All will be as it should be part 1

Clockwork prided himself on order.

On cogs that turned when they were meant to turn. On grains of sand that fell exactly once. On timelines that behaved themselves and did not—did not—develop bad habits like paradoxes, fractures, or speedsters.

He hated the Flash family.

Not personally. Oh no. Personally implied effort. This was professional loathing. Centuries of it. They treated time like a racetrack and then had the audacity to be surprised when it splintered under their feet.

Most of the time, Clockwork fixed it.

He sighed, rewound, clipped a branching possibility here, nudged a causality there. Clean. Efficient. Tedious.

This time, however, Barry Allen—bless his chronically impulsive heart—had done something irrevocable.

Clockwork froze the timestream and stared.

“No,” he said flatly.

Danny Fenton was not supposed to die at five. He couldn't stop it. It had to happen.

The accident—the accident—was cataloged, indexed, and filed neatly under Age Fourteen: Ghost Portal Activation / Half-Death Event. A controlled disaster. A survivable one. A boy old enough to understand rules, consequences, and secrecy.

Instead, a speedster’s careless temporal wake had nudged the Fentons forward. Five-year-old Danny had toddled into the lab on the wrong day. Pressed the wrong button. Been in the wrong place at the wrong moment.

The portal had activated.

And Danny Fenton had died.

And lived.

Clockwork fast-forwarded.

The screens before him filled with ruin.

A child who couldn’t control his phasing, screaming as he fell through floors. A boy who went invisible when frightened and never came back. Government containment. Dissection tables. A pair of parents who loved their son so much they would tear him apart to understand him.

Jack and Maddie Fenton were good people.

They were also catastrophes waiting to happen.

Clockwork watched timelines collapse like dominoes.

“No,” he repeated, sharper now.

He rewound.

With a gesture, the Ghost Portal vanished from the Fenton basement as if it had never existed. Solder cooled. Blueprints turned blank. The connection to the Zone sealed so thoroughly even the Observants would nod in approval.

In this timeline, the Fentons would never touch the Infinite Realms.

Then Clockwork turned to the boy.

Five years old. Small. Flickering between states like a broken light. Green eyes glowing faintly in the frozen air.

Danny Fenton needed to be raised right.

Clockwork watched.

He watched foster systems fail. Watched heroes try and fail to be parents. Watched well-meaning people recoil from glowing eyes and impossible abilities.

He watched until he found someone who had already died.

Someone who had been dragged back from death by rage and grief and an iron refusal to stay down.

Someone who knew what it was to be unwanted. Broken. Angry. Alive anyway.

Jason Todd.

Crime Alley, Gotham City, was a nexus of pain and persistence. A place where tragedy didn’t end people—it forged them. Jason was older now, rougher, freshly returned to the world and still figuring out what that meant.

Clockwork rewound just enough.

He erased a few memories.

Jack’s laugh. Maddie’s arms. A lab full of humming machines.

What remained was warmth. A sense of home without a face attached.

Then Clockwork placed the child carefully on the cold pavement of Crime Alley.

Right in Jason Todd’s path.

The boy hiccupped, went briefly transparent, then solid again. His eyes glowed green in the dim light. He clutched a too-big hoodie around himself and looked up at the approaching footsteps.

Jason froze.

“…what the hell,” he muttered.

The kid looked at him like he was the sun.

Clockwork watched Jason kneel without thinking. Watched him take off his jacket. Watched him swear softly as the kid phased through his own hands and then burst into terrified tears.

Clockwork saw the way Jason didn’t flinch.

Didn’t run.

Didn’t look away.

Instead, Jason pulled the child close, solid or not, and growled at the universe like it had personally offended him.

“Okay,” Jason said, voice rough but steady. “Okay, little man. I got you.”

The timeline stabilized.

The gears turned smoothly once more.

“All will be as it should be,” Clockwork whispered.

And faded away.

part2

bro lock the fuck in what are you doing

guys….,, being friends, like actual friends, with people you have systemic privilege over is going to involve some good-natured ribbing. it’s going to involve them complaining about [insert privileged group you belong to] in front of you or even to you. that’s not a personal attack, it’s because they think you’re cool enough to hang. it’s because they think they can express their frustration to you without you attacking them. you really want to prove them wrong?

Landback in Canada, the U.S, and Mexico. Landback for the Pacific Islands, Aotearoa, and Australia. Landback for Palestine. Land back for Ukraine. Independence for Hong Kong. Land back for every French and British colony. Land back for everywhere that people are eroding borders, killing, burning trees and crops, destabilizing resources, forcing people out. Land back for everyone whose independence is in question.

These people really have no soul, the most beautiful future they can imagine is just brands. it's sickening. they want to control the world and make it all exactly the same as the cultural wasteland that is the USA. [link]

and now the nightmare begins.

Oury Jalloh was burned alive in a German police cell while his hands and feet were cuffed to a bed. the cops claimed he had set himself on fire but offered no evidence. No one was convicted. It took 2 more violent deaths in the same police building (Hans-Jürgen Rose, died from internal injuries from blunt force impacts, Mario Bichtemann died from a skull fracture), before one cop had to pay a fine. No cop faced real consequences.

15-year-old Jerryson Noor was shot and killed by police in the Netherlands after being accused of trying to steal a bicycle. We was running from police and clearly posed no threat.

Independent forensic tests and later expert analysis commissioned by Jalloh’s family suggest it would have been very difficult for someone bound to ignite the mattress on their own and that fire accelerants such as petrol may have been involved.

A 2019 autopsy commissioned by the family also found fractures (broken rib, broken nose, skull base fracture) indicative of serious injuries before the fire — a point the courts did not allow as decisive evidence. (DW)

not to mention that the coastguard in europe are primarily a border patrol force and routinely watch migrants drown to death without intervening.

the migration data portal estimates at least 1700 died in the mediterranean in 2024 alone

If you or someone you know has enrolled in an ROTC college program where you will end up owing money if you choose to drop out and not enlist in the military, you CAN pay the money back the same as you would a loan. The rates will probably be better than the loan rates you would have gotten for normal student loans. You are not "locked in." You have a choice. You do not have to join the military.

also, if you are in ROTC and haven't yet gotten scholarships/completed field training/signed on the dotted line, you are free to leave without owing anything. You can drop your ROTC classes Right Now and there will be no consequences from the military (now depending on when you drop, you might end up with a withdrawal on your transcript, but that doesn't really have any consequences outside of the school)

You can drop out of JROTC at any time!! ROTC is NOT a military contract, you are NOT bound by anything except maybe a student loan if they've paid for some of your college. Paying off a loan leaves you with WAY better options than staying in the program.

I know multiple people who incurred permanent disabilities in ROTC that prevented them from going into the military, so they ended up having to pay the loan back anyway. They wish they had dropped out before they got hurt!

Do not join the US military.

working at a grocery store this is something i was so worried would happen, i cant stop someone from trying to feed themselves.

but it literally hasn't happened. people steal fried chicken and pack steaks into a duffel bag. or they have me write on cakes for their coworkers birthday and run out the door with it. they eat chicken and dump the bones on a shelf they pay for the rest of their "groceries".

i've never once seen anyone steal bread, or fruit, or vegetables, or cold chicken

Same

We have free purified water but no they steal soda

so you’re saying it people are trying to feed themselves

How dare poor people eat things they enjoy rather than bland staples, the only thing they deserve

A little disappointed that this didn't become a site-wide week-long discourse topic/meme fodder because it's a discussion we're way overdue to have

Like, let's set aside the practical concerns, like how "unhealthy" food has more calories while taking up less bag space, people can't survive on nothing but bread and water, many poor communities are food deserts where fresh food isn't even available to steal, and many people (including the explicitly unhoused man in the meme) don't have a way to prepare frozen chicken. Let's set all that aside, because poor people aren't required to justify every single action to you specifically

Instead let's talk about the sheer undisguised hatred of the poor on display here. "The fried food at the grocery store is for me, because I'm a good special boy with money, if the filthy poors want to steal they can steal the dried gruel powder because that's all they're good enough for. Or they can have meat, I suppose, but only if it's frozen meat that they'll have to go heat up themselves to prove to me that they've earned it. And make sure they grab some raw vegetables that they'll have to chop and cook themselves too, that'll be a good use of their bountiful time and energy. If they wanted not to be miserable, they should have tried not being poor, like me!"

There is literally no justification for this shit. If you believe that stealing bread from a chain grocery store is a justified act that hurts no one, why the fuck would you feel different about steak? Why are you even thinking about this shit? Why are you sitting around fuming at the thought of poor people having anything that makes life worth living? What does it fucking matter to you?

How can you be heartless enough to look at a society where people have to steal in order to feed themselves and their families, and your biggest concern is about policing what they steal?

"They only steal the expensive stuff, then they go and PAY for the cheap stuff???"

Gee I wonder why that would be...

I wonder why you’ve never seen someone with no house steal raw chicken before. There are just some mysteries that can truly never be solved

For the record, I was homeless for a while - or at least, I lived in a motel by the highway. And luckily I had access to a mini fridge - and it was the kind of motel where people just *lived*, which I discovered when they served Thanksgiving dinner in the lobby to everyone and asked us if we’d like to come down for it. (I cried. A lot.)

That mini fridge was a miracle, but I didn’t have anything like a hot plate or a way to prepare food - just a pot for coffee/hot water. Mostly what I ate was peanut butter and jam sammiches, apples, and lunch meat and cheese if I could get it, because it was expensive. I never got to the point of stealing… but it wasn’t because I thought I was too good to steal. The smell of the fried chicken in the grocery store deli was murder. I just didn’t think I could get away with it.

If I didn’t have that mini fridge or a way to keep my food cold and safe… yeah, I’d probably be stealing that fucking chicken.

So as a retail worker who has five years of experience, I'd like to put my two cents in. While most people advocate stealing if you can't buy food(which I do understand and completely empathize with), you must remember that you aren't just stealing from the corporation, you are in fact stealing from the employees themselves. So many times I've asked for overtime and have been denied it bc our shrink is too high. Ever wonder why there aren't enough cashiers? Cutting hours bc we need to recoup on our shrink. Also, on another note, the things I see people usually steal are high value electronics(like $70 fans, tvs, earbuds), makeup, and like $50+ toys. So while I empathize, please don't steal. You are literally taking money out of employees paychecks, and depending on the corporation itself, you could actually get them fired for not catching when people steal.

actually very easy to believe some people are shitty

@flower884 and everyone else in retail, I'm sorry, but you're misassigning blame here.

The people stealing from your corporate overlords aren't the ones choosing to understaff your workplace, cut your hours, pay you empoverishing wages much less than true value of your labor, nor fire you because they think the store's shrink is too large: Your corporate overlords are the ones doing that and they blaming John val John hoping you and everyone else believes them so you don't organize and demand concessions: and you've swallowed that pill like a potassum supository.

You've been in retail for five years; do some fucking organizing, form a union, fuck your boss's wife, and don't be the snitch that gets John 6 years hard labor for stealing some bread to feed his family.

It's not that hard*, just do what Chris Smalls do: he led a win against Amazon. FUCKING Amazon. Successfully unionizing, or even failing to unionize but scaring the shit out of the corporate overlords that you might succeed will have a lot larger, more positive effect on your material conditions than bitching on the internet about poor people wanting necessary or nice things they can't comfortably afford.

*Don't misunderstand me, it's hard work, organizing. Chris Smalls fought for over two years and a wrongful termination to acheive the win for fellows, but you'll more likely to find success in unionizing even against the most notorious union buster than you are to baulk even one person from theft of either necesity or pleasure on the basis of, in my opinion, a critically flawed moral argument**.

**I view the so-called property rights of corporations as illegitimate***, so 'stealing from a store' is to me morally nonsensical even as I'm forced to recognize its legal reality. The point of this footnote being that I don't think there is anything morally wrong with freely taking what ought be freely available to you, and you'd never convince me against 'shoplifting' using a moral argument, least of all the consequencialist one you're making because, as previously stated, you're misassigning blame. Again, unionize and fuck your boss's wife, yeah?

***As a property abolitionist, I also view a lot of 'property rights of individuals' as illegitimate too, but that's outside the scope of this discussion.

Also; what? It's very sweet, actually, to steal a cake for your coworker 💖

Also-also, corporations have a budget explicitly to handle stolen product. All the poor people stealing food so they can not starve are not running them dry to the point that they have to fire employees. If they were at that point, they would already be shutting down so they didn't go bankrupt.

Tl;dr:

i worked at ross dress for less for a year or two. they checked our bags at the end of every shift. a girl was fired for allegedly stealing some makeup.

they made us do half an hour of cleanup after we’d all clocked out or we’d be penalized for not ‘clocking out on time’ but also ‘not finishing facing’. half an hour of work at minimum wage was about 3$, multiplied by 5-8 employees per shift, multiplied by about three shifts. per year. forever.

they’d hammer on and on and ON at us about loss prevention and shrinkage, while skimming off 45$-72$ from their own employees in wage theft. every day. plus the hours of free work managers put in. but whenever we were denied raises or bonuses or pizza rewards or whatever it was always because of ‘all the shrinkage this quarter’ and they’d blame thieves, for their shitty secondhand crap they bought in huge remaindered job lots anyway.

my manager cried in her office once, for a company that extracted hundreds of dollars worth of free work off its employees every month, and then blamed the poor for our abuse.

you’re not being overworked and underpaid because your grocery chain is being robbed blind by filthy savages and fucking walmart or wherever needs to pinch some pennies. your bosses are fucking you over specifically because they can.

As a retail worker, if you blame other poor people or homeless people for your low wages, you're a fucking bootlicker riddled with propaganda.

A corporation is not a person, the people stealing even expensive things are living, breathing people.

You want to know why people steal non-food items? Because we live in a society that operates on profit. Electronics like TVs and Headphones, expensive jewelry, shitty brand expensive clothing, etc. Are all valuable items that can be sold. That money can go to fresh meals, phone bills, campsite fees or hotel fees, or a common one is Fines, because it's rare to be homeless and not have a cop cite you some bullshit, hundred dollar violation for something like sleeping on a bench, or your car having a missing brake light, and thats if you're lucky and said cop doesn't beat you or steal what you have on you.

Corporations are not people. Corporations are a infinite money glitch cycle so some rich fucks can horde money like fucking Smaug and convince the employees that oh we could pay more if Homeless Susan didn't steal that $25 package of diapers.

If you are a retail worker, you are closer to being that homeless person stealing a bucket of security cameras than to even your District Manager, and yet the rich have you convinced that you are somehow better than your fellow humans.

As a retail worker, you are not allowed to be punished if someone steals in front of you and you don't stop it. In fact, and actual retail workers will tell you this, we are advised to literally let people walk out because if we jump in we could open the Store up for lawsuits or workman's comp claims, so they'd rather eat the shoplift than pay for the medical bills of an employee who got hurt.

And even if you get a talk down from your manager, I'd say that's better than living with yourself knowing you just helped the Cops arrest a starving person who was just trying to get some food, clothes, or money so they could live another day.

Corporations aren't humans, they have no loyalty. That homeless person who just stole a flat-screen is more likely to give you support if you can't pay your rent and find yourself evicted, than a Corporation. A Corporation will not show you the loyalty you show it, a Corporation will throw you on your ass if your performance suffers due to illness, disaster, grief, disability etc. Because a Corporation is. Not. Human. And they will not be there when you fall.

Don't let the King convince you that the peasants are holding him back from paying you better. The only thing holding him back is greed. You will never see a share of his gold that you protect so loyally.

fuck it guess i'll throw my hat in the ring

i work at autozone, and i'm assigned to part sales, which means i'm almost always at a register at the very front of the store. sometimes i'll do other jobs when it's needed, but for the most part, i am at a register, so i get to look at everyone entering and leaving the store. which means that if anybody steals anything, i get to see that, too. autozone of course doesn't sell food, apart from some snacks up by checkout, so anything that people do steal are tools or car parts or fluid.

and when i see somebody pocket a pack of headlights, or a wrench, or a bottle of brake fluid?

i keep my fucking mouth shut instead of being a class traitor.

seriously, nobody WANTS to steal things, more accurately nobody wants to be in the position where they have to steal things. we don't even sell stuff people need to live, and i still shut up about it, because i don't know what they're going through. especially because while you don't need to to fix your car to survive, you do need it to have a half decent existence out here, and if it's got an out headlight you're gonna get pulled over by the state funded terrorist group patrolling the streets and at best they'll suck away half your paycheck in fines, at worst they'll just shoot you dead on the spot when you reach for your id.

"well then don't drive it!"

they need to get to work, don't they? what happened to getting a job?

"well then walk to work!"

lol, lmao. it gets to -3 fahrenheit in the winters here and sometimes it'll rain so hard the sidewalk floods, and in the summer you'll fry like an egg.

"well then bike to work!"

again, unsheltered

"well, take public transit!"

don't have any

"well what about the employees when they steal?"

most places don't dock hours for shrink, if they do, fuck em, unionize.

also, back to the topic of food theft, if you think people should only steal fucking gruel and oats, go fuck yourself. being against people who can't afford it taking the stuff that's actually half enjoyable to eat is the exact same shit as telling poor people who have a few luxuries to just sell them; you think enjoying life is something you should only be allowed to do if you can afford it, just fucking say that. people will take soda and prepacked food for the same reason they won't sell their playstation for that food, it's fucking depressing to live with the bare minimum.

No fuck the small businesses. They're some of the worst offenders because Walmart has people actively watching for blatantly illegal behavior. Small business owners think they're too small for it to matter.

Ma and pop stores are the worst about issues like understaffing, wage theft, overworking, and overpaying because they have to compete with places that out price them like Walmart. The small business owner I currently work for is every bit as selfish as Jeff Bezos. He just operates close enough that the community thinks he's different.

So hi I'm the pronoun having liberal living off of government aid that all the conservatives hate. I make less than $1000 a month with my disability income and food stamps combined and have noticed first hand something that no one has brought up.

That fried chicken that everyone keeps bringing up, as well as any hot food items at grocery stores, they cannot be purchased with food stamps.

Just a couple months ago I was really struggling. I had ~$20 in my bank account, ~$20 in my EBT account, my fridge was empty and a few weeks to go before I would get paid next. So I'm looking online for coupons and deals and doing the math to see what I can get for cheap that will last me until the first of the month. That's when I remember the local grocery store has a cheap chicken deal where I can get an 8 piece for $7. I figure that with some deli sides it will be plenty to fill my fridge and I can keep the money in my bank account for gas and other necessities. Only for my EBT card to be denied at the register.

You know what else you can't get on food stamps?

•tampons/pads

•paper towels

•toilet paper

•pet food

•medicine/vitamins

•ANY FOOD THAT IS 'HOT' AT POINT OF SALE (taken straight from the USDA website)

So yeah of course those are going to be things that are stolen. Because food stamps doesn't cover everything people need on the daily.

If I hear anyone freaking out about people stealing shit 1. you are not a socialist 2. You are a bootlicker 3. I am going to yell at you like a angry parrot until you leave Like you know what I hear if co-worker is freaking out about stealing shit? "Oh I will never unionize with you, and even if I did, I would sell you out for a pizza party" that's what I fucking hear, and you may go "oh no not me" but you have already told me that you don't have morals. You are a wannabe cop for corpos because you think they will pet you and give you cookies. You are the people who break the working class. You are the people who turn on our Black siblings because you got yours after the boss gives you a raise but not them. YOU ARE MORE OF THE PROBLEM THEN ANYONE STEALING

"no one NEEDS art supplies so why steal that?"

honey why do people BUY those things?

WHY is the only thing the underclass allowed mere HOMEOSTASIS?

WHY is being of an upper class the thing that makes you DESERVE joy? DESERVE self expression? why are these things gatekept by class privilege?

just speaking as my welfare recipient 4 times homelessness survivor self: why would I want to stay alive without art??? art is breath to me. it is somatic therapy that welfare insurance won't cover.

I think about the unhoused artists of my city who have sold their art on the streets and died in them. The bootstraps you expect the lumpenproletariat to pull ourselves up from get used as a noose by those complicit in our deaths.

Radlibs are still talking about how antisemitic it is to protest at Gaza land auctions hosted at synagogues in the year of 2026

If mosques anywhere auction native lands I will not hesitate to protest myself and it wouldn't be islamophobic to protest against this

You people disgust me

If you're an American that wants to "help the people of Iran" the only words out of your mouth should be "we should push for sanction relief"

Look out! It's Batman!

... wait...

(Tim twisted his ankle)

gif version here. WARNING - flashing image

things i'm afraid of:

1. being so emotionally dishonest and socially inept that nothing i say or do is ever taken seriously even in my time of greatest need

2. sincerity

"the forbidden advent calendar"

There should be a book that's called How To Art and it just teaches you the correct way to Art with numbers. Like a chemistry textbook teaches you how to do equations. "This is a good abstract painting because the distance between these two squares divided by the saturation difference between their two colours is within acceptable parameters. Don't forget to convert your units before calculating. This one is bad because these two lines have an angle with each other withing the Unacceptable zone." Make it numbers. MAKE IT NUMBERS SO I CAN DO IT.

"Can't you tell what art looks good and what art looks bad?" NO. NO I CAN'T.

"Derin that's utterly stupid, you'd think that was a stupid thing to say about writing stories wouldn't you?"

Well yes, because I know how to do that one which makes it easy. I can see and navigate how complicated it is which means it's too complicated to be Maths, complications that clearly can't exist in art I'm not familiar with because I can't see them. I don't know visual art which means it's hard and should be Maths so I can understand it. What, I'm expected to live in a world where other people have different skills and different types of artistic instincts than me? Don't be silly. OBVIOUSLY my perspective is objectively correct.