it became a question of survival–if he could predict them, he could escape them–my little brother; emotive, passionate and sensitive; pirate, dancer, lover of fairy tales; consumed with the unusual, the fantastical and eccentric, the romantic and the macabre, with Saint-Saens and Ravel and Stevenson and Baryshnikov and Nicola Tesla. Drawn to men, not women, in time. He does not simply stand, or pace; to this day, he moves when relaxed or absorbed as though still dancing, spins, shifts heels and hips, flutters his hands. His voice was expressive, sibilant and soft, though he has not spoken in his natural tone to me in years, but drops it to the depths he reserves for concealing his emotions and unnerving those he does not trust. Sherlock is explosive in his element. He is brilliant. He could be anything, except ordinary; that was and is impossible. He fit no one’s conception of the well-developed British child. No public school boy’s idea of a friend. They did try, but there was very little our parents could do, I think, to draw us out of the world we made for ourselves. After all, there were two of us.” – The Two of Us

Tagging @watsonshoneybee, @chriscalledmesweetie, @doomsteady,  @educatedinyellow, @blueink3, @artemisastarte, @ggaypilot, @suitesamba, @doctornerdington, @a-different-equation or anyone who wants to!

I love how Irving's always been kind to Helly even when he's suspicious of Helena and even when he's trying to drown Helena. The most obvious example of this in S2E4 is Irving saying he's so sorry for hurting Helly and making sure that she felt safe, that she had an anchor to cling to as she came back to life in the most disorienting way ever. Irving held her so tightly and protectively in his arms, whispering comfortingly to her and trying to warm her up, and I was all 🥺 the whole time.

But there are actually two other moments in S2E4 that I want to talk about! The first is the snow seal conversation. Irving is full of distrust by then, but he doesn't let that overtake him in the moment. He asks "Helly" again to tell him what she truly saw outside, but he does it in a way that shows that he isn't going to judge her no matter what her answer is and she's safe with him. If it really were Helly with him and she was keeping a secret out of shame, he wanted her to know there was nothing to be afraid of. She wouldn't lose his trust or respect.

The second moment is when he gets Helly back. Again, the most talked-about part of that scene is what I said in the first paragraph, but what I love the most about that moment is Irving brought Helly back to life because he loved her that much. Yes, it was to prove that the woman who was with them since MDR returned to work after the OTC incident was in fact not Helly as he suspected, but he specifically yelled at Milchick to bring back Helly. Not '"show them I'm right!", "prove me wrong," "do you really want to risk killing an Eagan?", or anything along those lines. He demanded Milchick resurrect Helly, back from the nonexistence she was banished to. And when Milchick did, Irving made good on his promise in the post-snow seal conversation: it would be okay. It won't change anything. Even after finding out who Helly was on the outside, his love and trust are unwavering and unconditional, something Helena probably never thought was possible after showing her "true" self because she's never had that from her blood family.

Oh NO. Had the most horrific thought, my heart is hurting. Thought I’d share.

To preface: So, we entertain the running joke about calling Bruno “Hernando” and “Jorge” when his hood is up/bucket is on - we’re playing along! It’s fun! This was a cute little joke by the screenwriters to show that this is a silly, theatrical, creative man who has definitely gotten a bit more eccentric in his decade of loneliness and solitude - UNDERSTANDABLE. Look at all of us after only 21 months, come on.

The deeper level to it that I also acknowledge is that he assumes aliases to get through the things that scare him, in an intentional way, like hey if it isn’t “Maldito Bruno” sneaking out to the kitchen, spackling the cracks, mixing plaster, etc maybe none of that bad luck will leak out, maybe no one will catch me, maybe it’ll be okay, maybe the fix will stick, maybe it will just go right this time. It’s Hernando, it’s Jorge, they’re brave and they fix things and they DON’T cause bad things to happen.

This is a headspace we see from him with his vision ritual and superstitious tics as well, and it is is a VERY common set of internal rules to be working from when you have OCD. (“If I can do it perfectly, nothing will go wrong” - I go into that in a lot more detail in my post about the mechanics of his visions, which I’m STILL working on bc it’s turning into a gd essay)

BUT.

Are we forgetting that Bruno has grown up USED to being one of three? The triplets are a unit - they each have their strengths and weaknesses, they protect each other, they assume different roles to get through difficult times. Consciously or not, would he not need those roles to be filled in their absence?

We have Pepa - the weather-wielder, bold and brave and terrifyingly tempestuous, always ready to stand in front, be the loudest, take the initiative, defend her family - undaunted in the face of any conflict that might make her gentler siblings shrink.

So we have Hernando, who patches the cracks and is afraid of NOTHING.

We have Julieta - the one who heals wounds with her cooking, warm and kind and calm, steady and supportive and observant and tactile - the glue that keeps the three of them together when her more anxious siblings feel ready to shatter.

So we have Jorge, who makes the spackle meant to heal the cracks in the casita and keep everything from falling apart.

He needs his sisters. So, in their absence, he constructs characters that can take up the mantle of protector, of healer, while he tries to maintain the distance he thinks is necessary to keep his family safe.

It’s just him, of course, fixing things from behind the scenes to try and prevent a future only he has witnessed. And he knows this.

What he doesn’t realize, naturally, is that his sisters need him, too. His foresight, his careful attention to detail, his knack for stories, his unerring kindness and humility, his quiet words of support. They are stronger together, always, and they’ve all been scattered and hurting for so long.

reason no. 264 why sans is smart af

Yoooooo okay I realized something. So we know that shopkeepers can’t be attacked. It isn’t a game function; it’s literally not possible. 

When you threaten Gerson, you get:

Shopkeepers/NPCs that sell items are invulnerable to attack due to an in-universe rule that you can’t initiate a fight with anyone who is actively selling something. I say actively because technically you have the option to sell items all the time at different shops (although not every shopkeeper will agree to buy), but monsters will still attack you and bosses can still pull you into a fight. If you’re smart, like Gerson, you can use this weird mechanic to keep yourself safe and alive. You can avoid hostile encounters, and thus damage/death, by becoming a peddler. 

And who do we know in this game that a) has dangerously low HP, b) keeps a tight lid on powers that could otherwise be used to protect themselves, and c) is constantly found selling things?

Sans is literally keeping himself alive by selling random stuff.

🔥sans?

everyone likes to quote the lines "do you wanna have a bad time" and "you dirty brother killer" as badass but they 100% rest on your emotional engagement with the ambience/story to land because when they don't have that to back them up they sound. kinda stupid gjsjfk.

i mean his whole badass schtick comes from how emotionally distant he tries to be towards everything that happens in your journey (even though he has his limits, both in a negative sense, like how he disappears completely if you kill his brother, and a positive sense, such as how he clearly sympathizes with you when you're relatively harmless). the moment he's forced to care though? when he can't not engage? he is NOT cool, oh my god. don't get me wrong, he has his moments, but whenever he's trying to one-line you it's a very hit or miss situation. and usually it's a miss (lmao). "but soon... you’ll need a cool mutant hand to count all of your deaths" i mean COME ON. that sounds ridiculous.

and you could say that's all just part of him trolling you, but personally i like to think that deep down? he's just as much of a tryhard as papyrus