#my cousin accidentally reported me

[feelo-fick]

trying to cope with the situation by realizing how this technically parallels the au. yeah thats how hard im coping.

[avalon-of-babylon]

CHEST OF HOLDING

This is inherently improper use so do this at your own risk and please report any problems with me and Larian for everyone's sake.

Preliminary findings/Original post

So I've been collecting pretty chests in case there's housing later and one of the chests I've kept is the Chest of the Mundane from the Arcane Tower in the Underdark because it's pretty and I think it's funny sticking stuff in here. Well because of all that I've been putting my chest collection in there and a minute ago I picked it up. Completely full of over a dozen other chests I was still able to pick it up. It's magic not only makes things look like mundane items it also gives them their weight, making the Chest of the Mundane is the closest you can get to a bag of holding. It has a base weight of 20lbs meaning the 227 loot items in there with over a 100lbs of weight was reduced to 36lbs.

"Proper" Use

Be careful when moving items. I have accidentally lost items while doing this and because it makes things things mundane they become hard to find after so be careful.

Save often. You don't need to save every time you use it use it but because of bugs I've discovered it's best to save regularly.

Don't be worried when selling. All the items in the chest should appear in the holder's inventory with the value of what it's disguised as, just moving them to the sell area will remove the enchantment and give them back their true price.

Recommended for Karlach. Because the chest has a base weight of 20 and will go higher I recommend having our girl Karlach or another character with a high carry capacity hold it.

Sell often. Because the weight will slowly go up as you loot sell when possible to keep from things getting out of hand.

Read and mind the warnings below. The warnings below are serious and there for a reason.

WARNINGS MUST READ

DO NOT EVER LOOT THE ENTIRE CHEST AT ONCE. This will at best bug out your inventory and as worse crash the game.

I fully believe Larian did not expect anyone to use the chest like this making any use of it in this way is inherently improper.

Do not fuck around with the chest. I do not know what will happen if you throw, destroy, sell, place or move the chest when full of random crap.

The chest isn't always right. Because this is inherently improper keep an eye on numbers like carry weight and mundane item value. These can be a warning that the chest might start bugging your inventory.

Verify file integrity. If things start acting weird don't be afraid to put the game down for a bit, verify your files, and take a break. Verifying takes 10-30 minutes for me, just make dinner, do your laundry, take a shower, clean your desk, it'll be ready when your done.

This has not been tested in multiplayer. I'm trying to talk my cousin into testing how it for me but until them it's a mystery.

Consider the risk. Cheesing the game like this is not without problems. Personally I'm a dumbass who sees this on the same level as modding outside Vortex or CursedForge when you have no fucking clue what your doing.

Soooo I started a new game a turns out the chest isn't doing the thing.

It will still bug out your game if you loot all so don't bother doing anything with it but going "hehe the sword is now a cup"

[lovely-p-issues]

I have this fanfiction idea for times when my English will become acceptable: (it was in my drafts for months and tbh if I didn't post it today like this, with mistakes and stupid parts, I wouldn't have posted it at all, so, sorry ig)

Book 1: The war

How it all started

Let's make Azulon not madly-evil, but just regular-size-evil: he didn't plan to kill Zuko, because it's a stupid idea to get rid of your possible heir, he just wanted to take a son from Ozai - so he decided to make Zuko Iroh's heir, de facto making him Iroh's son (let's not focus on formality, just assume that you can switch your fathers if you are highborn enough)

(Zuko's life isn't in danger, so Ursa doesn't kill Azulon and he'll be ruling at least to the end of that book)

It may seem a great idea (especially in comparison with killing Zuko) but we can't forget that Iroh just lost a son and is still in grief, absolutely not ready to take care of another kid. He still needs to learn how to find a new path and calm his spirit and now he needs to do it with Zuko around him.

Iroh decides to take Zuko with him for his journey - Azulon approves this, seeing his son (and heir) needs to learn how to live after losing Lu Ten and thinking that Iroh may finally teach Zuko some actual fire bending

"I do not want to want to leave, Azula. I'm sorry, little sister."

"Whatever, Zuzu. At least you won't be distracting me from my lessons. Finally, something good comes from this whole fuss around you."

(In fact, she's not happy. Not at all)

______

At this point, Iroh is not yet the nice old man you know from ATLA. He's a broken man, trying to find a purpose in his life, triggered by Zuko's alikeness to Lu Ten and tired of being imposed on things like taking care of a teenager.

He's not Ozai, he's not cruel or even just bad, he just can't force himself to care.

They don't really talk, only sometimes to establish a plan for their further journey. The worst moments are when Iroh calls Zuko Lu Ten's name and then suddenly stops, looking at him in shock. After that kind of incidents, they stay silent for days.

Zuko starts to blame himself for being, well, alive, when his much better cousin is dead. He convinces himself it would be better if he died and Lu Ten lived.

Zuko spends most of his time alone. He hates making Iroh sad and upset so he chooses to stay away. He doesn't know what this all thing with White Lotus, he just likes the idea of his uncle/formal-dad having friends.

Yet, they travel all around the world and for the first time in his life Zuko sees what sharing progress and civilization by Fire Nation looks like. And he doesn't like that.

He's still loyal to his family, so he doesn't believe that his grandfather knows what is happening.

He decides that he needs to make a proper report (soul of writer, ya know).

He makes notes and talks with people, even if he hates how awkward it is. He believes that it's necessary to help them.

I think it's a wonderful idea to see Zuko interviewing - I mean, investigating-

Zuko's raport list - random traders complaining about the difficulty of staying afloat, - migrants who are fleeing war or have lost their homes to fighting, prisoners of war (this doesn't go down too well, thank goodness Zuko is still a kid and his passion seems adorable so no one kills him), - strange ladies in nice outfits who are paid by horrible men for no one knows what, - malnourished scarred soldiers of the Fire Nation, - children of the Earth Kingdom who teach him their stupid game (once he understood the rules, it wasn't THAT stupid, but still), - crazy old ladies, who won't stop pinching his cheeks, - a young girl with a scar on her face who didn't want to tell him much, but Zuko knew what accidental burns looked like and this wasn't one of them, - a group of artists whose theatre burned down after they refused to perform plays approved by the Fire Nation authorities, - a mother who asks him if he knows what happened to her son who was an earth bender and one day. .. just didn't come home

But we all know that Zuko always prefered to act than think. Pretty often Sometimes he disappears for a night. With him disappears an old, theatre mask.

Son came home and left with his mom. Someone left some gold for the soldiers to buy food. Someone bought the most useless things from traders. Someone left burn ointment made by someone who must have grown up surrounded by fire, on the doorstep of the poor girl. And many other, strange things happened.

Of course no one suspects anything or anyone. Trust me. Not a single soul.

______

Zuko is still training but can't even be angry enough to make a big fire. He's just frustrated and that makes him choke with smoke more than anything.

But with every other day, he feels worse. He gets letters from Azula who started to receive more attention from their mother since Zuko was away. When Ozai's influence is limited, she becomes a little more normal. She's still sharp as a knife and dangerous, but feeling loved by both her parents (even if Oazi is more focused on trying to control her and transform her into a weapon) decreases her psychopathic behaviour.

"Mom asked me to take care of your stupid turtle ducks, dum dum"

She thinks he will be happy hearing that she spends time with their mom, and Zuko, honestly, is happy. It's just-

"Am I even still her son since I'm Uncle Iroh's heir?"

-where is his place now?

For the first time in days, he feels an actual rage. And just like this, his fire bending becomes hundreds of times better, even unhinged and dangerous.

Iroh sees this while coming back from meditation (or whatever) and in a second feels that something is wrong.

He reaches out to Zuko, offering him some advice and lessons, but Zuko, a 13-year-old, harmfully lonely and practically neglected at this point prince, can't hold back anymore:

"YOU WANT TO TEACH ME AFTER MONTHS OF IGNORING ME? YOU'RE JUST LIKE FATHER, HE LOOKS AT US ONLY WHEN WE ARE ABOVE EVERYONE ELSE! WHY DIDN'T YOU HELP ME WHEN I COULD NOT HOLD A LITTLE FLAME IN MY HANDS? I DON'T NEED YOUR STUPID ADVICE NOW! YOU WEREN'T THAT WISE WHEN YOU LOST BA SING SE AND GOT LU TEN KILLED"

Iroh sters at him calmly for a few seconds.

"You are right. I wasn't. I'm trying to do better. If you change your mind about training, you know where to find me."

Zuko comes to his Uncle by night.

They don't really train. They drink tea instead.

And it becomes a habit.

After a few days, they start to actually train.

They need to breathe a lot. It's too much for Zuko, but Iroh is rather stubborn about this one.

After a few weeks, for the first time in his life, Zuko feels that fire bending is soothing and just pleasant. It feels like home.

It can't last forever. Of course.

______

They stayed for a long time in the Earth Kingdom. One day Zuko sees Ba Sing Se and vast fields of previous battles, trampled, dry land and piles of burnt bodies.

It's not the work of some mad general or bunch of scared soldiers fighting for their lives. It's his chubby nice tea-loving uncle's work. This is not an accident, an accidental casualty of war. They are the pride of the Fire Nation. This is their honour. This is their civilisation and progress.

That's what his family is doing to the world. Purposely.

Something is breaking inside him. Thoughts of mourning for Lu Ten. No one has ever mentioned all those bodies, the people who died here too. His uncle, his good uncle, his father, the pride of his Nation, only cried over his son. He never even hesitated to burn to a crisp anyone who defended his home. Against them.

Zuko isn't very smart, as we know. He screams a lot at Iroh. And then he leaves.

He thinks to himself, that Lu Ten, who actually fought in those battles would understand that it was wrong. But Lu Ten would also know what to do about it.

He wanders for days, trying to avoid people, untill

He crushes into something.

"Why are you running, flame-boy? Your pants are on fire?" *wild laugh*

And this is how Prince Zuko met Lady Toph Beifong.

[am-i-the-asshole-official]

WIBTA for writing Sonic Fanfiction about my dead aunt?

Right, I know, it sounds bad right out of the gate. My Aunt died when an affair went wrong, he wanted to elope with her, and in a cocaine fueled rage, he shot her and then himself. She had five children. This all happened 15 years before I was born. It has directly impacted my life, however - my mother has always talked about her, my older sister was named after her.

I had no idea how she died, or that I had five cousins, until last year when I took it upon myself to look up old newspaper reports. See, she's burried under a tree by the cemetary, because her death was deemed too tainted by the devil for her to have a Christian burial in the church, so it's easy to find her grave.

It's a lot for me to think about. I normally work through, explore, and unpack issues in my life by writing out extensive stories which explore the themes and ideas - see, in the old American comic series, Knuckles dealt with a lot of generational trauma, finding out about random family members, and having things obscured by his parents because the conversations are "too difficult to have". It really helps me to write these things down through the lense of my favourite characters, I have for as long as I could write. The character Julie-Su, too, has a lot of secret family members, her life is thrown into turmoil to realise that the people she knows are actually family, such as Remington, who was the son of her dead brother. It's infinitely relatable.

I worry, however, is that disrespectful on my dead aunt? To compare her to one of Knuckles the Echidna's family members? Would it hurt my mother, if she ever found out?

I cannot talk to her about this, both as she doesn't want to talk about it, and I am estranged from my family as of my abusive father. The only time I have learnt anything about my aunt, is from my father drunkenly accidentally letting things slip, or from my older siblings.

So... I'm torn ... WIBTA for writing Sonic fanfiction about a real life tragedy that directly affects me? Not a fandom post, even though it feels like it ought to be one.

What are these acronyms?

[threepandas]

The Vod's List: Yandere Clones

The Galaxy changes, thanks to spit.

It's not even the first time it's happened, in my peoples history. But it's... kinda weird it happend? Twice? The FIRST time we actually PLANNED for it to happen. It was biological warfare. But this? This was just an accident. One that could have KILLED somebody.

Cause, see, the Techganic people? Are... well to put it lightly, we are the result of centuries of an ideological and spiritual holy war, that nearly tore our plant apart. The two sides don't really "talk" to each other any more. Or... you know... ACKNOWLEDGE the other.

They are waiting for the other to "inevitably die off, due to their own hubris".

Yeeeeeah. Fun times. You can see why I wanted OFF that dirtball.

At least on other planets? The politics aren't PERSONAL... is what I naively thought. Forgot about empathy! You know, like an idiot! Kark. Where was I? Right! Galaxy, changed, spit. Okay, sooo... here's the thing? My family was part of the bloody bone-sucking Holy Naturalist Empire. (Translated to Basic, the word "Naturalist" has more of a specific to the body? Meaning? Not so much "nature of the world" as "nature of the Self" you know? And in THIS case, the word they are using for "holy" in ancient means less strictly "divine" and more "pure like the divine"? It's Complicated.)

And the Progress Collective was ORIGINALLY this whole project, supposedly, that got WAY out of hand, became a cult, then a religion, and tore the planet apart? It was a technological hive mind that want to "perfect" the planet to a "higher state of being". And then extend its reachs to the stars.

We held the karking LINE. Died in legions. Refusing to give our bodies to be made machines. Droids and puppets. Refused to give our freedoms, our homes, our planet. Any of it. But it was at the cost of our original bodies. The only way to truely fight BACK? Was to become... poison.

The Jedi who eventually came, some how FEELING our distress, dispite the blockade the Collective created on the interplanetary transmitters? Our planet's holonet connection? Said that the creator of Our Salvation was guided by the Force. None of us could really argue. The Salvation treatment was madness. A machine so ahead of it's time, we STILL aren't sure how it works, just that it DOES.

We had a choice.

It was no choice at all.

And now? NOW? Kriffing CENTURIES later? I am STILL a biological weapon! Not do much to non-human adjacent races, but anyone human or human modified? Human descended? Kriff, even a few humanoids! If they're CLOSE enough!

I have to take neutralizers if I plan to be swapping any sort of bodily fluids with ANY race that isn't on the "verified Safe" list. For MONTHS. So it can build up in my system properly. And the side effects? Ugh. Stars and Bone, is it AWFUL! Like I GET why people do it. You love who you love. But the nausea! All those meds just to counter the side effects of other side effects!

It made me kinda glad to be single. Stars, poor cousin Tango.

Of course, I AM responsible. I always carry a FULL kit of emergency neutralizers with me. Just in case, Bones and Blood forbid it, the worst should occur. I have some for accidental blood mixing, some for plasma, a couple for bile, and the majority of the rest? Saliva. The most common accident reported. My kit even has an emergency medical guide on a lil piece of flimsy, on the inside lid!

...I feel like I'm getting distracted agai- OH! Right!!

I work in the senate building, now! Astral, right?! Center of the GALAXY! First step to making a DIFFERENCE! Granted, I am basicly the assistant nobody of no one... but STILL! It's a start! I'm ON Coruscant! That's more then most people can say! I go to work passing THE jedi temple each day! You can see them coming and going from your airspeeder!

Unfortunately? Rent is BRUTAL. I live in a glorified closet with barely a bunk and a sonic shower to my name. Not even a proper 'fresher! It's not like we're traveling. Or my species needs to avoid water! No, I literally just CAN'T AFFORD IT! And if you saw the prices? Droids be carting you off to the medcenter before you know it! Where do they GET their water? The outer rim?! Do they deliver it by HAND?!

.....I haven't had my Caf. Ignore me. I just miss feeling proper CLEAN. Sonic showers just... I know it's a psychological thing, but it doesn't FEEL as clean, you know? I am pouting. Pouty me. Unhappy.

Wait... what time is i- OH KARK!!!

See, on Coruscant there is no real "beating" the traffic. But there ARE certain steps you can take to cut travel time. Like making sure you're on the Senatorial speeder. It has right of way and is pretty comfy. And? If I get ON it early enough? Blend in with the walls? I not only can't get kicked off by some plasbone slimeball of a "I think I'm better then you" senator's aid... but they'll run their mouths!

I have learned SO MUCH that way~!

Unfortunately for me? The Caf merchant was REALLY popular today. So dignified I am NOT.

"Hold the 'LIFT!"

It more a desperate plea then an order, but two seperate armored hands immediately reach out and stop the turbolift's doors from closing. Out of breath behind my Goverments mandated mouth gaurd, I struggle to catch my breath as I finally make it. The kriffing thing makes running almost impossible. It makes most things karking near impossible.

"Tha... thank! You!" I manage to pant, trying not to double over. I am a bit light headed. It's hard to remember what I'm supposed to do when I'm like this. "Kriff! I hate running. Can.. never breathe! Afterwards!"

The lift is full of Coruscant gaurds, their mysterious gazes presumably locked onto me. I could only assume, given how their helmets were turned towards me, but ultimately it was impossible to tell. The gaurd standing next to me was more heavily painted then the others. I still couldn't for the life of me figure out what the marks MEANT. Rank maybe?

"Should we be requesting a medical droid?" Came the mechanized voice of... I was fairly sure the one to my left? I turned to address the one I was preeeeetty sure had spoken. It was a small, echo-y lift.

"No, no. It's just the mask. Makes it kinda hard to breathe. Gover-"

I never got to finish explaining. Just as we reach the Speeder platform. As the doors began to open. An explosion ripped the world apart. The very mask I disliked so much, likely saving my lower jaw from being ripped completely off. The turbolift slammed back, crashing, durasteel screeching as supports ripped apart and gave way.

Rapid fire, more explosions. The Gaurd next to me grabbed me, tucked me tight as they braced. Away from the exit. As.. the world... slowly LEANED.

All I could do was stare, terrified, down at the sheer drop of the now frantic Coruscant traffic below. Commuters desperately trying to avoid falling debris. I could hear alarms. The transparasteel below my face cracked.

Wait.

Below?

The 'lift had leaned. MORE then leaned. It was half unmoored. Hanging out into open air. I clung to the gaurd that held me, my caf dropped long ago, now seeping like dark blood through the cracks to drip... drip... drip... out into that terrible drop.

I.. I couldn't breath. My heart was pounding. Too fast. Too hard. Oh Stars that take us in the End, oh Bones and Blood, that we are! C-can't BREATHE! I managed to make a hand unseize. Rip the glorified muzzle from my face, so I could suck in air. I was drooling. Like a mad hunt beast. A panic response, I remembered distantly.

So far down. Oh Stars. We were going to fall so far down!

A creak. A snap. We jerked and swung downwards. I think... I think I sobbed. Pressed as tight as I could make myself to the red heavy gaurd. He was sturdy. Hold strong. I could hear the other gaurds working quickly and in tandem behind me. But... but I was frozen. Useless. N..nothing but dead weight.

I must have started babbling. Apologizing. Because the helmet near my head turned slightly, the arm around my waist tightened just a bit.

"You have nothing to apologize for ma'am. We were trained for this. Made for this. Not you. You're going to be just fine, all right? We'll get you out of here. Just stay calm and try not to move."

We are almost out. Almost free. When the next attack hits. The cheap duracrete crumbles and we DROP. Gravity releasing us for a few, brief, and terrifying moments.

I do not face them with dignity. I am terrified. A fractured, strangled, scream trying to rip its way free of me. Fear too great to let it. Some stars blessed 'Lift cord catches, arresting our fall violently. We slam into the side of the building the Senatorial Speeder pad is on. Throwing gaurds around the lift pod. Smashing us all together.

The man holding me has his helmet knocked off in a violent bounce that leaves his jaw sporting a shallow but painful looking scrape from someone's boot. Two panes of the transparensteel are just... GONE. Howling wind a deadly reminder of what waits below, should anyone fall through those holes.

"Hammer, Tricks! Get those doors open NOW! I don't care if you have to BLAST them open! We are running out of time and I'd prefer not to learn what the low levels taste like at SPEED." Growled a commanding voice in my ear. Then the voice turn reassuring. "We got you. You're not dying here. We're getting out, okay? Just hold on."

I managed to nod. Drool had long ago overwhelmed my mouth, now painting my chin, smearing everywhere. A mess. It mixed with my tears and some part of me was screaming. Dangerous, dangerous! But... but all I could see was that DROP. Gonna fall. Oh Stars, gonna fall! Please. Scared. Don't let go!

I pressed closer. Ignorant of the way my drool wet cheek pressed against the still bleeding wound on his his face. Ignorant of how I was doing the ONE THING I had been warned time and time again to NEVER EVER do.

The turbolift door gave a screeching clunk as they were force out of place. Toppling away. The gaurds ignored it, immediately getting into action. There was a patrol speeder clearly waiting to get into position. One by one the jumped into it. Careful not to destabilize the already precarious lift any further.

Finally it was our turn. And? With a gut turning drop as I was carried down? We were safe. The Speeder immediately making room. I cried. Clung. It took me entirely too long to remember that something might be amiss. It was only when the gaurd I was clinging to stumbled. Admitted to a "bit" of a headache. That everything came crashing back.

Like ice water to the soul.

Oh Stars! What have I DONE!?

I scramble for my neutralizers. The full anti-spectrum kit. Oh Stars! It's in his BLOOD! I stared in horror at the damning sheen of my own spit against his cheek, my hands shaking, trying to rip open the pack. A medic takes it from me. Opens it for me and reads the flimsy guide in side. Curses.

There is no way to REALLY know who was exposed to me. So everyone has to go to the medcenter. Immediately. Get emergency shots just in case. Then follow up with medical droids for a couple weeks afterwards. BARE MINIMUM.

Why? Because my spit carries organic nanites. They hunt and DESTROY anything they deem "non-native" to the body... as defined by MY species. They ignore obviously alien races but human adjacent ones? They were DESIGNED to destroy augmented humans. "Purge" them of their enhancements. They can't tell they difference. Alien humanoid? Augmented Techganic? Same thing, right?!

Without the neutralizers? The nanites will RIP PEOPLES BODIES APART. And even WITH them? All it does is soft reset them to whatever current race their in. They still cause massive problems and medical trauma as they go about "fixing" any perceived damaged. Like, you know, medical devices. Or shrapnel.

They are meant to break and cannibalize what they can. Fix indiscriminately. If it causes YOU unimaginable agony? So be it. At least you will be "whole". Die Technoganic. Pure. The pain has KILLED people. The nanites? Dumb enough to attack VITAL STSTEMS they deem "wrong". Killing their hosts before they themselves can FIX anything. They were a WEAPON. And... and I infected an innocent man.

I am a monster.

All I can do, is apologize. Again and again and again. Stare in horror, into the eyes of the man who SAVED me, and know that I returned the favor by poisoning him horribly. If there was room? I would grovel. This is... this is unforgivable.

He grimaced past the building headache. Pats my shoulder.

The worst part is... is no one is blaming me.

T-they SHOULD be...

The hand on my shoulder spasms, grip turning crushing as my savior's body violently seizes. His hands shoot to his head, limbs twitching and lashing. Blood trickles from his nose. Eyes shut tight against some terrible pain. They've GIVEN him the shot! It should be countering the nanites! The only reason he should be in this much pain would be if there was something lodged in his brain!

All at once... like a doll with his string cut... he relaxes. Just in time for us to arrive at the Medcenter. They try to usher me away from the gaurds. Push them off towards some "take care of it yourself" corner of nowhere.

I throw a FIT. Loudly.

I am prepared to sit on the floor and scream and cry like a youngling, and it must SHOW, because they hurriedly rush us along. People GET their kriffing bacta. Their technoganic poisoning shots. Yes, I had to harrass the nurses it digging the shots out of storage. NO it couldn't KARKING WAIT!

I learned my saviors name was "Fox". That he's actually stationed in the same building as where I work. The Senate.

Thankfully? "I got BOMBED" is a valid excuse not to show up to work. I was allowed to head home. Fox even escorted me. Showed me where the Gaurds all get their off duty meals. Pretty spicy! But good! I don't really notice how clear headed Fox seems. Surely he always was, right? I can't have CHANGED anything, right?

I don't notice him bracing for headaches that never come. Having thoughts that don't slip away. Seeing the world and for once... REALLY seeing it. Being about to trace all the changes back to one person. The smiling, laughing, soul who NEEDED him so much.

He...he was MADE to be needed. To serve and protect. But does everyone DESERVE his service?

Huh... a strange new thought, that one.

But THIS one... this one might make The List. He really hopes she does. Nodding to a passing vod, his eyes drift back to her. She was warm. Stands as a rare bit of bright in Coruscant's filthy everything. He'd... He'd really like to keep her. Feels too soon, but it's true.

Everyone else have their generals. What do the Gaurds have?

Maybe this? Might be nice.

He hopes she makes the List.

[psychokatrixxxy]

Random rant/analysis (ig) of the CW's Supergirl (Arrowverse)

Heads up, I only watch the first 3 seasons of Supergirl before losing interest. Writing just wasn't as compelling, and I was busy with other stuff.

My first introduction to Supergirl was through the CW's Supergirl, I had no knowledge about her character. Hell, I barely knew anything about Superman's origins. The only DC media I had really consumed was Young Justice and a few episodes of Batman: The Brave and The Bold. The only reason I even watched Supergirl was because it looked interesting. (And for some reason, it was in the kid setting for Netflix, which... yeah, it shouldn't of been. There was no nudity but the implied sex and stuff made child me a little uncomfortable and like can we get back to the fighting?) But that's besides the point.

My point is, that show did Kara dirty.

When I first mentioned the character of Supergirl, one of my friends' critics was that she thought her character was pointless because she was just a female version of Superman and she found it pointless to just make a girl version of a character.

And yeah, that's what the CW did. That Kara was just a girl version of Clark. A quirky reporter that's actually an alien adopted by human farmers and is struggling with her identity as a Kryptonion and as a Human.

Obviously, there are differences between her and Clark. She has an adoptive sister, she works with the D.E.O, etc. But the core of her character, her humanity, she's just a girl version of Superman.

But as stated before, I was a young dumb child who didn't know much about Superman, so I loved it. But now I understand that they completely messed up Kara's character.

Kara is compassionate, but she's also a hot-headed, fierce, and impulsive teenager. Yeah, you could say she does does become like the cheerful bubbly Supergirl of the CW, but we never see her being the scared, angry girl who just lost her parents, her entire home, and is now stranded on a new planet, with new powers she doesn't understand and can't control. We don't see her as the teenager that comes off as angry because she's scared and doesn't want anyone to see it.

Superman came to Earth as a baby, Earth is all he knew. It is his home. He grew up learning to control his powers to fit in, to not accidentally hurt someone.

Supergirl came to Earth as a teenager, her home is gone, everyone she knew and loved is dead. She has to learn about a whole new culture, while grappling with brand new powers she hasn't learned to control.

Superman and Supergirl are very different characters, just because they're both "Supers" and have similar costumes and powers (which is because they are cousins) does not mean they are just gender bent versions of eachother.

[underforeversgrace]

shattered saviors

DannyMay2023 Day 21: Shatter

title: shattered saviors

words: 2475

Complete

Summary: Danny gets a horrifying glimpse into the intense negative reaction of Amity Park, and especially his parents, when Dani is accidentally revealed to be half ghost and is taken into GIW custody. (Courtesy of @danphanwritingprompts post here.)

AU: None/pre season 3

Warnings: Minor Character Death

Beta: @probably-dead

~~~~~~

“In other news today, the Guys in White have released a statement on the hybrid they recently discovered, dubbed Danielle Phantom for her striking similarity to our own Danny Phantom.” The image of the reporter faded, instead showing a picture of a document against a blue screen, various sentences digitally highlighted in yellow as she read them. “Today, the experiment known as Danielle Phantom was successfully Faded. We were able to confirm the hybridism found in ‘Danielle’ was unique and unable to be replicated, there is no fear of other hybrids at this time. We thank the people of Amity Park who have supported us despite the small group of teenage protestors. We hope peace can return to the city, now that the creature has been disposed of. Its connection to Danny Phantom is still unclear, but we will continue to study the remains in hopes of discovering it.”

The image of the reporter reappeared, easily sliding into the next topic - something about the upcoming holidays - but ice began to creep up the screen.

“Danny?” Tucker asked at his side, shivering at the chill coming from his best friend.

The halfa turned to Tucker and he tried to rein in his ice. Tucker was only human, after all. Before Danny could say anything his phone rang and he fished it out of his pocket, not even checking the caller ID before answering it. He knew who it was.

“I didn’t get her in time.” Vlad said, regret and guilt in his voice.

“She’s gone? She’s really gone?” Danny asked, too numb to even cry.

“I was able to confirm that via my connections, yes. They got me in to see her too late.”

“Okay.” Danny said, ending the call.

His entire being felt disconnected from reality. Danielle was dead. Caught in a trap meant for him. They’d been holding protests for two weeks, trying to insist she was human enough to be released, to not be tortured. Almost all of the youth of Amity had stood behind her, even Wes, who had stopped trying to expose Danny as soon as he heard what happened to Ellie.

But the adults were louder, more able. And they insisted that Ellie was dangerous and needed to be contained. A ghost who could pretend to be human? What havoc could they cause and then fly completely under the radar? The negative influence on the youth of Amity, who were already too pro-ghost to begin with?

Even Vlad had tried to save her - though Danny still was unsure if it was because he genuinely was afraid for her or just that the GIW had a halfa in their custody.

Danny couldn't remember the rest of the night. He just existed, too numb to hurt or think or do anything.

Days passed in that fog. He went to school. He pretended to learn. He stopped ghost attacks. He tried to sleep. Every night, he just faced the same nightmares. Danielle, experimentally tortured until she died screaming, alone and in pain, wondering where her brother/cousin was, maybe even wondering where her father was.

It should have been him. The trap was meant for him. He should be the one dead.

Vlad somehow got Ellie’s body. She had left behind a human corpse, not a pile of destabilized goo. Vlad had tried to check her, to see if maybe she had somehow survived, maybe this was some sort of protective hibernation state. But Vlad looked and he found her still heart, found her shattered core. He and Danny buried her body in the back of Vlad’s mayoral mansion. They didn’t know what else to do. She wasn’t human. She couldn’t get a headstone or a human grave. So instead of being mourned properly, she was placed into a shallow grave, only the other halfas present. No one else had ever met her.

Well, no one else had ever met her who loved her.

No one who had ever met her who hadn’t hurt her, a sin even Vlad and Danny were guilty of.

Still, Danny went to school. Pretended to learn. Fought ghosts. Slept only for nightmares to haunt him.

The other students had looked bad for the first few days. It was hard not to, everyone had seen Danielle’s human side, seen a terrified twelve year old girl who’d fallen two stories after being shot by a power nullification weapon only to be held at gunpoint by government agents while she cried. Eventually, though, even the high schoolers returned to normal.

It should’ve been Danny. Danny should be the one rotting in the ground. Not Danielle.

Not Danielle.

Danny didn’t listen to his parents in the month following Danielle’s death. They wished they had gotten the chance to study her themselves, see how hybridism was even possible. Run their own battery of tests, torture her themselves. The parents didn’t understand why he and Jazz were pulling away from them. 

The numbness didn’t let up until six weeks later. A weekend patrol and he’d stumbled across an animal ghost attacking a human on the edge of town, the person hiding under a personal ghost shield of Fenton creation on their wrist.

Danny didn’t even have to fight the animal, it was low level enough he could just trap it immediately in the Thermos. He was about to fly away when the human stopped him.

“Oh thank God, Phantom!” He said, turning off the shield.

Hmph. They didn’t even feel the need for a shield around him, a full ghost for all they knew, yet had damned Ellie to hell under a scalpel. Danny wasn’t going to even respond, just leave, until he recognized the man’s face.

“I know you.” Danny said, the numb mask he’d hidden behind starting to fracture.

“You’ve saved me a few times!” The man said, a relaxed grin on his face.

“You were an organizer for the pro-GIW protests.” Danny responded, ice beginning to form on the ground far beneath his feet, his words cold and devoid of any happy emotion.

The man paled slightly, taking a step back. “Uh… she was dangerous!” He tried to excuse pitifully.

“And I’m not?” Danny asked, drifting closer to the man, less than six inches from his face as Danny’s mask of numbness shattered under the force of his anger, not even blinking. “I’m not?”

“You’re not…” the man gulped anxiously. “Your obsession is protecting us. You wouldn’t hurt us.”

“Obsessions. Aren’t. Real.” He hissed, grabbing the man’s wrist and squeezing until the man screamed. Danny didn’t even know the man’s name, just that he’d been a very public organizer in the campaign to keep Danielle in the government’s hands.

“Stop! Please!”

“Do you think my sister begged?” Danny growled. “For them to please stop as they tortured her, murdered her?”

“Sister?” The man repeated weakly.

“Sister.” Danny confirmed, danger in his voice. Danny had been numb for over a month and a half at this point and now his anger had cracked through the numbness and he found himself understanding Dan a little bit better.

“You’re a hybrid too?” The man realized, visibly shaking in panic, desperately trying to pull his wrist from Danny’s ironclad grip.

Danny felt the grin creep onto his face. He felt like he should probably care that he was delighting in this terror, in what he was about to do. “I am. But I can’t risk the Guys in White learning that, can I?” He finally answered. As soon as the words were out of his mouth, he squeezed harder on the man’s wrist, shattering both his bone and the personal shield he wore.

The man screamed in agony, collapsing to his knees as soon as Danny released him. Danny had never enjoyed hurting anything and had never hurt a human before, but this was downright elating. “I’m sorry!” The man yelled, looking up at Danny’s angry, unblinking, glowing green eyes.

“I’m not.” Danny answered, uncapping the Thermos and releasing the ghostly animal. The man tried to scramble backwards but Danny summoned a shield, trapping the three of them within it. The animal looked to Danny, submitting to the more powerful ghost, before glancing at the trembling human, whose hand was rapidly turning purple, though the animal did sit, deferring to Danny once more.

Danny hadn’t really looked at the creature before trapping it so he took a moment to study it, the man beginning to sob. Maybe a coyote or wolf? It looked too big to be a dog - not that it really mattered, he supposed, considering Cujo. It didn’t help that the animal hadn’t held its form very well, its edges too wispy and curvy for any real animal. Wolf, he decided.

His study of the wolf done, he returned to the man, staring directly into his eyes. The man flinched at the anger, the rage he saw. “Please…” the man tried to beg, crying. “I have a family.”

“So did she.” Danny said, turning to the animal. “Sic ‘em.” He ordered.

The wolf, despite being unable to truly understand Danny’s words, understood his intent and read his aura. It stood, growling as it slowly approached the human.

Danny had always thought the screams of someone being hurt would rip into his very being, a failure for his self-appointed job of protecting Amity.

But he didn’t feel bad. Human blood had already been spilt here and it hadn’t been by a ghost.

If the humans didn’t even care… why should he? Why should he give a damn about human life?

For the first time in two years, a human had died to a ghost. And Danny didn’t care. They were lucky he bothered to catch the wolf at the end of it, petting its cold head as it licked blood from its muzzle.

The next day was when Danny learned the man’s name. Edward Canton, leaving behind a widow and two young children. Still, Danny didn’t care, even as he heard snippets of conversation at school.

“I can’t believe someone actually died.” An underclassman whispered.

“I didn’t think any of the ghosts would ever actually hurt us.” Another said in hushed tones.

“Are we in danger?” Someone else wondered.

The thing he heard the most, the repeated question.

“Where was Phantom?”

“How could Phantom let this happen?”

“Doesn’t Phantom always protect us?”

The questions were echoed in the news, by the adults, even by his parents, wondering if this death would finally destroy Phantom from his ‘failure’ to save the human, ‘failure’ to sustain his Obsession.

For a city who had let a child be tortured to death for being only part ghost, they were awfully reliant on a suspected full-ghost.

“Are you… the death, are you alright?” Sam asked.

“I can’t always save everyone.” Danny said, feigning sadness.

“How are you holding up?” Tucker asked later.

“I’ll be fine. I can’t be everywhere at once.” He’d answered, still pretending to be sad.

He couldn’t tell Sam or Tucker. They’d never understand his decision to let the man - the man who didn’t even deserve a name, as far as Danny was concerned - be killed. To watch and do nothing. To take pleasure in the screams. They’d worry he was becoming Dan. He wasn’t, though.

Danny tried to put his mask back on after, to be engulfed in the comfort of numbness, but the mask was gone and left only anger behind. He could no longer access the fog that allowed him to drift through life.

More weeks passed, now nearly three months since the announcement of Danielle’s death. Danny had at least found a routine… though it wasn’t his old one. He still went to school and pretended to learn. Still struggled to sleep and battled nightmares of Ellie’s screams. But the ghost fights?

Well… the ones who deserved to be saved, he still saved. Children and teens, people who’d joined the protests, who were too young to protest. But no adult had joined to try to save her. No adult was innocent. Whether through action or inaction, all were guilty of her death.

So he would watch the joy and relief on their faces when they saw Phantom come to save them, only to turn to terror and panic when he trapped them, when he simply stared at them and watched them die. When he grinned at their screams, when he asked them if they thought Ellie begged for her life the way they were begging for theirs.

When they realized their savior was not bound to protecting them and they had pushed him too far.

“Aren’t you going to save them?” Vlad Masters asked, watching people run from the opposite direction, a commotion they couldn’t yet see from the restaurant the two sat at. They’d begun to bond after Danielle’s death, Vlad’s guilt finally soothing out some of his more evil edges and Danny growing more tolerant of what was still there.

“I save innocents.” Danny answered, shrugging, poking at the food in front of him. His appetite still had not returned.

“So the rumors from the Realms are true. You’ve stopped saving people.” Vlad stated, taking a sip of his nearly boiling tea. Heat didn’t hurt him like ice didn’t hurt Danny.

“If they aren’t innocent, yes.”

“Who’s innocent?”

“The ones who tried to save Danielle and anyone who was too young to help.”

“So, what? All the adults of Amity are guilty?” Vlad asked, a smirk sliding onto his face.

“Of either encouraging the GIW outright or of the same thing I am.” Danny confirmed.

“Which is?”

“Watching and doing nothing because it isn’t my problem.”

Vlad chuckled. “You’re becoming more and more like me, little badger.”

Danny paused as he realized Vlad was right. He was making decisions based on who he felt had slighted him or Danielle, decisions with potentially fatal consequences. Again, he sought a feeling of guilt.

Again, he found none. “If they wanted a ghostly hero, they shouldn’t have been so obvious in their ghost hatred.”

“How are your friends and sister taking that?”

“They think I’m ashamed. That I care about and mourn everyone I don’t save. Maybe the town will earn their hero back. Until then?” Danny paused, pointing across the street where an adult woman was cornered, cowering under the glare of two humanoid ghosts Danny couldn’t place a name to. She screamed as their claws dug into her. “Until then, it isn’t my problem.”

“How would they earn you back?”

Danny shrugged. “That’s their problem to figure out. An apology to begin with would be nice. But they’ll never do that, will they?”

And the topic moved to more bland conversations even as the woman’s dying screams echoed around them.

But it was fine. Danny wasn’t actively killing anyone, so he wasn’t becoming Dan, and that was all he’d promised.

[writingamongther0ses]

I found a cool Alice in Wonderland/Wizard of Oz comic by @hah-studios and it gave me a desire to go back to some of my own crossover projects.

Here is a snippet of Hiraeth!

-_-

Princess Langwidere gave Tip a weird feeling.

It might have been related to the bad feeling that her comments on Tip's appearance gave them, greedy eyes lingering on the star-shaped freckles that adorned their cheeks and the distinct green streaks that ran through their hair. However, that wasn't the weird part. Langwidere was known to lust after features that weren't part of her... boudoir.

No, the weird feeling came from the constant smirk the princess had on her face.

They sat in a parlor that looked like it hadn't been used for a while, with faint traces of dust still lingering on the furniture. Langwidere snapped her fingers, and the maid, who had been cleaning a second before they walked in, hurried in, holding a tea set encrusted with jewels. She set it down and, with a nod from Langwidere, began prepping a cup of tea for the older woman.

"So..." Tip said, tapping their knees to break up the silence of just pouring ea. "I'm grateful for your willingness to help free your aunt and cousins. I know that ruling in their stead must be difficult for you-" Nope, nope, that had been the wrong thing to say. They knew it even before they heard Tin's awkward hiss from where he and Lion hovered. "I mean, I.... you must have missed them?"

"Not really," Langwidere said, taking the cup from the maid to give it a dainty sip. "I barely knew them, if I must be honest, your Majesty. Still, it will be a relief to have them back, for Queen Bevina being in charge means that I will have more time to devote to my hobbies." Tip relaxed. The words were fucked up, but she didn't seem mad about the accidental insult. "But, I wanted to discuss something else." She took another sip of tea.

Tip raised a brow. "Something else?" Based on the report Scarecrow had written before he got sick, they would've thought Langwidere would've rushed them out by now. They dared to glance back in time to see Lion shrug at the confused look Tin gave him.

So they had no clue either. Great.

Tip turned in time to see the silver slippers set on the table.

[tobyblogger]

What Happened to the Other Users

Hey everyone, Toby here. Many of you have messaged me asking about what happened to the other users, like EerieWhispers, EddieMcRoy, NexusThrill, and Phantom Echoes. Pretty much all of them.

These are the people who posted previous accounts of their experiences with that copy of Five Nights at Prototype Fredbear’s. But before we get into it, have you noticed how once they posted their stories, they stopped talking? Well, you’re about to find out why.

Let’s start with EerieWhispers. I remember receiving a message from her parents about her whereabouts. In case you’re wondering, I’m friends with all of the missing users. Basically, her parents told me that after she stopped speaking—right after her pet cat Milo was murdered—they went to visit her. When they entered her room, they saw a shadow hanging over the bed in the dark. When they turned on the lights, they gasped in shock and sadness.

They found her body hanging by a noose above the bed, swinging back and forth. Underneath her body, they found a note. They read it and sent me the following:

“Dear friends and family,

I couldn’t believe it when I tried to call the police while attempting to stop it from taking my cat. They didn’t believe me and thought it was a joke. I can’t live like this anymore, so I will be taking my life.

Sincerely, Jessica.”

Her parents are now filing a lawsuit against the police department for causing their daughter to commit suicide.

On to the next person, Eddie McRoy, my cousin.

He didn’t kill himself or harm himself directly. Instead, at the end of his post titled I Encountered a Sighting of Prototype Fredbear—which was actually posted by his brother Julius—he described hiding in his room and huddling under his blanket. I was told that later that day, when Julius entered the house, he found Prototype Fredbear hovering over Eddie. The bear lunged forward, grabbing Eddie’s head and ripping it off.

Upon seeing this, Julius told the bear to “go fuck himself.” He grabbed his shotgun, aimed it at the creature, and opened fire. The bear took damage and fell out of the window. Julius immediately closed the window, locked every door in the house, and called both the ambulance and the police. When the police arrived, they told Julius they’d been receiving numerous reports of a similar creature matching his description. They investigated further, and while searching Eddie’s belongings, they found a terrifying image.

It was a photo of the backyard, with a strange creature visible on the left side. When the police showed the image to other people who had reported encounters, they confirmed it: the creature was Prototype Fredbear, the same one from JosephTheSnail’s game Five Nights at Prototype Fredbear’s.

For the record, the police also questioned JosephTheSnail, but it’s clear he wasn’t involved. Many of the people who reported the incidents didn’t press charges against him either.

Now, about NexusThrill. He stopped posting after sharing his account of the disturbing photos and videos on his computer. His roommate told me that Nexus shot himself shortly after.

His body was found on the floor, and his roommate took him to the hospital. Surprisingly, Nexus survived for a short while after the gunshot, but he later died from an accidental fall out of his apartment window.

As for Phantom Echoes, his cat was also killed. He overdosed on drugs and passed away. Sadly, his body began to rot because no one checked on him for a long time. I had been messaging him, asking where the hell he was, and eventually, a neighbor informed me of his death.

The neighbor checked Phantom Echoes' posts about the incident and typed the following: “Holy shit, what the fuck!?”

After that, he stopped speaking to me.

Finally, let’s talk about JosephTheSnail. The police interviewed him about the haunted game, and he gave them a very honest answer. He explained that everything started with a poll on Game Jolt. He showed them the poll results, and while the police were shocked, they realized Joseph wasn’t responsible for this. The haunted copy of the game wasn’t created by him, but likely by some psychopath—or something far more evil and horrifying.

As for me, I’m doing fine now, although I’m still pissed that Joseph’s reputation is being ruined by this creature. Thankfully, people aren’t blaming him.

My cat is safe and still with me. I swear I’ll protect him no matter what, and I’m staying as far away from that damn copy of the game as possible.

[trollprincess]

Do you have any dog daycare stories?

Ooo, yes! I have lots to stuff to share!

1. If your daycare gives you a report card after your dog’s stay, it will always say your dog is a precious angel who has never done anything in their entire lives, unless they’ve literally, like, committed genocide. We fucking LOVE dogs, even the pains in the ass.

2. I have worked at camp for about ten years give or take and have NEVER been bitten by a pitbull. Not once. Even the energetic ones who need to be individuals are usually just big goofballs who don’t know their own strength. And they give the BEST kisses.

3. Dogs I have been bitten by: my boss’s boxy terrier who guards the front door; a golden who was a foster and got overwhelmed by some other other dogs; and this one brindle hound who loves everyone but me and ran at the back of my leg with her mouth open looking like the snakes from “Beetlejuice.” It left a bruise that looked like a baseball bat hit me and a big scratch that left a bit of a scar through part of my tattoo of my dog.

4. We have had dogs pass away at camp. Not because of anything we did, thankfully, but still awful. We used to have this huge lovely doodle who looked more like Scooby Doo with a perm and he LOVED staying at camp. He followed our boss everywhere and cried for her as he arrived on the van. He was staying at camp at the owner’s request when he was approaching the end (she and my boss discussed it) so we all got to go and say goodbye to him. It was a sad day, but hopefully he’s haunting my boss and following her all around camp for eternity.

5. We send vans to NYC to pick up and drop off dogs four days a week, so there have been clients of ours who’ve appeared on the Dogist. We’re always so happy for them when we see it. One of our VIPs was on there about a year ago and we got to find out how he got his name, which was cool!

6. We have a rescue related to the dog camp and y’all … you know when you work at someplace like a bookstore and you use your discount to buy a lot of books? It’s like that, but with adopting a bunch of the rescue dogs because you fall in love with them so easily. (There’s one foster who’s been there a couple of years, and the only reason none of us have taken her home yet is she doesn’t like other dogs. We keep trying to get relatives and friends to adopt her because she’s SO great.)

7. There are certain regulars we get SO happy to see. For example: the sweet chocolate lab and his big dopey Great Dane cousin who come for daycare all the time; that VIP husky who’s the snuggliest baby; the yellow lab named Ruckus who lives up to his name; the Klee Kai whose constant attitude is “HELLO I WOULD LIKE TO SPEAK TO A MANAGER.” They’re like our best friends.

8. We have a pond that’s open as long as it’s warm and there’s nothing funnier than seeing the dogs who race down, launch themselves off the dock, and swim in circles until we literally have to go get them in canoes.

9. We deal with SO MUCH POOP. Like, SO much. At this point, I’d rather stick my hand in a bucket of dog poop than a bucket of maggots. Because I’ve accidentally done the first and … eh. Just hold your nose and scrub a LOT.

10. Some of the best dog names that have been at camp: Kittens the bulldog, Pants! (exclamation point included), Dr. Zizmo, Danny Devito (which was his foster name but he really did look like Danny Devito), Coco Pebbles Pumpernickel, Brown (which would have been fine on its own but he was black and also the family name was Weiner), Sir Butternut Squash, and Sir Hiro Batman Snugglepaw.

[a-good-bagel]

bee movie

According to all known laws of aviation, there is no way a bee should be able to fly.

Its wings are too small to get its fat little body off the ground.

The bee, of course, flies anyway because bees don't care what humans think is impossible.

Yellow, black. Yellow, black. Yellow, black. Yellow, black.

Ooh, black and yellow!

Let's shake it up a little.

Barry! Breakfast is ready!

Coming!

Hang on a second.

Hello?

Barry?

Adam?

Can you believe this is happening?

I can't.

I'll pick you up.

Looking sharp.

Use the stairs, Your father paid good money for those.

Sorry. I'm excited.

Here's the graduate.

We're very proud of you, son.

A perfect report card, all B's.

Very proud.

Ma! I got a thing going here.

You got lint on your fuzz.

Ow! That's me!

Wave to us! We'll be in row 118,000.

Bye!

Barry, I told you, stop flying in the house!

Hey, Adam.

Hey, Barry.

Is that fuzz gel?

A little. Special day, graduation.

Never thought I'd make it.

Three days grade school, three days high school.

Those were awkward.

Three days college. I'm glad I took a day and hitchhiked around The Hive.

You did come back different.

Hi, Barry. Artie, growing a mustache? Looks good.

Hear about Frankie?

Yeah.

You going to the funeral?

No, I'm not going.

Everybody knows, sting someone, you die.

Don't waste it on a squirrel.

Such a hothead.

I guess he could have just gotten out of the way.

I love this incorporating an amusement park into our day.

That's why we don't need vacations.

Boy, quite a bit of pomp under the circumstances.

Well, Adam, today we are men.

We are!

Bee-men.

Amen!

Hallelujah!

Students, faculty, distinguished bees,

please welcome Dean Buzzwell.

Welcome, New Hive City graduating class of 9:15.

That concludes our ceremonies And begins your career at Honex Industries!

Will we pick our job today?

I heard it's just orientation.

Heads up! Here we go.

Keep your hands and antennas inside the tram at all times.

Wonder what it'll be like?

A little scary.

Welcome to Honex, a division of Honesco and a part of the Hexagon Group.

This is it!

Wow.

Wow.

We know that you, as a bee, have worked your whole life to get to the point where you can work for your whole life.

Honey begins when our valiant Pollen Jocks bring the nectar to The Hive.

Our top-secret formula is automatically color-corrected, scent-adjusted and bubble-contoured into this soothing sweet syrup with its distinctive golden glow you know as... Honey!

That girl was hot.

She's my cousin!

She is?

Yes, we're all cousins.

Right. You're right.

At Honex, we constantly strive to improve every aspect of bee existence.

These bees are stress-testing a new helmet technology.

What do you think he makes?

Not enough.

Here we have our latest advancement, the Krelman.

What does that do?

Catches that little strand of honey that hangs after you pour it.

Saves us millions.

Can anyone work on the Krelman?

Of course. Most bee jobs are small ones.

But bees know that every small job, if it's done well, means a lot.

But choose carefully because you'll stay in the job you pick for the rest of your life.

The same job the rest of your life? I didn't know that.

What's the difference?

You'll be happy to know that bees, as a species, haven't had one day off in 27 million years.

So you'll just work us to death?

We'll sure try.

Wow! That blew my mind!

"What's the difference?"

How can you say that?

Aw man, I hope I don't accidentally respond to this anon ask. That'd be terrible!

[victorluvsalice]

Valicer OT3 Week, Day Five: Nontraditional Soulmates

In the home stretch of @ot3-week's OT3 Week, and we've come to a good one today -- "Nontraditional soulmates!" Which, of course, is a perfect opportunity for me to bust out the Soulmates AU I came up with for the trio! :D I did two fics for this for last year's Polyship Week, and this one is sort of the sequel to the first, "Day Four: Soulmates." (The second being "Day Six: Drabble(s)," and coming even later in the timeline.) That story dealt with Victor running into Alice in the Whitechapel marketplace and accidentally activating their soulbond, only for a slightly-panicked Alice to run, leaving Victor to report the discovery to his other soulmate Smiler alone -- here, we have Alice, having mostly gotten over her initial "SHIT IT'S MY SOULMATE I'M NOT READY" reaction, finding her way to Victor via the bond so they can actually talk -- only to hesitate right outside his door...

--

All right. Here we are. No turning back now...no matter how much I kind of want to turn back.

Alice rocked anxiously on her heels, staring at the door in front of her. It was a pretty plain, ordinary door, all things considered. Little more than a flat piece of wood with a handle attached. Oh sure, there was a bit of perfunctory decoration in the form of a couple of shallow squares roughly dug out of the front, and the usual assortment of nicks and dings acquired from daily living, but other than that – it was an uncomplicated door for an uncomplicated building. There was nothing special or interesting about it at all, really.

Beyond the fact that one Victor Van Dort, her soulmate, was behind it.

Alice swallowed, worrying her lip with her teeth. It is so bizarre to just – know he’s there, she thought. With the sort of rock-solid certainty I don’t have about anything else in my life right now. But then – he must know I’m here, right? Why doesn’t he just – open the door? Spare me the trouble of knocking? But then again, he didn’t try to chase me when I ran from him in the market...perhaps he assumes that I still want to make the first move. And since we can only share emotions, not actual thoughts, I can’t really correct him. She sighed. Bloody hell – whoever or whatever force tied our lives together, it could have given us proper telepathy instead of just its poor cousin.

“It could have,” Cheshire agreed, sitting by her feet. “But it didn’t. Time to turn thought into action and spur him forward in the process.” He gave her a trademark grin, teeth glittering in the dim light of the hallway. “Or purrhaps spur forward someone else.”

Don’t you lot even think of intruding, Alice scolded, giving him her best glare. I mean, yes, he probably knows about you and Wonderland already, and how mucked-up my mind is, but – my stomach’s already in knots about this. She ran her thumb over her wrist, tracing the faint line that only she – and Victor – knew about. I don’t need the stress of having to wrangle you or Caterpillar or Hatter or God forbid the Queen of Hearts into the bargain.

“Have it your way,” Cheshire said, fading to eyes and smile. “Though I think you’ll soon find it’s not only us who can intrude.”

And with that, he was gone – predictably before she could ask him what the hell he meant. She looked up and down the hallway, but there was no one else there – and none of the doors to the other flats in this place looked ready to open anytime soon. “Maddening,” she muttered, shaking her head. “As if I needed any help in that regard...”

But he’d had a point before he’d vanished – nothing was going to happen if she didn’t make it happen. Alice ran her fingers through her hair to neaten it a bit, brushed off her skirts, then plucked up her courage and rapped smartly on the door. A moment later, it opened –

Revealing, of all people, Nanny’s new bartender at the Mangled Mermaid.

Alice stared. The bartender – one Smiler Alton, if she recalled correctly – stared back. Then, just before it could get awkward, they snorted. “Oh – that Alice,” they said, apropos of nothing. “I didn’t think I lived in that coincidental a universe.”

“...beg pardon?” Alice said, for lack of anything better.

“What she said.”

Victor appeared in the doorway behind Smiler, looking as confused as she felt. “Uh – hello,” he greeted her, before turning his attention to his – roommate? “‘That Alice?’”

“From the Mermaid,” Smiler explained, glancing up at him. “She’s Nan’s old charge – dropped by a couple of times to talk to her. Didn’t expect to see you under these circumstances,” they added in her direction.

“When it comes down to it, neither did I,” Alice said, tilting her head. “You and Victor live together?”

“Ah – yes,” Victor said, twisting his tie. Alice found herself resisting the urge to fiddle with her own blouse’s collar as the nerves poured off him and into her. “I – I d-don’t know how much the b-bond told you, but...well...”

“Hi,” Smiler cut in, sporting their namesake expression. “I’m your other soulmate.”

...Not even “beg pardon” seemed sufficient for that. “What?” Alice blurted. “You – but – what?”

“Yes, ah, sometimes – sometimes you can get two,” Victor said, shooting Smiler a look before favoring her with an awkward smile. “It’s, um, k-kind of a long story...how about you come in?”

“There’s tea and biscuits in it for you,” Smiler promised, stepping out of the way.

No, I want you to explain to me what the hell you mean by “sometimes you can get two” right now – but before Alice could put words to tongue, she caught sight of Smiler’s arm, resting against the door frame. Specifically, their wrist, leaned up against the wood above their head. Even more specifically, the thin scar running along said wrist –

That looked very, very much like the kind one might get if they’d taken a blunt spoon to their flesh in a desperate attempt to end their life. Alice swallowed and nodded. “I – I think I could use some tea right now, thank you.”

[wild-oats-and-cornflowers]

Still no sign of babycat. There is a black feral cat that lives next door which I am planning to trap tomorrow or the next day and hold in a crate in the basement (heat wave incoming, not safe to put it in the garage) - I have arranged with a local feral cat worker to get it fixed on Wednesday and then put it back where it lives on Thursday evening. I am pretty sure that the reports of a black cat in the alley have been this cat, as it wanders around all over the alley at all hours. Getting it out of the alley for a few days, I hope will give me a leg up in searching for Marcus. I did accidentally trap this cat about 6 weeks ago, in a different trap than the one I borrowed from the feral cat lady, so I hope it will not be too smart/wary to be trapped. But we've been feeding it by the porch in the evenings, so hopefully it's willing to go into the covered trap to get the food. Hopefully also I don't catch any horrible raccoons; I will be scattering grapes and marshmallows in the yard next door to ideally keep the raccoon that was sniffing around tonight focused over there.

There is a small orange cat that lives next door as well - I and my cousin caught this little guy tonight and he is crated in the basement, to also be fixed on Wednesday. Seems to be maybe 4-5 months old by my guess, though the neutering vet will be able to tell more definitively. He isn't going back into the alley though - he has been surprisingly friendly, so my cousin is planning to adopt him.

Once I've caught and crated the black feral, I'm going to be putting a lot of effort forth in searching - go back around door to door asking to search yards again. This area has a lot of scrappers, i.e. people who will steal metal things to sell for scrap, so I'm thinking of getting a bicycle chain and padlock to fasten the trap to things so it can't be stolen if I put it in the alley. I'll be putting my trail cam out in the alley too - didn't get to tonight, since we were busy setting up the crate and catching little orangey, but I will tomorrow.

I miss my Marcus...it's been almost exactly 2 months since he got out. I refuse to give up hope about finding him though. Cats don't vaporize into the air; he is physically somewhere, and statistically likely to be still in the alley somewhere. Hoping and praying so hard to find my boy.

[superblycaffeinated]

We're back and ready to share the new and re-written story! I hope those that were reading the original So Far, So Goode are still with me, and for those of you that are new, welcome 🧡 I can't wait to hear what people think and I hope you enjoy it! Head on over to the So Far, So Goode masterlist here for information on the story, general warnings, and last, but certainly not least - the music. I'll be posting here and on Ao3 (under superbcoffeedrinkersubparwriter) - but you need to be a registered user to read over there. CW: description of guns

Chapter One:

To be honest with you, I used to think I was the furthest a person could possibly be from lonely. 

Which, I suppose, is because I had never really been alone long enough to ponder the true depth of all that surrounds the word, feeling - state. The more I think about it, the more I start to doubt if I’ve even touched the surface of what it means to be alone. 

I’m a triplet, so I haven’t been physically alone even before birth, save for the one minute and forty seven seconds both my brothers were out in the world before I arrived. Also, not only am I a triplet, but one of five Goode kids. Plus, there are my two cousins, and all of the Goodes that aren’t Goodes, but hell, yell the name in a room and they’ll all be turning their heads (a phenomenon I’m told goes well into the past). Long story short, I have a lot of family, making it almost impossible to ever be alone. 

Since there are so many of us, I guess I should clarify which Goode I am for the official record or whatever? Believe it or not, I haven’t actually written a formal CoveOps report before this. Despite receiving a superior education in the field I wish to enter, I’ve never once encountered any training on how to write one of these things. My educators (and family) claim paperwork is the worst part of the job, so maybe they hold off until it’s too late and it just never gets taught? I don’t know. All this is to say, don’t judge me it’s not up to, like, professional standards, okay? 

My name is Joelene Macey Goode, but everyone calls me Joey or Jo. I know most people hate nicknames, but I honestly prefer it over my full one. Not that Joelene is a bad name, but you try living eighteen years with people singing terribly offkey at you while you stand there awkwardly. So, no offense to Dolly, but I can’t hear Jolene without wincing now (but if you read this Ms. Parton, from one Gallagher Girl to another - you rule!). 

And yup, that’s me. A Gallagher Girl. My identity, my cover, my school - all for the last five and half years of my life. 

Since you’re reading this, I’m sure you know exactly who we are and what we do at The Gallagher Academy for Exceptional Young Women, and you may be thinking you know all there is to know about us Gallagher Girls, but I am no ordinary one. 

I’m a legacy, a fourth generation one to be exact. Meaning, a lot of Goodes (in one form or another) have walked those hallowed halls. They slept in the same rooms, they took the same classes, they ate the same creme brulee and then crushed records or did impressive enough things to end up with their pictures in our hallways and their names in our history textbooks (the ones that tell the real history that is). And they did it all before graduating. 

It’d be one thing if it was just their accomplishments to live up to, but it’s the footsteps attached to the person attached to the name, that I’m truly scrambling behind. 

Because, yes, you’ve been reading that last name correctly. 

Goode. 

Maybe you’ve heard of us? The best family in the biz, as Grandpa likes to boast.

I don’t like to phrase it quite that way too often as Grandpa usually gets a look from Grandma and mom that could kill him. And I mean, literally kill him, if Peter and I hadn’t accidentally broken the specific pair of glasses meant for such a thing on our fourteenth birthday. 

Because, as I’m sure you’re very aware of, by the “biz”, Grandpa and I mean that martini shaking and pouring while dodging a bullet, running from the explosion in a suit hand in hand with a girl in heels, passionate kiss or dramatic monologue before jumping out of the moving train kind of stuff. 

Spy craft. 

Espionage. 

The cool shit. 

But don’t worry, I know that stuff doesn’t really happen and it’s all for the cinematic experience. 

Why my Grandpa gets the looks, is because saying that “we’re the best in the biz” goes against everything my parents have told me and my four siblings our entire lives. That the name doesn’t mean we carry and wield this magical power. Being a Goode doesn’t allow us to assume we’re the best without working towards anything. 

My parents weren’t wrong, and I’ve never, ever, once taken my last name to mean I could do what I wanted with zero consequences. In fact, it’s made me believe the exact opposite. It isn’t zero consequences when we mess up, it’s an astronomical amount. Because, when you’re a Goode, you’re not just messing up, all Goodes are too. 

Instead of skating by on the merit of the name, I’ve spent my entire adolescence feeling as if I need to rise and thensome to earn the name that was simply just given to me because of my blood. 

Oh you’re their daughter? So you can do this like that? Why yes, as a matter of fact I am the daughter of agents Morgan and Luke Goode, and while I can do it like that, I’ve been forbidden from doing it in the house, or from using it on my brothers, thanks for asking. 

Also, yeah, you read those names correctly too. The best agents (in my totally unbiased opinion of course) the CIA has ever seen, are my parents. 

So, you see, I’ve got Goode blood, and not just any. I have to do this. I have boots to fill and make my own impressive steps with -  a name I have to live up to. 

I’ll admit though, that the name, the legacy of it all, the movies I love, the training - none of it compares to the real reason I have to be a spy. 

It’s a word, pretty well known around these parts, maybe you’ve heard of it?

Classified. 

Now, I don’t know about you, but when someone tells me I can’t know or that I can’t do something, I cannot rest until I know all the information or I do the thing. 

I’m told this lovely trait of mine comes from my mother, and a little bit of my dad, and potentially a whole lot from a great grandmother I’ll never know. So, I take breaks. I've learned when it’s time to take a step back - a breather - before I let the need to know or do swallow me whole. But I can’t let it go fully, not really, not until it’s done. 

Which is why I have to be a spy, and not only a spy, but the best. Because if I’m the best, then that word is never going to be in my way again. Knowledge is power, and power is privilege, and privilege is responsibility. 

So, when my mother was home for my entire Summer break, I knew it was my responsibility to -

Hold on. Let me backup. I don’t think that came out with the emphasis it requires to get my point across. 

My mother, current and working agent Morgan Goode, of The CIA was home, doing “nothing”. All. Summer. 

Something stunk, and it wasn’t just Andy and Peter’s disgusting socks that quite literally could have been radioactive. 

All summer, the feeling that my great grandpa - Grandpa Joe  - always tells me to never ignore, sat heavy in my gut. 

A spy’s gut is their number one weapon, Joelene, and the longer mine felt off, my nerves frayed and sparked until the slow, incessant heat of something wrong, finally caught fire and I couldn’t ignore the burn any longer. 

As mom took hushed phone calls and locked herself in the office of our safe house for hours, I felt the inside of that room and its contents calling to me like a flame does to a moth, or in my case, the opposite. I was the flame, engulfed, consumed by my need to know and that office and what was happening behind its closed door was the moth I was destined to devour. 

And that was all before she used that awful, horrible, no good for shit word. 

The classified of it all would have tipped me over the edge regardless, but it was the fact that it was my mom who said it that really sealed my fate. 

I can count, on my two hands, the total number of times my mother has said that something was classified to me, without my dad prompting her to do so. She’s always been a little…shall we say looser? with information. She is the one who always sort of half answers our questions until dad is stepping in. He’s constantly reminding her that her children are not supposed to know that she stopped a bomb in Brazil or saved an ambassador to France and that she’s, “making us think it’s okay for them to sneak out of their heavily guarded and safe schools and fly to foreign countries when it is absolutely not okay and don’t even think about it.”

I’ve heard dad’s speech so many times, that I promise you, even if I wasn’t trained to recall intimate details and information, I would still be able to tell you it verbatim.

That speech wasn’t gonna stop me because it never has, and, as I’ve previously stated, I have that trait that makes it so I can’t let things go. 

My dad shoved puzzles and code-breaking books at me all Summer. I beat Peter and Andy at Super Mario Brothers (the old one, from the 80’s, as Luigi - do you know how hard that is?). I beat Grandpa at Scrabble twice (which, okay, wasn’t that hard to do), and was forbidden from playing Monopoly with Peter inside the house ever again. I watched twenty-two spy movies, sixteen rom-coms, and five westerns. I learned the dance to Push It by Salt ‘n’ Pepa, mastered the Swift maneuver (that’s Taylor, by the way) and none of it worked. 

At my wit’s end is when mom caught me staring at a vent in the hallway between bites of Fruit Loops. Calculations and assumptions of what would stand between me and the other side seemingly apparent on my thinking face as my milk turned pink and the cereal turned squishy, because mom shook her head slowly without lifting her eyes from a newspaper. 

While, when she did lift her gaze, there was a distinct glint in her green eyes that could have you believing she was amused, her tone told me all I needed to know when she said, “Don’t even think about it if you love your eyebrows.” Which I really do (I have part of my namesake to thank for that - she never once let me take a tweezers to them no matter what the trends said) so, Operation Vent was out. 

But a threat such as this was an obstacle of child’s play proportions. Potential eyebrow removal standing between me and information? It was fuel to an already raging fire, a carrot in front of a bunny, a tailored suit and a shaken not stirred martini before the finest double o seven. 

So, on the morning of my mother’s birthday, the day before me and my brothers were to head off to school for our Senior year, I knew it was my last chance. 

I was careful to avoid the creak of the floorboard directly to the left of my bed as I semi-rolled off of it. 

Landing on socked feet, I held my breath as I glanced up at the bed across from mine. The eldest of all my siblings and us Goode kids, my sister Collins, was still asleep. Her chest rose and fell evenly under a buttercup yellow duvet and flat palms, her straight brown hair fanned over her pillow and framed her peaceful face. 

She looked like a goddamn Disney princess even in her sleep and I’ve hated her since we were kids for it. 

I hated her even more when my fingers had barely touched the cool metal of our door knob and her whisper sliced through the silence sharper than any knife my Grandpa had taught us to throw. 

“Whatever it is you’re about to do, it’s not a good idea and you should go back to sleep.”

“I’m just going pee,” I lied easily. 

She rolled her gorgeous eyes from her pillow, still laying on her side. 

Collins, of all my siblings, is the most made to be a pavement artist. She is a natural at blending, at becoming whoever she needs to be, but her eyes have always given her away. They’re a soft and warm brown most of the time, but depending on what she’s wearing or the lighting around her, touches of green and blue come out. But no matter what color they are, they’re far too expressive. 

Amusement and maybe a little pride shown in them then, her hands roamed under her cheek and her legs tucked up under the sheets as she spoke. “You have your lucky shirt on, and your lock picking set in your pocket. But sure, you’re going to the bathroom.”

“You never saw me,” I whispered, and practically somersaulted (to avoid the door hinges squeaking) out of the closest thing either of us had known to a childhood bedroom.

Spies aren’t totally devoid of feeling and emotion like the movies and novels would like you to think. They’re humans too, and crave and need a place to call home - they just need to be more careful about it, is all. 

Growing up, we moved around DC a lot, but I’m sure our actual address was in California or Idaho or something. Grandma and Grandpa took care of us quite a bit when we were really little. One of my earliest memories is Grandpa teaching me the signs for when grilled cheese is ready to flip while also teaching me the exact spot to press with a precise pressure that makes your enemy release without control (a method he so humbly calls The Zach Attack, by the way) at their ranch in the Midwest. 

There, and here, are the only two safe houses I’ve returned to. This one, close enough to school and DC, but not too close, is my childhood home if the life of a spy allowed such a thing. Sometimes, when I think about this place, I’m filled with an undeniable grief that makes my chest ache with something heavy. Because I know that one day, and maybe one not so far off, I’ll never return to it. 

This is not where, if I choose to have them, my kids will take their first steps. A boyfriend won’t show up on this doorstep with flowers and a handshake for my dad. There aren’t lines of mine and my siblings' heights tracked, there aren’t framed photos hung on the walls, there is no attic full of boxes of baby clothes or memories too fond to get rid of. 

Sure, there’s still little touches of our family here though. A dent in Andy and Peter’s room from where I flung open the door repeatedly hitting the knob into the wall. Peeling stickers of rock bands Peter and I plastered on the underside of the shelf in my closet. Scratches and scuffs on the hardwood from chairs being pushed away from the huge gathering table. A bright blue nail polish stain on the carpet in mom and dad’s room where Leia and I spilt it. We all give the fridge an extra bump with our hip to make sure it stays closed and we hit the top of the entrance to the living room as we pass underneath it. 

It’s my home. And like any girl in her home, and like any spy, I know its sounds, its tricks and secrets, its shadows. 

And sure, Collins caught me before I even left the bedroom, but that didn’t matter. If I avoided certain floor boards, if I kept low, and I worked slowly, I was convinced I could break into the office without anyone, particularly my mother, ever knowing. 

I had managed to slip down the entire hallway without a hitch, and was knelt in front of the office door with my compact lock picking set (an actual compact with the ability to unlock anything, thanks to my Aunt Macey) when I heard something. 

Hearing something, in the early hours of the morning, before the sky has really even transitioned from black to indigo, isn’t out of the ordinary. 

But hearing something, at a remote safe house, when your entire family should be asleep, is out of the ordinary. 

While I noticed the noise outside, I had failed to notice things, plural - my family’s number one rule. 

Because I failed to notice the lack of a competing snore with Peter’s and the smell of cinnamon, I’m not proud to admit I jumped when my mother’s figure slipped around the corner from the kitchen and her voice calmly and quietly asked me, “Did you hear that?”

“Yes,” I answered immediately, because I knew if my mother was clarifying if she wasn’t alone in hearing something, it was serious. There would be time to discuss how I was literally caught in the act of breaking and entering later. 

My mother stood at the end of the hallway, a steaming cup of coffee nestled between her hands. I snort and roll my eyes whenever anyone tells me I look like her. My mother is gorgeous, undeniably so, and while I may have her dark brown curls and green eyes, there’s no way I look like her.

Especially then, when she looked so much like a regular mom. My dad’s old SIX sweatshirt hung from tense shoulders. Worn navy fabric engulfed her frame, slightly covering rumpled pajama pants covered in penguins. Her brown curls were piled high on top of her head, loose pieces falling free and erratic.

But I knew about the scars under the sleeves, and the prosthetic beneath the penguins, and the look behind the green eyes. She was the furthest thing from a regular mom, especially when a louder thunk happened outside in what could be considered our driveway. 

Mom knelt slowly, her gaze on the front of the house that I couldn’t see, as the door knob in front of me started to twist. Before I could even tell her, she calmly and quietly just said, “Dad.”

I’ve always known my parents were good spies, but I never thought I’d see it in action, like this. 

The office door slowly opened, and dad barely looked at me, completely unphased as he called, “Morgan?”

He was equally fresh from sleep. A Blackthorne shirt pulled tight across his chest where letters faded and his plaid pajama pants wrinkled, looking so exceptionally dad, except for the black pistol in his hand. 

I was suddenly and acutely aware of a real threat. This was not CoveOps. This wasn’t P & E. This wasn’t a fun field trip Grandma had taken us on to Roseville with Uncle Matt. The gun without a safety ready to shoot in my father’s hand spoke the words I’d been fearing for years - this is real, and you’re not prepared, are you Joelene?

“Here, I’m fi-”

Two doors at the end of the hallway opened, cutting her off. 

My brothers blinked, heavy lids opening and closing sleepily but awake enough to assess the severity of the situation. Shirtless torsos tense as they both stared at the gun in my father’s hand and then at me with matching hard frowns. Their expressions were the beginning and end of their similarities. Peter’s brown hair was disheveled, curls flattened in some spots and sticking straight out in others. Andy’s blond was slightly less askew, if only because it was shorter. His green eyes landed exactly two inches taller than Peter’s brown, but his shoulders took up far less space in the doorway than Peter’s broad frame. One made to slip in and out of places he wasn’t supposed to and the other to barrel into anything that got in his way in the process. 

Collins, who must have determined I’d need the assist, was dressed for the occasion in all black and glaring at me from her spot crouched in our doorway. 

“I told you it was a bad-”

The front door knob rattled and my father was pushing me behind him as he stepped out of the office fully. He quickly made his way down the hallway, and I felt more than heard the steps of three of my siblings backing me up. 

Dad made to grab for my mother until she held her hand up, all of us freezing at her silent command.  

I’m convinced my parents have two different bodies. 

There’s the mom and dad bodies. The soft spot on my dad’s chest that’s perfect for a cheek to rest while listening to him read Shakespeare. The hands my mom gently runs over our heads, carefully detangling my curls. Arms and hands that twirl bodies around the kitchen in time with old music, heads that throw back in laughter with ease. 

Then, there are their highly trained take no shit I’ve seen things you can’t even imagine spy bodies. 

I hadn’t really seen these versions of my parents until then. Sure, I’d seen them fight, we all have dad to thank for our own stances. But this was different. These were shoulders and hips that stood with purpose, strong, planted, but ready to move. Arms that held a gun steady and sure. Eyes that communicated with each other without mouths saying a word. Bodies that were inherently made to protect, to fight. 

To kill. 

It was in less time than it took me to blink that their bodies transformed back into their mom and dad versions. 

The gun dropped to my dad’s side, their shoulders fell, tears quickly made my mom’s eyes glassy and both of them breathed out a name in the way only parents can. 

“Leia.”

I’d never seen my dad move so quickly, disappearing around the corner before my mom could. 

A quiet and familiar giggle burst out from the entryway, thick with tears as she whispered, “Hi, daddy.”

The four of us barreled down the hallway, tripping over each other and shoving, not believing it was her without seeing it for ourselves. 

Mom disappeared next, accompanied by the voice that couldn’t possibly be there, louder, and happier than her first words, “Happy Birthday!”

“What is wrong with you? Why didn’t you call? Why didn’t you tell us? Your dad could have -”

“Because it was a surprise,” my other sister interrupted my mother in a way I’ve never been brave enough to do so and I knew it was really her. Here. Especially when she said, “Where are the idiots?”

If Collins was made to blend, Leia was born to stand out. Even in an olive green t-shirt and camo government issued pants, Leia Goode sparkled, she glowed. Her blonde curls were pulled into a uniform low bun, and I had never seen her so tan, or her muscles so defined. Her green eyes practically glittered when the four of us rounded the corner, and her dimple poked out on her cheek and her freckled covered nose scrunched as she smiled. 

Collins managed to reach her first, but we all slammed into her, tripping over the two large green duffles at her feet as we all fell to the ground in a laughing and crying heap of chaos - our speciality. 

Leia winced under all of us, quick and quiet enough that if we weren’t who we all were, if we weren’t all still a little on edge, we wouldn’t have noticed. 

“Are you hurt?” Collins pushed all of us out of the way, gaze roaming over Leia protectively. Nurse Collins activated and assessing. 

“No,” Leia shrugged. But not the kind of shrug that admits you’re lying, the kind that, delivered properly, and with the right expression she currently wore, made you think you were crazy for asking. Of course she wasn’t hurt, why would you think such a thing? 

Normally, this expert lie delivery could win awards, and I’m sure Leia thought she was in the clear, on her way to The Academy to collect hers. But, the thing is, our parents are not normal parents. And while many parents seem to have this, like, engrained skill to suss out a lie, spy parents are worse. 

Way worse.

Each of them took a step closer, crossing their arms as they stared down at Leia like they weren’t thrilled to have her home. 

It was a shared look we’d all come to know extremely well. Without moving or saying anything, they seemed to circle you, pulling out your lie with only their eyes, making you spill your guts easily. 

They were good and highly trained, and we were no match for them. We all knew it was easier to fold - don’t lie when you’ve already been caught, don’t lie to the people who know your tells better than you do. 

But Leia stood with ease, and smiled. She shrugged again and looked at my parents without wavering. 

“I’m fin-”

“Don’t,” my mom narrowed her eyes with the word. She sucked in a breath, and I knew a speech was coming, but Leia threw her hands up in the air with a groan. 

“Alright! There was a tiny incident. It’s already healing.”

Andy’s fist clenched at his side, his jaw pulsing as he asked, “What happened?”

Leia pinched the bridge of her nose with her forefinger and thumb, closing her eyes in the process so she couldn’t see how my mom’s lips twitched in the fight of a smile or how her gaze made pointed contact with my dad’s. 

It was something we’d all seen him do a hundred times at least and before Leia could answer, Peter snorted, hands covering his mouth as his shoulder shook. 

Collins bit her lip, unable to hide her grin. Andy shivered, muttering “That’s scary.” I sucked in a breath, fighting a wheeze and Peter fell against me, laughing harder. 

Leia’s eyes flew open, looking around with a frown. “What? What’s so funny?”

“Nothing,” my mom shook her head, tucking one of Leia’s stray curls back behind her ear, “What happened?”

Leia frowned, placed her hands on her hips and huffed. 

“It’s classified.”

Mom snorted and we all lost it. Dad grinned and kissed Leia’s forehead right above where her eyebrows knit together as she whined about how she didn’t get it and that someone needed to tell her what was so funny right now. 

It didn’t matter why she was home, or that she hadn’t answered the question, not really. It didn’t matter that I still didn't know what was going on in the office all summer. It didn’t matter that my dad had a gun and had been ready to use it. 

All that mattered was that we were laughing, and safe, and together for the first time in a long time. 

[aroaceconfessions]

Before finding out that asexuality was a thing, I forced myself to read some very mild ero/hentai manga. They were more than ecchi as it was more than nudity, but not going too far either, I avoided smut as I already knew it made me uncomfortable. I was 18 at the time, these things weren't as scary anymore (I accidentally had seen some terrible ppg fanart that had burnt into my eyes, so I saw it each time I closed my eyes and bothered me constantly from when I was 13, but when I became 18 it disappeared). But... Even though I supposedly wasn't bothered as much by them anymore... I didn't like them either, they just made me uncomfortable. The talk about s*x made uncomfortable, heck just talk about m**trubation made me uncomfortable. Fetish fuel made me uncomfortable as always (which made me scared of Totally Spies when I was younger).

A girl talking about wanting to be seen as sexy by her crush but didn't want him to look at anyone else wasn't something could empathise with. I'm not interested in romance or things like that, but I can emphatise with wanting someone to like you as it's important in friendship as well. But her wanting something like that felt alien to me. Genitalia are gross, why would you want someone else's to have some gross reaction to it? Then I tried some GL, I got happy for the characters being with someone they cared about, just like with not overly romantic couples in other stories, but like with them I never got "turned on". I've never had "anime crushes" or a "I'd tap that" reactions to actors, maybe aesthetically pleasing as I love drawing (but have stagnated for a while, mostly because getting art requests from people wanting erotic shit have ruined some of the enjoyment for me... Also that when I wasn't able to draw well with a drawing tablet right away my dad called it a waste of money, and now just drawing feels like a waste of time...), enjoying how they are written, appreciating their kindness, but nothing more.

I tried really hard to be normal™ that day, but it really didn't work, and never tried again because I didn't feel the need to. It just wasn't for me. Just one of my adult friends (people who were adults when I grew up, good aunts and uncles) believed me and was supportive when I told her that I feel like I'm aroace (this even though she wanted me to get together with her son earlier as she'd like me to officially become family and she thought we might get along due to similar hobbies and personalities, but when I told her she stopped "shipping" immediately). My mom and an aunt always go through a "you'll find someone eventually" charade whenever I tell them, which hurts as I feel pretty close to them. An psychologist I went to because of my PTSD seemed accepting at first, but would wear revealing clothing for the rest of our sessions, almost pushing her chest into my face (which is a harassment I'm pretty sure, I wanted to report her, but didn't dare to as she's apparently the friend of one of my mom's friends).

Do I wish I wasn't aroace? Not really, I'm happy the way I am. I wish I was braver and dared to go out more and make friends and eat at restaurants just I want to eat at alone, or confidentially order just a glass of water and have fun at a barcade. But I don't want a romantic partner, it just isn't for me. When I see friends and cousins having a romantic moment with their partner, it just doesn't look that interesting to me being more than a friend. Kissing and sharing salvia and crumbs sounds just gross. As long as there isn't a huge imbalance or you are forcing yourself, do what makes you happy, but do not expect my happiness to lie within the same things. As everyone's happiness is different, and that's okay.

[evansbby]

HELPP OMGGG

I hate my manager so much omfg. Today was the worst day ever. First of all, he stands behind me while I’m working and just looks at me, which is fucking creepy😭 Secondly, he overheard a conversation I had with my colleague about one of her exes, and he thought we were talking about MY ex. So, he randomly decided to join in and said, and I quote, ‘You just need to be with a black guy,that’ll fix all if your problems.’ with this stupid smirk on his face. LIKE WHAT??? SIR, PLEASE LEAVE ME ALONE. I’m 19, and he’s 36. Pardon me??????

I hate him so much. Yesterday, I accidentally messed up a customer’s coffee, and unfortunately, he was standing nearby. I kid you not, this man came up to us and told her, ‘I’ll make sure to punish her next time she messes up.’ Sir… NOOOO WTF! 😭😭😭 I feel so uncomfortable every time he’s there, especially when I work late because he always tries to give me a lift home💀 I don’t know what I should do though, my cousin said I need to report him to HR, but I’m scared. 😭 The only good thing that comes out of this is that he’s flexible and lets me take as many breaks as I want.

GIRLL CALL THE POLICE 😭😭😭 19?!?!?

It’s so sad how atp this is literally a canon event for us girlies, we just get harassed at work by our older male managers as if it’s the most normal thing in the world 😭😭😭

Girl you definitely SHOULD report him to HR. I understand you are scared, though. Maybe you could talk to him and set boundaries? That’s also scary but just be like hehe i get uncomfortable when you talk to me like that IDEK bestie i am concernedddd fr 😭😭

This man is making my blood boil by the things he’s saying to you 😡😡😡 I hope he loses his job or gets transferred somewhere far away. WTFFFFF.