#home coordination

[miss-floral-thief]

Source: https://blog.piapro.net/2024/10/w241004-2.html

[biggest-gaudiest-patronuses]

i will never understand why more people in their 80s don't commit felonies. you reach that age and surely there's something illegal you always wanted to do but didn't bc Consequences

dammit, GO FORTH GRANNIES!!! rob an armored car! hold up that bank! tunnel your way into fort knox! what are they gonna do, sentence you to 20 years? good fuckin luck with that

[ofhouseusher]

I feel like I just want to bang on the door of everyone who ever talks about Rhaenys's death and say: YOU KNOW SHE DID THE FALL IN TWO TAKES? She has TWO takes for that shot!!

This is exactly the kind of information that should be issued as a public service announcement, cause it's genuinely astonishing.

Two takes. Two.

TWO.

That’s all Eve Best needed to deliver one of the most devastating, hauntingly beautiful death scenes in recent memory. No endless resets, no drawn-out process—just pure, instinctive mastery of her craft. The woman acted against a green dot, and still managed to convey a depth of grief that felt like it was clawing its way out of her soul—twice—and that was all she needed?

It’s one thing to act grief—it’s another to make the audience feel it in their bones. And she did that in. only. two. takes. while looking at a green speck. And it's become one of the most harrowing moments in the entire series... I'm wowed.

People can say whatever they want, but there is no denying the artistry of what Eve Best did. The way she internalised that loss, let it build and unravel across her face in real time, all while reacting to absolutely nothing. An actor so in tune with her character, so utterly assured in her performance, that she can distill something that raw and shattering into perfection almost instantly.

She is simply built different. No, but for real, because how dare she be that good? Eve could act against a brick wall and still outshine half the industry.

I will be banging on doors with you. We riot at dawn.

[unganseylike]

hey guys did we ever discuss why the hennessy copy girls were so prepared to take on violent home invaders. why were they so coordinated they were just a bunch of 20 year old weird art freaks in a toxic codependent situation. did they do a group bonding martial arts class. did they all just watch home alone a bunch. was there ever an explanation for this.

[polysyndetonaddictsupportgroup]

did every hero really follow endeavor's plan during the jail break? I've never watched bnha, but I always figured there were more heros then Japan knew what do with. Was endeavor really just that worried about how the fight again AFO would go? and did AFO have the league with him? or other prison escapees? Given eraserhead was so entrenched?

As a preliminary matter--yes, it was way more than AfO. The League basically did what they did during the USJ arc and subcontracted their violent attacks. They needed a big force to first get AfO and everyone else out of Tartarus, and then they made it very clear (via loudspeaker and also fucking tweet) that they would all be very peacefully retreating while all those criminally insane and violent motherfuckers went that other direction. Ball's in your court as to how you want to tackle it.

AfO was the biggest threat, by fucking far, but it was far from isolated to him. It was the entire League of Villains + Their Very Special Friends. It was the kind of force that would be required to make the entirety of Tartarus fall for the first time in history. So the heroes had plenty to keep them busy.

And as to whether Endeavor was that scared about the next fight with AfO... Yeah.

I think bnha does a good job at establishing that All Might and AfO just exist at entirely different levels than every other person alive. Their fight leveled a decent chunk of Kamino. And I think that's kind of power and devastation is hard to conceptualize as like, people in a world where we don't have to worry about superhero fights. (as a side note--Sukuna's Big Fight in the Shibuya arc from JJK did better than any other fight in media to really capture the sheer cosmic horror of being caught as a bystander in one of those fights).

But endeavor saw it. He was there for AfO’s and All Might’s last fight. The gods were fighting. Everyone else was just an ant.

He is facing the villain that ultimately took down All Might. All Might won Kamino, sure. But he didn't get up again after. He was permanently and irreversibly taken out of play. And Endeavor has spent the last year feeling like he was struggling to be even half of what All Might was with two hours of productivity a day. He was so consistently voted to not be able to compare to All Might that he bought a wife and had four kids about it, all of whom hate him actively.

He does not think he is winning this fight. He is Japan's number one hero. The responsibility is going to fall to Midoriya Izuku to him. He is the best they have left, and the fight that would be coming was one that already nearly killed All Might, the one guy he has never ever been able to compare to. And when he really looked himself in the mirror and asked if he could stop AfO, the answer was no.

And it wouldn't just be AfO if he came back to power. It would be his followers--and he was liable to get more than just the current League of Villains roster. It would mean more Nomus. They could barely handle one Nomu--how could they possibly handle the Nomus, and the LoV, and AfO?

And the answer that he came to was that they couldn't. Not without All Might.

He thought he was sacrificing Yokohama for every single other city AfO was going to level if he had time to grow in strength again. He thought that if they threw absolutely everything they had at him while he was weak, then maybe they could contain him and the League before entire cities fell.

So. That's why he came to that decision. Why did every hero fall into line?

So what’s key to what happened here was it was this complete structural breakdown at exactly the wrong time.

Structural Flaw #1: Transportation

Was it every hero in Japan that responded to Endeavor’s order? No. But not every hero in Japan was available. Any heroes out of the immediate area were too far away to do shit.

But it's a massive crisis. Heroes would commute from all over if they could--but it's not about desire, it's about time and resources. With how imminently emergent the threat was, a lot of far-away heroes would need something like a jet to even conceivably get there in time.

Who is sending the jet?

Let's pin down what heroes could, conceivably, get there in time. Very few heroes are in walking distance. How do heroes typically get from Point A to Point B?

Hero society in bnha is an agency model. There is no communal pool of resources--you have what your agency has. You have a jet to transport you if your agency has the money for one, and I’m pretty sure only all might had that (he has since had it dismantled and the parts repurposed for the sake of the environment. He only had it to begin with so he could quickly respond to imminent threats. All Might thinks there's more than one way to save the world and saving the environment is part of it). Like. We even saw Endeavor flying fucking commercial.

But let's just assume, arguendo, that some agencies have jets. It would have to be the very top agencies to possibly afford it.

All of whom are shown in canon to mostly operate out of the same area. So they're going to have to send the jet somewhere else to get more heroes. Now any travel time is doubled. If they do send it out, how many people are they realistically getting? Are these heroes in multiple different cities? That's more travel time then. Maybe we just land the plane in Kyoto and whoever gets on in the twenty minute period while they're refueling is who is coming back. We'll hand them parachutes and kick them out the plane door over Yokohama. Okay. Good plan. Go team.

Who is sending the jet?

Like, who is physically making the call to send the jet? Who do they call? Do they just start ringing around their buddies and seeing if they have other plans? The city is on fucking fire and we need people fighting now, so the big name heroes don't have time to organize transport with other agencies. They’re not even thinking of that right now. Make it a sidekick's job.

They are all on fucking strike.

Fuck it. Fine. Make it an admin's job. There has to be some kind of office staff who can work a telephone who's available.

Who is thinking to send the jet?

Admins are not making strategic calls about where the company jets go. There would have to be some kind of protocol in place or someone with the authority to send the jet would have to think of it in the moment. And I guarantee you this would not be the case.

Because this is a society where they have canonically semi-privatized public safety and put people in direct competition with each other over it.

ASIDE: The Economic Structure of Heroics and Why It Sucks

I have an economic structure. You must listen to it. I promise it is relevant. This is why it takes me forever to do things it's because i get too deep into the weeds and have to explain the fucking economic structures underpinning the analysis for my nonsense to make sense.

How the fuck do heroes get paid?

I have no idea if canon ever tells us because to be so for real with you guys I have not watched this show in years. I haven’t cared about canon since the Shie Hassaikai arc. The fucking YouTuber arc broke me. I literally never watched it again. If they ever explain to us how heroes get paid I do not know and I do not care. I refuse to go back to canon. Everything I found out about canon after the Shie Hassaikai arc, I learned against my will. The ending to this story was so fucking stupid and I only have a scattered knowledge of the details but I’m still right. If canon ever tries to explain it then please do not tell me, I refuse to learn more things about this show.

But I still like poking around the potential economic structures based on the part of canon that doesn’t cause me psychic damage. So here’s the thought process for the economic underpinnings of hero society in the pez universe.

From canon, we know it can be an enormously lucrative profession, we know that it involves some degree of private interests (re: merch lines), and we know that there are some people who cannot have merch lines (Underground Heroes, e.g. Eraserhead), so there also must be some kind of public funding aspect to it as well. So. Who the fuck signs your paycheck?

Sources of Funding

a. Public Funding

There must be some kind of official governmental budget for heroics. Like. They are very much a public service. There would be no way to have a fully private heroics force without government funding. What else are you supposed to do, fucking Venmo heroes after they save you? Do they put your kitten back in the tree if you don’t have enough.

In my mind, there's public funds allocated to heroes as part of a city's budget. That funding is allotted based on the number of employees in a given entity balanced against the confirmed acts of heroics of that same given entity. There’s a base salary level and that can be increased based on how successful you are, but salary isn’t exclusively what this fund is for. The heroic entity (an individual hero or an Agency) is effectively receiving grant money from the government to run their agency. You put it into salaries, gear, office space, everything. The government is basically investing in heroes, and it’s investing more in heroes who are shown to have a greater positive impact on society.

It involves overly complex calculations regarding the scaled difficulty of a given bust/rescue/act and ranking of the villain (if there is one) and the overall public benefit for the service rendered. You get bonuses for having a lower average property damage, for contributing to community building projects, that kind of thing. It is Complex. There is a lot of paperwork that has to be submitted to strange and vaguely threatening government accountants. When Mirio and Izuku start their agency, they will burst into tears multiple times trying to figure it out once filing season rolls around, bundle all the paperwork in a Massive Tears And Shame Package, mail it off to the shadowy powers at be, and then get a perfunctory notice that they are getting a ludicrous amount of the city budget allotted to their dinky little agency for the upcoming fiscal year because they are Big Fucking Heroes and enormously good at what they do and it reflects in their stats. They will then lay on the ground of their haunted fucking office and stare at the ceiling for a very long period of time.

But this puts the heroes in competition with each other. Your public funding is chained to your stats under this model. There's only so many criminals out there--you've got to get the right numbers or it cuts into how much of a slush fund the agency is working with.

It's sort of an insane model for a public servant position, but I think it matches with what canon shows us. Imagine having firefighters pitted against each other. like, having a competitive model for public safety raises extreme concerns about how it incentivizes public servants to act.

But this isn't canon's model. It's my guess as to how canon works based on the hints i can remember and my own mental illness. So why do I think canon suggests a model like this?

It's because 1) canon does establish that heroes are in competition with one another and 2) this kind of model would likely be necessary due to the level of autonomy that heroes have.

The literal first fight we see involves heroes in competition with each other. Kamui Woods is doing a big Ultimate Move, and Mount Lady rushes in and steals the show. Like. that is crazy behavior if we are looking at this through the lens of a typical public servant. Imagine you're trying to get directions from a park ranger and a different park ranger kick flips in with a map and a desperate need for you to get your directions from them instead. You call poison control and they’re beating each other in the head over who gets to tell you you’re dying.

Still, on its own, the competition isn’t dispositive, because the private income streams (we'll get there) would incentivize competition even if public funding wasn't based on it. But the level of autonomy that hero offices exhibit also suggest some kind of competition model.

Heroics agencies are not run like a typical police force or fire station. With most entities that function as first responders, they respond to some kind of centralized force (like 911 call centers) and they have highly regulated resource distribution. Like, police forces are restricted to a specific jurisdiction. Within that jurisdiction they have multiple districts and officers typically stay in their district. They're not going to a different fucking city because they think the crime is cooler there.

But Endeavor does exactly that. He's like "hello, son who hates me. Let's go to Hosu because I want to fuck with the hero killer for street cred. won't you come along. It is non-optional" and todoroki says "i hate you father and will abandon you on our father son trip to set a serial killer on fire with my mind. it will be for mildly gay reasons."

These agencies aren't a centralized public service. They are all just off doing their own thing. They're not responding to specific areas as allotted to them by the city--they just fuck off and do whatever. Like, there's probably some coordination between agencies as to who is covering what patrol, but it likely would be more out of courtesy than formal requirement. People wouldn't step on each other's toes nearly as much if there was more of a structure to this.

Typical public agencies who receive funding in accordance with staffing and budgetary needs have more structure and formality than is exhibited in canon. Heroics Agencies act like they're all independent contractors. They probably function like grant money recipients, where they're all fighting for the same pool of funds. You have to write in and show why you deserve that money when that's the case. They're in competition with each other.

Like, is this definitively the structure in canon? No, of course not. I have no fucking idea what, if anything, canon has going on. But it definitely fits with canon.

b. Private Income Streams

We know from canon that it can't just be public funding. Izuku alone probably paid for the Mighty Agency private jet with how much fucking all might merch he bought. Canonically, heroes have merchandise lines, branding deals, commercials, everything. All Might had fucking movies made about him. Those are all extremely lucrative income streams--and likely where the richest heroes get the biggest brunt of their income.

In order to get this kind of income, you are necessarily in competition with your fellow hero.

Public attention, spending money, screen time, all of it--it's a limited resource. You have to be the person who gets to the fight first, who does the big move, who saves the day. If it's someone else? Then that's another kid buying their action figure instead of yours. Heroics is heavily commoditized in canon, and that inherently invites competition.

2. Distribution of Funds

So now that we have a theory as to where the money comes from, how does it get paid out? Based on canon, it comes down to a structure of (a) Independent/Underground Heroes and (b) Agencies.

a. Independent/Underground Heroes

I can't actually remember if the word "independent" is said in canon or if I came up with it, but I think canon implies its existence. It's basically the same thing as being an underground hero, but you're still a Spotlight hero. I also cannot remember if the underground/spotlight thing is canon or fanon or what I’m sorry I haven’t watched this show in years.

Independents are spotlight heroes without the backing of an agency. They just go out every day with the clothes on their back and a dream. They have no support staff, no back up, and no one to help them if things go sideways.

It is not a popular employment option.

Part of it is because it's that much harder to fund being an independent. Like. Say you're just out of high school and you decide to strike out on your own as independent. You're still spotlight, so you can have a merchandise line, and that'd be a nice income stream while you're just starting out.

How the fuck do you start your own t-shirt line?

How do you make contracts with the manufacturers? How do you make and copyright the design? how do you sell the stupid things? Do you try and get them in Walmart? Do you start an Etsy? Your own website? do you call your mom and cry when you have 500 ugly t-shirts with your face on them that no one wants to buy and they're taking up all the space in your studio apartment.

Agencies have preexisting structures in place to help launch these kinds of options, which is one of the reasons why they're so attractive for baby heroes just starting out. The only reason why Mirio has merchandise is because he decided that he didn't care and didn't need to make merch and Izuku came after him with feverish crack addict energy because he cared and he needed Lemillion merch like. yesterday. All Might ended up getting his agency to start a lemillion line. Mirio gets the profits with a reasonable fee to the Mighty Agency. To this day he suspects that Izuku is 70% of his sales but Izuku denies this fervently, like a liar (he actually has a small but very devoted fanbase who rabidly support him and buy all of his merch. he would cry if he knew this. Still. Izuku is his biggest fan and buys literally every single piece of new merch in triplicate.).

Underground heroes are in the same boat as independents but they don't even have the option of a merch line. They exclusively get public funding unless they're backed by an agency, which none of them are because agencies have a tendency to fuck them and their busts for the sake of the spotlight. All underground heroes are bitter and culturally opposed to agencies.

On that note:

b. Agencies.

This is where by far the most heroes would end up. But an agency is like thirty dudes with the same joint bank account. How does the money get there and get distributed out?

i. Public Funding in an Agency Context

Take the above model. How do you attribute public funds based on personal statistics if there's no single person? Does everyone get their own check? But that wouldn't make sense--this isn't just for salaries, it's for funding the actual heroics itself.

Everyone under the same agency would be counted together for the purposes of funding allotment. If Sidekick A managed 300 busts last year and Sidekick B man managed 350 busts, then congratulations, The Big Hero Hero Agency made 650 busts last year, here's a check made out to the agency, figure out what you want to do with it.

But what about incidents that involve multiple heroes from the same agency? Let's say that The Big Hero Hero Agency is involved in a big bust. It is Sidekick A's baby. They have spent months doing this. This has been blood, sweat, and tears. When the day comes, they are joined by Sidekick B, Sidekick C, and Big Hero himself. Sidekick B has been helping Sidekick A for the past three weeks on this case. Sidekick C got called in the day-of to help.

Big Hero showed up for the last twenty minutes of the fight when they were mostly done with everything.

So. You're filling out the post-arrest paperwork. For funding and for public statistics, you need to make sure to properly account for who gets credit for the bust. It has to be one person--if you had everyone individually credit themselves for the bust, then it looks like you've resolved four incidents instead of one under this financial model. it's artificially inflating your numbers for public funding. that's fraud. Who should get the credit: Sidekick A, Sidekick B, Sidekick C, or Big Hero?

Well, there's nothing stopping Big Hero from writing their own name. So let's go with Big Hero. He helped.

This was one of the big sources of the sidekick strikes: a lot of agencies had an absolute policy of attributing successes to the name hero if they touched the case at all, because there was no rule against it. It was better for the agency, after all--unrealistically high numbers on the biggest name meant the agency as a whole appeared more successful.

So there were a lot of heroes artificially inflating their stats with things that were more properly credited to their sidekicks. Which made it all the harder for sidekicks to leave because their stats were shit because their boss was taking credit for their work.

ii. Private Funding in an Agency Context

But that’s just public funding. How would agencies distribute private income streams?

Big Hero Agency is proud to announce its newest line of Big Hero Action Figures, featuring the Entire Big Hero Team, now retailing for $39.99. Get it now from a store near you.

So. An agency is selling an action figure line featuring Sidekicks A, B, and C, as well as Big Hero himself. We’ll round up to an even $40. How do we split up the cash?

You can’t give everyone each $10. You have to first pay the suppliers, the advertisers, the trucks that shipped the toys to the store, etc. Then you have to pay back into the agency to fund miscellaneous expenses—the stationary, the insurance, the coffee in the fucking break room. Everything. By the end, there’s only $4 of profit left over. Not great, but hey—they’re selling a lot of toys. So if they each get a $1, then it should add up quick.

Right. But. If you think about it, people are only really buying it for Big Hero. He’s the best hero of all of them—his name is on the agency, and just look at how much higher his stats are. So it’s only fair that he gets $3.70 a toy and the rest of them can get $.10 apiece. Don’t worry, it’ll add up quick.

Not all agencies would have been like this. But a lot of them would be. Money is a hell if an incentive to screw people.

END OF ASIDE.

With all that in mind—why would they feasibly have a structure to fly in help from other heroes far away? That’s their fucking competition. Sure, we have team ups, but they’re all either well in advance or in the heat of a moment. If they are in the heat of a moment, half the time the heroes resent it because they just stole their fight. They’re gonna what—pay the exorbitant jet fees to fly in someone who’s just going to steal their hard work in the eyes of the public?

Okay, but what about situations like this? Massive emergencies where you need more people?

Those haven’t ever happened before. They had All Might.

So. The heroes on the ground calling in help are out. What about the heroes who are close enough to make it there by ground transport? No one calls them, they just show up out of public need. How are they getting there?

Trains are out. All the trains into the area are shut the fuck down. We are not giving the freshly escaped villains a bullet train to the rest of the country. Same thing for buses. No fucking bus driver is making their regular route into a fucking battleground.

Private transportation it is. Anything more than a few hours out of the area is completely out of the question. Like, good ol’ Manuel from Hosu City and all his buddies? Not making it. The wild wild pussycats? Watched this on TV from their mountain home. Gran Torino? On FaceTime with All Might, who is watching the fight with Midoriya Inko’s hand gripped in his left and Bakugou Mitsuki’s hand gripped in his right. Gang Orca? Twelve hours away and on a fucking island so he needs a boat AND a car to get there. Or he just fucking swims.

But there has to be at least some hero that saw this happening and heroically climbed in their Mazda sedan to make the three hour car trip. Why didn’t they go to the fight in Yokohama instead of the one against AfO?

Frankly at that point those literal children were visibly doing way better than the actual heroes were faring and any heroes showing up went where they were most needed and uh. It wasn’t by the kids.

If we have the agency model as given to us by canon, then that means there is a decentralization of resources. If you want to utilize your public defense force in the case of emergencies, then you need a way to fucking get them to the emergency. Canon does not have that. This is a huge structural failing that only wasn’t a disaster sooner because most emergencies required one guy and he had his own private jet. So most heroes in the country never had to even consider if they would listen to Endeavor’s order because they were completely cut off and useless at the time.

So. Now the analysis has been narrowed from all of Japan’s heroes to just the ones in the immediate vicinity of the fight. That’s still a fuck ton of heroes. This is a heavily populated area with a bunch of heroes around. You can’t go outside without tripping over a hero.

Most of those guys were on fucking strike.

Structural Flaw #2: Over-Reliance on and Abuse of Sidekicks.

The vast majority of the workforce had to be sidekicks. Like, just from a business model perspective. Even the smallest agencies we saw had 2-3 sidekicks. Endeavor’s agency had at least double digits, and I think Idaten was at over a hundred or something. We were probably looking at, conservatively, a 1:10 ratio of heroes to sidekicks.

All those guys are on strike.

Okay. But not all of them, right? Idaten already settled and got their sidekicks back. That’s like a hundred guys.

Except the Strike was not isolated to the Tokyo/Mustufasa/Yokohama area. Idaten sent out a lot of their sidekicks to other regions to help alleviate some of the strains of the strike. (As a note, this was not the Idaten sidekicks crossing the picket line. Them picking up the slack for other sidekicks still striking would have helped minimize effects on the public. However, the agencies of the striking sidekicks would have reaped no benefit from this under the compensation structure outlined above. Idaten would have gotten the credit for everything their sidekicks did, so the other agencies would still be bleeding from this while risk to the public was slightly alleviated. Idaten’s entire function in this strike was to set an example for quick settlement and minimize public harm. There’s this entire sub-analysis on Idaten’s internal culture and how it intersects with broader heroics standards that I won’t get into now this is already way too long.)

Idaten is at 1/10 capacity. It has like, ten guys, all of whom have been working say, thirteen hour shifts (voluntarily—again, it was a decision made to try and minimize the public safety risks of the strike while still allowing their colleagues their best chance at improved conditions) daily for the past month.

All of those ten guys responded to Tartarus before Endeavor made the call.

To understand the exact nature of the breakdown, you really have to see the chaos of how exactly this unfolded.

The LoV and their merry band of criminals hit Tartarus. The heroes do not realize at this time that they intend to let everyone out, give them transportation, and point them straight towards the mainland. They think that they’re just there for AfO. That’s still a huge crisis that needs to be shut down immediately, so they call out all of their best. Endeavor responds. Hawks responds. Eraserhead responds. Mt. Lady, Kamui Woods, Miruko—everyone in the vicinity who could conceivably respond show up. For a second, it looks like it’s going to end here.

Once the LoV get AfO out of his cell, the entire tide of the battle turns against the heroes. Now everyone’s out. All of those horrible, terrible villains. Tartarus has fallen. They have to make hard decisions. The high ranking, very powerful heroes who are most likely to break the line on Endeavor’s decision? They’re already at the fight by the time he has to make it. It is chaos and something they cannot easily leave.

The LoV’s picked right now because they knew that the heroes were operating at less than a tenth of their regular capacity. They picked right now because they knew the system had structural faults, and if they hit them just right, it would all come down on the heroes’ heads.

But the sidekicks broke strike lines to respond, right? Why do they all go to endeavor’s side?

For one thing, it wasn’t all of them who showed up—maybe a third of them were not even in the area any more. It wasn’t malicious, or intentional, or anything like that—they were off visiting their families for the first time in a long time or taking vacation. All of them had spent the past few years being completely overworked and abused by their jobs. They just weren’t there.

So now we’re down to 2/3rds of them who can even try to show up.

A lot of it wasn’t actually made as a reasoned choice. For many of them, they ended up where they did because of all the chaos.

So you’re a sidekick. You’re on strike. The entire world has gone to shit. How do you normally find out about the world going to shit?

This is a competition model streamed through individual entities. There’s no central command structure. Your agency calls you.

Well, your agency either fucking fired you or they cut you off completely during strike negotiations. This time, you find out through the news when the story breaks. Now what?

You frantically try to get in touch with your (ex) agency. Who is picking up the phones?

No one. That was your fucking job before you went on strike.

I used to work at a government public-service type deal, and let me tell you, they abuse the fuck out of non-unionized workers. You are doing everyone’s job. No one ask why we don’t get more support staff because they have unions. Like. I had a law degree. I was hired to be a lawyer in that office. They had us all doing the jobs of four people, and by that I mean it would be the literal entire job description of another fucking position in that office and we were all expected to just do it too.

Unions incentivize treating workers right. The absence of them opens the door to the opposite.

Why the fuck would agencies hire more people to lighten the load on the sidekicks and let them focus on actual heroics? Just make the sidekicks do everything. What are they going do, complain? They’re a dime a dozen. Hire more of those fresh faced kids with no standards just out of school.

You know when you had a job where you’re like. This fucking place is going to fall apart without me. But they treat you as disposable and easily replaceable and you’re like “okay bet” and so you leave and you find out from the people left behind that it actually fucking fell apart without you and you’re just like :o

Yeah. So that happened.

There has been a massive break down in the function of heroics offices for the past month and change because the sidekicks were not there. They were the ones who actually did most of the day to day handling of the office. They were the ones coordinating transport and figuring out the actual mechanics of who would be deployed where in a crisis. All those things that would be super helpful now? Yeah, those guys aren’t there, and they’re locked out of the fucking offices and can’t get in to un-strike for the sake of societal crisis.

But they know where the fight is. It’s on the news. Why don’t they just show up?

Where’s their gear?

Who owns it?

Heroics support gear must be an enormously expensive thing. It would have to be provided by the agency itself. Literally the only reason why Mirio has gear is because 1) all might would NEVER let his pseudo step son run around without proper support so the man would have bankrolled it himself if needs must and 2) the UA support class has a stipend each year where they can make support gear for active heroes and those heroes get it for free in exchange for free advertising for the students trying to kick start their careers, so he is decked out in THE most experimental bullshit from Hatsume Mei Industries (I have this entire side plot where the support class this class year low key became a sort of religious cult haha not really it’s just a joke it’s not really a joke and power loader is afraid every single day when he comes to work he is afraid under the iron clad rule of Hatsume Mei’s weird girl energy and they all decided Mirio was the Tabula Rasa, a figure of prophecy, and I just cannot get into that right now it’s too long it’s too long already. But it’s so fun).

All those sidekicks on strike lost valuable time trying to get back into their agencies so they weren’t showing up to an S-class villain fight in their fucking jammies. Then, when some poor admins figured out what was going on and let some of them in, everyone was frantically gearing up and getting in whatever transport van they were pointed at. Some of them didn’t know they werent reporting to Yokohama until they were already at the other fight. There’s was so much chaos and confusion that very few people had a clear idea of what was happening.

With the sidekicks, some of them never made it, some of them just got in a van and went wherever it took them, and some of them chose to obey Endeavor’s orders. Some agreed with the decision. Some disagreed but deferred to his experience. With how the Sidekick Strike had left their infrastructure, very few sidekicks were able to respond fast enough to make any real difference.

Now for the last possible demographic: the heroes that weren’t on strike and weren’t initially deployed to the Tartarus Prison Break. Why didn’t any of them go to Yokohama?

Structural Flaw #3: All Might was that one kid doing the entire group project for like forty years and some of these people are having to be heroes for the very first time and realizing that they don’t actually want to risk their lives to save people they just sort of liked the idea of this job.

It may be a bit too specific to be a structural flaw but I’m counting it anyway.

So, just to give a bit of a recap: We consider every hero alive in Japan as a candidate for Endeavor’s order. The vast majority of them are too far away to do shit, and there’s no centralized transport network to get them there faster. Toss in those who are dealing with personal medical issues or are away on vacation or just can’t come for some reason or another, and you’ve lost most of the heroes in Japan as respondents. Probably ~80% of potential heroes are culled from this alone.

So we have, generously, 20% of Japan’s heroes left as potential people to respond. ~90% of those are sidekicks on strike. They’ve got hours before they make it to any fight, because of the aforementioned structural breakdowns.

Now we’re down to 2% of Japan’s total heroes.

Some of that 2% were first responders to the initial Tartarus prison break. All the big name heroes in the area. But there can’t be that many top heroes—so let’s say 0.2% of them were at the initial fight.

Now we only have the remaining 1.8% of heroes to analyze.

There have to be a percentage of those who agreed with Endeavor’s call as a tactical decision. If they show up to any fight, they’re going to be obeying his order.

So we only have the ones who disagreed with his call left to look at.

These are small-time heroes. All of the big names are already at the fight. So they are less likely to have flashy Quirks, be especially talented, or consider themselves to have an especially large effect in the grand scheme of things. They have likely spent their entire careers living in a world with All Might.

It has never actually been down to them.

Think of Uwabami. Momo did her work study with her.

Her hero outfit is a fucking evening gown. She spent the entire work study doing commercials and meeting with her fans. She explicitly invited the young heroes that she did because she thought they were cute enough to be in commercials with her.

Now, she’s had some good if minor moments helping rescue civilians. It’s not that she’s never saved anyone.

But all of the top heroes are already committed to the fight against AfO. The current Number One Hero just ordered all her colleagues to report there. And Yokohama has a lot of S-Class villains en route.

And what the fuck is she going to do to stop them? It’s just her. Half of those villains took All Might to stop the first time. She is not fucking all might.

Is this a hero likely to go to Yokohama completely on her own to fight *checks notes* literally the entire prison population minus one guy? The worst guy, albeit. But one guy.

These are all heroes who have never had to be the actual thing standing between society and destruction. There has always been someone more powerful or capable or heroic nearby. Until recently, there has always been all might.

This isn’t to malign them. A decent percentage of them are legitimately well meaning about being a hero. They do good. But when it came to the big, blowout fights, they have always, always, always been the heroes evacuating civilians in the background or performing rescue in the aftermath. It has never been them who had to stand up and do the fight itself.

Every single one of those villains represent a big, blowout fight. And this hero trying to decide if he’s going to obey Endeavor’s order? They are one guy. And they’re not sure if they could even beat one of those villains alone, let alone all.

The reason why no one disobeyed Endeavor’s order was because, frankly, at the end of the day, they did not want to die.

Endeavor’s order signaled to everyone that there was no guarantee anyone would show up to Yokohama. It actually put good odds to the opposite. If you decided “fuck that, I’m going to Yokohama” then you’d likely be doing it alone.

What Class 2-A did was considered a death sentence. People who didn’t know them and their bullshit were shocked that they all made it out alive. These were the worst villains their society had ever faced and it was all of them at once (minus that one guy).

The heroes who were in a position to disobey endeavor didn’t actually think it’d make a difference if they did. They’d just… lose.

Most if not all of these heroes made the decision to become heroes during all mights era of peace. Everything just had lower stakes. Crime was less frequent and less serious. The big fights always had someone there who could handle them, because All Might was there. They’d fight the odd mugger or purse snatcher and help put out fires and go home at the end of the night. They’re heroes. That doesn’t mean they’ve ever truly had to grapple with a life or death fight.

If they went to Yokohoma, they thought they’d die. So they might as well respond to a fight that has a chance. Even if they feel ashamed as they do it. Even if they think Endeavor made the wrong call and wanted to go to Yokohama instead. All Might wasn’t there anymore. And they were afraid.

But there is one thing that Class 2-A had going for them that gave them an advantage over these heroes. And that was the fact that they are all medically insane.

It’s that they were together.

It’s a decentralized heroics structure. If you have a large agency, you are necessarily a top hero because no one else would be able to get that many people to agree to work under them. So you’re already at Tartarus and this isn’t a decision you had to make.

Maybe you’re independent. Maybe you have a small agency with 2-3 people. There is no preexisting centralized line that you can use to try and gather more people to go to Yokohama with you. You’re stuck with your immediate colleagues and maybe a few other heroes you’re close enough with to have their number. You really don’t have time to try and ask around to see if anyone else wants to go to Yokohama instead—you need to pick a battle and get there yesterday.

What good is 2-3 people going to do in Yokohama? You’ll just get massacred and it won’t have made a difference. At least if you go to stop AfO, you’ll have a chance at doing something that mattered.

Maybe you disagree with Endeavor but you defer to his training and experience.

Maybe you don’t go at any fight at all. Maybe you’re afraid. Maybe you became a hero in a time where you had a symbol of peace, and you realize you can’t keep doing it in a time without one.

I think there’s a small subsection of heroes that quit in the aftermath of Yokohama. Because they wanted to disobey endeavor’s order, and they thought they’d just die and it wouldn’t matter, and then dawn came and a bunch of school kids had managed what they were too big of a coward to do. I think the fact that they fell into line when their hearts told them they shouldn’t made them seriously doubt whether they were good enough to be a hero.

But they were alone when Endeavor made the call. And it felt like certain death. And—yeah, it sort of felt that way to Class 2-A when they made the decision to respond. But they weren’t alone when they did it.

They were together. And they always felt braver when they were together. Together, they could make miracles happen.

[kangals]

@as-old-roads floppy puppy bouncing, as requested

[sarcastic-clapping]

jobs paying wildly different rates for the literal exact same role based on your location is so wild when you think about it for more than 0.5 seconds because it’s like. so you’re not assigning a dollar amount to my time and energy based on the value delivered by my work, you’re dictating how well and how comfortably you think that it means i deserve to live in whatever area i happen to exist in

[rosanna-writer]

first WIP Wednesday of the year! <3

patting myself on the back because I did a zeugma in this draft of a future chapter of we said hello and your eyes look like coming home

"Can we agree to forget each other's birthdays, then?" "No," he said flatly, and I glared. More softly, he continued, "I used to mark the occasion with a night out with the Inner Circle. Dinner, drinks, dancing. No gifts." Before Amarantha, I realized. Rhys had fifty years of celebrations to catch up on, and I couldn't begrudge him that. "That sounds…nice," I admitted. "If you'd rather I didn't buy you anything, at least allow me to make you climax twenty times on Solstice." He tossed it out so casually that I was sure he was serious. Besides, it wouldn't be the first time he'd wrung more pleasure out of me than I'd thought possible, his relentless hard thrusts reducing me to a trembling, mewling mess. But even as my cheeks heated at the thought, I found myself balling up a napkin and chucking it at his head. "Your cock is not a gift." By now, I'd thrown enough objects at him that Rhys wasn't caught off-guard. In one smooth movement, he dodged and used a wing to smack the crumpled paper, sending it sailing back in my direction. I caught it deftly in one hand. He winked. The napkin dissolved into mist—and me into a fit of laughter.

[waywardstation]

O had an idea a while back, but I don't remember if you were the one I sent the ask to or not for it about a potential Ingo/Alari reunion. In hindsight pretty sure it was someone else, but my idea was that after reuniting with her family, Akari would remember Ingo had been Unovian and decided to take a trip to Univa in hopes of finding him. Since Castelua City is a port town, she'd lively make landfall there and stay in a pokecenter. One hesdcanon about pokecenters i have that aren't seen in the games is that they have various facilities within them dedicated to pokemon care, which we know, and that includes a place for trainers to freely roam with their pokemon, )ike a fenced-in harden in the back or something that we never get to see, and it's a sort of communal locations for trainers to meet up and talk about the latest gossip, discuss their pokemon, or trade news together. And while in the Castelia Pokecenter's communal area with some of her pokemon, our favorite girl overhears some rumors about a 'Subway Boss who went Missing Being Found' and the Battle Subway's subsequent grand reopening. Since the description matches her Uncle Ingo, you can guess what Akari does next.

In regards to my interactive reblog game

Ahh yes! I do have the same idea about pokemon centers, because in the anime, we do see other facilities within them, like designated places for trainers to sleep overnight if their Pokemon are there, and cafeterias to go to, as well as phone booths and different rooms for different injuries a Pokémon has! Your headcanon can certainly expand on this further, too! I love the idea about backyard areas!

And I do really like this idea for the Reblog game! I have a loose visual of how I want a scene like this to go in the comic, and it is close to this, but I’m not developing it too much now so I don’t end up getting too attached to it, just for a winning choice somewhere in the middle to steer it away from it happening that way ^^;

BUT they will find each other again! That is a guarantee for this story. With Ingo having only fragments (but he can regain them throughout these segments, I already had a way set up in case this happened), Akari will probably have to do most of the work finding him. Probably a lot like this scenario you’ve presented!

Thanks for the ask anon!! I appreciate you sharing it with me!! ^^

[blondebrainpowered]

[madd-nix]

The first things I drew once I have moved in to a new place are mainly about Johanna. I got inspired by Ink Masters to give Johanna some tattoos. First she got one in her 20s shortly after having Dawn, to commemorate her daughter and to just do something fun for herself. Then, years later, once Rosie and Percy (my ocs) came along, she had to get two more tattoos for her new kids. And of course she wanted to get one for Ingo, but he insisted they get matching ones together. I just think it's all cute! And I love drawing Johanna chubby!

[idontmindifuforgetme]

I genuinely want to immortalize this memory forever & look back at it when I’m in my last year of residency so . I got my period today while helping consent a patient for the first time in my life 💀💀

[akkivee]

so if kr really intends to come back for ax this year, what are the chances that they show the hypmic movie for this year’s panel lol

[russetruse]

I know I don’t post writings here often, but I wanted to write something for @lizadale’s Dimigi!au. I don’t know Libby if you dream about the Dimigi!au but sometimes I do. I blame you sis. But also I added a lot more since you read the smaller version, enjoy almost 3k words on only part one of many.

Sorry it is written in 2nd person, but I blame Libby for getting me to only function in this style of writing but I can’t seem to write in any other prospective anymore lol.

I color coded characters, but what sucks is that this one doesn’t have black so I can’t use one of my original colors for characters speak. So the color I planned for one character had to move to the heart and the hearts color was originally black >:[ But I hope you enjoy.

Calamitous Revelry

Part I

Luigi Prov

CW/TW: Trauma, abuse, triggers on abuse, mentions on drowning/strangulation

You run your fingers through his greasy, tangled hair. Every time he goes on a mission, it seems he neglects basic bodily functions. The longer he’s off on one of his Merloo missions, the more worried you become. It brings you back to the days of the Castle, how he only seemed to eat when the other members were shoving food in his face at the required meetings. Even back then, his mask didn’t hide much from you. He had long given up before joining that group. It just frustrated you so much, he puts his own well being always being last on his list.

”Can you be more gentle?” He spoke very softly, but the voice cuts through the silence. His fragile, small body, leaning against the frame of the claw foot bathtub. It knots your stomach seeing him like this. Why did he always do this? Why was being away from you for any extended amount of time so collapsing to his mental state? Were you the only thing keeping him from self-destructing?

”Sorry. You really knotted your hair this time. I am trying my best to be gentle.” You reply softly, not wanting to cause him to jump and flee. This was close to being just as bad as when you found him almost dead in the deteriorating remains of Castle Bleck. Dimentio being caked in blood and dirt. You were hardly able to handle how much came off of him then, but even this was trying to match up to that day. Right now, the bath water was darker than your tan skin. You click your tongue, a Dio habit that you had seemed to pick up sometime throughout the course of living with him. Very glad that you had rolled up your sleeves above your elbows before even starting to wash him. And the water being this dirty before you even started to actually scrub his body! You click your tongue again in annoyance and frustration.

You knew Dimentio wanted to teleport away. Especially after he walked into the house. Well walked was even an understatement. He half floated, half dragged his feet across the threshold when he opened the door to your entrance. You swore he was going to collapse there in the entrance if you hadn’t been there to grab him and hold him with your own weight.

What shocked you more was the jester actually complained as you fondled him in worry, going down your own checklist in your head as you did so. First, checking him for injuries since he did have some blood caked on his clothes, and you weren’t sure if that blood was his or another’s. Which raised even more questions that you knew he wouldn’t divulge answers to you. So giving up on even prying into the matter, you scoop him up bridal style, and rush him up the stairs. Your lips placing kisses on his scars around his left eye, making sure to not miss a spot and to distract him from what you had planned ahead.

He started struggling in your grasp as you started running warm water in the tub of the finished guest room and declothed him. The caked on clothes were a pain to get off of his dirtied skin. Through the frustration of removing the clothes piece by piece, you confirmed at least most of the blood on his clothes were not his. Which did not lighten the feeling of comfort you wanted from his return, it concerned you more. Whose blood was this and did they deserve such injuries from him? But you shake your head, another series of questions you would not get answers to. You needed to get him clean before you would even get any chance to put food in his system. Let alone would your mind allow you to put him on the back burner and cook food when you knew he needed to be cleaned up right away.

The jester complained as you worked on completely bringing him down to his birthday suit, still double checking for any injuries that may need stitches or extra care. He complained to you until you submerged him into the warm bath water, that’s when his demeanor changed. He then held onto you as if his life depended on it. As if the water in the tub would drag him below the water's surface and take his last breath. You also knew if you looked away, he would quickly teleport away. And your goal to get him cleaned up would long be abandoned.

It takes you way too long to comb out the knots and grime out of his hair, but this makes you feel a bit better. Well, until you wrap your arm around him; your forearm resting across his chest and placing your hand under his armpit. It always takes you by surprise at how tiny he is, not just in height, but in size. Your body is giant compared to him. And you were use to being called “too skinny”, but even you didn’t complain to the man you held in your arms.

You lean forward, and with your free hand, you begin to drain the dirty water in the tub. You really needed to replace it with fresh, warm water. His body tenses at the water starting to run again to refill the tub. The jesters heart was beginning to race in a panic from this. You press him tighter to you, slowly soaking your own shirt. What good did you get from rolling up your sleeves to only press a wet twink to your chest. But still, you do not let him pull away, hoping that he can feel your heartbeat through the wool top. Yet you also hope that he doesn’t feel the Chaos Heart beating as well in your chest.

”I am NOT letting you go.” You whisper softly into his right ear, your mustache tickling it. Dimentio squirms in your grasp, fighting his own instincts to flee. Every nerve he had, you knew told him to get away quickly. You bring your lips to his ear, pecking it with a soft kiss. His body squirms more at his own signals being challenged. A challenge to fight staying and be adored by you or flee due to the rising water in this situation.

”I won’t let you drown.” You speak sternly to him, not sure if it was in assurance for you or him. You start to nibble on his ear, your free hand grabbing the washcloth and rinsing it under the spout.

You can feel his fingernails dig into your arm as the water rises above his hips. You wince at this, but start to scrub the dirt and grime off of his legs and feet. You take extra time on his swollen ankles in another attempt to calm him. Letting your hand through the wash cloth slowly message his swollen ankles to make sure he didn’t do more damage to them then what appeared on the surface. You find yourself at a loss when you run the washcloth over his ribs. Your stomach turns seeing the jester's ribs through his skin so easily that you could count every one of them. It upsets you so much that he is neglecting himself when he is away from you.

”Luigi.”

You grumble, tightening your grip, mumbling under your own breath. Why was he like this? Why was he so willing to throw his life away? So many cared for him. He had more worth than he thought or believe he had.

”Luigi!”

You can feel your own anger bubbling and building in your body.

No one.

No one.

Not even yourself. Not even in the dreamscape. Not even against the chaos heart, or even in your own dreams, were you willing to throw your life away so easily. A growl builds in your throat and comes out through your own words. “Why are you like this?”

“Lui!”

Thu-Thump…

You freeze up, your body stiffens at your own thoughts. Only Dimentio was ever able to rile up so much negative emotions in you. King boo wasn’t even able to do this to you.

“Lui-“

Thu-Thump.

You feel his fingernails claw at both of your arms now. Digging deep enough to draw blood.

Thu-THUMP.

The nails dig deeper and deeper into your arms, clawing down from your elbows to your hands. With what little nails the jester had left, were tearing at your arms. You knew he feared water, but this was ridiculous at how much he was trying to get out of being cleaned by you. You tighten your grip to this, growling loudly in frustration and anger at Dimentio.

THU-THUMP!

Water splashes onto your pants, snapping you out of your own thoughts. The buzzing sound in your ears is replaced with the sound of splashing. Your eyes widen in shock as you quickly pull your hands away from his neck. Your arms and hands dripping from blood from the number he did on you.

You watch him in worry and shock as the ancient quickly yanks himself from under the water's surface. Dimentio’s body was shaking uncontrollably from fear, coughing and gasping from the need of oxygen that deprived him. You were unsure of how long you had held him under, but the water he was coughing up said enough. His lungs were trying their hardest to clear the water that you had forced into them. The ancients eyes never leave your bloody, shaking hands.

No…

No.

No! You would never do that to him.

Never!

THU-THUMP!

You can hear the heart beating loudly in your ears and chest.

”I’m sorry Dio. I-It wasn’t me,” you stutter though a shaky voice, “I promise. It was th-“

You reach your shaking hands towards him in assurance. But the second you do, the familiar sounds of the jester teleporting away before you can even finish your explanation. Your eyes now staring at a bodiless bathtub full of fresh water, with swirls of red in it.

”C-Chaos H-Heart….” You finish, your voice trailing off to a soft whisper.

THU-Thump…

You let your arms drop to your sides in disbelief. The heart had found another opening, this time by your emotions. It had taken advantage of your emotional loophole, and went after what was the biggest threat to it. The one you loved…

It wasn’t you. You would never do that to him.

Never…

Never!

The image of Dio’s scared. No, scared was an understatement. He was terrified. And when you closed your eyes, that expression from Dimentio showed on the back of your eyelids. The bathtub overflowing, starting to soak your jeans and socks.

You needed to fix this. But could you even fix it? You stand, ignoring the tub overflowing and slowly flooding the bathroom. Your soaked socks splash in the water as you walk over to the sink, ignoring your own discomfort. You pick up the phone with shaky hands. You were having such trouble dialing the number correctly on the keypad, that you changed to your call list and clicked the forth or fifth recent call down.

You lift the cell to your ear and after a few rings you hear an ecstatic voice that didn’t match the feelings you were having right now.

”Gigi! It’s been a while. What-“

”Mimi. I fucked up badly. I need Nassy’s help, now. It’s too much to explain. Please…Please tell her it’s urgent.”

”That bad? I’ll get a hold of her ASAP. Keep your door unlocked Gigi. You better be ready to explain then.” You hear the phone click to Mimi hanging up and you drag yourself out of the bathroom. Your wet socks slush against the carpet of your guest room, and you force yourself down the steps. The house sounds oddly silent, except for the sound of what you believe is still the bathtub running. You must have forgotten to turn off the water, but you don’t seem to have the energy to bring yourself back up the stairs.

You bring yourself to the couch and work on removing your drenched socks. Your hands are shaking so badly that the simple task is more of a challenge than it should be. You discard your socks on the floor near you and you pull your legs up to you on the couch, making yourself as small as your body would allow you to.

You bring your eyes to your hands. Your hands rough with calusis from all the tinkering and hard work you did, middle class work. Though it had been a while since you had seen blood oozing from them. You shake your head.

His body was so small, so fragile. He was so easy to force under the water with your hands. It was even easier to wrap your fingers around his thin throat and start squeezing. He would have been easy to break, easy to finish off. You could snap him like the twig he was. Would anyone really miss him? Didn’t he deserve to be dead? He still attempted to go after IT. He still wanted to go after his original goal with the heart. He wasn’t a fighter, he was weak in that aspect. You could so easily break him, all you would have to do is grab his neck and snap it. He deserved that.

“Enough!” You yell to no one in particular, grabbing at your own greasy hair. Heck there were times you would have never fought those thoughts after everything he had put you through, but these thoughts weren’t your own. You growl at yourself for letting the heart dig into your thoughts and emotions over Dimentio. He confused you so much and had your emotions everywhere. You had anger towards him, frustration, confusion, annoyance, but most of all…you loved him.

Thu-Thump.

You grasp your shirt above your own heart. You couldn’t imagine a day without him anymore. You wanted to spoil him with affection that he was long deprived of. You wanted to show him what the world should have long given him. You so badly wanted to let him figure out what the true meaning of his emotions towards you were. Why did this relic have to be such a problem, and everyday you were losing more and more to it. You bite your bottom lip. You couldn’t lose to it, so many would fall if you lost. It would return to where it was taken from. It would reopen the void that you had worked so hard with your friends to close. If you could rip it out yourself and stop it from what it was made to do you would, but you were already told what that outcome would be.

A loud bang on the door causes you to jump from the couch, almost hitting your head on the ceiling from surprise. Only for the silence to be followed by the door slamming open before you can even take a step towards the entrance. The voice booming louder than the door hitting the wall or knocking combined.

“Ye here lad? We rush’t here as fas’ as we coud. Dimensoon stil’ a’ problem withoot tae wee yin crossin’ tae gap fir us.”

[jakeperalta]

can we take a moment to appreciate the coordination of my outfit and my book today

[virgil-upinthestars]

the fire alarm went off a lot when I was in high school, for a multitude of reasons (someone pulled it, someone decided to smoke weed in the bathroom, someone tried to microwave a burrito) that were never actually a fire. but, because of protocol, we'd have to stay outside in the cold pnw rain for anywhere from twenty minutes to an hour as the fire department trudged over to figure out what the fuck happened this time. this resulted in a school full of teenagers who reacted to a fire alarm like it was an announcement for a suprise assembly. instead of dropping everything and heading for the exits, we'd jump at the loud noise because ew loud noise, groan because fuck not again, and proceed to pack our shit because there was no way we'd be standing out in the cold for forty minutes without our coats and phones.

cue me now, three thousand miles across the country, studying in the library of a well-respected university when the fire alarm goes off. my roommate and I nearly both jump out of our seats, grabbing each other's hand out of sheer reflex, and after a blurred prayer, I realize what's going on. all around us, people are getting up and talking over the alarm as they worry about what's going on, making their way to the nearest exit. my roommate gets out of her chair, looking worried. me?

I look up. I take a long sniff, like I'm impersonating the wolverine. and then I finish my goddamn email.

some of my roommate's friends come over to us, hurriedly explaining that it's just a drill, we don't need to worry. my roommate visibly relaxes. I respond "oh, thank fuck" and close my computer, packing my stuff up. these girls from east asia look at me with shocked and slightly unnerved expressions as I put on my blazer. they've all left their stuff behind. my roommate's also leaving her coat and bag. I shrug, and sling my backpack over my shoulder. If I don't smell smoke, I'm finishing my goddamn email.