Forced femme cartoons

In 2007, Jim Samples, then executive vp and general manager of Cartoon Network, abruptly resigned following the Boston bomb scare scandal related to the Aqua Teen Hunger Force movie. A few months later, Turner Broadcasting named Stuart Snyder president and COO of Animation, Young Adults, and Kids Media. The newly created position included oversight of Cartoon Network, Adult Swim, and Boomerang.
Snyder's reign at CN would last from 2007-2014, and among Cartoon Network fans, his tenure at the channel is seen as very much a mixed bag. On the one hand, he green lit some of the network's most innovative and boundary pushing shows in its history. On the other, he was infamous for moving the network towards reality TV. But for all his faults, I think Stuart Snyder mostly had the right idea for Cartoon Network, and was able to keep it successful in the face of a changing tv environment.
To understand what Snyder was trying to do for CN, you have to understand the kids tv landscape at the time. Nickelodeon and Disney Channel were seeing incredible success with live-action tween sitcoms and movies geared towards 9 to 11 year old girls with shows like iCarly, Hannah Montana, Naked Brothers Band, and High School Musical. These cash-cow franchises dominated much of the children's entertainment zightgiest in the late 2000s, and Cartoon Network needed a way to stay relevant in a kids tv environment dominated by tween girls. Snyder's solution? Target their older brothers.
Rather than compete with Nick and Disney directly, CN instead opted to court slightly older, mostly male viewers. Both with edgier comedies like The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack and Total Drama Island, as well as darker action-adventure shows like Star Wars: The Clone Wars and Ben 10 Alien Force. The goal was to draw in more 12-14 year old kids, while still appealing to its core 6-11 year old audience, knowing that kids want to watch what the older kids are watching. And on the animated side, this worked. Total Drama and Star Wars were among the network's highest rated shows, and it showed that Snyder's era of CN was off to a decent start.
Where it didn't work however, was with the controversial decision to move into live-action. Yes, we can't talk about Stuart Snyder's Cartoon Network, without talking about the real-life elephant in the room known as CN Real. Now in my opinion. Live-Action shows on Cartoon Network... isn't necessarily a bad idea (Put your pitch forks down and listen). There is a way to make it work, just look at channel-mate Adult Swim, who managed to make live-action work for them by making those shows as bizarre and nonsensical as their animated stuff.
In the same way, Cartoon Network could've made a decent foray into live-action if the shows were compatible with the animated lineup. Plus, if Snyder wanted to appeal to the young teen audience, then having live-action was kind of a necessity. Problem is, if Snyder was going to start putting live-action on Cartoon Network... Reality TV was by far the WORST possible genre he could've chosen to start with. Because most of the CN Real shows were just watered down kids' versions of other reality shows. Kids don't watch CN to see more of the same shit they could get on other channels. Kids always turned to Cartoon Network to get away from reality, to see things that couldn't be done in real life. So yeah, it's no wonder CN Real failed.
Thing is, Cartoon Network a few, much better live-action shows that aired after that disaster such as Unnatural History and Tower Prep, and it makes me wonder, why didn't Snyder start with these shows? They weren't cartoons, but they were fantastical and special-effects heavy enough that they fit in with the animated lineup just fine. But by that point, the damage of CN Real had already been done, and people were disgusted with the idea of any live-action show on Cartoon Network. Snyder of course, got the memo, and refocused the channel back towards edgy animation in 2010, with the one-two punch of Adventure Time and Regular Show.
I think Stuart Snyder had the right ideas with Cartoon Network. Broadening out to an elusive audience that wasn't being served by Nick or Disney, focusing on edgier programing, and trying to create a diverse range of shows. I think he just really bungled the execution on some of these plans. For better or worse, Stuart Snyder's regime at Cartoon Network was kind of a wild ride.

This is a sci-fi fantasy world with a focus on combat and bonds. Separated into eras from an early alternate earth to the galactic community.
Here are the 4 systems Magic: It is different for each person and lacks heredity. Most people have a couple of magic abilities that can range from being able to rotate any object 90 degrees at a time, to a charging punch that you wind up your fist for like a cartoon, to controlling glass or wind. Most people have little to no abilities that are useful for combat.
Real Strength: Getting shredded is also an option with a very high upper limit on strength. There was a human named Atlas who threw a large alien land craft at another enemy craft.
Fractal energy. You touch this strange black fuzzy energy, and it becomes an item that you can use, and only you can use. Some of these "weapons" are activators for abilities, armor, keys that summon items, and shifting items. It is a reflection of the soul and its flaws; its flaws, called cracks. These are the downsides to the items. There is a space pirate whose mirror weapon gives him ultimate freedom as he desires. It give him a toon-force form. But due to his carelessness, he can’t remember what he is doing while using it. ( Fractal energy is Introduced later in the story.)
Technology. Guns, Exo and cybernetic enhancements, robots, Exo-suits, Mechas, and ships are all technology. Mortals strive to outdo the gifts given to them by the gods and skip all the hard work of training.

i just discovered this reddit and i have a ton of weird ass dreams lmao but heres mine this morning:
it was like a cartoon episode of among us except the astronaut dudes already know who the monster is and it was fcking spongebob squarepants
and it was so gorey like there are bits where the screen flashes an image of a dead astronaut guy with his entrails all over the place and spongebob can be seen looking so innocent and creepy holding a spatula with organs on it and then he suddenly disappeared
and the art style was of amongus except i could see the fricking intestines and kidney and brains
i was so creeped out i forced myself to wake up holy fvck
i dont even play amongus (but i do see the memes alot) idk how it got into my head

I used to make videos. Not to a large following, just little interesting clips about life in a small town and the various people who live there. It wasn’t just content for the sake of content, it was a record to show what life was like in the 2020’s for the folks of Tomskog, Minnesota.
I’d done a couple of videos already. One was about the old couple running the corner pub, one was about a landlord, and another was about the principal of the local high school (and their apparent pool troubles). Long story.
I was doing a shorter video about a woman named Marla. She was a beekeeper who worked with moving intrusive hives. This kind of content gets a lot of views, so I figured I’d do a more compact but better edited video this time around. I’d done my research, prepped my gear, and was rearing to go.

I met Marla on a Thursday morning in late May. We took her pickup, had a gas station sandwich for breakfast, and stopped for a quick coffee. I talked to her a bit about her job, her life, and her aspirations. Small town stuff. She was the kind of woman who was happy as long as she could keep up with her payments and have a bit left over for a Netflix subscription. Wholesome.
She drove me out to the site of the day, talking to the camera as we went. We were turning further and further off the paved roads as the suspension struggled against weeds, rock, and gravel.
“There’s a hive near a walking trail,” Marla explained. “A couple of folks called in about their dogs getting scared. It should be fine, but we’re gonna gear up just in case they’re mistaken.”
“You expect us to get stung a lot?” I asked.
“Not really,” she smiled. “Not if you know what you’re doing. But there’ve been times when folks have called in about a hive and it turned out to be paper wasps.”
“Not as pleasant as honeybees.”
“No,” she laughed. “No, they really aren’t”.

We passed through a section of trees that covered both sides of the road; the branches hanging low enough to scrape the hood of the car. Emerging on the other side, a field opened up to our right. A large, wide-open field, covered from end to end in blue sunflowers; a local variety that is, apparently, sort of rare. I asked Marla about them.
“The blues? Yeah, they were introduced as a sort of gimmick back in the… 1930’s, I think? 1940’s maybe? They’re actually quite invasive. I’m surprised there aren’t more of them around.”
“But bees can make honey on them?”
“I guess,” she nodded. “They’re just sunflowers.”
“Have you tried it? Is it blue?”
“Can’t say that I have,” she laughed. “But I’m sure it’s fine. Ordinary sunflower honey is fantastic. Kinda earthy.”

We got out and suited up. It felt like putting on a tent. Marla shared some interesting bee factoids that I didn’t manage to catch on camera, but I made a mental note to ask her to repeat it later. Of course, I wouldn’t. I’m kinda forgetful.
I hadn’t seen a single bee yet, but Marla was already heading out into the field. The sunflowers reached about waist-high, and there was this strange, almost chemical smell in the air. Sort of a mix of chlorine and ammonia. As we got further out, Marla pointed out a couple of flowers to me.
“Right there,” she said. “Get a clip.”
I zoomed in, spotting two bees chilling on a blue sunflower petal. They were just sort of sitting there. They had a slightly more reddish tint to them than I expected. Marla didn’t seem to mind, or notice.

It didn’t take long before we got to the hive. I immediately started filming as we approached. The buzzing got louder as bees started to poke and prod at my defenses, curiously checking for gaps in my gloves and neck. Thankfully, Marla had helped me secure it. Still, the buzzing kinda gave me the creeps. Never been a fan of bugs.
“Yeah, alright,” Marla laughed. “No wonder there are bees. Someone set this up.”
It was a man-made hive, framed with sheets of mahogany. A series of wooden squares with hollow cork pipes lining the inside. The bees had really taken to it, transforming it into a sturdy hive.
“We usually call these bee hotels,” Marla said. “Some kind-hearted local set it up, but as this isn’t private property we have to take complaints into account. I’m gonna make sure we move it to a better location with more nutrition for our free-bee friends here, where they won’t spook any dog-walkers. And of course, we’re keeping the hive. Someone put a lot of thought into this.”

I got a nice video out of it. How she unsecured the hive, moved the sections one by one, and pointed to interesting pieces for the camera. She found the queen and scooped her up in a separate container. Marla stopped for a moment though; apparently, the queen was larger than she’d anticipated. I didn’t really have a frame of reference, so I had to take her word for it.
We wrapped the hive up under a tarp on the pickup and made our way back to Marla’s property. I was afraid all the bumps in the road would shake the bees loose, but they seemed perfectly content. I guess it helped that Marla was a very calm driver, despite some curious bees making their way inside the cabin. We still had the suits on, luckily.
There was a cute hand-painted sign of a bee as we entered Marla’s land. When you live in the middle of nowhere, most folks can get away with owning more land than they need; especially if they don’t mind having spotty internet or a fair drive to the nearest supermarket. One look at Marla showed that she didn’t mind either of these things.

We took some time offloading the hive, finding a good spot on the eastern side of her property. There were plenty of wildflowers for the critters to feast on, and Marla seemed confident in her choice. There wasn’t much more to it; we set it up, captured a couple of finishing thoughts, and called it a day.
As I packed up my gear and took off my suit, I got a moment to speak with Marla without the camera. She was excited to have a new hive, but there was something about her expression that seemed a bit… off.
“I’d love to try some of their honey,” I said. “I think it’d make a great end to the video.”
“Yeah, I’ll keep in touch,” she nodded.
There was an oppressive silence as she stared into the distance. I tilted my head, trying to catch her attention.
“You alright there?” I asked.
“Yeah,” she nodded. “I, uh… I’m just anxious. New responsibilities, you know?”
“Is there a problem?”
She bit down on her lip, squinting.
“Maybe.”

A couple of days later, I started getting updates. Marla was having some trouble with the hive. It was more aggressive than she’d previously thought, and a lot of the bees had been dying off at alarming rates.
“It happens when you move them sometimes,” she sighed. “It’s rare, but it happens. They can have trouble adapting.”
She managed to get a little honey, but she wasn’t too happy about it. Apparently, it wasn’t as sweet and sugary as she thought it’d be. There was just something off about it, texture-wise. She was gonna make me a little bottle of it either way, for the video, but she advised against eating it.

Returning to my day job, I was looking forward to hearing more from Marla. Out of all the people I’d worked with, she’d been the most eager to contribute to my channel. We kept in touch over the week, discussing future collaborations and other ways we could make content. She suggested making a couple of DIY videos to showcase some neat tricks for would-be hobby apiarists.
The following weekend, we met up again. Another early morning, this time with a light drizzle spattering against the hood of her pickup. The moment she came around, I could tell something had happened. She had these bright red spots on her arms, and she was a lot less talkative than usual. Before I got the chance to talk to her about it, she explained.
“Got swarmed yesterday,” she said. “Never happened before.”
“Those are all stings?”
“That’s just the thing,” she scoffed. “It isn’t. They’re bites.”
“I didn’t think honeybees bit people.”
“They don’t.”
We just looked at one another for a moment. Her marks were pretty nasty, some of them swollen enough to burst. The conclusion was obvious; these weren’t ordinary honeybees.

We made our way back out to the field where we’d found them. I did a little filming, but Marla was self-conscious about her arms. She was scared that it might dissuade people from working with bees, and she kept repeating how it was “her fault” for not handling them correctly. She said it so many times I couldn’t help but to feel she was trying to convince herself rather than me, or an audience.
We made our way out into the field. Marla flipped open a pocketknife and bent down to check on the flowers. Cutting one off at the stem, she examined it for a moment. She held it up for me to see for myself. I looked it over but couldn’t see anything strange – apart from the obvious blue color.
“You gotta touch it,” she said. “Check it.”
So I did. As soon as I touched it, a few petals came loose. The flower was clearly dead and dry.

Checking out a couple more, we came to a startling realization. The entire field was, in fact, completely dead. Bone dry of pollen and sustenance. And, according to Marla, it must’ve been dead for months. I didn’t really understand why that was such a big deal.
“Because,” Marla explained. “The hive flourished out here, in the middle of the field. If they couldn’t survive here, they would’ve migrated, but they didn’t. So what the hell have they been eating?”
“Whatever it was, it’s what must’ve made the honey taste weird.”
“Not just taste,” Marla said, shaking her head. “The smell is the worst. Like stale bacteria and methane.”

Things started to fall into place. Whatever they had been eating out here in the field wasn’t available at Marla’s place; hence why they had been dying and getting more aggressive. Getting back to the pickup, Marla was deep in her own thoughts, drumming her fingers on the dashboard. She couldn’t figure it out. I tried to cheer her up with a pat on her shoulder, which caused her to flinch a little. I probably poked a bitemark.
“Sorry,” I said. “But you know, maybe that’s why they swarmed you.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, maybe they tried to eat you up,” I chuckled, pointing to her arms.
“Bees don’t do that,” said Marla, her face stern.
“I know,” I nodded. “Sorry, bad joke.”
But I could tell I’d planted something in Marla’s thoughts. Something that worried her.

As we went back to her property, she explained that there was indeed a kind of bee that was carnivorous. There was a type of bee called the ‘vulture bee’ that fed exclusively on meat. Mostly carrion though; they weren’t active hunters. They couldn’t be, as they were stingless.
“You think these might be vulture bees then?” I asked.
“They live south of the border,” she explained. “Can’t imagine them just, uh… popping up. And even so, they wouldn’t be this aggressive.”
“Would explain the honey though.”
Marla’s face went pale. Had she been eating meat honey?

I decided to hold off on posting my video. This was turning into something more interesting, and I wanted to see it through. I filmed a couple of shots where Marla got to explain the intricacies of vulture bees. She did it in the frame of an interesting fact rather than a suspicion, but I could tell something had changed. She wasn’t as certain anymore, and a bit of eagerness had run out of her. There was a tangible worry there.
As we went out back to check out the hive, Marla stopped. Her eyes widened.
“Turn off the camera,” she hissed.
Three dead pigeons; covered in bees.

From that point on, I was fully invested. This was something neither of us had seen before; unfamiliar ground. It didn’t take long for Marla to confirm that the honey she’d harvested did, indeed, contain a meat protein. After that, it was just a matter of observation.
Yes, the bees ate flesh. They bit instead of stung. But they weren’t vulture bees.
These were larger, more aggressive, and had a wider abdomen. Their mandibles were longer, and they had a slightly reddish tint to them. It was difficult to tell whether the color was a result of mutation or blood. The dead pigeons were stripped to the sinew in surprisingly little time.
Marla didn’t know what to do. She’d been working with preserving bees since she was a teenager, and this whole situation was testing her. She didn’t want to just kill the hive, but she couldn’t let them spread either. These could be highly invasive.

But she took too long to decide. Just a couple of days later, two of the other hives on her property had been completely decimated. The red bees had killed and devoured all of them; leaving only empty chambers and hollow carapaces behind. When Marla facetimed me about it, she couldn’t hold back the tears.
By now, I considered myself a friend of hers. We’d talked a lot and got along really well, and it wasn’t just about content anymore. I didn’t want to see her like that; she deserved better. I offered to drop by and brainstorm a bit. I figured she needed the company. She’d done at least two dozen of these bee rescues, and the one time someone came to cheer her on it all went to hell. That had to suck.

So I dropped by one day after work. The sun was setting. Dark clouds on the horizon.
I noticed them the moment I stepped out of my car. A handful of red bees climbed the white picket fence outside Marla’s house. A few others were clustered in a particular spot near the edge of the house; no doubt feasting on a small bird or a rodent. I went up to the door and rung the bell, ducking from a couple of curious bees trying to make themselves comfortable in my rough post-work hairdo.
Marla invited me into her kitchen, offering me homemade lemonade. She had these custom-made coasters with cartoon bees on them, along with the logo for her rescue. I could tell she’d taken a couple of sudden precautions. There were tape lining the edges of the windows, as well as a plastic sheet covering the ventilation duct. No wonder the air felt stale.
“No one knows what to do,” she sighed. “I called the Wyatt brothers, South Bound Api… they can’t even believe it. They actually don’t believe that I have what I say I have.”
“And what is that? What is it you have?”
She sighed, scratching her eyebrows. A kind of nervous tic.
“There’s no name, but… I mean, I know what they do. I know now. They’re like the vulture bees, but…”
She threw her arms up in surrender. I could tell she was tired. One of her eyes drooped a little lower than the other. Might’ve been from a bite too.

Marla spent the better part of an hour showing me websites, witnesses to similar bees, drawings, and descriptions. She talked about the application of pesticides, mutations, climate change, GMOs, and microplastics. Hell, at one point, she was bringing up 5G towers as a possible culprit. She was all over the place, and I could tell her heart wasn’t in it. It was all just desperation; grasping at straws.
After a couple of hours, well into the dark of the evening, we’d gone from homemade lemonade to lukewarm, well-nursed beers. We’d run out of ideas and topics. Instead, we just stood by the kitchen window, watching the red bees crawl across the glass. Marla put down her bottle; this time without using one of her cartoon bee coasters.
“Check this out,” she said.
She placed her hand on the window, and the bees outside immediately swarmed to it. Within seconds, there was a cluster of at least 40 crowding around her hand, on the other side of the glass.
“Give them a minute,” she continued. “It’s kinda crazy.”

They started to move in a pattern. A sort of pulse, moving counter-clockwise from a perfect circle into a four-armed spiral. Their wings pattered in unison; a buzzing noise that scratched against the windowpane.
“I can’t explain that,” she said. “I can explain following my hand, or killing other hives, but that?”
She shook her head, not looking away.
“I can’t explain that.”

It got a little bit too late, and I’d had a couple of beers too many, so I decided to crash on her couch. I wrapped myself in a blanket and pulled a pillow up to my ear, so I wouldn’t have to hear the buzzing outside. It wasn’t loud, but it was such a distinct sound that I couldn’t un-hear it. Marla didn’t seem to share the same issue though, she just walked into her room and that was that. Out like a light.
I had an uneasy sleep, falling in and out of surface-level dreams. I remember forcing my eyes open - just to see if I could. I was uncomfortable, and I couldn’t stop hearing that buzzing noise. Even when things were quiet, I kept imagining myself hearing it. I’d see little black spots on the windows as they landed and disappeared, looking for a way in.
Somewhere in the early morning hours, I was finally out cold.

I didn’t notice those first few sounds. How the tapping against the window got louder. How the patterns got bigger and clearer. I was finally asleep, and it was already too late when I woke up.
I was lying on my side as I popped open a single eye, only to see a red bee on my hand calmly brushing itself clean. I didn’t notice the droning noise at first, until I realized the background noise of the room was different. Looking beyond that first red bee, towards the window, I realized something.
The pattern of bees was on the inside of the window.
There were hundreds of bees already inside the room.
But the sound was closer than that. It was all around me, and somewhere in the background, I could hear a breeze. Was the front door open?

I tried to stay completely still, but I could feel something in my chest tightening. I wanted to brush the bee off, but I couldn’t bring myself to move. Something was holding me back, keeping me from just waving my arms around and getting out. There was something more to this.
Seconds later, there was a noise. A rising murmur, like a moving mass. Best way I can describe it is a vibrating burlap bag followed by meaty footsteps. Not loud, but not quiet either. Someone didn’t care too much about waking me.
If there was ever a time to get up, to run, or to fight – that was it. But all I did was lie there, staring at that one red bee on my hand, listening to something slowly approach from behind. It’s as if I knew how badly outmatched I really was.

I could feel something shift as the side of the couch was grabbed. Creaking noises as fingers dug into old leather.
Snapping sounds. Sinew and muscle stretching and realigning under a thin layer of skin. Forced breathing and hissing descending on me from above. Little sniffs – then silence. I held my breath.
“…y o u t o o k m y h i v e.”
Less of a voice, and more of a collision of wings and carapaces. A shaped buzzing. The red bee on my hand looked straight into my eyes. Not a single twitch. Nothing.
“I didn’t,” I whispered under my breath, trying not to move my mouth. “I-I… I didn’t.”

There was a pause. A sudden shift as someone stepped back. A little moving mass came loose, dropping on top of my blanket. A handful of red bees, carefully spreading out to investigate me. Behind me, footsteps – leading into Marla’s bedroom. I could hear her deep breaths from here.
I stayed completely still. I was unharmed. I’d be fine - I just had to wait. Every nerve in my body felt like it was put through a white fire – still, controlled, and desperate to explode into action. As little creatures made their way across me, carefully looking me over, the pores on my skin were screaming at me to move, itch, and shudder. I could feel the hairs on my neck rise; only to be tugged on by eager mandibles.
Then, a scream.

Marla screamed. A bloody, mind-piercing, screech. The kind of scream that you just know means pain. Hearing it was like feeling a physical push, and I couldn’t hold myself from acting any longer.
I rolled off the couch, trying to shake the bees off. The cluster on the window exploded into a disorganized attack, swarming every piece of me, and the room, and the adjoining kitchen. They were inside my clothes, in my hair, in my eyebrows, and they were going to eat their fair share. Every bite was white-hot fire, followed by a sudden stinging cold.
I ran outside. I remember taking off my clothes, waving my shirt around. Shoeless and burned by bites, I ran from her house; making as much space between me and the hive as possible.

There was this blur of buzzing, biting, flailing, and screaming. Some of it mine, some if it Marla’s, in the distance. Little red spots crawling across my waving shirt. I threw myself on the ground, rolling in the grass. I smacked my body with the palm of my hand over and over, ensuring me that the little tickle I felt wasn’t another one of them.
Then I just lay there, panting in the grass. They were gone. A single red bee on the palm of my hand remained, carefully brushing itself, before casually flying off.
I could feel the soothing morning dew on my cheek. I slowly sat back up, leaning against a tree. I could see Marla’s house in the distance as I gasped for air. There was a heaviness to my lungs, like I couldn’t completely fill them.

A man stepped out. Or at least the shape of a man, it was hard to tell at that distance. It was as if he wasn’t completely solid; his silhouette kept shifting even as he stood still. He stopped in the doorway, looked me way, and just sort of… dissolved.

I burst into action.
My phone was still inside, but I had a backup in my car. I wrestled it out of the glove compartment, staining the driver’s seat with spots of blood. My fingertips were bleeding, making it hard to call emergency services. My cheek and tongue were swollen, making it even harder to speak.
I made my way back inside as I frantically explained what’d happened. What would you even call it? An assault? Marla wasn’t in her bedroom, but there was plenty of blood. There was a sound further in. Her shower was running.
She’d made it to her bathroom and dropped into her tub. She’d turned on the water, hoping to keep them off. The end result was her ending up swollen and unconscious in the bathtub; dead bees bobbing in the water around her. Some still twitching.
It was horrifying. She was bitten, and it wasn’t just from bees. There were miscolored marks from all kinds of stings, coloring her skin both a burning red, a pale white, and a faint green. Her neck was almost as thick as her head.
But she was alive.

Emergency services arrived. They managed to keep her alive, but she had to be put on a ventilator. They claimed she’d had a massive allergic reaction. They said something similar about me; completely ignoring the eyewitness account of a strange intruder. It didn’t help that neither me or Marla could say the slightest comprehensive thing about their appearance or identity.

It took some time, but I recovered. Marla too. By the time she got back home, not a single hive was left. Every single one had been butchered and devoured. And the red bees, well, they were just gone – along with their handmade hive.
Not too long ago, I talked to a friend-of-a-friend who worked at the Sheriff’s office. I told them where we’d found that first hive. He asked me at least three times if I was sure that that was the specific spot. Of course I was. I even had a clip of it.
Turns out, that place had been the discovery site of at least half a dozen unidentified bodies a couple of years ago.
Which, in turn, made me wonder. A couple of wanderers in the area had spoken about finding dead animals on the trail, only for them to be gone the next morning. It wouldn’t surprise me if that field was littered with bones. But with the way these things work, there is no telling what else might’ve gone missing along that trail.

That conversation is what spurred me to write this all down. Marla and I will never publish that video, and for all intents and purposes, neither of us will bring it up. This never happened. This couldn’t be real. We can’t move on with our lives if we keep talking about it, because there is nothing we can say that will make it alright.
Instead, she has new hives. She has a new smile.
And for a while, I think we can lie to ourselves just enough to make it.

So with M. Bison apparently joining the ranks of the Fight Hobos for a while, I thought it might be a good time to reflect on that rare trope where a villain gets so severely defeated by the hero that it seems impossible they could ever be a threat again, and then rather than just turning up later the story takes the time to show their rise back to power. It lets even complete scumbags become sympathetic underdogs, at least until the murders start up again.
My personal favorite is from the two-season 90's Iron Man cartoon. Season one was a very stock adventure-of-the-week series with Iron Man and Force Works (remember Force Works? No you don't, you liar) battling the Mandarin, Fin Fang Foom and some jobbers. Season two, on the other hand, amped things up immediately by having the Mandarin betrayed by Fin Fang Foom, decisively defeated and seemingly killed in a massive explosion, but at the cost of all of Tony's friends getting fed up with his garbage and leaving him.
As Tony grappled with being a solo act, mending his relationships and various other problems, we learned in little end-of-episode vignettes that the Mandarin was alive, but powerless and reduced to laboring in some sort of prison camp. As the season went on, he broke out, traveled the world and slowly regathered his rings, gradually restoring his power in time for a big series finale battle. The whole arc showed that the Mandarin was not a joke, but a cunning and vicious villain even without his powers.

Hey, this might sound silly, but I’m trying to remember the name of a sci-fi book written by a trans woman about a young trans woman character is a dystopian future who breaks into a force femme like camp or operation to try to get gender affirming healthcare. Whenever I try to Google it I just get porn results, but the book I am thinking of was like an actual sci-fi book thinking about trans fantasies and how trans women are sexualized. Does anyone have any idea what I’m trying to remember? Thanks!

Stand name: my ordinary life(living tombstones)
Ability: the stand is a realm where imagination and fantasy into reality that the user can only enter and exit on command via the use of drawing a circle on any surface with their fingure or anything that can be used to be written. In this dimension, anything the user imagines becomes reality so anything that is created or brought in this dimension can be created, destroyed, altered or worse, except for the user himself which he is still quite human and killable. The user can also create life and object from fiction(but only if he knows how it works in detail and from what story, if life is created they will live in the dimension until it dies, then it can't be created again once it dies in the real world not it can't be revived again. Once the user is in the real world he can bring out anything he has created in the dimension through his pockets like a cartoon character(including from nature's pocket) and it has to be something the user has already thought of or created in the dimension prior to the situation.
The user can't bring people into the dimension forcefully(he can only do that with objects, plants or some animals that aren't related to humans), he has to trick them into entering on their own. He can also be defeated in the dimension by his intrusive thoughts or just with a good plan to weaponize things inside. He has a physical manifestation in the real world, but it can only be manifested for a last resort on the count that it is the manifestation of the darkest depths of the user's imagination and his mind. It could kill the user if its out long enough, but also kill anyone in his range.
Also, the user can only use the dimension for 48 hours and after that he can't use it for 24 hours because he needs time to be in the real world.
Stats:
Strength: null
Speed: null
Range: A
Precision: null
Durability: null
Potential: A
What are your thoughts on my stand?

[First] - [Prev] - [Next]
Memory Transcription Subject: Maxwell Teller, Human Exchange Program Member
Date: [Standardized Human Time] August 23, 2136
“So, how did you end up hurting your stomach?” I winced as nurse Rosie gently pressed against my stomach, examining it for injuries. Rosie frowned sympathetically at my reaction and moved and prodded a different area, this one not hurting nearly as much. She nodded knowingly, and I couldn’t help but wonder what she was actually learning from this outside of the fact that my stomach, indeed, hurt.
As for the question, I hesitated a bit to answer. What would happen if I told her my exchange partner had done this? Would I be kicked off the station? Would he? Would we be jailed for disturbing the program? My brain scrambled to think of a lie, as in my sleep-deprived state I hadn’t even thought to prepare one, but nothing was coming to mind.
“My exchange partner and I got into a bit of a fight,” I finally said, begrudgingly confessing the truth. “Well, ‘fight’ might be a bit generous, he just sorta kicked me in the stomach.” Rosie hissed softly through her teeth and nodded, moving to the other side of my body and gently probing my abdomen to see if I responded to it.
“Yep, that’ll certainly do it. Did you hurt him?” I shook my head. “At all?” I continued shaking my head. “Well, that’s good. When did this happen?”
“Just under 36 hours ago, I don’t know the exact time.” She paused, her hands frozen where they were on my abdomen. She seemed to be thinking through something in her head, doing some mental calculus. After a couple seconds, she frowned.
“That would have been within the first couple minutes of the program starting,” she said with concern. I nodded in response. “What could you have done in a couple minutes that would’ve prompted a kicking? Was it like that incident with Sharnet?”
“Who?”
“I just mean was it just a ‘prey fear response’ kind of thing?” I hummed a moment in thought as she went back to prodding. That was a… sort of accurate explanation. It certainly was a response, and he was afraid. However… “Dara was explaining the whole venlil fear situation to me the other day.” Her soft voice once more knocked me out of my thoughts as she gestured over to a fellow nurse, this one a venlil, who was currently examining a venlil patient on the opposite side of the hall. “She says they don’t have a ‘fight’ fear response like we do, just a ‘flight’ one, but that doesn’t seem right to me.” I scoffed without even thinking about it, and Rosie raised an eyebrow in response.
“I’d certainly say. Marek’s got this whole ‘dominance’ thing going on. Kicking, pinning me down, whole bunch of ‘alpha’ bullshit.” I chuckled, but Rosie apparently did not find this situation amusing. She stepped back, her examination of my stomach completed as she looked me in the eyes with a grimace.
“Maxwell… is… is Marek regularly hurting you?” Her voice was gentle, tinged with concern. If I didn’t know better, I’d believe she almost actually cared about me and wasn’t just fulfilling the obligations of a job. Her eyes, meanwhile, were a strange combination of gentle but firm.
“No,” I shook my head. “It was just the kick that really hurt. The rest of it’s just been verbal. Y’know, ‘all predators are monsters’, ‘know your place’, kinda stuff. Asserting dominance, that kinda thing. Standard venlil behavior.” Rosie shook her head fervently.
“I cannot stress enough that this isn’t standard Venlil behavior. A bit of fear and suspicion is natural for the venlil, but this endless barrage of dominance displays and belittling? Maxwell, this sounds… really toxic. You should report him!” I felt chills run down my spine at those words. I’d lowered my guard too much, been too honest.
“No!” I responded, panicking and shouting the words. Rosie jumped back, startled, and I instantly felt a twinge of regret. “Sorry, sorry, didn’t mean to… no, it’s just… no, I can’t do that. I’d be sent home if that happened.” Rosie nodded.
“Probably, but you make that sound worse than it is. You’re not being “sent home”, you’re being returned to a safer place.” I shook my head.
“Believe me, that isn’t true. I don’t exactly have-” I stopped. This nurse didn’t need to know that I would almost certainly be homeless if I went back. She didn’t need to know that I’d be proving him right. She didn’t need to know just how much of a fuckup I am. “Anyway, no. There’s nothing for me back there. Besides, trust me when I say that I deserve this. Honestly it’s kind of overdue. It’s fine, really! Toxic or no, anything’s better than nothing!” Her face fell almost immediately, a twisted mask of compassion and sorrow.
Don’t pretend like you actually give a shit what happens to me. I could die tomorrow and you’d be better for it.
“That’s… not true… I can’t force you to leave, unless you believe Marek is a threat to the life or safety of himself or the people onboard. Tragically, a simple, single kick doesn’t really fall under ‘mandatory reporting’, so I need your permission to report it… please give me permission.” I shook my head.
“Nurse, really, it’s fine. I think we’re doing better anyway, it was really at its worst at the beginning. Now that I’ve told him that he can be in charge, and I won’t challenge his dominance, he’s chilled out a bit more.” Rosie almost winced at those words.
“Maxwell… alright, well… ultimately, the choice is yours I suppose. I can’t make you do anything. If you need someone to talk to… you know where I am.” I nodded, fully intent on not burdening her with my weakness. She sighed, writing some things down on her pad. “You said this injury occurred on the 21st, right? Why wait until now to get it checked out if it’s been aching since then?”
“Ah, the 22nd was a… weird day.” Despite our agreement to trust one another, we couldn’t simply relax in each other’s presence. We had both waited all night for the other to fall asleep first. Naturally, neither of us could actually see the other, but we both just knew. Sure enough, morning came around, and my suspicions that he hadn’t slept a wink either were confirmed. Because of that, we spent the 22nd basically just trying to catch up on sleep. We alternated passing out for about ten minutes before jumping awake, and this continued on and off into the night, whereupon I managed to get a whole four hours of uninterrupted sleep.
Honestly, the strangest thing was Marek. After the scissors incident and the Arxur, he’d been very… brooding. He’d occasionally mutter under his breath, but I’d never be able to catch the words. On the few occasions I got out of bed, to stretch or use the restroom, he’d keep his eyes on me the entire time, but it’d lack his earlier… alertness. “Didn’t sleep well the night before, so I was catching up that day.” Despite my attempt to cover and act like everything was okay, Rosie’s narrowed eyes and pursed lips told me that she saw right through me.
“Right… well, good news is that it’s almost certainly just bruised. Painful, but not serious. We’ll run some tests just to be sure, but I should be able to just give you some ibuprofen and you’ll be okay in a handful of days.”
I was out of the office in an hour. As the nurse suspected, it did appear to just be bruised. While waiting for the tests though, she had told me something critical: the Arxur attack was repelled, obviously, but not without over a hundred human fatalities… and no venlil deaths. However she had gotten that info, I must’ve missed it while inside and in-and-out of sleep all day yesterday. It seemed only natural, of course, for the venlil to happily sacrifice us to save their own skins. Rosie claimed that the humans sacrificed themselves without even consulting the venlil military, but I wasn’t so sure about that.
Of course you did nothing to help. All those people died and you hid like a coward on your ass.
I wasn’t military and had no experience flying, so there was nothing I could’ve done to help anyway.
Convenient excuse. You could’ve at least tried to fly into them, or absorbed a couple bullets and prevented them from hitting the real heroes.
When I got back to the room, Marek didn’t verbally acknowledge me. His ear flicked in a way that was… probably intentional, but I still couldn’t make out that way of communication. I rubbed my stomach soothingly, the ibuprofen beginning to kick in, and as I did I became acutely aware of another sensation.
Holy fuck I’m starving.
Like a cartoon anvil dropping on my head, the sensation of starvation hit me all at once, and I became suddenly cognizant of the fact that I hadn’t eaten at all in the last 36 hours. Between my anxiety surrounding Marek, the ache in my gut, and my biorhythm being thrown out of wack by the whole sleep situation, I hadn’t even realized I was hungry until now.
I’m so hungry I could eat a venlil.
The macabre joke flashed through my head unbidden, and I suppressed a chuckle. Some part of me wondered if I should feel bad for even thinking that, even as a joke, but hey: treat me like a predator, I’ll think like one.
“For the first act of our truce, I suggest we get something to eat.” Even from here, I could see Marek’s fur stand up a little at that suggestion. “Look, we’ll be safer out there.”
“Surrounded by humans?” Marek muttered.
“And Venlil. Neither of us could make a move against the other without provoking a response… honestly I’m surprised we haven’t tried being in public together yet, in retrospect.” It seemed really obvious in hindsight. “Besides, I don’t quite know how venlil metabolism works, but I hafta imagine you’re getting hungry too.”
Marek’s ears fell, but after some thinking he relented and trudged out the door with me. It was odd, actually seeing people and venlil ambling about together, chatting and laughing.
They seem so… happy with each other. You wouldn’t know anything about-
My internal monologue was cut off by my stomach rumbling, followed by Marek conspicuously walking a few paces further away than before. I couldn’t even hate myself properly without some food ASAP.
On the walk to the food court, however, something stood out to me. I hadn’t noticed it when I was alone with him, especially since I hadn’t seen many other venlil before, but here in a crowd it stood out like a sore thumb.
“Hey Marek… forgive me if this is awkward, but I just noticed that just about every venlil is naked except you. You’re always wearing that… what is it, like a duster or a jacket? What’s that about?” Marek’s ears fell once again, and this time I couldn’t help but notice that I wasn’t the only one who seemed to find it odd. Occasionally, passing venlil’s eyes would linger on him a bit too long for comfort. He didn’t answer me, placing one arm atop the other in front of his abdomen and looking away almost bashfully or anxiously.
I was beginning to prefer Marek insulting me to this… brooding. I mean, sure, the incidents on the 21st were harrowing, but every other venlil seemed to have more or less carried on just fine. Why was Marek so affected? Why did he become so quiet? At least when he was insulting me, I knew what he was thinking.
Maybe some food will change his spirits.
A/N: A new character! Max visits the nurse and... what's this? Empathy and kindness? Who's this mysterious "him" that Max wants to prove wrong? And what's going on with Marek, why's he suddenly turned so brooding and quiet? Who can say, really, only time will tell!

Compte poubelle, Je suis juste à bout comme d'habitude, Je me déteste, Je me rends malade tout seul, Et je fais de la merde à longueur de temps, Je suis un hypocrite et un menteur, Un crasseux addict au porno, Un introverti incapable de s'exprimer correctement ni d'avoir un minimum de discussion, Un inculte limite attardé tellement c'est abusé, Sûrement le mec le plus mauvais au lit qu'il puisse exister, Un mec de 28 ans avec la dégaine d'un homme de 50 ans, Un homme qui n'a aucune discipline, Un taré qui fait une fixette depuis 6 ans sur quelqu'un en sachant que ça ne sera jamais réciproque, même après avoir eu sa chance, Un mec incapable d'être un minimum efficace dans son travail, même après plusieurs mois, Un vieux simp de merde qui achète du contenu parce qu'il n'a aucune dignité, Un mec sans maison, ni appart, Un mec sans femme ni gooses, Un énorme tanguy, Un radin, Une ordure, Un gars avec une vieille calvitie dégueulasse, Un corps immonde, Un faciès disgracieux, même pas foutu d'avoir deux yeux parfaitement fonctionnel, Zéro cardio, zéro force physique ni mentale, Un fou qui devient parano dès qu'il a le malheur de réussir à se lier d'affection avec quelqu'un, Un cassos sans vie sociale,
Je me hais J'en ai marre de cogiter tout les jours, De devoir pleurer tout les jours pour rien, J'ai envie de crever pour ne plus avoir de problèmes J'ai une migraine affreuse J'ai besoin de me défouler

Special thanks to u/SpacePaladin15 for his awesome universe! Second part to my first time writing a fic, critique until your heart is content.
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First
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Memory Transcription Subject: Katamiri, Fissan chief exterminator, Spirefin Bay.
Date [Standardized Human Time]: November 2, 2139.
“You know you don’t have to be an asshole all the time.” I responded as I heard Narn approaching from behind me, attempting to quicken his step to the front entrance as if Isaac wouldn’t notice if he were just fast enough.
“Narn!” Began Isaac. “My favorite exter-“
“Shut it, you mange ridden ape! I’ve got urgent business to attend to and it doesn’t involve entertaining your sadism and sass.”
“What you got goin’ on that’s more important than this?” Said Isaac, gesturing to his own form. “Got some elderly couples to hose down in all this heat?” He continued, pointing to Narn’s brightly colored plastic water gun.
After the incident with Kavithi and the foam our former chief made it mandatory that Narn never be allowed near a real flamethrower, as his eternal punishment, Kavithi issued him a “state of the art” toy water gun. Narn was to even clean and maintain it, and when it came time for weapons inspection Narn would dress with the rest of us and present it and the chief would check with the same thoroughness as he did our gear.
“Pretty colors too,” Isaac continued, “that pink sure is frightening.”
“It’s not the pink you should be worried about, it’s the orange, the color of blood and sacrifice,” said Narn while violently shaking his water gun before him, “You’re laughing now but you’ll be weeping the day I’m allowed to get a real flamethrower!”
“That’s cute buddy! You go ‘an get ‘em!” Isaac said while motioning a swinging gesture with his fist, “Though I do hope it’s soon, Dayside city already finalized the paper work on an outright ban of flamethrowers. Other offices are considering following their lead.” He added with a sadistic grin.
Narn’s face fell sheepish with a hint of existential dread, “Narn says he has important business to attend to,” I interjected with the utmost authority of my voice. “You are not a member of this guild so you’ve no business harassing my employees when they’re on duty. Be on your way Narn.”
Without a second glance Narn jutted his way past Isaac and through the front doors. I thanked the stars neither tried to get any last words in. Now it was just me and the man of my guild’s nightmares. I now realized that I never had a proper, sit down, face to face with him, I hope I was prepared as I now understood that I had no idea what to expect.
“You know you should probably get a better quality water gun, with the way that thing rattles and leaks about, when he’s doing that cute little flustered walk,” Isaac said. “you’d hear him from a mile away and he leaves a trail. Then again, why don’t you get him a real flamethrower? Couldn’t be because the SC slashed the guild’s funding again could it?” He said through his smile.
Keep your composure Katamiri, loosing your temper is the stuff this predator feeds off of.
What would Kavithi do in this situation? I asked myself as the image of a middle aged Krakotl, prancing about and squawking profanity, going on a long tirade about “predator filth”, asserted itself in my mind.
Never mind.
Some around the office initially claimed Isaac must have killed and ate our old exterminator chief to dispose of any evidence, but Isaac wasn’t that sort of man neither were humans that sort of predator. Vulgar and the embodiment of lacking tact, he was strange and hard to get along with but he wasn’t violent.
I let in a deep inhale while massaging my temples, finding myself at the climax of a situation that had been building up for over a cycle. Ever since his arrival strange things had begun to happen in and around the town, especially near the office.
It began, not long after the incident with Kavithi, when an anomalous caller phoned in a predator attack, Code Indigo, at a cross roads just off of an abandoned farm on the outskirts, this called for the deployment of all on duty exterminators in Spirefin. Kavithi was on a business related trip to Tonalu thus I led the charge! Suited and loaded up we took to the roads only then to discover that the emergency alert system aboard all of our Rapid Response Trucks (RRTs) were broadcasting an ancient Earth jingle known as “Turkey in the Straw”. Puzzled, I instructed all in our convoy to resort to declaring our presence over our loud speakers, informing nearby civilians to make way.
Due to Spirefin’s infamously unique geographic location, dusk had set and we were guided by our headlamps. We arrived at the abandoned farm where we were met with an odd sight. At the crossroads was a primitive construction, a scarecrow, though in hindsight, an effigy, made of local dried grass, fitted with an exterminator suit. Narn, being eager to please, lept from his truck to dismantle the object. I sent the others to search the abandoned farmhouse and surrounding woodlands. As Narn began tugging at the scarecrow, rather violently, it exploded in a cloud of pink dust and glitter. Narn flailed about in the dirt road, crying for help, as a ‘predator was attacking him’, it wasn’t until I came to his side that he came to his senses. The others, searching the perimeter, turned up dirty, bruised, and a good bit terrified as after scavenging the forests and decrepit farmhouse for nearly an [hour], they turned up a number of strange carvings, runes, and small totems, made from local tree bark, wood, and grasses. One such carving had human script carved into the back of it scribing the words; ‘Scuzzlebutt was here’.
Accepting defeat, after realizing it was all a prank, we loaded ourselves back into our RRTs and headed to the office as I called our police chief to look into the matter. Once back at the office things did not get better.
Opening the doors we were greeted with [0.5 feet] of standing water. Every tap in the office had been opened and the drains plugged. Our basement was completely submerged. And yet again we found more odd tiny runes and totems littered around the office. Likely meant to scare us with some form of supernatural mysticism, then again they may have just been the perpetrators calling card.
We could never find the culprit as all of our security monitors had suddenly gone missing from their mounts. We looked through the security feed only to find that all recordings of the day had been replaced with episodes from an ancient Earth children’s cartoon depicting a creature called a “wabbit” and his parlous, yet humorous, encounters with a human hunter named Elmer.
Odd, I thought at the time. It seems the ancient humans were depicting this wabbit as the protagonist of the tale and the human hunter as both the villain and comedic relief. Humans were much more complicated of a species than the Federation initially gave them credit for. I wasn’t sure if I was more mystified or curious that a predatory species would depict a human hunter and his prey in this manner.
This would not be the last time we encountered this culprit. Some would claim that it was of the supernatural order but most knew better, and we had a good idea of who it was, but with new anti-profiling laws passed by the SC we would need hard and undeniable evidence, thus whenever an incident would occur we would refer to it as ‘Scuzzlebutt’s’ doing.
As I was distracted, reminiscing on one of my more chaotic shifts, I passed a glance at the window behind Issac to see a frustrated Narn entering one of our, rather beat up looking, RRTs, parked along the sidewalk.
“Say Kat, what happened to Narn’s truck? Lookin’ a little rough.” He said, turning around, to watch the same spectacle as I, as a very bitter Narn tried to close the driver side door, only to find that it refused to latch shut.
“An, unknown assailant, coated our driveway in vegetable oil a few [days] ago,” I said through clenched teeth. I let out an exagerated sigh and approached the window, standing beside him as we both observed the commotion, “caused a lot of damage to our fleet, you wouldn’t know anything of that would you?”
“No ma’am,” he said with a chuckle, “Sure wouldn’t!”
“I certainly hope not. Feaden is looking into it as it is a very serious criminal offense! He seems to think that it’s the same perpetrator who flooded our office a while ago.” I stated with bitterness.
“Ah Scuzzlebutt at it again! I hope that sheriff finds ‘em. They sound like a real scumbag!” Said Isaac with his unwavering smile.
“And a danger to public safety might I add!”, I stated sourly as the commotion from outside continued to catch both of our attention as we watched a livid Narn repeatedly slamming his door in vein to latch it shut while screaming incoherently.
While the damage to our fleet was moderately severe I don’t recall this door malfunctioning. Why was the door not closing?
Isaac then let out another light chuckle and it dawned on me.
Oh, of course…
“Well I’m sure you guys got the budget to at least fix that door.” He said cheerfully.
We didn’t.
The SC did cut our funding after all, and exterminators across Skalga were turning in their silver suits left and right. There was a certain, unforeseen, response to this. A vacuum was left in a world dwindling of forsaken exterminators.
Initially starting out as an enterprise backed by the local magistrate, known as the Epidemic Prevention and Wildlife Purification Department of the Tonalu Valley Authority, often short handed to “The Authority”, was created. A name that was supposed to sound appealing in the minds of SC politicians, lawyers, and big decision makers, however most everyone knew them by a different name, a name they still refused to publicly deny.
The Immolators.
Created mere [months] after a massive controversy took place in Tonalu city, which led to the disbandment of the entire city’s exterminator office and brought in countless investigators from across SC space.
I can still see the news reels, and the unsettling B-roll footage.
Regardless, they were making a name for themselves across Skalga and beyond. Earning the favor of many of the rich upper-class, politicians, bankers, and a small handful of other Magistrates across our planet and colonies. Former exterminators flocked to them. Though they were a controversial group, earning the ire of many peoples longing to be a part of this human led alliance and of those who wished to distance themselves from the federation, still, they were gaining a small, yet loyal, fellowship.
We stood in silent contemplation for a moment as we watched Narn exit the cab and lept into the trucks bed, tossing out a random assortment of items across the pavement.
I don’t know that I can do this anymore, is this what utter defeat looks like? Is surviving the exterminators a lost cause? I ask myself looking at our young recruit reduced to nothing more than a muddled mess scavenging for scraps of supplies we probably didn’t have.
We used to be so much more.
The Federation betrayed us, the SC ignores us, the humans are draining us dry, and the people barely acknowledge us anymore! Worst of all being that I couldn’t just indict the man beside me based on crimes of suspicion due to one of the earlier reforms of ‘anti-profiling laws.’
“Why do you do this?” I asked with a defeated breath, deciding to give up our game, I turned to face Isaac. “I’m not doing this dance with you anymore, I know it was you. It always has been you. Many in the SC are on the path to shutting the guild down entirely, it’s everything I’ve ever worked for my entire life and I have you adding insult to injury. Have we not changed enough? I like to think that I have been very much fair to you humans since you arrived here. You can at least agree that I’ve been much more so than Kavithi!” I spat, finally loosing my temper. “I wish no ill will against your people and I hope you Humans prosper with the rest of us in this new galaxy but I just wished that you would leave us alone.”
“Not sure what you’re on about Kat”.
“That’s it? That’s all? You want to continue this song and dance?” I said with pleading desperation. “The time we had a stink bomb tripwired at our front door? The time that all of our radios got jammed with…” I struggled to remember. “‘Serbian’ war music? The multiple times that someone of our office has had their guild account hacked? Should I even mention the number of my exterminators who have had their Bleet and MyHeard account’s hacked and flooded with anti-exterminator propaganda?”
“Not a clue about that, it could be anyone considering you guys ain’t popular with the public like you used to be.” He finished with a smirk.
“Oh really? Not a single brahking clue?”
Isaac paused for a long while, as if in deep contemplation. A long moment passed as we idly watched Narn continue to litter the pavement. He let out a long sigh.
“Why are you still here Kat?” He said with a somber tone. “You’re a good person, most of you, that are left, are good people, why still hang on to this?” He said without looking at me. “You all know it’s a sham, since the guilds founding. Be something better, the exterminators are no longer needed. They never were needed.”
I felt a sudden fury flutter in my chest. Not Needed?! Of course I was still here, we all, or what was left of us, we’re still here! We were needed! “We are necessary! People need us, that won’t change it will never change! We have been the protector of prey peoples for countless centuries! We have upheld the peace and stability with dignity and glory and honor and respect since our peoples first ventured forth into the black abyss of the unknown and Found Ourselves At The Precipice of A Predator Infested Galax—“ I found myself searching for breath that I didn’t know I needed.
Oh stars,
I let myself go, I thought that out loud didn’t I?
I glanced in his direction, searching for that sinister snarl. But it wasn’t there, instead it was the stone face of a man who had been bombarded with a monologuing tirade and didn’t know what to do with himself.
Yeah, you thought all of that out loud.
Now he finally has me right where he wants me.
I brush my now frizzled mane from my eyes and shut them as I exhale. I accept my fate and await his barrage of insults and lecture of human pseudo sciences like ‘ecology’.
Is this really how it all comes to an end? Being the guardians of peaceful loving preyfolk everywhere for centuries only to be undone within a few solar cycles by these creatures?!
“Relax Kat, I didn’t come here to insult you.” He said. “Well, not initially anyway.” He lightly chuckled.
What?!
“I found you at last my pretties!” Announced Narn, dancing with delight, as he found a pair of bungee cords.
“We’ve embraced change even knowing that it will harm us all in the long run. You’ll never know what it’s like to be prey.” I said sadly as I noticed his smile suddenly fade. “All of those methods you use on Earth may work for you humans because you’re-erm…”
“Predators?” Replied Isaac, though oddly I didn’t find any malice in his voice.
“Yes,” I said flatly. “I— do try to police my speech, I want you to know. I understand the connotation that that word carries to your kind.”
“I’d be lying if I said I didn’t appreciate that.” Came Isaac. “Must be a struggle to wash all of that Federation brain washing off ya.”
It wasn’t all brain washing! Some of it was necessary to protect us! I calmed myself down before I replied. “Yes. As I was saying it may work for you humans, this idea of ‘preserving ecosystems’, but I know time will show that it doesn’t work when applied on a prey planet, filled with prey folk.”
“Hmm.” Was his only reply, was he actually contemplating what I was saying? Did I actually crack through a bit of his exterior?
I stiffened my posture with new found pride realizing that the man of the guild’s nightmares was actually listening to me. “Yes I’m sure in time you’ll realize that there is a lot more to us exterminators than just setting fire to feral predators.” I stated proudly.
I was always careful to use the word feral before ‘predator’ in the hopes that the humans I interacted with didn’t make the mistake of thinking I was including them when I talked about the monsters who lurked in Skalgas wood and dark side. I understood the difference between sapient, though sometimes troubling, humans and a feral beast of the field that needed to be vanquished. I wanted humans to be comfortable in my presence, in a way I was a saleswoman and I was determined to sell the idea of the exterminators to the humans so they could see our worth.
I needed their cooperation if I were to save the guild. I needed it now! I was not going to wait until feral beasts were wondering our cities, devouring our children and elderly. I was not going to wait for the predator taint to take hold of entire herds, I was not going to wait for the humans to realize their mistake!
“We orchestrate charity events for the needy,” I continued. “teach school children how to react to and combat predators, how to identify when a predator has been near.” I puffed out my chest and held my hand to it. “We install predator defense systems into the homes of the elderly. We rehabilitate wild prey animals back into health, we provide perimeter defenses to farmers, and instal trail cameras to monitor heard migrations!” I finished with my head held high!
“That’s all well and good Kat, maybe I’ll humor you another day, but I didn’t come here to have a long back and forth either.” He said, sounding disappointed.
I found myself puzzled, was he not up for a debate with me? Clearly it must be that now he understood that I was a lot more intelligent than he thought, he must have thought he could beat me in a game of wits, challenging our ideals, now he’s on the back paw looking for a way out! That must be it! Pride swelled in my chest at my own genius before I began. “Then why, in all of the stars of the galaxy, are you here?” I said with authority.
“Ahh! Eureka!” Shouted Narn as he finished wrapping the bungee cables around the door and rear window frame.
“Came lookin’ for Grith!” His tone suddenly taking on a cheerier mood. “Shelby’s been whisperin’ in her ear and that Skalgan’s adventurous! It’s about her shift’s end an’ she’s been itchin’ to learn how to swim. Wants to be the first Skalgan to take a dip in the bay and see a Spirefin for ‘er self!”
Ah, Grithilyn. Just a young ‘local yokel’, as Kavithi would call her but I always saw something more in her than most, always eager to put everyone around her in a good mood and her constant happiness was infectious, though her overbearing curiosity was hard to tame. When the SC made the demand that all exterminator offices have a ‘forensics’ division our little intern was the only one who volunteered in ours and thus became the division’s lead, not that she knew more than anyone else. She’d spend countless hours with her exchange partner watching human ‘crime dramas’ under the guise of “taking classes.”
“Well you’re waisting both of our times,” I huffed. “She’s at the bi-annual Spirefin festival running our recruitment booth, looks promising,” I said with a smug expression, “guild numbers have gone up two percent since last season.”
“Two percent ain’t nothing when the season prior saw ya drop eleven percent”. He said with a wide grin.
I loath this man.
We both turn when we hear a series of loud and incoherent bleats coming from outside. Narn had launched himself headfirst through the driver side window of the truck, his legs were sticking out of the window and kicking in every conceivable direction.
I had no idea a Venlil had such a wide vocal range, nor did I know a Venlil held that much air in their lungs.
To my horror the truck lurched forward and began rolling, for all of about [10 feet] until it collided with a road marker.
I raced through the front entrance to ensure Narn was okay. It wasn’t a hard impact but regardless I wasn’t about to let my employee embarrass himself any further, in addition, it was my duty to ensure that everyone under my command knew that they were cared for.
I opened the passenger door to see Narn, slowly skidding face down on the floor boards.
“Isaac!!” he yowled as I noticed the man was now standing beside me.
“Buddy!” Replied Isaac, “Why didn’t ya use the passenger door?”
“Is this yours?!” he yelled while fidgeting his arm from under his belly and lifting his face. In his grasp was a time keeping device with a band running through it. Definitely a human artifact. It featured a cartoon mouse with the direction of its hands indicating the time. Isaac’s. I turned to see Isaac, and Narn had the same idea, looking at his bare wrist.
Anti-profiling laws had been one of the earliest reforms pushed by the humans looking for acceptance in a galaxy that was very unaccepting. It was also laid out for those of other species looking to reverse ‘the cure’. The SC claimed that far too many resources and man hours were being diverted, from local law enforcement, to instances of ‘humans just doing human things’. Unfortunately this is what Isaac used as his personal play thing. With no hard evidence ever being found at any of the odd instances we encountered, and no eye witnesses, we had no hard proof that he was responsible. He’d only say snide remarks about the incidences when pressed. We could do nothing but pray and beg that he’d mind his own business.
Not anymore.
I put on my best “shit eating grin”, as he would say, and turned to him, as me and Narn’s laughter slowly rose from a chortle to a thunder. Isaac sheepishly rubbed the bare spot on his arm.
“Got you now you sneaky prick!” Screamed Narn through his fit of laughter.
“Hmm, Narn, my dear employee,” I said as he gave an ear flick of acknowledgement. “Why would Isaacs’s watch be in one of our guild’s vehicles? Did anyone invite him in it lately?”
“No ma’am!”
“Did anyone authorize him to be in one of our company vehicles?”
“Nnnnope!”
I turn to Isaac to see that his sheepish expression was now replaced with one of sullen disdain.
“Do you think this watch is from the same culprit who doused our driveway in vegetable oil?”
Narn took in a surprisingly long inhale. “Considering we’ve been under similar antics in the past and it only began after an Isaac Riffson started residing in this town and now that we have a personal possession of this Isaac Riffson at the scene of a crime, a personal possession, that we have him wearing in plenty of social media posts, I’d say it’s highly likely that we can at least criminalize him for trespassing on guild property, though considering that this trucks door was working a claw prior and the watch was discovered very shortly after it’s malfunction, I conclude that this Isaac Riffson was also tampering with guild property with the intent of sabotage.”
I was shocked at Narn’s sudden, long winded, professionalism, as if he’d been waiting for this moment for quite a while.
Had he been reading Skalgan law just for an instance like this?
“And with Skalga’s law of reasonable suspicion, this is enough grounds to at least incriminate”.
Yeah, he’s been researching Skalgan law.
“I’d say this is the same culprit who broke the door frame and laced our driveway with vegetable oil.” He continued. “The same culprit who goes by the alias of ‘Scuzzlebutt’, the same culprit whom Feaden has been searching for for [months], the same culprit who once placed a flaming paper bag of feces on my doorstep, the same culprit who once replaced my shampoo With Hair Remover!!”
Oh yes, how could I have forgotten about that…
Narn turned to a very grumpy looking Isaac. “As you would say; get fucked ape boy! We finally got you!”
“Isaac, do you know anything of this?” I asked. “Don’t make me call Feaden, I will call Feaden!”
Isaac let out a growling exhale, his sullen expression never fading.
I’ve got you right where I want you!
This was it, I could finally rid myself of this menace! I could finally free my local guild of this nightmare! Finally we have undeniable evidence! A simple call to chief of police Feaden and have him locked behind bars, or better, deported back to Earth!
Or…
I could be throwing away the chance of a lifetime. The man had a very unique set of skills, skills of which I doubted any of my employees had. Skills that I needed on my team. Skills that the exterminators needed. Stalking around for over a solar cycle without ever being caught, without ever being seen, leaving behind no trace, no evidence, and no witnesses while reigning chaos and mayhem!
What could be done if he actually applied himself?
I need him!
“Isaac, sweetie!” I said turning to see Narn taking selfies with the watch as an agitated Isaac tried to pry it back. “How about you join Narn in resupplying Grithilyn’s booth?”
“WHAT?!” They both shouted in unison.
Oh yes, you are going to make an excellent exterminator.
I grabbed Isaac by his shirt collar and with all of my strength I dragged him to the side of the truck and shoved his back to it. “I’ve shown you the exterminators good side now show me your good side!” I said through my teeth. “Everyone else in this town seems to get along with you, except us, now show me why!”
Maybe I could make him see!
Isaac let out a huff of defeat. “Could I at least call my boss and tell ‘em I ain’t showing up for work today?”
I smiled in the human way as I jingled his watch in front of my gaze. “Dearest, I am your new boss!”
—————————————————————————
—————————————————————————
Memory Transcription Subject: Isaac Riffson, exterminator new hire, Spirefin Bay.
[Time accelerated] - 10 minutes.
“I lost all interest in talking to Kat when she called herself prey,” I said. “as long as she thought that way I’d never get through to her.”
“But we are prey.” Narn replied while munching absently on his Earth made granola bar.
“I know you think that way but I thought better of Kat. I thought she was starting to see things our way.”
“You’re a predator and I’m prey, it quite literally is that simple.” Stated Narn in a matter-of-fact kind of way while balancing the steering wheel in one paw while the other opened another granola bar.
“Yeah, I know that, I just want people to stop thinkin’ like that.” I responded. “As long as people hold on to those old Federation ideologies there’ll never be any sort of progress made.”
I sat there, stewing in silence for a moment before I began again. “I mean before we met you lot we never really thought o’ ourselves as predators.”
“What? Really?!” Said Narn with a high amount of surprise in his voice. “How?!” He spat crumbs from his muzzle.
“What? You think we walked around all like; hello fellow predator,” I said in a tone of mockery. “fine predator day we’re having here aren’t we? Under this wonderful predator sun and this fine predatory weather. Can’t wait to go to my predator home and tend to my predator garden and eat dinner with my predator wife-“
Narn let out a light chuckle, “alright, I get it!”
I let out a deeply needed sigh, “Before we met you all, we were people, not predators, feels like we got demoted.”
I let silence permeate in the air. I was hoping Narn was using this quiet time as contemplation but knowing him he was probably just sulking. Or just really enjoying that granola bar. What was it that Kat said, show your good side?
After an awkward minute or two of silence had passed I decided that I was going to show that good side. “Hey Narn!!” I said a lot louder than was necessary.
“Gahh!” Was his sudden reply.
“Calm down, I was just guna suggest some music.”
“I don’t wanna listen to your—“
But I wasn’t going to allow him enough time to retort. “I like me some ole southern gothic too!”
“What? No! That’s not what I—“
But my holopad had already been connected to his truck’s music player since before his shift began. I had bypassed the volume control and the on/off authority as originally I was going to remotely force him to listen to the wondrous and sloppy sounds of Skuggels mating on his drive today but that wouldn’t do now that I was in here.
The music began.
Narn began saying something more but I turned the volume up until he realized that any further protesting would only be in vein.
Well fuck me sideways and call me Sally, I’m an exterminator now, how did that even happen, it was all so fast. I thought to myself as I took in the views of the rural town along our route.
Can’t really be mad at ole Kat for this one, I sort of had it coming, but of all the ways… blackmail?!
I look to my left to see that Narn was a bit more acceptive of the music than I thought he would be.
Guess this means I got to start being nice to you now too.

Someone else posted the summary up to episode 23 if I remember correctly and we can see that besides Lillian transformation, there was not a significant new plot point.
Up to now, my major grip with the series is not the lack of the fights per se, but the fact that we are basically reaching the Middle point of the season and we don't have a villain presença.
I really miss the generals characgers behing the monster creations.
It feels like that lilo and stitch cartoon when the garu garu attacks are at random, but even there there was an antagonist force.
I think that seeing Nyammy fighting the animais Who are just corrupted really was a stock factor. I don't hate the chase action or anything, they still can make some episodes look interesting and is cool that the characters use of an more creative problem solving than just blast a love beam.
I am kinda worried at how well this group, Who usually don't fight, will really blend well with the others in the All Stars movies.
Also, i really wanted original attacks for each member...
Anyway, what do you all think about this?

Pam made her way to school eagerly. Not that she wasn't always eager to learn, it was just that school could be terribly dull at times, but today the Terrans would arrive. It was the most exciting thing to happen at school since Ms. Ocia got sick for a deciday and they got to spend the Cultural Studies period watching old entertainment media, even if the Terrans coming to the school were in her grade, and probably not heroic soldiers or tides-blessed super-pilots or anything yet, but everyone knew that Terrans meant adventure. Just like everyone knew that first contact with the Terrans resulted in just one Terran, ONE, killing an ENTIRE PLANET of evil villains. Mai said that that story was exaggerated, and that Sneaky only took out a gang, but Mae was fat, so what did she know? She didn't know how to not be fat, that's for sure. Anyway, even if the real story wasn't quite that exciting, with the war on there was a new Terran hero every deciday. Who knows, maybe the one joining her class would know one?
With such pleasant thoughts to occupy her, Pam skipped beside the canal where her classmates passed her by as she took the much slower land route. Most of her classmates thought she was funny for walking the whole way, but she didn't care, she liked keeping her clothes and fur dry all day long. Besides, she never got a zero on homework because of a backpack leak. Even so, she was on time. She was always punctual, boredom was no excuse to be rude, after all.
However, the Terran wasn’t anywhere to be seen as Pam and her classmates took their seats, but there was a slightly bigger desk near the door sitting empty. It didn't surprise her in the slightest that pretty much the entire class was looking around and whispering about the missing Terran rather than paying attention to Ms. Ocia until she shwacked her still-strong tail on the hard tile floor and shouted, "Settle down!"
Once her charges had assumed a semblance of prepubescent order, she said with the exasperation familiar to those who mistakenly pursued a career that involves children sitting quietly with patience, "As I was saying, we have a new student today, though from your gossip, I think you know already. Neville Neman comes from a planet in the Republic of Terra, but I'll let him introduce himself." She turned to the classroom door and called musically, "Neville, come in please."
Pam's heart pounded in her chest and her ears practically vibrated in anticipation as a bipedal form darkened the doorway, but the second the boy's gangly frame awkwardly ambled to the front of the class to take a nervous pigeon-toed stance, the sheer disappointed shock dropped her jaw open. His clothing was ill-fit and garishly colored, he wore thick corrective lenses over his eyes, his head-fur rose in an untidy mess of orange-ish curls, and all of that was made worse by the way he jittered and fidgeted in place. Pam didn't think that he looked heroic in the slightest.
Neville audibly sucked in a deep breath and let out in a rush as if to get it over with, "I’m Neville Neman, and I come from a planet in the Republic called Hope Eight. I know, it's not the most creative colony name, but I can tell you about it later if you care. Anyway, my dad's here to consult with your latest shipbuilding project and Mom doesn't like station life, so we're living planetside. I hope we can be friends if you want."
Then, he just stood there until Ms. Ocia realized that he'd rambled through his little introduction without pausing for breath. "Thank you Neville, please take your seat I'm sure you'll make lots of friends here," she told him before activating the board to show the basic math lesson they'd left of with on the last math lesson and going into an explanation of decimals that Pam tried super hard to pay attention to. Followed by a lesson on poetry that Mae tried less hard to pay attention to, and then it was time for recess.
The very instant that Ms. Ocia dismissed the class, all fifteen students, except for Neville for obvious reasons, attempted to crowd around the gangly boy. However, he proved more deft than he had at first appeared. That, or the general press of grade-schoolers trying to all swarm through desk rows against the grain gave him a few precious seconds to make good his escape through the door. Pam wondered whether he could psychically tell that everyone wanted to ask questions, and so ran away before anyone could get him.
The entire twenty minute recess was wasted by practically the entire school looking for a single boy without success, but he did appear again when the bell tolled for class to begin again. Then, he materialized in the hallway while his new classmates were filing into their classroom to continue their lessons for the day. Pam was so distracted by trying to figure out how in the currents he could have possibly done that, that she had no idea what Ms. Ocia was droning on about until lunchtime. Could Terrans turn invisible? Some cuttlefish could blend in to their surroundings, so maybe Terrans could do that too? Or maybe his shipbuilder dad had super-top-secret stealth tech he gave him? She just had so many questions!
Then, the bell for lunchtime was tolling, but Ms. Ocia was giving instructions, "Now, I know you're excited, but it's obvious that Neville doesn't like to be crowded or charged by a mob of fifteen of you. So you're to give him at least a tail's length, and allow him to eat his lunch. Understand?"
The usual put-upon drone of children on the receiving end of a lecture they deserved came, "Yes, Ms. Ocia."
"Okay, you can go to lunch now, anyone who breaks that rule will take a demerit home."
More groaning and mumbling answered as the class dug lunchboxes, meal-tickets, or credit chits out of their backpacks and filed out the door. Pam had hoped to walk and talk with Neville, but those gangly legs just ate up the tile, and try as she or any of her classmates might, the gap between him and they only grew. However, they did catch up to him at the lunch tables where he was already eating… well he was eating something. "What are you eating?" Mai asked between panting breaths. Of course Mai would waste the first question on food, the fatty.
"Oh," Neville said after swallowing a bite. "It's a sandwich, sliced filling between two outer bread slices, this one is ham and cheese."
"What's ham?" Mac asked, and Pam glared daggers at Mai for getting the topic stuck on food instead of something more interesting like what kind of super powers Neville might have.
"Ham is a cured meat product made from a livestock animal," Neville answered before taking another bite.
Pam decided that whatever language he was speaking with under what her translator implant was playing in here ear sounded nice as someone else asked, "What's bread?"
"Uh… well so there's like grains that get farmed an-"
"Oh, so it's grain based? I wonder if we can eat it…" Mai interrupted, because of course she did.
Neville only shrugged before taking a pull from a water bottle and Pam took the opportunity to ask a real question, "Can you read minds?"
Water shot out of Neville's nostrils and he started making the most awful hacking coughing sounds as some of the other girls glared at Pam while somebody asked, "Are you okay? Do you need medical?"
Eventually, Neville managed to wheeze, "I'm fine. I'm fine. That's just what happens to a Human if we laugh while trying to drink something," to which Pam let out a relieved sigh. "Erm, no. I can't read minds. Why would you ask that?"
"Well, 'cause you escaped at recess."
"I could see you all coming. All of you looking at me, all of you coming my way… I just didn't want to get squished."
Bix piped up, "How did you hide?"
"I'm not telling that. What if I want to hide again?"
"Do you have camouflaging pigment sacks in your skin?" Pam pressed.
Neville tilted his head to one side and said slowly, "No… that's a weird thing to ask…"
"Is it? We don't know how your biology works."
"I thought that us being warm-blooded bipeds was common knowledge by now…"
"Well, did you use advanced top-secret stealth tech from your dad?"
"If I did, I wouldn't be allowed to say so."
"Wait," said Bix, "I thought you were a Terran, but you said you're a Human?"
"Oh, I'm a Terran because my ancestors are from Terra, and I'm a Human because that's my species, or race? Whichever, I guess. Not all Terrans are Humans, if you didn't already know."
A low murmur of excitement ran through the crowd and Mae asked, "What other races are Terrans?"
"The Doggos, the Bigkitties, the Digitans, and the Chimpmandos."
"Did you evolve together on Terra?"
"Erm, I don't know really. Except the Digitans, they're digital sapients, so they didn't evolve, exactly."
"Did you ever meet Sneaky?" Pam asked before anyone could ask another boring question.
"No, it's not like every Terran knows every other Terran. Besides, he died before I was born. Oh, and his name was Greg George."
Mae got a positively evil look on her face as she bared her fangs and laid her ears back asking, "Is it true that Greg George killed a whole planet of evil villains?"
Neville snickered at that, and Pam's heart sank right through the floor as he explained, "Nah, he and some Star Sailors took down a major crime syndicate because they'd kidnapped a kid from the family who was helping him come home. I can find the whole story in my history texts later if you want. I like the whole planet story though, it sounds super cool."
Mae had her tail raised in an infuriatingly smug way as she asked, "Only a baby would believe the planet story, huh?"
Pam slunk away to eat her clams alone before she heard the answer to that one, and hoped that everyone was too busy paying attention to Neville to notice.
After spending the rest of the lunch period stoically contemplating the nature of the world, or rather, sulking, Pam found the ensuing history lesson a lot more easy to pay attention to. It gave her a reason to not see Mai's stupid smug face cutting her eyes at her. Then, Ms. Ocia held the class past the bell to give Neville a thirty second head start claiming, "He probably could use some rest," as if Terrans weren't basically unstoppable.
The next day, Pam's class was markedly less distracted by the Terran, and his lunch table crowd had diminished by precisely one, Pam. Then, the next day, it diminished further, and the same the next day, and again until Neville was merely another student to the rest of the school. Or to most of it, anyway. Then, before anybody had realized it, two decidays had gone by, and the Terran was merely a weird looking alien student who nevertheless wasn't that weird once the novelty of him wore off. That's when he decided to sit down next to Pam one day and ask bluntly, "Did I hurt your feelings? I'm sorry for laughing at your questions…"
Pam had to fight to keep her ears up and shoulders square despite the urge to cringe into a ball. "You didn't hurt my feelings… I just really thought it was true…"
"That Terrans are all superheroes with laser eyes and lightning breath?" he asked wryly.
Pam giggled and told him, "Maybe not like that exactly."
"I'm not a hero or anything. I'm just a kid. I'm sorry."
"I just thought Sneaky Adventures Through Space was… like…"
"You like SATS?" Neville asked with glittering eyes and a wide smile, to which Pam nodded weakly. That was all the encouragement Neville needed to launch into a discussion of his favorite cartoon, which was more than enough for Pam to do the same. They almost didn't notice the bell tolling the end of the lunch period. It struck her later on her walk home that cheering up a lonely kid is just the kind of thing a hero might do.
From then on, Pam and Neville met and talked about the latest episodes of SATS, their favorite older episodes, or Pam's favorite, what was and wasn't true about Terrans or Sneaky in real life from the show. She found out that Humans really did drink insane amounts of ethanol, but only adults, that they could eat almost anybody's food, and that the "Power of Friendship" was a very real thing. Neville said that it was, and Mai and her fat face could just cry about it.
Then, one day Pam saw some older boys had cornered Neville by a canal a few blocks away from the school. She didn't recognize them, so they must have been from a different school, and they looked mean. They had surrounded him, and despite being shorter than the Terran, they were shoving him around and jeering at him as he tried to keep his balance.
"What's the matter Terran?" one taunted, "Where's your super strength?"
"Come on, pull out your Terra gun!" Another jeered.
"Maybe they're only tough in armor!"
"I heard they can breathe under water, let's try it!"
"Let's see if he can swim first," said another as he shoved the beleaguered Terran into the canal. Pam stepped forward, but let out a breath she didn't know she was holding in relief when she say Neville treading water.
"I can't breathe underwater! No gills! Mammal!" Neville shouted as the bullies dove into the water to swim about him in darting circles and splash him with their strong rudder tails as they laughed and jeered before darting off down the canal.
Then, Pam went forward to her friend asking, "Neville, are you okay?"
"I'm fine, they didn't hurt me. I just need to find my glasses."
Pam didn't stop to think about it, she dove into the water and darted to the bottom of the canal. They had drifted a little way, but they weren't hard to find. "Here they are," she said proudly as her head broke the surface.
"Thanks," he muttered and took them.
Three sodden blocks later, Neville was nowhere near as good a swimmer as any Lutrea, and Pam asked what was on her mind, "Why didn't you stand up to them?"
"Huh?"
"Why didn't you fight them?"
"Oh…" Neville forced a smile and said, "I told you, I'm not a hero or anything. Besides, there were five of them. I would have had to hurt them to make them stop. I dunno if I could do that."
"But they're bullies, the deserve to be hurt!"
Neville shrugged and said, "Maybe, or maybe not. I don't like fighting though, and I don't like hurting people."
Pam couldn't say why that answer made her so mad, but it did, so she said, "Well if they do it again, I'll stand up to them!"
Neville laughed in a friendly way, "Now I really feel sorry for them."
Pam only grunted in reply.
The days became decidays became months, and Pam didn't see any more evidence of anybody picking on Neville. In fact, it seemed that despite his atrocious fashion sense, he was becoming rather liked. In fact, their lunchtime talks had something of a circle of other kids who'd come and go for chats on SATS, homework, recently found books, the latest movies, and sundries, which was great because that meant that Pam wasn't by herself so much anymore. She was having such a great time that she had forgotten all about Mae. Mae hadn't forgotten, however.
One day, Pam found a note in her desk reading "Pam, I have something important to talk to you about, please meet me in the gym equipment room at lunchtime. Bix." What could be so important you had to leave a note to arrange for a private chat? Didn't Bix know he could just come up and ask her for a word by now? Well, sometimes boys did things that made no sense, so Pam decided to just go along with it and see what he wanted. She realized that she had made a mistake when the bucket of spoiled clams and hagfish slime clattered off of its precarious perch on a shelf above the equipment room door and onto her head, leaving her with a bruised noggin, and the rest of her covered in filth. Things got worse when the gym doors were flung open and a gaggle of about fifty students led by Mae came in to see Pam in her sorry state.
"Oh look, the slime girl is all covered in slime! What a filthy little thing!" Mae crowed as she puffed out her chest and lifted her tail in a display of dominance.
Pam cringed into a humiliated ball in anticipation of the laughter of her classmates, but instead Neville called out, "Are you proud of yourself Mae?"
"What?"
"I asked you if you're proud of yourself," he repeated with an almost sad note to his voice.
"Sure, why not?"
"Do you think being a petty, cruel, hurtful, jerk is something to be proud of?"
"Shut up! What do you know!"
"I know that you wanted to hurt my friend for no good reason, and you're proud of it. I know you're not the kind of person anybody wants to be friends with," Pam tried to sink through the floor, but Neville was there anyway whispering, "Come on, let's go to the office."
"You lied," Pam sniffled as he helped her to her feet.
"Huh?"
"You are a hero."

Lors de cette longue émission sur la chaîne de Lucyshade comme désormais nous les faisons toutes, nous avons abordé de nombreux sujets, allant de l'architecture aux lois de la guerre, en passant par la littérature populaire, l'armement, les rites funéraires et le droit des animaux. Voici les sources vous permettant de vérifier ce qui a été dit durant l'émission :
Armet et messer :
En attendant que le public arrive, nous avons discuté avec les premiers venus de l'équipement de Lucy, composé notamment d'un armet et d'un kriegmesser.
L'armet est un casque apparu dans la second moitié du XVe siècle, avec des prototypes, hybridé à partir de barbutes ou de bascinets, comme cet exemple italien, du début du XVe siècle. Le principe de l'armet est d'épouser la forme du crâne de très près et de l'entourer complètement, n'offrant aucune partie de la tête expoée. Pour ce faire, l'armet s'articule en trois points, la visière qui peut remonter et les deux flancs qui sont articulés pour s'ouvrir vers l'extérieur, parfois de manière très élégante en élytres, dans le but d'enfiler le casque. On referme les flancs, qui sont joints par un loquet, pour enfermer la tête dans le casque.
L'arme qu'utilise Lucy est un sabre d'un type assez largement répandu appelé "messer", de l'allemand et qui signifie "couteau". Il existe des grossemesser de divers styles en fonction des époques, mais aussi des versions destinées à la guerre appelées "Kriegmesser", de l'allemand "Krieg", qui signifie "guerre". Certains pouvaient avoir de généreuses dimensions, comme celui utilisé par Lucy. On peut voir ici un exemple à gauche et comparer sa taille aux espadons qu'on voit à côté pour avoir une idée générale des dimensions de l'arme.
La cotte de plates :
Parfois, on voit des chevaliers ne porter aucune armure ou, en tous cas, aucune armure au dessus de leur cotte de mailles, comme ici, mais en vérité, à partir du XIIIe siècle, au dessus de la cotte de mailles et en dessous de la cotte d'armes ou "tabard", on porte communément la cotte de plates. Cette pièce d'armure est constituée de nombreuses plaques de métal se chevauchant les unes, les autres et assemblées à du tissu, généralement par rivetage. Il en a existé de nombreuses formes, avec des plates verticales ou horizontales et même carrées.
Un exemple connu de cotte de plates est la statue de St Maurice à Magdebourg, sur laquelle on voit bien, notamment au niveau des aisselles, la cotte de plates dépasser du tabard.
Avec le temps, les plates deviennent de plus en plus petites et se chevauchent de plus en plus largement, préfigurant la brigandine, qui repose sur le même principe.
L'apparition de la rapière :
Cette question est très intéressante, puisqu'elle suppose qu'on ait une définition claire et précise de ce qu'est la rapière, ce que nous n'avons pas. Encore aujourd'hui, et déjà à l'époque en vérité, l'appartenance ou non d'une épée à la catégorie des rapières est un débat commun des amateurs d'histoire de l'armement.
Cet exemplaire, par exemple, est une épée capable de taille mais essentiellement, même presque uniquement, dédiée à l'estoc munie d'une lame très longue et dotée d'une garde complexe. C'est donc la rapière par excellence, pourtant la majorité des gens n'appellerait "rapière" une épée que si elle a cette monture. Partant de ce principe, cette épée qui a mangé un peu trop de choux à la crème est une rapière et pas celle-ci alors qu'elle a, au moins sur le papier, tout ce qu'il faut. C'est la raison pour laquelle il ne faut pas trop strictement s'attacher au sens qu'on donne aux mots.
On voit apparaître des épées à montures complexes dès le début du XVe siècle sur des épées appelées "spada da lato" en italien ou "sidesword" en anglais, comme cet exemplaire de 1432 ou celle-ci de 1460-1480. On en trouve même avec des montures qu'on verra sur les premières rapières clairement identifiées, comme sur cette épée datée de 1480. Ces épées sont du type qu'utilisaient les hommes de Christophe Colomb ou les premiers conquistadores.
La rapière clairement définie, sans équivoque, sans débat d'opinions, apparait aux environs de 1560 et tout le monde s'y met, quoique les Allemands ont un peu de mal à comprendre qu'on peut faire des épées pour autre chose que couper des gens en deux d'un seul coup et nous sortent donc une rapière qui a un peu trop écouté Rammstein avec une lame aussi large que n'importe quelle épée de taille de la fin du Moyen-âge, mais je les pardonne parce que j'en veux une comme ça pour mon anniversaire.
La prise de guerre :
Le terme "droit de prise" est moderne et sanctionne légalement le droit à une prise, une réquisition, par l'autorité du vainqueur parmi les matériels de l'ennemi vaincu. Il est opposé au "butin", qui est ce que la troupe va pouvoir récupérer pour son bénéfice personnel. L'ensemble constitue la ou les "prises de guerre".
Les lois de la guerre modernes comme les conventions de Genève et de celles de La Haye de 1899, de 1907 et 1954 ne sont à notre connaissance pas codifiées durant le Moyen-Âge, et on se contente de suivre un corpus de règles théologiques, morales, culturelles, ainsi que certaines doctrines personnelles comme celle qu'expose Giovanni da Legnano dans son oeuvre Tractatus de Bello, de Represaliis et de Duello, ouvrage dans lequel il offre un ensemble de lois de la guerre, qui seraient universelles, plutôt que de laisser le choix des actes (pardon, rançon, pillage, clémence, exécutions sommaires, procès, etc.) ainsi que la manière de les mettre en oeuvre à chaque commandant.
Cette vidéo en anglais, par un maître d'escrime médiévale, historien et archéologue, détaille dans ses premières minutes la question du butin et comment ou pourquoi on peut ou ne peut pas s'approprier tous les biens d'un ennemi vaincu en fonction de notre rang social.
Le "Sturmgeld", ou bonus financier pour ceux qui lancent l'assaut, retirent les pierres du passage après destruction d'une muraille ou acceptent de se lancer dans une opération plus dangereuse que la moyenne, est commune au Moyen-Âge.
Un texte édité par le Sorbonne et qui traite du pillage chez les byzantins.
La pratique de la rançon est très commune au Moyen-Âge, c'est même la première source de revenus de la guerre et, pour la majeure partie de la noblesse, la première source de revenus toutes catégories confondues.
Richard Coeur de Lion a été rançonné pour 150 000 marks d'argent, le rois de France Charles Ier d'Orléans sera rançonné pour 220 000 livres. Saladin n'acceptera d'offrir de sauf-conduit vers les terres chrétiennes à la population de Jérusalem, qu'il venait de prendre, que si ils n'étaient pas choisis d'office comme esclave et pouvaient s'acquitter d'une rançon de 20 besants pour un homme, 10 pour une femme et 5 pour un enfant. Il réduisit progressivement ce prix au cours des négociations jusqu'à finalement accepter un paiement unique de 30 000 besants contre la libération de 7 000 prisonniers avec possibilité d'échanger les hommes contre les femmes et les enfants à raison de dix enfants ou deux femmes pour un homme.
Les chevaux au Moyen-âge :
Les chevaux au Moyen-Âge sont séparés en plusieurs catégories en fonction de leur apparence, leur tempérament et l'usage qui en découle.
Les roncins, roussins ou ronchins sont des chevaux de travail, d'éducation ou de loisir. Ils ont une réputation de force, d'ardeur à la tâche et de rusticité, ce qui explique pourquoi Jehan le Bel, dans ses mémoires, écrit au chapitre X que les Escots, dont il vante la dureté et les prouesses militaires, les montaient pour porter la guerre contre leurs ennemis. C'est un cheval sans noblesse, et celui qui peut se procurer mieux le faisait.
On trouve aussi les destriers, les palefrois, les coursiers, les sommiers ou les affrus. On fait grand usage de hongres et de haquenées dans tous les domaines et les chevaux ambleurs, ceux qui vont au pas appelé "amble", sont très appréciés car ce pas cause très peu de secousses pour le cavalier et est donc très confortable.
Cet article publié dans le Journal International d'Ostéoarchéologie détaille une étude de presque deux mille chevaux du IVe au XVIIe siècle, laquelle a trouvé une taille de moins de 1m50 pour la large majorité des spécimen. Ces chevaux avaient donc une taille d'environ 1m20 à moins de 1m50 au garot, équivalente aux actuels pur-sangs arabes, au mustangs ou aux chevaux de Przewalski et seraient donc ce qu'on appelle aujourd'hui un poney, quelques rares spécimens dépassaient 1m50.
Il est important de ne pas exagérer cette petite taille comme beaucoup le font : c'étaient des poneys, mais pas des poneys du Shetland. Pour obtenir une meilleure idée, rien ne vaut les images : ce cheval, qui va d'ailleurs à l'amble dont je viens de vous parler, mesure environ 1m35-40 au garrot.
Les caparaçons, qui sont les armures des chevaux, nous sont très utiles puisqu'ils sont aux dimensions des chevaux de l'époque. Vous pouvez aussi voir sur l'iconographie de l'époque que les chevaux n'étaient pas gigantesques, en vérité leurs garrots arriveraient en haut de la poitrine d'un homme se tenant debout.
La mode à la fin du Moyen-Âge et au début de la Renaissance :
En bas, au milieu, on voit un homme porter le fameux duo gagnant : pantalon à jambes bicolores dont une bleue monochrome et l'autre bariolée orange et marron en accord ton-sur-ton avec le pourpoint en brocard à moitié dépoitraillé. Un grand classique.
Ici, un homme a tout misé sur le pantalon pour sortir en boite ce soir. Son pote à gauche a choisi de faire sobre aujourd'hui : ballerines en daim sur leggings rayés jaune/gris et rouge pétant pour la discrétion.
Quand on n'a pas de coquille, on laisse pendre la dague entre les jambes pour compenser. Il y a même existé un type de dague appelé "dague à rognons" ou "à couillettes" qui... disons qu'elle portait bien son nom.
Mais on trouve toujours une solution, quitte à rembourrer un peu ou même à s'en servir comme porte-monnaie.
On porte généralement un genre de pantalon court de pyjama par dessus lequel on monte des "chausses", qui sont semblables à des chaps moderns, comme cet homme à droite. On referme à l'avant par un simple rabat qui préfigure les coquilles des décennies suivantes jusque durant la Renaissance où on misera sur un look "poutre apparente" d'un goût tout à fait délicieux.
Les braies n'ont jamais vraiment disparu durant le Moyen-Âge, et elles avaient l'avantage d'être moulantes pour exposer sa musculature et son organe, mais aussi d'être renforcées à la semelle, ce qui permettait de les porter sans chaussures.
Dans Les Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry, on nous montre même un paysan qui a décidé de miser sur le confort avant tout.
La Guerre du Seau :
Une vidéo en anglais qui traite de cette guerre et explique où se séparent l'Histoire et la légende.
Les Elfes et les Gobelins sur Wikipedia.
L'architecture philippienne :
Les forteresses du Moyen-Âge sont au départ souvent une simple motte castrale, généralement artificiellement créée par empilement de terre. Les mottes castrales ne sont généralement pas la demeure même du seigneur. Ce sont des observatoires fortifiés destinés à repérer une force ennemie et la ralentir ou, simplement, elles jouent le rôle de centre administratif local. Le seigneur vit dans une maison semblable aux nôtres à l'intérieur de l'enceinte de la motte.
Avec le temps, on se met à construire les fortifications systématiquement en pierre et on va évidemment convertir les mottes castrales, voire même les renforcer, mais un entassement artificiel de terre n'est pas ce qu'il y a de plus solide alors on va construire les châteaux sur des éperons rocheux.
La forteresse normande va marquer un tournant dans l'architecture militaire, en augmentant la hauteur des bâtiments dont la forme devient carrée, surmontée d'une tour à chaque coin et entourée d'une grande muraille de pierre contenant tout ce qui permet au château d'être autonome : puits, basse-cour, potager, écurie, etc. C'est à cette époque que le seigneur se met à vivre dans le "donjon", la tour constituant le principal bâtiment de la forteresse.
Plus tard, sous Philippe le Bel, l'architecture militaire va évoluer avec, notamment, des tours rondes surmontées de toitures tuilées, des ouvrages de bois pour projeter la muraille vers l'avant et tirer directement au bas des murs, les "hourds". On arrive à la forteresse typique de la fin du Moyen-Âge, la forteresse philippenne, dont on a eu des exemples bâtis dès le départ comme tels ou convertis depuis des forteresses normandes.
Le château de Talmberg dans le jeu vidéo Kingdom Come Deliverance est un excellent exemple de forteresse philippienne et la ville de Rataje est, elle, une "citadelle", une ville entièrement fortifiée, dans ce même style architectural, ainsi que l'est l'incroyable ville française de Carcassonne, probablement l'un des plus impressionnant et des mieux conservés des exemples non seulement de forteresse philippienne mais aussi de fortification médiévale toutes catégories confondues.
Le château de Guédelon est une forteresse de style philippien en cours de construction selon les méthodes et avec les outils et technologies de l'époque. C'est actuellement l'un des projets d'archéologie expérimentale les plus audacieux et précis jamais entrepris.
La majorité des chevaliers vivaient néanmoins dans des maisons dites "fortes", comme celle-ci.
Le Roman de Renart :
Le Roman de Renart est un ensemble d'oeuvres mettant en scène des animaux anthropomorphes vivant leurs aventures et centré autour du personnage de Renart, un "goupil". C'est parce que ces histoires ont connu le succès que, de nos jours, on appelle les goupils "renards", en référence au personnage principal de ces aventures.
Moi Renart est une adaptation moderne et libre sous forme de dessin animé. Les aventures sont parfois fortement modifiées, voire totalement inventées, mais les personnages gardent globalement leurs traits de l'original à cette adaptation.
Le roman de Renart est inspiré des fables d'Ésope qui sont aussi à la base des fables de La Fontaine).
Le code d'honneur du combattant :
Il existe des termes comme "Code de Chevalerie" ou "Serment du Chevalier", au sujet desquels je n'ai pu trouver quoi que ce soit de vérifiable, je ne les inclus donc pas ici puisqu'il m'est impossible de vérifier si leurs textes sont des inventions modernes ou non.
L'idée d'un code de la chevalerie, bien que non-codifié, qui inclut des mentions de rançon, pillage et droit de prise mais aussi d'honneur, de valeur, de règles de respect des prisonniers, de protection des pauvres et des faibles, de merci pour un ennemi vaincu, de clémence envers un tort, de respect de la parole donnée ou de fidélité à un suzerain est déjà bien ancrée dans la culture à la fin du Moyen-Âge.
Les chevaliers ne suivaient pas tous ou pas toujours ces règles, allant d'une allégeance à l'autre en fonction du climat politique ou de leur intérêt personnel.
Emich de Flonheim est notoirement réputé pour avoir pratiqué le brigandage et le génocide en dirigeant une bande de croisés séparés de la croisade populaire vers les villes d'Europe centrale et de l'Est où il massacrera spécifiquement les juifs sous couvert de vengeur pour le christ.
L'Angleterre a connu ce même problème, avec notamment les gangs Folville et Coterel.
Le corps de "gendarmerie" de la France, institué lors de la seconde moitié du XVe siècle, était composé à large majorité d'anciens "écorcheurs", les troupes personnelles du roi de France durant la Guerre de Cent Ans, avec pour but de combattre le banditisme très important dans les campagnes de France et dû à des guerriers sans emploi en maraude, beaucoup eux-mêmes d'anciens écorcheurs.
L'embaumement et la momification au Moyen-Âge :
Ressources et lectures supplémentaires :
Texte intégral de la convention de La Haye de 1907, qui reconfirme les décisions de la convention de 1899 et ajoute quelques articles.
Extrait d'un ouvrage que vous pouvez vous procurer et qui traite du droit de prise au Moyen-Âge avec, comme cas d'école, les écorcheurs, les troupes régulières du Royaume de France à la fin de la Guerre de Cent Ans.
La différence entre jus ad bellum, le droit pour entrer en guerre, et le jus in bello, le droit lorsqu'on est en guerre.
Le concile de Charroux en 989 est une tentative primitive de loi de la guerre et qui a trait à ce qu'on nomme aujourd'hui le "code de chevalerie". Il détaille ce qu'il est interdit de faire lors de la guerre et, bien qu'il inclut les pauvres, il met surtout l'accent sur l'Église : interdiction de voler l'Église, de s'en prendre à ses personnels et ses biens, etc. Il évoque le pillage comme part normale de la guerre.

I noticed how most “Top 100 Animated Series” lists from websites like IGN include bad 70s and 80s cartoons, and often include series for their popularity over their actual quality. So I made one of my own.
It only includes cartoons made for an english speaking audience, so no anime. Also no currently running shows with only one season, since they’re too young to judge.
Both television series and series that started as theatrical shorts will be included, and series will be added for their actual quality over popularity, so there’s a few obscure picks.
Respond and tell me if you think the list should be changed. Or if you think it’s shit.
Here it is:
100) Shaun the Sheep 99) Dave the Barbarian 98) ThunderCats (2011) 97) Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2012) 96) Hey Arnold 95) Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends 94) Garfield and Friends 93) The Oblongs 92) Danger Mouse 91) The Twisted Tales of Felix the Cat 90) The Brak Show 89) Xavier Renegade Angel 88) Beast Wars: Transformers 87) Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2003) 86) F is for Family 85) The Fairly OddParents 84) 2 Stupid Dogs 83) Dr. Katz, Professional Therapist 82) The Midnight Gospel 81) Woody Woodpecker 80) Superman: The Animated Series 79) Pinky and the Brain 78) The Critic 77) The Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes 76) Todd McFarlane’s Spawn 75) Batman Beyond 74) Pink Panther 73) Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) 72) Archer 71) Bob’s Burgers 70) Harvey Birdman: Attorney at Law 69) Sealab 2021 68) Roger Ramjet 67) Duckman 66) Courage the Cowardly Dog 65) Young Justice 64) Invincible 63) Gargoyles 62) Frisky Dingo 61) Clerks: The Animated Series 60) Aqua Teen Hunger Force 59) What a Cartoon! 58) Æon Flux 57) Mighty Mouse: The New Adventures 56) Johnny Bravo 55) Rick and Morty 54) The Tick 53) Scooby-Doo Mystery Incorporated 52) Tiny Toon Adventures 51) Danny Phantom 50) Liquid Television 49) Regular Show 48) Home Movies 47) The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack 46) Family Guy 45) Steven Universe Future 44) Steven Universe 43) Daria 42) The Powerpuff Girls (1998) 41) Freakazoid 40) Justice League Unlimited 39) Justice League 38) Smiling Friends 37) Star Wars: Clone Wars (2003) 36) Rocko’s Modern Life 35) The Spectacular Spider-Man 34) Invader Zim 33) Space Ghost: Coast to Coast 32) Animaniacs (1993) 31) The Venture Bros 30) Superman (Fleischer Shorts) 29) Beavis and Butt-Head 28) Teen Titans 27) Primal 26) Clone High 25) The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show 24) Mickey Mouse (2013) 23) Phineas and Ferb 22) The Boondocks 21) Mission Hill 20) Popeye the Sailor 19) Dexter’s Laboratory 18) Ed Edd n Eddy 17) Betty Boop 16) Adventure Time 15) Bojack Horseman 14) King of the Hill 13) Over the Garden Wall 12) Moral Orel 11) Samurai Jack 10) SpongeBob SquarePants 9) Futurama 8) The Ren and Stimpy Show 7) Gravity Falls 6) South Park 5) Tom and Jerry 4) Batman: The Animated Series 3) The Simpsons 2) Avatar: The Last Airbender 1) Looney Tunes

Basic Training:
Ben would have used Buzzshock to defeat Trumbipulor instead of Ultimate Echo Echo. The Omnitrix would scan him, unlocking a new transformation. The random blue guy would give them the information about the training, and the Omnitrix would scan him as well. They go inside of the ship where they meet Tack, allowing Ben to unlock a new transformation. There would be the two aliens talking. We've seen one of them before, but the purple one with a tangle shaped eye-hole, is pretty different, so he can be scanned. A blue/violet skinned alien walks by Gwen, Getting another alien. Tack would bump into brannigan, and his two buddies. The pink one looks like the same species as blank-slate, but the other two are new guys, so they get scanned. There was a third, green guy that looks like the alien plumber from Too Hot Too Handle, but without the antenae, so I'll count him as a different transformation.
Hulka shows up in their room, causing him to be scanned. XLR8 is used instead of Fasttrack. There are two aliens standing in front of the fire, one with orange eyes, and one of mana-squared's species. One is scanned. The rest of the episode goes the same.
It's not Easy Being Gwen:
The episode goes the same until the end. Big Chill is replaced with Deep Freeze. Tiny Big replaces Humungosaur.
Ben would arrive with Gwen to fight the mutant frogs. Ben would rush in as Green-metal, tussling with the frogs. Ben would go into the planetarium and would de and then re-transform into Green-metal. Ben would go Ultimate Green-metal, punching his arm into the laser, draining it of its energy, and coating himself in metal, jumping up and attacking Dr. Animo and his frog.
Prisoner Number 775 Is Missing:
When Prisoner 775 steals the ship, Ben could use any of his other super strength aliens, meaning that he does not get away, and will easily be taken down by everyone there. Prisoner 775 is still scanned.
Since Moonstruck is a flashback, the episode goes the exact same.
OS Roster:

1. Clawfish (Name by Impressive-spray629): Drilling underground, amphibious.
2. Diamondhead: Crystal creation and construction
3. Grey Matter: Supper intelligence
4. Octo-Lock: Telekinesis
5. Cellshiftier: Shape shifting, Heat immunity
6. Buzzshock: Electric powers
7. Gax: High durability, Enhanced abilities compared to humans. I chose this name, because I'm lazy, and I like reboot.
8. Chromastone: Energy absorption, flight, crystallization
9. Wildmutt: Enhanced abilities. Different form of vision.
10. Roothack (Name by Impressive-spray629): Latching to the ground. "Ground tentacle growth" (Also by Impressive-spray629)
11. Lookback: Can look in front and behind himself. Stronger than humans.
12. Hexagolt (Name by Impressive-spray629): Understand the great one, six arms, splinting into two pieces. Can understand and read all languages.
13. Blind-sight: Heat vision only. Can not see walls unless they emit heat.
14. Light-Brawl: Can make his eyes glow, allowing him to light up areas. This light can hurt Ectonurites and Vladats. Electricity shooting.
15. Melt-claw: When the red claws scratch something, they send out a signal, allowing him to know exactly where that person is, no matter what. Other people can track them. The claws are super-heated, allowing them to cut through materials.
16. Deep-freeze: He can blast out extremely cold air that freezes everything around him. His vision is restricted due to the placement of his head.
17. Sticky-spine: Can climb on walls, and does not suffer from blood flowing to the head.
18. Green-metal: His arms are made of metal, making them much more durable, and have higher attack potency. Poor vision. Has four arms.
19. Bug-blast: Itching dust. Prevents cloning and regeneration.
20. Spike-shoot: Can create spike out of his body, skewering whoever is by him. He can choose where on his boy the spikes come from.
21. Eye-shock: Multiple red eyes. Red shock that triggers pain. If he uses the electricity, then the eye becomes temporarily blind.
22. Sight-staler: Can take away the vision of someone he hits, making them temporarily blind.
23. Heavy-Mettle : Does not need oxygen to survive. Extreme heat resistance. Can survive as long as his head is intact. Really strong. Electricity immunity.
24. Brain-Brace : Telekinesis. Can shoot blasts of it. Can create force fields. Breathes underwater.
25. Four-Arms: Super strength. Four Arms.
26. Ultra-Ben: Weak to chocolate. Super strength, and durability. Laser vision, and freeze breath.
27. Pummlmayan (Name by Gechoman44): Super strength. extended tongue that can grab objects. Necromancy. Temporary Soul adding.
28. Hive-mushroom: Can control and mutate fungus if it's around. Can spawn mushroom minions that share vision.
29. Cyan Cyclops: No powers.
30. Greenie-Weenie (based off of the Beanie Weenie form PVZ Heroes): Has a prehensile tail. No other powers.
31. Goo-luck: Can regenerate from a small piece of slime. Wall climbing. Immune to harm except crushing. can use tendrils to grab and swing things.
32. Wildvine: Seed bombs. regeneration. Stretching.
33. Upgrade: Tech merging. Eye laser.
34. Braindrain (Thomas Perkins): Can turn people into zombie minion if he bites them. Life force sapping.
35. Transmorpher (Name by Gechoman44): Shape-shifting. Can look like people or objects.
36. Heatblast: Fire manipulation and fire immunity.
37. XLR8: Super speed.
38. Snorecupine (Name by Derrick J. Wyatt): Can shoot sleeping quills.
39. Edit: Bunny-bruiser: His eyes are positioned so that he can see on the side of himself. No other powers.
40. Fish-fight (Thalassian): Can only breath underwater. Only has fins, so can not walk on land.

Alien Force Roster:

1. Hydro-fold (Aquarian): Has a containment suit that allows him to survive. Makes him able to survive in a vacuum. The suit is much more durable than Labrid's suit so it won't tear. If it is breached, then a fail-save will de-transform Ben into human form.
2. Peel-Puncher (Highbreed) (Name derived from a commentator, but I can't remember who): Can fly. Shoot needles from his fingers. Immune to cold but not being frozen by ice. The Omnitrix cleaned his DNA so he isn't sick.
3. Pick-axer (Name is WIP): Has a pickax that can be enhanced with electricity. Has a headlight to see in the dark.
4. Dragon-fry (Dragon): Flight. Fire (Maybe laser) breath. Highly durable.
5. Bullfrag (Incursion): Same as original. No sunglasses :(
6. Sparklebellum (Sylonnoid) (Name from Derrick J Wyatt): Can survive in a vacuum.
7. Frog-dodge (Gilhil's species): Same as Bullfrag. As strong as stone Kevin.
8. Spider-Monkey: Can shoot webs out of tail. Four arms. Enhanced in all attributes.
9. Moon-man (WIP name): No powers
10. Tiny Big (WIP name): Stronger than Humungosaur. Can't see in the dark. Sees people with sparks in their Anodite form.
11. Arma-mask: Has four arms. No powers
12. Null-Slate: No powers
13. Whisker-Word: No powers
14. Sun-Lite: (based off the ): When in the presence of sunlight, he can heal others.
15. Void-Ogre (WIP): Can manipulate darkness, making himself hard to see.
16. Tele-static: Can short-circuit machines. Can teleport themselves to other places they have been or know the location of. Can teleport objects to himself
17. Cobra-crush: Same powers as Ssserpent. Looks like a black mamba
18. Decagon Vreedle (Vreedle): Can survive in a vacuum. Expert at pyrotechnics. Will eventually be regenerated when killed.
19. War-Monger (WIP Name): No powers. is short.
20. Grem-lunch (Gremlin + Lunch): If he consumes meat before or during the transformation, Ben will turn into his primal form, allowing him to absorb electricity and become huge. The Omnitrix prevents his mind from being poisoned.
21. Grey-skull (He-man/She-ra reference): Stonger than a human.
22. Ghostfreak (Ectonurite): Can possess people. Flight. Intangibility. Tendrils. Invisibility.
23. Frankenstrike (Transylian): Can shoot electricity. Can stick to metal.
24. Blitzwolfer (Loboan): Can shoot sonic howls. Has claws and a jaw.
25. Snare-Oh (Teph Khufan): Made of bandages, which can be used to wrap people up. Can't be hurt.
26. Un-perceivable: Can perceive many dimensions, allowing him to perceive invisible beings. Can teleport. Is unable to be harmed due to being made out of that weird energy. Telekinesis.
27. Marshmallow Marauder (Lewodan (Name By DJW): Can float, and can use electromagnetism, short-circuiting technology. Can regenerate.
28. Power snack: The more he eats, the stronger he gets. Has to be actual food.
29. Nanomech: Very small. Can shrink. Can shoot green energy.
30. Plas-max (Name may be used already): Can shoot solar rays. Teleportation.

Ultimate Alien Roster:

1. Water Hazard: Can shoot water. Has hard armor.
2. Terraspin: Mana resistance. Flight. Air shooting.
3. NRG: Heavy suit. Radiation blasts.
4. Splice-speak: Can swap the voices of two people by firing a small beam from the two spikes on his head, similar to the experiment that swaps minds from the Lilo and Stitch TV show.
5. Invert-vision: Can mess with the vision of someone he touches, making them see upside down, or with messed up colors, making them trip up.
6. Armadrillo: Hard armor. Drill and piston hands.
7. Ampfibian: Electricity shooting and transformation. Intangibility. Flight.
8. Marrow-scar (Morgg's species): Imagine Bashmouth's powers, but with bones instead of metal.
9. Eye-sore (Churl): Very strong. Can shoot lasers.
10. Guardi-orb (Sentinels of Monarch): Giant rock. Very strong. Can also shoot lasers.
11. Grey-zerker: As strong as Ultimate Humungosaur.
12. Truemor: By touching someone, he can pass a tumor onto them that forces them to tell the truth.
13. Slug-slipper: Is a slug like alien that is extremely slippery.
14. Mana-squared: All mana and magic based attacks and defences are two times as strong. This applies to enemies like Charmcaster, and friends like Gwen. Can't be turned off.
15. Black Matter: Can increase the intelligence of others he touches. He himself has no enhanced intelligence, and can't increase it using his own power.
16. Back-hand: Can reflect any ranged attack, making it home in on the attacker.
17. Blank-slate: Never has to blink. Immune to eye irritants. Can heal injuries and poison by physical contact.
18. Clockwork: Time powers
19. Ele-fainter (Trumbipular's species): Removes Ben's peanut allergy, allowing him to eat peanuts and grow to large sizes. As strong or stronger than Humungosaur.
20. Bluey (Name taken from the Disney cartoon.): No powers
21. Tick (Tack's species): Can stretch his neck
22. Lights-in: Can redirect where the light that hits him goes, allowing what he sees to be seen by others.
23. Norm Mally: No powers
24. (WIP NAME) (Brannigan's species): (WIP)
25. Orange-split: Composed of a somewhat soft gelatinous liquid. When damaged, any pieces will regenerate into a perfect copy.
26. Down soar: The two spikes going down his face can invert gravity. By moving the spikes in a direction, gravity will go in that direction. Is a relative to Splice-speak's species.
27. Ignite-iris: Can ignite flammable liquids that he looks at, like oil.
28. Chamalien: Invisibility

Ultimate Forms used (Some taken from my other what ifs) :

1. Ultimate Peel-Puncher: He can use his tendrils to drain the water out of living things, weakening them. (Like Cell from DBZ) Plant based life like Highbreed, methanosians, and Flouranas are unable to attack him.
2. Ultimate Dragon-fry: (Power by Optimal_Ad6274) Elemental Breath "The ability to breathe different elemental beams like fire, water, ice, lightning, etc." Quote from him. Can surround his wings with those elements.
3. Ultimate Spider-monkey: Same as original
4. Ultimate Snare-Oh: Puppeteer. Can attach his bandages to a living thing, controlling them. All other powers are the same.
5. Ultimate Water Hazard: His water can now become gelatinous, trapping people inside. Can suck up water from people by poking them with the holes on his hands, dehydrating them.
6. Ultimate Tiny Big: Passively absorbs the mana of living things, making himself stronger and grows in size. Is smaller than the base form.
7. Ultimate Void-ogre: Can form darkness into objects.
8. Ultimate Green-metal: Can transform energy into metal, covering more of his body. Can use this with laser blasts, kinetic energy, (When he is hurt) radiation, or sunlight.

Part 1, Part 26, Part 27, Part 28, Part 29, Part 30, Part 31, Part 32, Part 33, Part 34, Part 35, Part 36, Part 37, Part 38, Part 39, Part 40, Part 41, Part 42, Part 43,
Based on a this post: "What if the Omnitrix only had the scan function."

Has nothing to do with being femme really, I was just watching a cartoon and an episode about wishes came on.
I think I would relinquish mine or use them on friends because inevitably I would likely regret whatever thing I wanted.

Je compte commencer une transition MTF prochainement, mais je suis parfois rattrapé par ma mentalité masculine. Ce désir d'etre un homme, et d'avoir une copine. Une tres jolie copine. Frustré qu'a 24 ans, je n'ai aucune experience de l'amour. Ça joue dans ma vision des choses.
Personellement, au niveau relation homme femme, je n'ai toujours voulu qu'une chose (et c'est encore le cas meme si j'aimerais m'en défaire mais pas pour les bonnes raisons), c'est juste une copine hyper jolie, que les gens soient jaloux de moi en me voyant avec une 10/10 au bras. Surtout avec ma personnalité d'introverti, et mon physique pas top (meme si moi je me trouve objectivement, vraiment tres beau mais je dois me tromper). Et la vous allez me dire, "may c pas bien tu veux juste un trophé et tout". Sauf que non. J'avais aussi de vraies intentions de respect et d'amour envers une potentielle copine. Mais ça le monde refuse de le voir. En plus d'un physique, je cherchais une personalité particuliere, qui me coresspondais, sans etre comme mpi. En réalité je dis 10/10, mais le critere est large. Jolie, féminine, fan (ou au moins grande consommatrice) de mode et de makeup, pas obese. Et ça me suffit.
Il me parait évident que je recherche une enorme part de féminité dans ma vie. Que ce soit chez une compagne potentielle, ou chez moi. Et il est plus qu'évident que les deux sont liés.
Je disais que je n'ai eu aucun experience de l'ampour, c'est vrai, mais j'ai eu quelques bribes. Une fille, ultra motivé pour etre ma copine, et moi pas motivé pour un sou. Ayant tout de meme fait l'effort d'aller creuser un peu le truc. Ayant pu experitementer un peu plus une intimité H/F, et comprendre que NON, c'est clairement pas surcôté. Avec une fille qui me plaisait pas du tout c'etait tout de meme un peu agréable, alors IMAGINEZ avec une fille qui te plait, et a qui tu plait. J'ai absolulent aucun putain de doute que ça doit etre exceptionel.
Et quant tu sais ça, tu comprends pourquoi certains sont des incels. Ils sont privés du bonheur ultime, par pur manque de chance. Pour mon cas, on m'as fait etre introverti, manque de bol, introverti = interdit de petite copine. Donc forcément quand tu comprends que t'as pas le droit au bonheur... (Rappel d'ailleurs qu'au dela du sexe, une copine c'est aussi de l'affection a donner et a recevoir, une compagnie qui fait plaisir, avancer a deux et se tirer mutuellement vers le haut. Bref, ça change littéralement la vie)
Moi. Il est temps de décider de ce que je veux. Il est temps de décider de ce qui fait de moi un etre humain avant tout. De décider de ce qui va créer la connexion aux autres. La connexion essentiele a la survie de l'homme qui est un animal social. Il est temps de décider, quelle image je veux renvoyer aux autres.
D'un mec introverti, blasé et sois disant "méchant" qui a réussi le casse du siecle en se trouvant la 10/10 ultime, et qui impose définitivement son statut de "mieux que les autres", auquel il a toujours cru.
Ou bien. L'image d'une 10/10, qui ne sais meme pas encore a quoi elle aspire, si ce n'est etre jolie, et etre toujours meilleure que les autres. (Oui j'ai aucune idée de quoi faire apres la transition).
Ou bien je réussirais aucun des deux choix, et vu que je peine a trouver un objectif de vie qui n'implique pas une vie de couple quelconque... J'erre et j'attends que le temps passe... je m'occupe comme je peux, et trouve du bonheur dans des choses de la vie. Tente de cultiver la solitude. D'en faire une force. D'en faire une marque de fabrique.
Oui c'est tres confus.
TL;DR : Puceau de 24 ans, terriblement frustré de ne jamais avoir eu de copine. Mais aussi femme trans qui ne s'est pas encore lancée. Je suis tiraillée par ces deux côtés de moi et je dois décider d'un clan.

L'emploi a peu varié en mai 2024 (+27 000; +0,1 %) et le taux d'emploi a diminué de 0,1 point de pourcentage pour s'établir à 61,3 %. Le taux de chômage s'est établi à 6,2 % en mai, en hausse de 0,1 point de pourcentage au cours du mois et de 0,9 point de pourcentage par rapport à un an plus tôt.
Voici quelques faits saillants des plus récents résultats de l’Enquête sur la population active :

• En mai, l'emploi a progressé chez les jeunes femmes âgées de 15 à 24 ans (+48 000; +3,7 %) et chez les femmes âgées de 55 ans et plus (+21 000; +1,1 %). Parallèlement, l'emploi a reculé chez les femmes du principal groupe d'âge actif (de 25 à 54 ans) (-40 000; -0,6 %) et chez les jeunes hommes (-23 000; -1,6 %).
• L'emploi a augmenté en mai dans les secteurs des soins de santé et de l'assistance sociale (+30 000; +1,1 %), de la finance, des assurances, des services immobiliers et des services de location et de location à bail (+29 000; +2,0 %), des services aux entreprises, des services relatifs aux bâtiments et des autres services de soutien (+19 000; +2,7 %) et des services d'hébergement et de restauration (+13 000; +1,1 %). Parallèlement, il a diminué dans les secteurs de la construction (-30 000; -1,9 %), du transport et de l'entreposage (-21 000; -1,9 %) et des services publics (-5 400; -3,5 %).
• L'emploi a progressé en mai en Ontario (+50 000; +0,6 %), au Manitoba (+7 800; +1,1 %) et en Saskatchewan (+5 400 +0,9 %), tandis qu'il a reculé en Alberta (-20 000; -0,8 %), à Terre-Neuve-et-Labrador (-2 100; -0,9 %) et à l'Île-du-Prince-Édouard (-1 100; -1,2 %). Il a peu varié dans les autres provinces.
• Le total des heures travaillées était inchangé en mai, mais il était en hausse de 1,6 % par rapport à 12 mois plus tôt.
• En mai, le salaire horaire moyen des employés a progressé de 5,1 % (+1,69 $ pour atteindre 34,94 $) par rapport à un an plus tôt, après avoir augmenté de 4,7 % en avril (données non désaisonnalisées).
• Le taux d'emploi des étudiants de 20 à 24 ans retournant aux études s'est établi à 61,0 % en mai, ce qui était inférieur de 2,9 points de pourcentage à celui de mai 2023 (63,9 %) (données non désaisonnalisées).

***
Employment was little changed in May 2024 (+27,000; +0.1%) and the employment rate fell 0.1 percentage points to 61.3%. The unemployment rate was 6.2% in May, up 0.1 percentage points in the month and 0.9 percentage points on a year-over-year basis.
Here are some additional highlights from the latest Labour Force Survey results:

• Employment was up for young women aged 15 to 24 (+48,000; +3.7%) and for women aged 55 and older (+21,000; +1.1%) in May. At the same time, employment declined among core-aged women (aged 25 to 54) (-40,000; -0.6%) and young men (-23,000; -1.6%).
• Employment rose in May in health care and social assistance (+30,000; +1.1%), finance, insurance, real estate, rental and leasing (+29,000; +2.0%), business, building and other support services (+19,000; +2.7%), as well as accommodation and food services (+13,000; +1.1%). It declined in construction (-30,000; -1.9%), transportation and warehousing (-21,000; -1.9%) and utilities (-5,400; -3.5%).
• Employment increased in May in Ontario (+50,000; +0.6%), Manitoba (+7,800; +1.1%), and Saskatchewan (+5,400 +0.9%), while there were declines in Alberta (-20,000; -0.8%), Newfoundland and Labrador (-2,100; -0.9%) and Prince Edward Island (-1,100; -1.2%). There was little change in the remaining provinces.
• Total hours worked were unchanged in May and were up 1.6% compared with 12 months earlier.
• Average hourly wages among employees increased 5.1% (+$1.69 to $34.94) on a year-over-year basis in May, following growth of 4.7% in April (not seasonally adjusted).
• The employment rate of returning students aged 20 to 24 was 61.0% in May, 2.9 percentage points lower than in May 2023 (63.9%) (not seasonally adjusted).