#whos an entire train wreck of a creation

[jennrypan]

The fact that G3 CAN make black character deisgns..

And then made Clawdeen the most white washed version of herself is fucking evil actually.

You're telling me..Venus looks GOOD and actually looks black coded but the ONE(1) black character we had.

Is light skin, mixed, her personality is softer and more watered down and her original style is washed out??

Fuck you. Tf.

Clawdeen should've gotten the same treatment, but noooo let's make her mixed despite. Already have two latina(? Corrent term??) characters (Lagoona and Skellita) so..why couldn't Clawdeen be kept BLACK? Why did she need to be mixed for her to be the main character?? It's fucking gross and weird.

[team7-headquarter]

The thing about Naruto being Hokage and why the execution of such concept is so tricky is that every other Hokage was practically a genius.

I'm not saying Naruto is not smart (he tricked a goddess with a sexy jutsu, after al), or that every other Hokage was better than him 'cause they were book smart or whatever. What I'm saying is that every other Hokage was more versed on stuff like politics and negotiations, were a bit more crude or realistic or at least had more experience.

Naruto is not fool. He's not a little kid too busy dreaming to do something about the world. I don't mean to undermine his capacity of learning, nor deny that he could become a great Hokage.

The thing is —he needs training.

And yeah he's the strongest shinobi in the world and there's no one more qualify to protect the village (he proved that several times). But we're talking about governing. Not only paperwork, but what's behind the paperwork. We're talking about decisions like sending some kids to possibly die in crazy missions. We're talking about malicious and dark stuff. Choosing a side in a conflict between allies. Dealing with greedy no-shinobi politicians. Interfering with clan politics. Making people mad. Dealing with bad consequences of good actions.

You could argue that all the leaders of the world became besties after the last war and I could say that's one of the most bullshit decisions of the manga. This is a shonen, I know. But if you meant to have a continuation of some sort, I think you'd have to acknowledge that peace can't last. You don't even need an entire family of gods to reach that conclusion. You don't even need to mess with space and time. All you need is to wait for the tiny conflicts to accumulate. Evil shinobis wanting to wreck havoc, some misunderstandings, even just climate catastrophes or the consequences of a past you can't erase.

In the end, you can't be loyal to the entire world. And while Naruto did fight in a war, the nature of it was not the same as the other wars. There was no big common bad back then, just flawed people being flawed people.

When I say every other Hokage was a genius on their own ways, I mean this:

Hashirama was a founder of the hidden villages, a political solution to protect the shinobis, balance the entire world and further the progress of society.

Tobirama did almost everything in Konoha's system, including the Academy, and he is arguably the best Hokage when it comes to modernization, politics, jutsu creation and being realistic.

Tsunade changed the entire landscape of how wars were fought by introducing the importance of having a medic nin in every team (or close to it).

Minato proved to be not only the strongest but the smartest shinobi in Konoha, without kekkei genkai or any clan; he was second to Tobirama (in my opinion) in terms of Hokage intelligence in politics and such.

Hiruzen was the student of both the first and the second Hokages, and even when he made a lot of bullshit decisions (LIKE A LOT), he had the experience of having lived through almost every war and kept Konoha running after Tobirama died.

Kakashi has been making war decisions since his childhood. Bloody, ugly, dark decisions. A prodigy who became an anbu at childhood, with a mind capable of adapting on the run, capable of quickly analyzing any situation. Again, more versed in politics and such.

Naruto needs training. He needs instruction, he needs to study. He needs to mature further still. But when I read about the blank period, all I read is about him falling in love with Hinata, teaching the kids on the Academy, etc.

I personally want Naruto to be the best leader he could be, 'cause I grew up supporting his dream of becoming Hokage. I want to see him succeed! What I don't want is the implication that someone else has to do the job for him. I want Naruto to be able to discuss shinobi politics with Shikamaru, not because Naruto is a genius, but because he loves his village and he's willing to work hard for it. I want a Naruto that has his own thoughts about shinobi children, about orphans and families and civilians and clans. I want a Naruto that learns all he could about the origin of Konohagakure and tries to reach other Uzumakis and give them a home. Stuff like that.

Every other Hokage was practically a genius but competing with geniuses never stopped Naruto. He's stubborn and he loves with his entire heart and he doesn't give up. He mastered the rasengan in a couple of days. He won his match against Neji in the Chunnin Exams, defeated Pain and Nagato. He is not stupid or incompetent, okay? And that's what I want to see when I'm presented with the future of him being Hokage.

[anxiety-banana]

there's something vaguely disappointing in realizing you've been writing a long fic like you wrote those sentence-by-sentence stories in fifth grade

am I an author or am I tommy olivo who made the entire story creation into a train wreck with one sentence

so anyway my WIP is going great I just have to reread 7k words to decide if I need to rewrite everything from chapter two on 😙✌️

[mean-scarlet-deceiver]

*pulls out pen & paper*

How do you headcanon pre-NWR engines? Like the W&S crew, Or the TK&E lot?

I don’t have extensive headcanons for them… I’ll share notes on what I have but it’s not very fleshed-out.

My usual headcanon for the TK&E lot is 4 ‘Coffee-Pots’ (per IoS), whom I generally name: 1 — Glynn 2 — Reese 3 — Afon 4 — Janey I don’t incorporate TVS canon (apart from accepting the name and appearance for Glynn). But the whole TVS plotline where Glynn is just abandoned on a siding for yonks has given me the unshakable headcanon that STH was extremely business-minded about their creation and careers and didn’t really get sentimental about them until fairly far along in NWR history. Perhaps the one exception is Janey, who was the most robust of the lot and named for STH’s wife Jane. She also proved herself shortly after her building by brave service during the great gale that wrecked havoc on Tidmouth (I can’t remember now where I got this notion—the storm might be a detail from IoS?)

I have them scrapped during WWiI behind STH’s back, though he (rightly) feels significant culpability because he had left them in store for so long.

My alternate take lately is that their names are 1, Tidmouth, 2, Knapford, 3 Elsbridge, and 4, Hackenback. I don’t really have a plan nailed down yet for their fates in that universe. Perhaps I’ll even splurge a bit on the good endings and save some or all of them for a change.

I’m kind of a mess with the W&S lot. I’ve named and characterized the four of them before (you can probably find them throughout my archives) but I’ve never been happy with the names. At some point I’ll sit down and do a proper deep dive on bases for them. I do tend to always headcanon that they’ve resented amalgamation since the beginning, and, before Edward was transferred to Wellsworth, you’d have to deal with tremendous amounts of clanking bitterness anytime you had to ask for a banker. Whichever of the W&S lot got stuck with you would a) often struggle with the great wartime trains, and b) still somehow find the puff to bitch at you the entire way up the hill.

[darkmaga-returns]

Mark Wauck Oct 17, 2024

But, as a retired federal bureaucrat, I need to say that I’ve always opposed government employee unions. To see the problems that are inevitably created by the political power of such unions—created to a great degree by the irresponsible government expansion of government employment, accompanied by off shoring of our real economy and creation of the great Wall Street Casino for the benefit of the Ruling Class, I offer this eye opening article:

One big reason Chicago Public Schools is facing a billion-dollar deficit

What’s behind the latest Chicago Public Schools mess is simple, and not surprising. CPS spent its temporary covid money on permanent costs, namely salaries and benefits, and that covid money has finally run out. Now the district’s back to facing potential billion-dollar deficits, credit-rating concerns, and political chaos, largely due to an irresponsible covid-era hiring spree.

What began with Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson’s demand that CPS CEO Pedro Martinez take out a $300 million payday loan to paper over deficits has morphed into a train wreck.

Johnson called for Martinez to resign after Martinez refused to borrow the money. Then the entire school board quit in protest of the mayor’s hardball efforts. Now the CTU is screaming at everyone involved to demand $1 billion from the state, while Martinez wants Johnson to raid the city’s TIFs funds to help bailout CPS. And Moody’s, watching this all play out, has warned that more cash flow problems would be a “credit negative” for the district.

What’s funny in all of this is that nobody is pointing out the root cause of this current chaos. The district went on a covid-era 25% hiring spree, adding more than 9,000 staff since 2019, even as enrollment dropped by 10% (a loss of more than 37,000 students).

There’s more at the link, but I can’t resist these graphics. Every picture tells a story, and these are pictures of a trainwreck. That’s democracy for you. Who expects voters to vote for sensible governance?

[blindtaleteller]

lmao! Pretending they don’t care? They’ve been stating their disinterest in the franchise, it’s entire premise, and characters they’re supposed to be displaying since Jenga Block Boy Waititi was hired to direct Ragnarok: not just plainly but very, very openly to boot.

Waititi made his stance and intent to literally make a mess of the Thor corner and every character in it during Ragnarok’s creation and release VERY clear in every interview he did at the time, until Disney’s PR teams had full control and was not only unapologetic about it but downright insulting: and gen fans lapped it up, fed him & teh studios more of their money as a response, and still defend it today to stupid levels while complaining that he followed through with Love & Thunder and did EXACTLY what he said he would.

Which, with that as an example for them to hold up thanks to that dumb; is how we ended up with hacks like Waldron, who adapted the crappiest, second most misogynistic script in Phase 4′s roster into the Loki title, while admitting he had never watched or researched the TITLE character, any of the background: and proving he didn’t understand what Phase 4 and why it’s called that, means: BEFORE he admitted multiple times that not only was it never his intent to write the Loki show they advertise, promoted for LIVE at Cons prior .. but that he when he did adapt that crappy script replacing the name ‘Dixie’ with Sylvie among others? He did so writing a Sylvie Lushton series NOT, ‘Loki’ (or more appropriately named by some of us who know better and are aware of this: the Larry/Bob: the Accountant show.) Which, did not go over as well as their PR teams like to pretend either: as most viewers they pulled the false advertising and bait and switch on, dipped out either mid first episode or, mid second episode. It’s that much of a dumpster fire and unrecognizable mess with lie of the title name over it’s head. It’s so bad.. that now coming up on two years later and trying to promote a second season with the same premise line (which they never saw through in the first season at all EITHER by the way) they have been and are STILL making excuses and new lines for them up to try and make it pass so people will watch season 2... who Waldron’s buddy has taken over writing in the same spirit (his interviews are very telling) just to make sure it keeps on suckin’.

And mentioning that, it’s no great surprise then, that with Waldron and Taika still having jobs during that period (and in Waldron’s case also being the one responsible for MOM’s equally dismissive or the characters script) That the Second Doctor Strange movie, and SMNWH (through great on nostalgia & good cast to carry even this GAPING HOLE) completely ignored the premise of the first Dr. Strange film and the Masters of the Mystic Arts that was in fact the first film to start the multiverse off.. only for Waldron and the Accountant crew to try and pretend otherwise BEFORE that second film for Doctor Strange was even released.

Add in the train wreck of what they dropped for She Hulk, especially at those price tags and uh no, honey. People are hating on the MCU at current, because the MCU at current is mostly trash.

The current hires and mentality in the studios has completely forgotten the premise and quality over quantity which people paid their hard earned money to watch: any of it.

Personally, I don’t think Disney in particular is entirely to blame here though. This shit started to get out of control, when the ship threw it’s officers, navigators and maps overboard in dismissing the Marvel Creative Committee that kept it on course as a major contributor, and it’s just been going downhill between that and hires with this mentality.

I was really, really hoping MOM would escape that when Raimi took over Multiverse (his experience and examples as a professional gave me --and others-- false hope) but, nope: unfortunately Raimi failed ALMOST in the same unprofessional way Waldron has, in not bothering to know even the film he was making a sequel to, well enough to correct any of the issues in that film along the same lines, and again like Taika, said as much in his official interviews.

Marvel Cinematic has lost the Universe in it’s title; and is going down the toilet. And guess what? People are allowed to notice, and get annoyed/angry when they spend their money on one thing, and are given a shoddy knock off instead: and, allowed to say something about it.

You want to keep your blinders on and have to rewatch, and rewatch, and rewatch.. and then cling to PR-generated excuses made after the fact to find anything good in it? That’s on you. Not other people. Just sayin’.

‘it’s just trendy to hate on marvel’ no. marvel has done this to themselves. they overwork underpaid and non unionized vfx artists, they don’t allow actors to have access to the full scripts, they gloat about continuity but don’t have consistency, very few of the writers care even slightly about the characters or the source material, and they have gone for quantity over quality / are overproducing their product to the point of consumer exhaust. they are a multi billion dollar creative monopoly that should be held accountable

[antiloreolympus]

10 Anti LO Asks

1. I kinda hate how Hades has only had 2 relationships before Persephone and one being his brother’s brother and the other being toxic on both ends. I sorta wish Leuce was in there as like an ex with no drama like the two just didnt work out or something chill (break ups are hard but there’s less dramatic break ups). Idk I just feel like a little internal conflict like that would have some spice to the story but also make me root for the couple a bit more.

Going deeper into it, as a reader we know Minthe as his evil gf whose never gonna work out and Hera and Hades are toxic secret affair, but what if Hades did have a functional relationship with someone who wasn’t toxic but they didn’t work out and she didn’t want to stay in the underworld/be queen. I just feel like that would add a complex layer to the story, not making it all black and white.

With Persephone having more dating experience it’s kinda hard because everyone wants her BUT they aren’t allowed to date her to keep her pure/her mother would kill them/TOGEM. But if RS ever wrote more Persphone and Hermes I’d just want them together like forget hades. 

2. Ive seen some LO fans say "NOW the actual myth will begin" and it's like??? Wasn't that already done in the first three episodes? Why would you RESTART IT? More so, it is objectively awful writing to publish nearly every week for FOUR YEARS to actually get to the main point of the story, which even then will probably take month at best to even start. This is just such a train-wreck in terms of planning, writing, development, and even basic story creation yet the fan will insist it's genius!

3. What I find so aggravating about LO and its fans is they are convinced it's the most unique, groundbreaking work ever, when it's anything but that. Modern settings, Technicolor skintones, "humanizing" the gods, etc have all been a Thing for decades, sometimes even centuries before LO even existed. Even the idea it "deals with heavy topics' is false since the original myths already did so and didn't treat it as haphazardly like Rachel does. They want it to be anything but what it really is.

4. I see so many of the fans excuse Rachel making it just modern NYC as "it's a fictional world so she can do what she wants"  begs the question: do they think Ancient Greece is a fantasy land that never existed? It very much did, and had cultural and social differences from modern day. Even modern Greece is different from America. She does't even try to keep any of it intact despite it being set in that exact time and place. At some point we have to admit the "Greek" part is lip service at best.

5. the "anti" community for LO is overwhelmingly queer, BIPOC women and NBs who used to like the series who where in turn forced out of the fandom because of the almost entirely cishet, white fanbase who refused to even court the idea of differing opinions. The idea all of us marginalized people are "oppressing" a privileged white woman and her entitled fanbase because we critique how she' butchered countless real issue and a real country's stories for her white "feminism" fantasy is laughable.

6. i do not get why all the new book covers we're getting for lo are so boring?? like at least the first normal cover was visually grabbing (even if just lie about what the comic is actually about and has some questionable symbolism in it) but the newer ones are so boring. they don't even have backgrounds now and the logo is so randomly placed and I don't get why. they have book cover artists on staff surely they could help her do it? or work off her sketches and make something better?

7. rachel retweeting a single old picture from cyprus: see! i can about greece! anyway let's ignore that while I retweet 20 pictures in a row about how eris is literally an apple and how hades just needs so many babies RIGHT NOW.

8. rachel spends more time posting about her nails on twitter than even bothering to retweet even one post from her co-workers to give them a needed promo to her massive audience. it's just off putting to me how every other webtoons creators minus her, mongie, and snailords will do anything to support and promo each other while they refuse to do the bare minimum even as the webtoon company bends over backwards to make sure they get them everything they want while ignoring the rest.

9. Even ignoring the issues Rachel added into the story for her own weird reasons, how naive are her and her fans to think whitewashing and romanticizing perhaps the most infamous of all Greek myths into an idealized romance aimed towards pre-teens at the youngest wouldn't come with built in criticism? Like there's a reason the myth is so hotly debated, and it's not because of "misogyny", it's because of how misogyny is used to demonize a mother for the sake of a romanticizing a male abuser..

10. I love how LO fans say "hera only cheated with one person! so that's different from zeus's many affairs!" like no it's not lmao. a person who killed one person and serial killer both get life in prison regardless of how many victims they have. rachel also seems to be implying hera is having an emotional affair with echo which by her own in comic logic is just as bad as a physical affair, so wouldn't that be at least two people? regardless two wrongs do not make a right, hera is also bad here.

[crymeariveronceagain]

Hmm... you like MHA, correct? I'm curious what you think about the Todorokis then.

Well.

Endeavor: Ugly man. Disgusting. Almost worse in my mind than Cassius Sencen. Worse than him. You treat your kids like crap??? You treat your children like weapons in front of me??? Then I will never forgive you, and your kids whose lives you ruined after you gave them intense psychological trauma shouldn't have to either. Screw off, and screw yourself, idiot. I mean *cough* I don't much care for him. I also hate the "redemption" arc he's getting. Like, firstly, why did it take so long for him to have this change of heart. Why did it take like, his wife going insane, his son going insane, his other son being abused for years, the rest of his children being neglected for years, and then being faced with his insane eldest son who he high-key thought was dead to start this redemption arc? Like, i get that sometimes people are thick-headed, but this felt wrong. Moreover, I don't mind a redemption arc when it's done well, but Endeavor's has happened too quickly, and it's too forced to feel real. His change of heart feels shoved in there like a "Time for Shoto to feel bad about hating his father!!!" kind of thing, which is always bad. Like, seriously. His dad verbally, emotionally, and physically abused him for years, very actively, and made him have major trauma from that, and now that Endeavor's like "uwu im sowwy" Shoto feels awful because for a long time, the only way he's been able to deal with Endeavor's crap is to pretend like his father doesn't care about him, doesn't want what's best for him, doesn't want his approval or forgiveness. And when Endeavor wants approval and forgiveness(like a lil' bish), Shoto feels awful because, what's he supposed to do? He's built up this persona in his head of who his father is out of self preservation, and his father wrecks that, and acts all wounded and hurt whenever someone insults or hurts him. It's just... shady. And gross, imho. Like, idc. Maybe other people have different opinions on the whole arc. I just really do not vibe. Like, sir. Leave your children alone. If you feel bad for what you did, give them time, space, actual apologies, and freedom. Don't. Force them. To be around you. Like. Come on. I don't care that you're having feelings about not being around them. But guess what they don't want to be around you anymore. Ok, except for maybe Fuyumi, but she can deal with it. Your children who you've excessively traumatized are not validators for your emotions. Get out of here. Goodbye.

Rei: I don't like her all that much as a character. But I know she's been through a lot, and I can understand her actions. She's fine. Not the best mom, not the worst. Nyeh.

Touya: Oh man. Oh man. Oh man. Oldest child is a golden child-to-invisible child pipeline. Oldest child starts out as a perfect and powerful creation. Oldest child finds out his power isn't what his dad wants. Oldest child trains and tries and tries and tries to make himself into what his dad wants. Oldest child ruins himself for parental approval. Oldest child puts entire life in the hands of someone who doesn't care about him. Oldest child realizes he will never be as "loved" as his littlest brother. Oldest child stops getting noticed, except in bad things. Oldest child realizes that he never meant anything, he's never going to be anything, and he will never be loved by his family. Oldest child is in severe mental and emotional distress. Oldest child fakes his death and runs away. Oldest child spends the rest of his life trying to make his father suffer for the way he was treated. Oldest child... has a point. Oldest child murders tons of people violently. Oldest child needs therapy. And possibly some jail time.

Fuyumi: Older sister trauma but is coping by making other kids' lives better than hers was. Just wants everyone to be okay. Aaah. Stop being relatable. Also, just. Side with your siblings, love. It'll make you feel better about your choices in the long run.

Natsuo: LET. THE KID. BE ANGRY. He was cheated out of a happy childhood, watched his siblings get emotionally and physically abused, and he's angry now. And that's completely valid. Like, this character is just completely valid. Heck yeah, insult your dad to his face. Your father hasn't earned your respect and he sure as heck cannot expect it. Moreover, I feel like Natsuo is just generally annoyed with everyone. He's annoyed because Shoto doesn't know how to use slang, he's annoyed because Fuyumi's too nice, he's annoyed because his mom went insane, he's annoyed because Toya's sort of kind of dead, he's annoyed. Let the kid be angry. He needs therapy, but he's doing okay.

Shoto: Oh. This kid has been really hurt. But hey, he's gonna be a hero, and he's doing his best. Like, honestly, I don't think there's much more that we can ask of this kid, just like I don't think there's much more we can ask of Izuku before both of them become vigilantes and join the LOV out of spite and pain. Like, yeah. Todoroki Shoto is a piece of work, but he is doing his gosh diddly darn best. And it's very inspiring, honestly, if an anime character can be inspiring. Like all the crap he's been through? Being pushed to be a hero since the day he ws born? Decides to be a hero anyways, but decides to be the kind of hero that makes people feel safe. Told he's going to be more powerful than All Might? Works at it crazy hard, isn't afraid to have(mostly) healthy rivalries with his classmates. Neglected and never had any real friends or contact with actual humans? Has a ton of friends now, whether he wants them or not, and is a king at cracking deadpan jokes, whether he thinks they're funny or not. Like, this boy. He's doing so much. I'm so proud of him, honestly. Like, I think he's got some internalized trauma, especially about how much of what he went through can be blamed on him, but like, really, this 15 year old super hero trainee is doing really well for what he's had to go through. I'm honestly like so proud of this kid.

[lol-jackles]

I had no idea about the shitshow that was YANA but all things considered, that Jared-who had just been stabbed in the back by friends trying to milk his own MHI-was the one to explain what it was about says a lot about who Jared is as a person, and how much MH awareness truly counts for him.

This entire thing sucked ass and he was the one to damage control it. Fuck J&M for that.

First let's get this out of the way: most actors are not friends. Misha isn't friends with Jared or Jensen, merely a coworker.

Oh yeah, the amount of damage control Jared did was funny (to me). An hour after Misha/Jensen train wreck livestream video, Jared tweeted that he will have announcements the following day on his Facebook (damage control 1.0).  In 2 minutes Jared explained YANA’s purpose, and to further placate the fandom he assured that he and AKF has been part of YANA’s campaign all along (damage control 2.0). Long time fans know that Jared never showed up in any of the YANA videos.

The disorganization of the YANA launch (through Creation) and confusion over the campaign’s message had me thinking Misha moved the launch ahead of time before Jared’s fifth AKF launch (through Represent) on Valentine’s Day.   Jared pulled out his own campaign and delayed it by couple of weeks even though it was obviously designed for Valentines Day (damage control 3.0, Jared didn’t want competition between YANA and AKF).

Despite how it may looked like Jared was saving Misha’s ass, that wasn't the case. The YANA mess had the potential to be picked up by the mainstream press and bring damage to what Jared worked so hard for.

[empatheticvirtue]

Twisted Memories of a Gray

Starter for @sympathyforsin​

Coco had woken Mallory four hours earlier than she was supposed to, shaking her arm, startling her. No one else was awake that she knew of.

"I’m parched Mallory! It’s so cold out in the hallways. Get me a water! Hurry, wake up!!" Coco insisted urgently.

Mallory felt like she had not slept at all after that disastrous interview with Michael. She had tossed and turned the entire night, fighting with herself within as if something was trying to drive its way out from deep within her. She had a strange dream. There had been a thick fog that had practically choked her feeling a chilling darkness. But she had ventured towards the center finding a crying little boy. There was a voice warning her to stay away, that he will kill her but she embraced him, protecting him until she was pulled away. She sat up quickly gasping for air, her blankets now thrown on the floor as she shivered in her long white Victorian nightgown getting up reluctantly out of her warm bed.

"Am I going crazy?" She said to herself as she looked into the mirror in the bathroom, splashing cool water upon pale features before grabbing a robe to make way out into the chilled hallways of the Outpost. She wasn’t sure what was real. Or if what had happened the night before during the interview with Michael had all been a bad dream. She just knew Michael wouldn’t choose her for the sanctuary after that train wreck of an interview.

She couldn’t shake a familiar feeling, of deja vu, when Michael had spoken with her right before the chaos instilled then. As soon as he had brushed his long ringed fingers along her delicate jawline, it was as if something inside of her was trying to tell her that she wasn’t who everyone thought she was. And that she knew Michael somewhere, somehow. But she was frightened. Unbeknown to her, the fear was just a way the identity spell worked to repress her memories. She was afraid of who she was deep inside. The manifestation of power coming from her only made her more frightened of who she was or could be. She remembered the look of shock on Michael’s face. What if she had hurt him? She didn’t want to harm anyone. How could someone so small and meek like her hold so much power? And how could something like that even exist? It was something she had only seen in comic movies.

But there was something else that bothered her. She could feel his confusion and intrigue at the same time ever since she had felt the stroke of his fingers softly upon her porcelain cheek. Mallory had always been one to care about others, even that bitch Coco, but this was an entirely different experience. It was as if she could feel what he was feeling when he had contact with her directly. And at first, it had chilled her to the core. But there was something else deeper, something that had saddened her. It was like a vice upon her heart and thinking about it now, she felt sympathy for him wanting to know why she felt these things and why he would feel that way.

She must have imagined all of this! Was she going crazy? She could swear this place did something to her. All she had felt ever since she had arrived was an impeding melancholy that saturated the walls and halls of the outpost. She felt as grey inside as her clothing.

And now she felt she would be one of the ones left behind, to die of starvation or be eaten by the cannibals. Already she was hungry all of the time ever since Venable had cut their food portions to once a day. Mallory didn’t want to die, but who would want a lowly grey anyway to help in the creation of this new world that Michael had described to her in the interview. She was never tenacious, or the type that would burn down the Tree of Knowledge, using it for firewood like he had stated. She was meek and mild, kind, and had tried to not be noticed. Getting noticed here got you killed. The others seemed to be trying everything possible to get Michael’s attention so that they would be selected to go with him to this so-called sanctuary. But all she wanted to do was hide from him.

She dried her face, her eyes weary and fatigued as she walked out of her door and out into the hallway. She knew her place, and it wasn’t the sanctuary. She wanted to try to get some more sleep after fetching the water for Coco so she put on her gray robe over her nightgown trying to stay warm, her long golden honey brown locks falling passed her shoulders now out of that ridiculous bun. It was cold throughout the corridors at night. She made way down from the top level of the stairs in a spiral that would lead to the main floor hoping that no one was awake yet to bother with her. She gathered up the mineral water, placing it on a silver tray. She made way down the corridor near Michael’s room.

The closer she ventured towards his room, she began to feel that choking darkness that had been in her dream. Her hands began to shake and she dropped the silver tray, as it crashed in front of Michael’s door, the water bottle rolling to meet it. 

[dontcallmecarrie]

continuation of this, because the idea lives rent-free in my head [heads up for minor profanity]:

Under other circumstances, planning a prison break wouldn’t have taken more than a week, tops.

Stranded in this weird hellscape, however...

Ivan Vanko sighed, and scrubbed a hand down his face. It was either that, or survey the main room of the bunker Victor von Doom had somehow managed to secure because he was a goddamn overachiever that way. Ivan’d probably be more annoyed if it weren’t working in their favor at this moment— wait a minute.

“How’re you holding up?” Ivan asked warily as he looked at him from a safe distance across the war room, because now that he thought about it, Victor had been acting...very weird, lately. 

Which was a problem, because Ivan had more than enough on his plate just trying to figure out how to get them all back home when he wasn’t stuck watching Loki and his feral counterpart circle each other like cats half a second from brawling, or the headache he got when the two Winter Soldiers came back from recon or supply-gathering or whatever the hell else they got up to ever since they’d joined up with the others and found out where Justin’d landed. 

Ivan didn’t think he was wrong to be paranoid about this type of radio silence, not when it was coming from the poster boy for a type-A personality. 

“I? Am fine.” Victor said, and Ivan might have even believed him if he didn’t have that maniac glint in his eyes that precluded the type of disaster only their esteemed leader could prevent, and sure enough— “Get the others, I have a plan ready.”

.

Once more, Loki was inordinately proud of the friends allies he had.

In an entirely different universe, limited resources and external factors working against them, and they still managed to pull stunts like this off. 

“What kind of...” His counterpart muttered from his spot in the corner, even as Victor walked them all through his plan to break the last of their party out of one of the most secured locations in one of the most powerful countries on the planet. Ivan nodded along as he took notes, presumably for whatever hyper-specialized gear they’d need, while the Winter Soldier looked over their plans with a pensive frown before throwing in the odd comment here and there.

Victor was in fine form today, confidently answering their questions as he ran through contingency plans and every last scrap of intel they’d managed to access. 

“This is why.” Loki said quietly, and his counterpart seemed lost and oddly bereft as the rest of Cabal plotted. “You wanted to know why I allied myself with Midgardians? Here you have it.”

.

“You know, you don’t have to do this.” The Winter Soldier told his counterpart. “Justin’s my friend, you have your own problems to deal with, Soldat.”

A single blink was his answer, and right, he’d been stubborn from the start, hadn’t he. It was...probably why HYDRA’s conditioning never took, which was good, but also frustrating as all get out because Soldat— and just getting him to pick a name had been a trial in and of itself— was dead-set on coming along.

“I mean it. We’re going home as soon as Ivan can figure out how to use the Tesseract to reverse whatever the hell he did to get us here, you’re going to be the one to deal with the consequences and you’re going to have enough on your plate as is.” 

How someone could look so mulish without moving a muscle, Winter didn’t know, but Soldat sure managed to pull it off nevertheless. 

“Oh, let him.” Victor interrupted their standoff. “It’s his choice to make, and we need all the help we can get, Winter.”

“We can pull it off.” He countered, and Victor inclined his head.

“Of course we can, I’m the one who planned it. But you can’t deny that four people trying to break someone out of supermax is a fairly tall order.”

“Ah, fuck, this is going to be a disaster.” The Winter Soldier pinched the bridge of his nose with a groan as he abruptly realized they’d be throwing two Lokis at the problem and would there even be a supermax standing, afterwards?

“Excuse you, my plans never fail—” 

“You sure you want in on this train wreck?” He asked Soldat abruptly, “Because odds are, it’s going to be like this the entire time.”

A single nod, and Winter leaned back with a sigh. “Fuck, I was afraid of that. Fine, okay...but when it goes to hell, I told you so.”

.

For the record, everything didn’t go to hell within the first five minutes. 

...it took six.

.

“Objective secured,” the Winter Soldier barked over the specially-made comms Ivan had handed out, as his left hand easily snapped the cuffs limiting Justin’s movements and immediately started ushering him to the extraction point while Loki set to work shorting out the camera system. Justin seemed to be frozen in place, but that was secondary; clearly he was in shock, but Winter couldn’t afford to put him at ease, not when they were operating on such a limited time frame and so he didn’t think twice about lifting his friend in a fireman’s carry. 

Elsewhere, Other Loki’s distraction continued to draw the guards’ focus.

“Okay, moving onto phase three. Victor, you ready?” Ivan’s voice came through loud and clear even as the alarms continued to blare around them.

“On i—” Victor’s voice cut off as what could only be an EMP went off, casting the entire facility in darkness for a few seconds.

Ivan’s creations were good, but he had limited resources to work with and so for the two minutes it took for their comms to get back online, they were on their own.

Fortunately, everyone in Cabal had taken that into account. 

“Come on,” Loki ushered them along and Winter didn’t even blink at the familiar green sparks that lit the way. In the distance, the guards’ surprised yelps told them Other Loki had decided to step up his own game long before they met up with him in the hallway. 

“Took you long enough. Is this him?” Other Loki’s smile had a strange sort of curiosity, and going by the way Loki had tensed, he’d noticed it too. 

“We can talk once we’re done.” Loki demurred, and set to work getting the array that’d teleport them out of here. 

As he did, Winter gently set Justin down. “Sorry about that, we’re on a bit of a time crunch.” 

“I—” Justin sounded oddly nervous, looking between him and the two Lokis, and Winter sympathized. 

“Yeah, I’m impressed the building’s still standing, too.”

If possible, Justin seemed to curl in on himself even more, and Winter reached towards him in concern. Hey, you okay? I’m sorry we’re late, things happened, but—”

“We’re ready,” Victor interrupted as he and Soldat rounded the corner and rushed towards them, and Winter froze as he saw who else they had in tow and whipped around to check, but—

“Oh, you have got to be kidding me.” Loki said as he stopped short, seeing the problem. 

Justin Hammer frowned at them in mild concern, as the Justin Hammer at his side started to hyperventilate. 

Whoops.

“Shit, I am so sorry—” Winter started, before he whipped around just in time to catch the shield hurled in their direction and fuck, that meant the Avengers were here, coming in hot and they had two noncombatants in direct range—

A single look told him the others were on the same page, and without saying a word, Loki and Victor set to activating the array while Winter hurled Captain America’s shield down the hall as he took up a defensive position. Soldat mirrored his position, and Other Loki seemed more curious than anything else but still threw out a shield strong enough to deflect the explosive arrow for the split-second it took for the array to kick in and get them the hell out of dodge before anyone got a good look at them. 

Then, and only then, did Winter have the time to take a step back and turn around and realize— 

“Ah, fuck, we accidentally kidnapped someone, didn’t we.”

[fistsoflightning]

light up the dark

ffxivwrite2022 29: fuse n. a continuous train of a combustible substance enclosed in a cord or cable for setting off an explosive charge by transmitting fire to it.

zaya & g’raha. post 5.0, near the end of ‘for every child a star’. 583 wc.

In all their adventures, there had been very few times where Zaya had been entrusted with fireworks—or really any manner of explosives, and for good reason—but even they could tell that these ones were heavy for their size. The shell that the Exarch—that G’raha had handed them was about the size of a sad La Noscean orange, but it weighed like it was filled with titancopper chunks; given that the First didn’t seem to have bombards in abundance like the Cascadiers back on the Source did, it made sense, but Zaya was given the faint impression that these fireworks could take down a behemoth.

Potentially-overclocked fireworks still didn’t seem like a good enough reason for G’raha to break the unspoken agreement that he and Zaya hadn’t been on speaking terms since surfacing from the Tempest, much less invite them into the Tower in the middle of the markets for a private talk. They looked up at him and tilted their head, waiting for him to explain.

He gave a faint, nervous smile in response, no longer the unshakeable and confident Exarch. “Perhaps it was a selfish decision on my part, but I was hoping I could beg your assistance in a matter I find myself advising,” he said, echoing in the wide space of the Tower’s throne room. “Katliss and the Crystalline Mean have been hard at work creating lights for the children of the Crystarium, you see, and each of the Facet leaders has taken it upon themselves to create a source of light uniquely their own; for her part, Katliss wished to avoid infringing on any one lantern’s design and hold a fireworks show instead, inspired by a book from the Cabinet. However, as the last fireworks in Norvrandt were created over a century before, she asked for my help in both the creation of and privately grading the appearance of her attempts.”

Zaya’s eyes widened, relaxing their shoulders as they considered what, exactly, he might need from them. It was no great ordeal to set off some fireworks beneath notice, especially when he had the entirety of the Crystal Tower practically to himself, and by all means it seemed he’d been able to tell Katliss what went into firework shells…

“You don’t remember fireworks,” they signed back to him, after a few long moments of consideration. For anyone who had lived in Eorzea for long enough, the notion seemed ridiculous—every Moonfire, Rising, and Heavensturn it was impossible to avoid them—but G’raha had only given himself a year before he gave the rest of his life to the distant future, most of it at the foot of the Crystal Tower. They’d only managed to drag him out to see the Moonfire Faire properly because the entire expedition of adventurers had banded together to get a break from climbing up and wrecking the Allagan terrors inside.

“It is as you say,” G’raha said, almost resigned. “My belief was that someone who had been on the Source more recently would have better judgement of what constituted a ‘good firework’, but on short notice the only one I could find with free access across the rift was… well, you.”

Zaya sighed, only slightly exasperated. They were the only one who had crossed back over after delivering the news of the Scions’ safety to Tataru, the rest of their friends choosing to tie up some other loose ends on the Source first. 

“Help me make Ryne a lantern and I will be your fireworks judge.”

[commanderchr1st]

I can't say for certain, but I didn't exactly have AVGN or any of those guys in mind, strangely enough. I was more focused on trying to create a Youtube/video editing inept fella who is straight out of Web 1.0 DOS forums, but I think AVGN and others probably had an implicit influence on them since their pioneering of video game reviews/essay/whatever was foundational to pretty much any persona having to do anything with a game.

Concept wise, the idea of a recession/2009 era early video sharing train-wreck masquerading as a game review video series came first; shit like completely getting the descriptions of games wrong, being a bumbling mess, and the worst video splicing possible took the lead, and the character itself kinda came later when I was playing around with the delivery of the video. I can't recall absolutely everything within the creation of it, but I do remember that having an Uncle Gary dying and derailing an entire review was the very first idea I had for an episode, but I wanted to save it for a tad bit later as I wanted to throw out the first video as almost a proof of concept, or a test.

How did you come up with the idea for “Video Game Yoda” and “Dark taint”?

Good question! Nobody ever asks about Christmas Classics or Video Game Yoda even though they were some of my favorite videos to make. For Dark Taint, I wanted to try and think of something edgy but vaguely sexual. For Video Game Yoda, I'm pretty sure it was inspired by New Mexican medical marijuana.

[libraford]

We interrupt the feral celebration of ousting an oligarch to bring you a story about Yeehaw and his Branch of Mystery.

  It has been a while since we last had some co-worker drama, but man- has it been a weird summer. I mean... we all had a weird summer in 2020, but I don't think I was really expecting this particular... flavor of weird?

 This is a story about Yeehaw, but it starts off with a story about Aggie.

 Aggie was someone we were excited to hire and part of our excitement was that it's rare to find someone with prior floral experience and we'd concluded at this point that it does no one any good to be picky about new hires in the middle of a pandemic. So finding someone who knew the difference between a carnation and a rose was a big deal for us.

 I say that in jest, but saying that we do 'on-the-job training' means that we've had to explain that yes- the flower in my hand that looks like a carnation is a carnation and not some other flower that looks like carnation but is not a carnation. Floristry is a very straightforward practice and for the most part a rose is a rose and a daisy is a daisy and if someone asks for those things, you give it to them.

 The hard part is, as always, making them look good together.

 Which is why we were pleased with Aggie- who previously did weddings for her friends and seemed to have a basic understanding of how to do things with her hands. We were happy to have her aboard.

 ... until you gave her criticism.

 She made her vases embarrassingly short, and if you tried to tell her how to fix it, she'd snap back with "I'm not DONE yet."

 She was done until you said something.

 If you gave her an order for two dozen white roses, she would take it upon herself to mix white and yellow roses together 'because it looks better.'

 It did not.

 Hashtag: #selftaught

 When a client asks for all white roses, there is likely a reason they asked for all white. Given that 90% of our work is funerals, it stands to reason that they are asking for all white because that is a traditional color for mourning. Working with a client means doing exactly what they asked for. Doing a wedding for your friends may get you high praise from people who trust you to work in the same aesthetic as them, but in a shop setting you are being paid to follow things to the letter. Doing so shows that you can follow directions, and they may come back next time.

 You don't know customer entitlement until you've been torn another asshole for leaving out a single rose.

 This seemed to never occur to her, and so criticism was a painful realization that perhaps she wasn't perfect at an art that was exceptionally susceptible to criticism. There were plenty of opportunities to make something in her own aesthetic, it wasn't like she was being stifled. There was a considerable amount of downtime where she filled the front cooler with her own creations- enigmatically giving each of them their own names like "Autumn Walk" or "First Snowfall." (This is not something that we do, on the whole.)

 Not very many of those sold.

 But I think what bugged me the most is that she only ever designed. She didn't take out the trash, she didn't answer phones, she never helped customers. She just... did flowers. Nothing else.

 Oh... and the chatter.

 "Do you travel? Oh, you simply MUST go to Bali sometime! You've never been to Asia? Well, there's nothing like achieving inner peace at a Buddhist temple on a mountaintop in Nepal. They have temples here in Ohio, but it's nothing like the real thing! You say you've never even been off the continent? Well, what are you waiting for? You only live once, you know!"

 Ma'am... we're in the middle of a pandemic. Ma'am... I only get paid so much...

 While trying to relate, I talked about my summer in Montana and she gave me the BIGGEST stank-face. "Montana? Ew, WHY?"

 Look, lady- I lived on a mountaintop next to an active, world-destroying volcano system. If that's not cool, I don't know what is.

 But thankfully, she only worked on weekends. See, this was her fun job. The job she does to stay social during a pandemic and flex her creative muscles while she makes money at her much more lucrative,but boring,HR job. So I only had to see her twice a month when I was manager on duty.

 Then she got fired from her weekday job and went full-time at the flower shop. Poor thing wasn't used to waking up at 7am every day. She was full of suggestions.

 "I think it would be easier for me if we only opened at like... 11am."

"Don't you think we should be taking proper photos of our work? All we would need is a nice camera and a soft lighting setup. Couldn't be much more than $1000."

"Oh I know! We should be doing inventory on tablets instead of writing things down!"

 Okay, you go buy those things then. It took her about a week of making those suggestions to realize that she wasn't real clear on how things worked around here and stopped. She became quiet, less enthusiastic about her 'fun' job now that she wasn't immediately the star of the show.

 Enter Yeehaw.

 We were excited about Yeehaw, too. He didn't just have experience with flowers- he had experience with a flower shop. He gave a good interview, he seemed like he knew what he was doing and was very passionate about flowers. He was definitely an entire hippie, but about 1/3 of all plant people are. Most importantly, we still had like three spots to fill left from our pre-Covid staff.

 Hired.

 There was an overlap of about a week where Aggie and Yeehaw worked at the same time. His work was... immaculate. Just... astonishingly beautiful work. You didn't even have to show him how to make anything. He just... knew.

 Well, Aggie didn't  like that much- we had only nice things to say about this new guy but all she ever got was criticism. And if we complimented him on something he made, he would give a little 'namaste' bow. And I could see her fuming with rage each time he did this.

 One day, she rushed into the back to take a phone call and any time someone went back there for a vase she would lower her voice as if keeping a deep secret. Twenty minutes later, she called Grandpa into the back as well to discuss something. Ten minutes later, Aggie left the building with her Live, Laugh, Love bag, looking pissed.

 "Where did Aggie go," I asked Grandpa.

 "She got a new job," she said. "Doing HR somewhere."

 "She didn't even say good-bye," Blue said, appearing unsurprised.

 And so we went on with out lives without really putting much further thought into Aggie, apart from the occasional 'you simply MUST visit Bali' line thrown in for bougie emphasis.

 Which brings us to the next part of the story, and that is Yeehaw.

 There are some details to know about Yeehaw that are kind of difficult to fit into a story neatly. Here is a brief list that may come in handy to know later.

-He lives with his mother.

-He drives a Tesla.

-He can afford the Tesla because he was in a terrible wreck that had him hospitalized, and a lawsuit was won.

-Because of this, he has two screws in his head at the temples.

-Unrelated, he has hair that goes all the way down to his back.

- And...

 "Grandpa, we need to tell you something," Blue said. "In private."

 Blue and Kali pulled Grandpa aside while Yeehaw slowly put together a funeral order. "Grandpa, there's no polite way to put this: Yeehaw is drunk as fuck."

 "He smells like whiskey," Kali said.

 "He's stumbling everywhere."

 "And he won't stop... burping."

 Grandpa paused. "There's something I need to tell you," she said, and she reached for a manila folder. "Yeehaw has something called... what's it called..." She leafed through the file and produced a paper, reading from it. "Auto-brewery Syndrome. His body actually produces alcohol anytime he eats bread or sugar. If he's drunk, it's because he can't help it."

 We each had a chance to go over the doctor's note, verifying that yes- that sure does look official. Everyone had questions, but it did answer the one I had about why he was sitting in the break room literally drinking peanut butter from the jar.

 So that was incredibly interesting and we no longer asked about the burping or why he was so slow.  

 However, the fact that he was so slow was extremely frustrating. Our average number of orders runs approximately 100 per-day. This can be eased somewhat when we have a full-staff with five designers- an average of 20 designs per person in an 8-hour day, 3 per hour.

 But it's a fine line some days, and if one person cannot keep up it turns into a struggle for all of us.  

 We did our best to accommodate. We gave him all the day-ahead orders so that we wouldn't be behind and he'd have all the time he'd need to make his gorgeous pieces.

 We were willing to make it work.

 A number of factors came into play one day, but most notably: Yeehaw's Tesla wouldn't start and he had to take the bus. So he was late.

 I think I saw him make one entire item in the two hours that we were in the same room. He went to lunch around 12:30, I took mine around 1:00. I saw him stumble back in from lunch, looking... out of it. Just... absolutely incomprehensible- mumbling, barely upright, his hair out of the bun, quite possibly sleepwalking- who knows?

 I saw him for that brief Sasquatch moment... and that was the last that I saw him that day. It was around 4:00 that  Grandpa asked the question:

 "Where's Yeehaw?"

 And no one had an answer. We all had places that we thought we'd seen him: cleaning the cooler, in the break room, heading to the bathroom... but no one had really... seen him since he stumbled back in around 1:30.

 We checked all these places.

 None of them.

 The person who actually managed to find him was Sarge, who noticed his feet sticking out from behind the bushes behind the building.

 "Huh," he said, presumably. He gave the feet a light kick and Yeehaw slowly sat back up. "Hey dude. You... okay, there? They're lookin' for you inside."

 Yeehaw mumbled something to Sarge and got to his feet, stumbling back into the shop without further interaction. He appeared into the workspace, holding a branch in front of his face for mysterious reasons. There were still twigs entangled in his long hair.

 "Where were you at," Grandpa asked, concerned.

 "Oh, I was in the bathroom," he lied from behind the branch of mystery. "I'm pretty tired. Is it okay if I go home?"

 Bewildered, Grandpa gave him permission to leave. It was soon after he left that Scout found his phone in the empty sink. "Who's trying to wash their phone," he asked in the loud manner that is characteristic of old white men. It rang while in his hand and one of our designers snatched it from him. It was his mother.

 "Hello," said the designer. "Yeehaw went home early, but he left his phone behind. Can you bring it home to him?" Mom agreed, she was just over at Trader Joe's anyhow.

 We thought, of course, that we were doing something smart and nice. Yeehaw's mom looks just about what you would expect the mother of a 30-year-old hippie that drives a Tesla to look. Grandpa, in a polite way, explained that he'd fallen asleep in a bush. To which Mom seemed neither surprised nor concerned about his behavior.

 "Okay. I'll be at Hallmark."

 Somewhere between the bus stop and Bexley, Yeehaw must have realized that his phone was not with him and so he came back looking for it. Despite his mother being literally in the same strip mall as we were, he seemed irritated that we'd taken the initiative to make sure his phone got to him.

 "Well, I bet if you just went down to Hallmark she'd give you your phone and probably give you a ride home."

 He mumbled something and then left.

 This seems like a decent place to pause, because him leaving the second time in the day should be the end of the story. However... at 5:00 in the evening there was still two hours left in the work day and from past experience... that is plenty of time for a lot of things to happen.

 The thing to happen was a phone call.

 "Hi, this is Jade from the main store. We've gotten... some... interesting phone calls. Is there... a... hmm... is there a dead body out in front of your store?"

 Pause.

 "We'll take care of it, bye."

 Who wants to be the one to poke the cadaver on the sidewalk? A volunteer from the audience! Ms Crowe: won't you come down?!

 I have had it planted firmly in my mind that Crowe certainly understands the concept of fear but does not recognize it. Apart from being one of our most reliable drivers, she is also a performer, a street medic, an activist, and most notably... a fire-breather.

 You have your hobbies.

 Point is- she's brave enough to check to see if the person laying on the sidewalk was dead or simply overdosed.

 As it turns out, it was Yeehaw- curled up in the fetal position with his arm covering his face.

 "Hey," Crowe said, poking him with her foot. "Heeeeeeey," she said again but more firmly this time. He moved, blinking in the evening the sun. "Buddy, you can't be laying around on the sidewalk. You gotta move on."

 Again, he slowly got to his feet. At this time, his mother emerged from Hallmark to see him talking with Crowe. A group of four people escorted him into Mom's car while he stopped every few feet to perform another 'namaste' bow.

 You think this is the end. But what have we learned?

 There's always more.

 He came in the next day as if none of this had happened. Conversation was difficult because we both desperately needed to know what the fuck happened and also did not want to trigger something. So we didn't bring it up. He apologized for leaving early: chronic fatigue syndrome, you know.

 Other places would have fired him, but we're a very forgiving workplace. Falling asleep on company time is not, in any way, the worst thing that someone has done at this location while still keeping their job. There was Sugar and her drugs, there was the dude that used the company van to pick up prostitutes (this was before my time), there was the guy that screamed at customers over the phone... it's a long list.

 The primary concern of our employers is whether or not you are a reliable person. If you routinely show up for your job and do the work, you're going to be okay at least for a little bit. And Yeehaw, for all his impeccable fuckery, at least showed up every day.

 We kept this at the back of our minds.

 One day, after the Day We Found Him In a Bush was behind us, one of the designers mentioned that they'd seen where Aggie works now. It was not in HR.

 It was our major competitor.

 Now, Grandpa knows this competitor well. She knows all her competition. It is the nature of a lot of florists to, once they've gotten sick of one place, move on to the next one and spill the beans on their operations there. So Grandpa gets the dirt on everyone.

 This particular shop was very regimented. You don't wing it- you follow the recipe as listed. He's been known to pick discarded flowers up off the floor and tell you exactly how much  money you're costing the company by letting it fall, to the cent. If you get so far as to make casket sprays, he will take your first one and chuck it across the room if it even looks like the stems are in there too loosely.

 This is what I mean about us being an easy place to work.

 Hashtag: #ohfuck.

 People come in and out of your life like that, in little ways. Sometimes you just have to have a little laugh at it. But what I thought was funny was that she felt the need to keep her new employer a secret, as though we would get jealous or tattle. Curious thing.

 Now that the glamour of Yeehaw's arrangements had worn off, we were starting to see more and more odd behaviors that didn't seem completely related to drunkenness.

 "Did you just fart?"

 "No, that was a spider barking."

 Amazing.

 Conversation with him was becoming... difficult. As I sat in the break room with my quick lunch and he drank soup out of a mayonnaise jar, he mentioned his area of study in college.

 "Cognitive Psychology and Hindu Philosophy, huh? That's an interesting combination."

 "Yeah," he said, funneling an amount of squash soup down his throat. "It'll take the rest of the world about 100 years before they catch up to where I am."

 I sat, posed in front of my beef and broccoli which I was eating with a fork, trying to process a logical reason why the rest of the world will be sleeping in a bush in one hundred years. "Uh... huh."

 This was followed by another thirty minutes of silence where I desperately wanted to know what he meant by that but didn't want to be the one to ask him.

 People will tell you that a hippie is generally an ineffective, benign kind of person who chants 'love love, peace peace' in a circle and consider that to be an action for change. But I can say with absolute certainty that I have met some downright egotistical hippies in my life. Those were lessons in bias- which I will have to save for other times.

 Eventually, Grandpa became frustrated with his slowness. We presumed that his speed of choice was a combination of his meticulous nature and his various ailments, but with the Christmas season coming upon us it was becoming much more than a series of symptoms.

 Previous persons who lacked speed were chatty, would play on their phone, or get distracted. But Yeehaw... Yeehaw simply moved like a tranquilized sloth. He slowly picked off each leaf, each thorn, each guard petal and took a minute for each action. He would put in his greens and then contemplate it powerfully for ten minutes before putting any flowers in... slowly.

 In the time spent doing this, I had already made something of a similar size and was starting on the second one.

 It was during one of these times that Grandpa finally said something.

 "Yeehaw, that spray is due in thirty minutes. Is there a way you can go any faster?"

 He looked up from his greens, held one carnation to his face, and said:

 "If you wanted me to move faster, you would pay me better."

 Let me start by saying that we do not get paid well. We don't. Compared to other flower shops in our city, we are probably the lowest-paid. This is something that the company is starting to work on with benefits and raises, but any amount of change takes time. (And its still better paying than when I worked in retail. But that's another book.)

 Yeehaw had been here for exactly one month. I don't know a single workplace that gives you a raise after one month and still lets you sleep on the clock without firing you. He knew what he was getting paid when we hired him.

 So anyways, he slowly grinds down our nerves to a very fine dust- burping, farting, falling asleep on his feet, staring intensely into space, talking about how much he should be making but isn't, bragging about his enlightenment, and generally just slowing down production.

 And then Grandpa had her well-earned vacation week. Blue was in charge for the most part and the week leading up to Halloween is generally pretty slow, so it was a good week for her to have a break with few mishaps.

 Eh... hehe. Yeah.

 Yeehaw... disappeared again. We checked the cooler, we checked the break room, we checked the bushes out back, we checked the sidewalk out front.

 He was in the bathroom.

 So we left it.

 He was still in the bathroom an hour later.

 We had one of the male drivers pound on the door to check on him. When Yeehaw opened the door to the men's room, there was a wad of toilet paper on the floor that he'd been using as a pillow.

 If I may pause here to explain- our men's room is disgusting. I have deep cleaned it several times only for it to become a germ-fest once more in a matter of hours. I don't ask who is peeing all over the floor because, honestly, I have no desire to know what grown man can't aim his willy in the right direction.

 So in order to fall asleep in the bathroom, you have to be willing to sleep in pee. During a pandemic.

 He reappeared in the workroom, put his apron back on, looked around at all of us still working and said: "Wow, it must be really hard to get fired here."

 It was at this point that Blue informed Grandpa.

 "Tell him that he's fired," Grandpa said, clearly 1001% done with this.

 "I'm not going to fire him," Blue said. "I don't think I can fire anyone."

 So she had the driver that found him do it, which was confusing for all of us. He ended up calling Grandpa to clarify. And by 'clarify,' I definitely mean 'beg for his job back.' A synopsis of the 20 minute phone call went like this:

 "What do you mean, I'm fired?"

 "Just that. You're fired. I'm tired of it, Yeehaw. You don't work here anymore."

 "Why?"

 "What do you mean 'why?' You spend all day making a total of three arrangements and then you wander off somewhere and fall asleep."

 "I can't help it if I have chronic fatigue syndrome!"

 "This is a physical job. If your body can't handle an 8-hour shift without falling asleep for two hours, this isn't the job for you. Tell me: where is that fair to the girls that you do 3% of the work while they pick up the slack and you wander off to sleep on the clock?"

 "I simply do not care about them."

 "You don't care that you're shoving all the work on your coworkers, and that's why you're fired."

 "I wish you'd given me a warning."

 "Tell me, Yeehaw: how many employers can you find that will allow you to sleep on the clock for two hours and let you off with a warning?"

 End of discussion.

 Now, you're probably wondering where Aggie comes back into this. Just hold tight, I'll get there.

 The Sunday after he was fired, he came in to pick up his paycheck. I was busy handling a minor emergency where one of our funeral homes forgot to order a spray and I had to make one as fast as I could. We held a brief conversation while I made the spray in a hurry.

 "I'm here to pick up my check," he said while I greened the spray and leafed through the paychecks simultaneously.

 "Here you go," I said, handing it to him without much fanfare. I presumed that he was looking for sympathy or some kind of followup or... I don't know. Sorry you suddenly care about your job?

 "So what are your next plans," one of the designers asked, trying to coax more information out of him while I did the work of three people.

 "It's kind of funny," he said slowly... as he did all things. "I've only ever been fired from flower shops." He paused, thoughtfully. "I think I'm going to go apply to the shop in Bexley that Aggie went to."

[welcometomybraincomics]

Robits, The Epic Train Wreck Dumpsterfire of a Transformers sidestory AU

Because self control is for wimbuses *figet spinners start to spin of 5 different points of my body as I ride a hoverboard into the sunset, but trip half-way down the road because it ran out of battery*

Ok, now onto what this is actually about:

Robits is what I have dubed the information pretaining to the....... entire galaxy of creations I made based off one (1) detail from @zombieheroine​​ ‘s  fanfiction <Uninstall>  (the idea that in the wide wide universe of Autobots and Decepticons fighting eachother, it is entirely possible that there was a group of ‘Bots and ‘Cons who got into a situation where they could benifit from eachother’s help and did, in fact, end up helping eachother and creating a comunity together) and my increadibly spoty knowledge of space. Namely, the fact that solar flares can mess with tech and can do so even when that tech is inside the Earth’s atmosphere.

“Why ‘Robits’?” You may ask. 

“Well,” I say, drawing a smoking pipe out of my waistcoat and pouring bubble solution into it, “You will find that my vast intelect and many creative talents do not at all lead into names in the slightest. I just butchered the word ‘Robot’ and went on with my day.” I lean back in my plastic lawn chair whose legs are begining to melt because the room is on fire and This is Fine. “The main characters are also itty bitty hell spawn, but that is completely and utterly irrelevent.” 

Now, let me lay out the ground work of Robits for you:

A fleet of Autobot ships and a fleet of Decepticon ships get into a battle. In this battle, one side ends up chasing the other into the far reaches of space and find themselves transported even further into the unknown when whoops they were too busy chasing and being chased to realize they’re about to dive head first into a wormhole. Now on the otherside of the wormhole, both sides are lost, hurt, and have a limited supply of fuel and rations. 

At this point, you might think “this is where they see past their differences and work together to save eachother!” But nu uh, honey, I’m not that optimistic. These are prideful warriors who think they’re in the right and literally fought themselves into a diaspora, like hell they’re gonna roll over and help the enemy just because they’re a little lost. Oh no no no, they don’t work together here, this is where they get mad. Both sides blame eachother for the disaster they all got themselves into and now the battle has become heated and personal. If they can defeat the otherside, they can take their enemy’s fuel, rations, and gear and get themselves to safety. Lines are being crossed, ships are being boarded, and blood is being spilt left and right. They’re so focused on eachother, that they have once again lost focus of their surroundings, or perhaps there’s just so much going on that they can’t pay attention to their surroundings. Either way, none of them notice the powerful solar flare coming their way until it’s too late. 

The flare washes over all the ships and turns off everything.  The guns, the engines, and, most importantly, the Cybertorians themselves.

Now, I did a quick search about what kinds of damage solar flares can actually do and found that, in some cases, solar flares can damage hardware (but for the most part is just seems to mess with electronic signals; again, it was a quick search, so I don’t really know much) and that’s enough for bogus fictional drama, so now 

And the real fun starts

Upon awakening, neither side knows there are even sides to be had. All they see around them are dead bots and lots and lots of damage. No one knows who they are, who they are supposed to be, or who they used to be. They don’t know about Autobots, Decepticons, or even Cybertron. All they see is hurt bots around them and all they really know is that they should probably get to safety. 

They’ve basically have a hard reset. Everyone knows the basics like language and how to walk, but most cultivated knowledge has been lost to the void. Some bots remember things like basic medical care, how to use a weapon, and the fact that professions and oragizational systems exist, but most things are more muscle memory and relfex than anything else. Cynicism and suspicion are learned traits, but they still have their instincts and as social creatures, it is not so much of a stretch for bots to start helping eachother to safe places and patching each other up. The more functional bots there are, the more knowledge they can consolidate, and maybe together they can figure out what’s happening.

News flash! They don’t. 

They can tell that they were fighting... someone. Maybe eachother maybe someone else, they can’t be sure. There are holes in the ship leading out to space that their attackers could have easily escaped through while they were all incapacitated and they can’t think of a reason they would have to fight one another. One bot suggests that it might have to do with the red and purple badges they wear, but the idea is shot down pretty quickly. Fighting to death for a badge would be increadibly stupid, they reason, besides, they can’t find any critera for who has what badge. There’s a smattering of frame types on both sides and both have weapons that are similar enough. In the end, the matter is dropped. They have more important things to worry about than what whoever they used to be was fighting for. Right now, they need to find shelter, fuel, and heal.

They try to access the databases of their ships to... well, do anything really. They’re not sure where they are and knowledge on how to fly the ships is spread between approximately 25 bots who can’t agree on anything exept the fact that starting the ships has absolutely nothing to do with shooting the engines with a blaster, as was so helpfully suggested by a bot who, for this very reason, becomes known as Mishap and is never ever given a leading role of any kind because his planning abilities are atrocious. He’s a wonderful shot and does great in literally any working role, but if he is given control of literally anything without supervision, it will explode.

They get things working eventually, and wow their systems are absolutely trashed. Navigation is scrambled and half of all the files are scrambled into uninteligable messes. Some lucky bots have files that are still intact, but, as one might expect of a military, they don’t actually have a lot of personal information that would be important to a bunch of bots who don’t remember anything at all. Some bots get their names back through this, but most don’t.

Eventually they do find something that’s useful for getting the ship started and 5 bots shout “I told you so!” at the same time. Absolutely none of them were right.

So, they get the ships started and eventually find a place to settle and sources of fuel scattered about a small system of planets. Of course, being strange robot creatures new to the region, the natives take an interest in them. And by take an interest, I mean they attack and kidnap them out of fear, curiocity, and greed. The bots of course, retaliate and set up safe points or Stations where bots can rest and stay protected. These Stations eventually become settlements.

The Stations are where most of the naratives in the Robits universe takes place because I’m a sucker for world building and comming up with stuff for these clueless bots to deal with and do is fun and hilarious. 

Extra fun stuff is added based on headcannons and fannon info from various parts of the transformers fandom such as: Younglings, hardlining, and scraplets are like vicious roaches in that you thought they were gone, but psych! there was another one hiding in the floor boards and anywhere Cybertronians go, there is a possibility of there also being scraplets. Except everything that normally has a sexual context absolutely does not because I am asexual and it makes it increadibly funny for when these isolated dumbasses come back in contact with the rest of cybertronian society. “Whatever do you mean this intimate action has a sexual context? It’s simply practical and scientifically intreguing!” Because most intimate acts do have some sort of connection to science since they usually come about due to a biological or psychological need.

There are 7 Stations, each with a different focus and quirk.

[mastermegatron]

You're a fuckin' train wreck. There's entire mountains of unresolved issues that ya need to get a handle on, but beyond that- you're interesting to talk to, and got a sharp mouth and a sharper wit. I enjoy your company, even when you're bein' a right spike. I really wanna see good things happen to ya. Wanna see you be happy for once.

Don't really fuckin matter who I am, or where I am. Take care of yourself, gobstopper.

Send my muse an anonymous note with your muse’s feelings towards them. My muse has to guess whom the note is from.

He taps his digits on the arm his throne, reading the note that been sent to him and trying to pinpoint how he feels about this.

Feelings, such tricky things.

Deadlock didn’t know him before his defeat. When he was content to enslave Unicron’s creations for their power; when he tried to subdue Unicron himself; when he ultimately won and tried to use the power of god to collapse the entirety of the multiverse, to recreate it in his image. 

That he sits in a dimension of fire bitching about the trivialities of life is sorely underwhelming of him. That he makes an attempt to sit alone inside himself, to sort out repressed trauma - whatever; he’ll settle for train wreck and this metaphysical mountain range formed by the upheaval and tearing of his brand of psychosis. It’s smaller than the enormity of his monstrosity before; and perhaps small could be synonymous with better, improved, recovering.

‘Stupid, conniving swordsmech.’

Megatron smirks.

Perhaps he should ask him precisely what his definition of happiness is.