Just Some Nerd

he/him, 29

[redrockingchairdotmp3]

“i cannot perform basic household duties while other people are in my house” crowd make some noise

[i-peed-so-hard-i-laughed-deacti]

we can’t. there’s people in the House

[smoke-and-aurora]

animal crossing rules

[captainkirkk]

Ok but Zuko using the knowledge he acquired during his banishment to help him as the Fire Lord. Like making small talk with Earth Kingdom dignitaries about their local foods that he enjoyed and even misses. Like having in-depth conversations with his captains about sea currents and navigation. Like, in the middle of a meeting with several high-ranking naval officials, pointing out flails in security, like how a person can cling to a Fire Nation ship for hours at a time, or climb aboard using hatches on the upper decks, or disguise themselves as a lower ranking guard with easily accessible spare armour….

Though none of his experiences can prepare Zuko for the long, awkward silence that comes after he admits to doing or at least knowing something illegal and/or completely buck wild

[cinthi-lante]

fire lord zuko: you should maybe revisit the security measures around the water ducts that the sealturtles use

northern water tribe leader: that’s not necessary, no one can survive submerged in the artic ocean for so many minutes

zuko:

zuko: remember that time the fire nation attacked you

[chucktaylorupset]

Zuko: okay first you have to promise not to get mad

[kamen-rider-zed]

Earth King: Tell me about your first visit to Ba Sing Se.

Zuko:

[elidyce]

Okay, but before all this:

Advisors: Princess Azula did perform the astounding feat of infiltrating Ba Sing Se…

Zuko: Huh? Oh, that’s not hard. It’s pretty nice, if you don’t mind the brainwashing, but you can’t get a spicy octopus for love or money. We ate so much jook. *shudders*

Advisors:… you got in too…. interesting.

*

Advisors: The mysterious Water Tribe city at the North Pole

Zuko: It’s a pretty place, if you like ice.  Lots of sealturtles. They have a really nice little sort of sacred grove thing there, too, I kidnapped the Avatar from it once.

Advisors: …. we have some questions….

*

Advisors: We still have not found the Fire Lord’s secret supplier of new weapons - 

Zuko: He’s at the Northern Air Temple. (Realizing they’re all staring at him) Oh, no, I haven’t met him personally, but I have friends who have. He sounds like a very interesting guy.

Advisors: SO MANY QUESTIONS

*

Zuko: (while directing post-war reparation efforts) Oh, and we need to send a lot of people to work on replanting the forest around this obscure village.

Advisors:…. may we ask why?

Zuko: Apparently the local panda spirit is pretty mad about having its forest burned down. 

Advisors, now afraid to ask: ….Yes, Fire Lord. 

*

Every now and then, the curiosity gets too much and they’ll bring up something like ‘legendary sand benders’ or ‘Southern Islands’ and Zuko invariably produces some tidbit of local knowledge (either his own or gleaned from the Gaang’s stories) and six Foreign Ministers have resigned in fear and the seventh one only barely held it together when Zuko greeted an envoy from a tiny, insignificant Earth Kingdom island with ‘Listen, I am really sorry about what happened last time, I hope the supplies I sent helped with the rebuilding, do you still have that giant eel thing?” IS THERE ANYTHING HE DOESN’T KNOW.

[knittingandscience]

Advisor: Before we start the meeting, I’d like to address the anniversary of Captain Zhao’s mysterious disappearance…

Zuko: At least he died doing what he loved?

Advisor: What do you mean, died?

[outcasts-redeemer]

Adviser: “There still has been no word about the whereabouts of the vigilante known as the Blue Spirit. The last reported sighting was in Ba Sing Se. It is imperative we find more information about him.”

Zuko: “Oh you’re still looking into that?”

Adviser: “He is a wanted criminal in both the Earth Kingdom and Fire Nation for espionage, theft, assault and battery, breaking and entering and breaking numerous other local laws and customs.”

Zuko: “Huh when you put it like that it does sound pretty bad.”

Adviser: “My Lord, surly you heard of him and his crimes.”

Zuko: “Of course I heard of him. Its just… I mean considering all the good he did. His heart was in the right place?”

Adviser: “…”

Zuko: “Ok, so don’t get mad…”

[biggest-gaudiest-poltergeist]

a lot of stuff happened but i'm choosing to remember 2025 as the year i found out people with green eyes exist irl

[biggest-gaudiest-poltergeist]

couple things:

yes i spent my entire life until a few months ago assuming green eyes were an urban legend

"what about all the fictional characters with green eyes" thought it was a trope like with anime protagonists having naturally purple hair

i found out by watching Desperate Housewives (one of the actors has green eyes and it threw me off)

(i had never watched Desperate Housewives until that point bc i assumed it was reality tv, of the same genre as Real Housewives Of Metropolitan Areas franchise)

i still haven't seen green eyes irl, i am simply aware now that they actually exist

"have you really never met a person with green eyes." i didn't say that. it's possible I've met dozens. my autistic ass has spent decades elevating eye contact avoidance to a sublime art form.

[homunculus-argument]

My rule of thumb with cooking and picky eaters is that I'm fine with people being picky, but I'm not ok with people lying about it. So if you've got a long list of things you can't or won't eat, give me the list, and I'm fine with cooking by it. Like literally just write a google docs with all your Yucky Ingredients on it and I can find a way to cook with whatever's left that isn't on the list.

But if you go "no I'm fine with anything it's ok I'll eat it :)" when I ask you what you will and won't eat, and once the food is on the table then you go "ew yuck it has Bad Ingredient, I can't eat this :(" I'm going to beat you with a frying pan.

[undeclaredinallthings]

I am a veeery picky eater. It is impossible for me to make a list of things that are “yucky ingredients,” and a dish can be made entirely with good ingredients and still will set me off.

Your pasta sauce is a bit chunky? Sorry. Your pizza feels a little too soggy? Sorry. Your curry just smells a way? Not even specific enough to name the issue? Sorry. But if I try to force myself I will gag and maybe loose my appetite for the rest of the day.

And neither of us could have necessarily known because it can be set off by absolutely nothing.

BUT! I don’t just do nothing and lie about my food issues or pretend that nothing is happening or going to happen!

When someone else is cooking for me, I ask what they’re making ahead of time. If they ask and are open to it, I make suggestions. If I can’t eat what they’re going to make I let them know. I tell them it’s not their fault and that I have food issues to do with things like texture and smell especially. I offer to bring a side dish that I can eat so I don’t go hungry and make everyone feel bad.

Worst comes to worst, if I don’t know if I’ll be able to eat and can’t talk to them beforehand, I have a snack before hand and pack a cliff bar. Again, I tell my host that it’s just food issues and it’s not their fault that I can’t eat what looks like an amazing meal.

Most people are very understanding if it’s clearly communicated (especially if I am able to communicate beforehand). Many of my friends now know to give me a heads up of what they’re serving. I can even trust some of them to make a simple side dish that I can eat, but that everyone else will like too so it doesn’t stand out as much.

Talking about it with acquaintances or strangers (friends parents, coworkers, etc) can feel really embarrassing. But they generally appreciate the heads up, are willing to accommodate in one of the above ways, or will, at the very least, know not to loudly point it out or put me on the spot later.

I promise that just telling them beforehand is still less embarrassing than having someone loudly ask why you’re not eating what they cooked in front of all the other guests and they are much less likely to be offended.

[homunculus-argument]

Clearly and openly communicating your food limitations, and even asking if you can bring your own food instead so you can at least eat together even if nothing they can provide is an option, is much better for everyone involved and significantly reduces your risk of getting whacked with a frying pan.

[r0zeclawz]

sick post i just found online. sorry i couldnt find the source

[r0zeclawz]

if this gets more notes than the memedaddy repost it would be really funny actually

[targetedknowledge]

[hedgehogoftime]

The Big Three of Olympus look nothing like what you expect.

-

Zeus is surprisingly androgynous. Ever since he absorbed Metis it's hard to tell if he's male or female from a distance. You can see her in the sharpness of his cheekbones, the lightness of his brow, and the richness of his silver-gold hair. He still proclaims he is a man, because only a man can be King, but there are moments where he looks to be more Metis than Zeus.

But that is not the first thing you notice about him. No, the first thing you notice are the scars. There are thousands of them. Most of them like tiny cracks along his skin bleeding silver-gold light into the world. remainders from when Typhon ripped him to pieces and he was sewed back together by his children. And, of course, he wears a massive jagged scar in the shape of a branching lightning bolt across his entire abdomen.

He hates them. You never see him with his torso uncovered. Even during sex. Only Hera, in the moments where they love each other and don't hate each other, is allowed to see the evidence of his weakness.

-

Poseidon is like the tides, ever shifting ever changing. He's not comfortable looking like a human. He finds it too limiting. he always looks to be some sort of chimera of sea life. Fish, octopus, shark, crustacean, mollusk, jellyfish, all some seemingly random mishmash of aquatic life that is at once random and perfectly orchestrated.

On the occasions he does look human It's never... quite right. His limbs are too long. His torso too thick or rounded. His head too small. Something is always off about his human guises. He looks less like a person and more like an animal awkwardly approximating humanity in a borrowed skin. And his skin is never a truly natural shade that you would see in a human. Always off. Always tinged with... something like blue or green.

It's the eyes that get you the most though. From a distance they look blue. But up close, you realize they aren't eyes at all. They're pools of seawater. Seawater, ever swirling and ever moving in his skull like tiny oceans contained in his skull. And as you stare longer and longer you feel more and more like you're drowning in the freezing, unforgiving water.

-

Hades is hard to see. He's more often a shadow on the wall. You turn to look, and he's gone. It's hard to catch sight of him. But you know when he's there. It's like a burr at the back of your mind you can't dig out, and yet it's always there. It's the feeling of ice up your spine. Every moment in his presence is like something walking on your grave.

But when you DO see him he's... uncanny. Not in the way Poseidon is, but something less obvious. It's like someone took all the traits that you're meant to consider attractive in a man and gave them to a single creature, but the combined effect is something... unsettling. Like he's something you're supposed to consider attractive in a purely theoretical sense, not a practical one.

Or like he's one of those illustrations in a medical textbook of a default of idealized human musculature and reskinned it, animating it to life.

And that, you realize, is what's uncanny about him. He's like if someone decided to design a human from a theoretical textbook, with none of the flaws and details that make us human.

[homunculus-argument]

Scrolled past that tiktok again giving advice to people who like to argue: Do not argue with people who don't realise that this is a sport to you. Yeah, as a person who does not like to argue, my first instinct is to make it so awful for you that you won't make the same mistake again. Don't start going "nuh-uh" just for fun, this is over when I die or you give up. If I have to pluck the fun out of it for you piece by piece like I'm pulling out your teeth, one by one, you can bet I am going to be doing that.

If you like fighting people for fun, by all means double-check whether the person you're planning to fight is a pitbull type. To the death is to the death and they might not let you run once their teeth are in you.

[rimpyspinkeye-deactivated202406]

[krudman]

[tundrakatiebean]

[undeadentropy]

Never have I seen the perfect application of two memes back to back so that both can stand without any alteration but the lack of words itself. This is a work of art. I would call this meme poetry.

[one-time-i-dreamt]

I somehow discovered a niche tumblr microcommunity centered about actual irl cannibalism. Not murder (although that was partially accepted too), just the act of eating people. The main point of discourse was not, in fact, the moral implications of such a thing, but people chastising eachother for trying to force cannibalism on people who weren’t interested.

[taken-aurally]

[catchymemes]

[supreme-leader-stoat]

No matter how suspicious you might find the neighbor who never opens their blinds, they will never be as suspicious as the neighbor who wants free reign to peek in through people’s windows.

[totally-cis-offical]

I need a “humans are space orcs” thing where all sentient species are weird like that, but in their own unique ways

And a lot of them are aware of this (like we are when we make these “humans are space orcs” stories)

Maybe one species enjoys getting bit by something equivalent to mosquitoes. Maybe one actively avoids the hospitable places on their planet because it’s boring without a challenge. You get the gist.

I want to see a bunch of aliens (+humans) sitting around a table talking about how their own species is a bunch of freaks

Everyone is space orcs

[totally-cis-offical]

Best possible addition. This is a top-tier insight

@hotcheetohatred

[stephenleasheppard]

The thing about "humans are space orcs" is it was originally conceived of as a response to science fiction tropes in which every alien species had its own special thing except humans, whose special thing was either Most Generic, Most Adaptable, or Most Je Ne Sais Quoi. Like, in a lot of science fiction, Klingons are Honorable Warriors, Vulcans are Logical Scientists, Romulans are Cunning Strategists, and humans are all of the above in a way that leaves us slightly less good than any of them at their shtick but better overall and able to triumph because of our lack of specialization and the assumption that we are, somehow, just destined to be the best. See this scene from Enterprise for what I'm talking about. There's a similar scene in Mass Effect where Mordin talks about how humans are more variable and adaptable and less predictable than all the other races in that setting, which is super annoying if you know anything about how much our species is defined by the genetic bottleneck we suffered during the Ice Age -- the generic bottleneck that has left us all so genetically similar to each other that we can do crazy things like donate blood and organs to each other, things other species can't tolerate.

@prokopetz proposed that humans ought to get something special of our own that isn't just "We are the bestest and specialist in some generic way that feels like a vague and unsettling metaphor for American superiority and manifest destiny amidst all the other cultures of the world," and settled on space orcs because "Pursuit predators with freakish endurance" was the ecological niche we occupied during our own evolutionary history up until we started doing the civilization thing. The assumption from the start was that every other sci-fi or fantasy species would each be freaks in their own way, and the point of humans are space orcs was to let us be our own sort of freak, too.

People who expanded on the humans are space orcs stories immediately turned it into a reason to write little stories where humans are the biggest freaks or the only freaks and we are, in fact, the specialest most manifest destinyest je ne sais quoi-laden metaphors for the superiority of American culture over all the other cultures of the world. I hate it I hate it I hate it.

Which is to say you've reinvented the point of humans are space orcs from first principles. That's pretty cool.

[prokopetz]

I think my mistake was failing to appreciate just how readily "humans have exceptionally high cardiovascular endurance due to our real-world evolutionary history as specialised persistence predators" could be twisted around into "humans have superior Will to Power", which is the other problematic special niche humans have historically been assigned in popular science fiction.

[funoftheday]

You don’t say.

[a-spoon-is-born]

[timemachineyeah]

For the record, she actually abandoned the movement BEFORE they all got whooping cough, but abandoned it too late. There’d been a breakout of measles in her area that caused her to reassess, and she and her doctor had already drafted and started a catch-up vaccination schedule, but her kids caught whooping cough just before it could be started. Then she wrote a blog post for The Scientific Parent explaining how she and her husband had come to wrong decisions in the first place, how they changed their mind, the consequences they suffered as a result, and asking other parents to please vaccinate their kids. And now she’s an activist for destroying the misinformation of anti-vaxxers, and reaching out to anti-vaxxers because she’s understands their fears but knows their kids deserve better. 

She was trying to the best for her kids and just didn’t know how to interpret the validity of information or its sources, an actual skill that can be actually difficult and that is under-taught and a necessary first step to being able to trust vaccination research, so chose no action over taking an action she wasn’t sure of. She kept looking into it with family and friends and even eventually came to the right conclusion before her kids became sick, but it was still too late.

Honestly it was pretty brave of her to publicly admit she was wrong. She could have just quietly vaccinated her kids and not become a national news story, but instead she spoke out, even saying “I’m writing this from quarantine, the irony of which isn’t lost on me.” and also “I am not looking forward to any gloating or shame as this ‘defection’ from the antivaxx camp goes public, but, this isn’t a popularity contest.  Right now my family is living the consequences of misinformation and fear.  I understand that families in our community may be mad at us for putting their kids at risk.”

She understood the consequences and still put herself and her story out there. 

[hatey-mchaterson]

You know what, it does take a big person to admit they were wrong so publicly and work to undo the harm. I believe I made fun of her in the past, but timemachineyeah changed my mind.

[snarklordofthesith]

“I never thought leopards would eat MY face, until I realized they totally would, and they will eat your face, too!” warns defector from the leopards-eating-faces party

[aqueerkettleofish]

don’t hide this in the tags….

#really important actually#like. it’s so important that we allow people to STOP voting for leopards eating faces#because if you attack anyone leaving the leopards eating faces party when they realize it’s bad#the only support system they’ll have is the people who want them to come back to it#you have to make it possible for people escape instead of considering them forever tainted and impure and inherently evil

[elfwreck]

The #1 trait of anti-vaxxers is not “they’re stupid” or “they fell for propaganda” but “they don’t know who’s safe to trust.”

The movement is pushed by women, especially suburban moms, because they know damn well you cannot trust doctors. You cannot trust the medical industry, the billion-dollar corporate zone of “you should lose some weight and maybe the pain will stop.” Cannot trust the ones who keep changing diet advice - is it no sugar? No carbs? No fats? Is it dangerous to let kids eat things in wild colors? Food pyramid: good or bad? They cannot trust the BMI chart that says they should lose 75 lbs to be “healthy.” (Whether or not they “should” lose 75 lbs, they know damn well that “healthy” does not describe any part of the journey to getting there.) Cannot trust the ones who keep giving them incomplete and sometimes incorrect information about contraception. The ones who said “that’s false labor; you have two weeks more” 12 hours before they gave birth. And so on.

So they have their kids, and they want so much for their kids to be safe, and the doctors and nurses say: Get them vaccinated.

So they ask: What about if there’s complications? An allergic reaction? Side effects?

And the doctors and nurses say: Get them vaccinated.

This is… not reassuring.

And they ask, My sister-in-law’s cousin had a really bad reaction to the MMR shot and I want to know how I can tell it’s safe for my kids.

And the doctors and nurses say: Get them vaccinated.

Throw in the right-wing/libertarian faction yelling YOU CAN’T TELL ME WHAT TO DO and the insurance companies saying “hey um you need a specific type of coverage for that; we probably cover those vaccinations but you’ll need this special paperwork to be sure” - and then you have the actual anti-vax propagandists yelling some combination of cherry-picked statistics and outright lies, and you get a whole lot of moms willing to say BUGGRE ALL THIS FOR A LARKE.

There is no amount of facts that can fix this. They’re swamped with facts from 300 directions. What they need to fix this is empathy and the kind of connections that lead to trust.

They need to trust that, even as the medical industry dismisses a whole lot of womens’ concerns, in this particular area, they’re right.

[embervoices]

Add in the consequences of having a significant portion of your social support network tied up in a particular worldview, leaving it, much less openly condemning it, is really hard and means losing your community support. In a world where the system can’t be trusted to pick up that slack, Moms can’t afford to risk the change - until the cost of staying clearly outweighs the coat of pushing back, not just in general, but for their kids.

Kindness doesn’t just matter because it’s more ethical - it'salso a more effective strategy.

[genderkoolaid]

Don’t normally do this but

Kindness doesn’t just matter because it’s more ethical - it'salso a more effective strategy.

Get this into your fucking heads. Kindness and compassion and one might even say “love,” are strategies, not just vague fluffy inoffensive emotions. Cruelty will never save us.

[nochd]

Gods damn I wish there was an option so’s you could see the latest addition to a post when it swims across your dash instead of the first.

KINDNESS IS A MORE EFFECTIVE STRATEGY. CRUELTY WILL NEVER SAVE US.

[libraford]

Your kid probably already knows about sex. Despite your most careful efforts, they probably have figured it out at least a little bit.

My aunt was pregnant with my cousin when I was 4. My other cousin gave us a kitten because his female cat 'got out of the barn' when i was 5, and i had to learn what 'spaying' was. It was rumored (correctly) that I was a lesbian when I was 7. When I was 9, a couple of boys on my bus were gawking at a playboy one of them stole from their dad.

When I was 11, I was friends with a girl who was a victim of sexual abuse from a family member. My parents gave me 'the talk', which was largely about consent and why bodies are weird. I watched "Revenge of the Nerds." When I was 12, I was friends with someone who wrote rape fantasies. I learned what hentai was. I learned what a furry was (though i have a more nuanced understanding of it now). When I was 13, I was told by a classmate that I seemed like the kind of person to (extremely graphic description of a bdsm kink that I didnt know existed.) My church gave me 'the talk,' which was largely about STIs and why you shouldnt have sex til youre married. My school also gave me 'the talk,' which was largely about the names of body parts and what pregnancy is like. I saw a South Park episode. I saw some John Hughes movies. I watched a friend deep-throat a banana as a joke. Crime procedurals were on TV. When I was 15, most of my friends were on fanfiction.net and livejournal (I am old) or roleplaying through online forums. I learned what yaoi was. One of my friends had a restraining order on her ex for stalking.

At 16, I was largely inexperienced with sex- had never been on a date due to a complicated relationship with the closet. But it seemed everyone else had quite a bit of experience, whether good or bad or neutral. So I learned some things this way.

When we talk about banning books for being 'sexually explicit,' my mind goes to "Speak," by Laurie Halse Anderson- which is about a teenage rape survivor. One of the reasons for its banning is that it includes the rape scene, but the narration fades to black before it becomes graphic.

I read that when I was 13, and it made me think of Sasha- my friend who was a SA victim at the age of 11 and who knew how long it had gone on, who dropped off my radar after 5th grade. And I would think about that book again and again every time I would make a friend with that kind of story (surprisingly often.)

So... all of this. All of this gets revisited when we talk about purity culture, when we talk about 'sexually explicit books with minors,' when we talk about 'protecting their innocence.'

I, a nerd that never went to parties, was not the target audience for this book- even if it helped me relate.

The target audience was Sasha. Or Kelsey. Or Nicole.

And here I am, arguing with some asshole on the internet who probably calls himself a 'protector of children' by supporting drag bans and book bans and defunding planned parenthood, because he thinks that a young adult book about navigating toxic relationships that has the words 'hand on my thigh' in it should be banned because thats 'sexually explicit' and I'm tired.

Your kid probably knows about sex. Through friends at school, through family members, through observation. I think its okay to let them read books where the lesson is that they're allowed to say 'no' to it.

[libraford]

This, by the way, applies to a host of 'inappropriate topics' that books get banned over.

The book about drug addiction might not be for you, but it is for the kid whose dad is in and out of rehab.

The book about child trafficking might not be for you, but it might be for the kid whose cousin disappeared one day.

The book about the school shooting will likely not make your kid a school shooter, but it will provide understand for the kids who have been through one.

The book about racism isnt supposed to make you feel bad for being white- its supposed to help the kid that feels bad for being black.

The book about a gay kid wont turn your kid gay, but it might help the kid who needs to come out.

The book about the transgender kid probably wont make your kid trans, but it will give a voice to the kid that already is.

Your kid probably knows these things if they've interacted with the world outside their nuclear family at all. If youre looking at a reading list and thinking that the books should be banned, it might be prudent to instead ask yourself 'who is this book written for?'

[wreckedvibez]

My default setting is assuming people don’t want to talk to me

[unofficial-autism-post]

Unofficial Autism Post

[sheikonfleek]

“You need to believe in things that aren’t true. How else can they become” - Hogfather, Terry Pratchett

[captainlordauditor]

it’s seasonal lads

[captainlordauditor]

IT’S SEASONAL AGAIN LADS

[terrible-tentacle-theatre]

‘Tis the season so I’ll reblog my absolute favorite Terry Pratchett quote ever

Happy holidays folks

[otatma]

welp

[variablejabberwocky]

#The wisdom#The kind that sits on your chest heavily#And you don’t so much get over it as you learn to keep existing with its weight

[json-derulo]

Thinking about Home Alone from old man Marley’s POV…you’re a hermit who volunteers countless hours of his time in the winter salting and shoveling the sidewalks to make the neighborhood safer. Despite your kindness, the neighborhood kids whisper rumors about how you must’ve murdered your family, which are even crueler for how they remind you of your estrangement from your son.

It’s almost Christmas. The neighborhood is deserted, and you could swear you overheard some commotion about your next door neighbors, the McCallisters, going out of town for the holidays the morning after that storm that knocked the phone lines out, but you keep running into their youngest kid. He’s so spooked by you (rumors) that he accidentally shoplifts a toothbrush. Your inability to smile (estrangement) and bloody hand (shovel?) aren’t really helping the situation. But what can you do? You keep to yourself too much to know these people, and you don’t have any reason to suspect something is seriously wrong. You mind your own business and shovel your salt.

On Christmas Eve, you go to the local church for your granddaughter’s choir concert, because it’s the only way you ever get to see her. You encounter the neighbor kid again, alone—and it’s…weird? That’s weird, right? Maybe you’re not so great with estimating kids’ ages, it’s been so long since your son was a kid, but this one looks…roughly elementary school-sized? And sure, you live in one of those Mayberry neighborhoods where nobody locks their doors, but what’s this little boy doing out all by himself after dark? Come to think of it, he’s been all by himself every time you’ve seen him in the last few days. And what kid would choose to come to a boring ass church on their own? You ask him if he knows your granddaughter, thinking maybe he must have some connection to one of the performers, but no. He’s just here because he feels bad. Maybe about that toothbrush he stole?

You’re a little concerned, so you keep him talking. His answers to your questions are a little evasive, but he doesn’t say anything that alarms you, and he comes across as surprisingly mature. Maybe you misjudged his age? Or maybe the parents are into that new-age, free-range, Montessori parenting stuff that’s supposed to foster independence, or whatever. Considering your relationship with your own son, you’re certainly not in any position to judge others’ parenting. The kid even ends up giving you advice, nudging you to swallow your pride and reconnect with your family.

You go home. The phone lines are finally fixed, so you call your son for the first time in years. The conversation goes far better than you expected. Tears are shed on both sides, cursing all the precious time lost to pride. You make plans to see him and properly meet your granddaughter for the first time ever tomorrow. Then you hang up the phone because you hear a commotion outside. Two men shouting? This is a quiet street, and never moreso than on Christmas Eve. Something isn’t right. You yank on your gnarly-looking boots, grab your shovel in case shit goes sideways, and follow the raised voices across the street to the Murphys’ house.

The front door is open. Not a thing people do in Chicago in December. Looking around, the place has been ransacked. You’ve got a bad feeling about this. You tread lightly, but statistically speaking, you probably fought in one of the Big Wars, so you’ve seen some shit before. You’re not just gonna turn tail and run. You detect the sound of water running somewhere, but that’s not nearly as disturbing as the threats you’re hearing from the two male voices in the kitchen. You find these grown adults—who look like they must’ve gotten beaten up by a third guy?—about to hurt the neighbor kid. So you look at the shovel in your hands and decide that if the local kids are gonna call you the “South Bend Shovel Slayer,” you may as well make it count for something.

You can already hear the sirens approaching, so you don’t stick around to deal with the flood or see what happens to those two—you know how incompetent the cops are in this town, and you’d rather not get mixed up in some trouble when you’ve got plans to see your son tomorrow. You just wanna get this shaken-up kid home safely. Except...he's really not that shaken up? In fact, he's weirdly chipper. You know kids are "resilient" or whatever, but four hours ago, this one was telling you a story about being afraid of the furnace in his basement; why is he less rattled right now than you are?

You're so mystified that at first, you don't even notice nobody else is home. The kid ropes you into helping him "clean up some stuff" around the house. You gradually piece together that this "stuff" is the aftermath of an elaborate network of booby traps that would make the VC blush—Jesus Christ, kid, punji sticks are against the Geneva Convention!—and get a sinking feeling about the injuries those two guys had. Did this kid single-handedly fight off a pair of home invaders? Why is he smiling? You know the phone lines are back up again because you called your son earlier—why didn't he just call 911? Why is he smiling? How’d they get across the street, anyway? At the church earlier, when he said he felt guilty for doing bad things—what sins has he committed? Montessori parenting my ass! Why is he smiling?! What the fuck happened here?!

You don't want trouble. You don’t. Want. Trouble. All you want is to see your son and meet your granddaughter tomorrow. Clearly this kid is more than capable of handling himself if he can beat a couple of grown men half to death with unconventional weapons. Sketched the fuck out, you wish him a merry Christmas and go home, glancing over your shoulder the whole way.

You chalk it all up to some sort of A Christmas Carol-ass weird dream. Pretend it never happened. Reunite with your son. Mind your own business and shovel your salt. Now, though, whenever the neighbor kids whisper about you, you just eye the McCallister house uneasily. There is a dangerous monster on this block—but it sure as hell isn't old man Marley.