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[binnudacademy]

If you're in the need for some kind of magical artifact of magic for your setting, consider Fresnel Lenses which are used in lighthouses:

These things are Alive.

[binnudacademy]

11. Hiding from pursuers or 16. Meeting past/future self with whoever you want to do it with!!

I hope you are having a good day :)

"We’re lucky it was you they spotted,” Kate said, nodding appreciatively to Reynie. “That gives us some time to hide.”

“Where?”

“The countryside,” Kate said matter-of-factly. “We just need to find somewhere to lay low."

"In case you haven't noticed, we're on a moving train!" Constance said, gesturing to their surroundings.

"If I remove this window, we can climb up on the roof, get a running start going the opposite direction, and jump off.”

"What?" Constance said incredulously.

Sticky piped up. "I hate to say it, but she's right." He shook slightly, just out of time with the train's rumbling. "Running in the opposite direction reduces the total momentum. We'll be moving slower when we hit the ground, less chance of injury."

Constance raised an eyebrow, her arms crossed. "You've jumped off of a moving train, George?"

"No, but I'm familiar with the theory! The physics checks out."

Constance rolled her eyes. "Oh, well if George Washington says it's fine I guess it's okay!"

"What is your problem with me?"

Reynie held up his hands. "Guys, please–"

"--seriously, what do you want?"

"You get to show off and you're suddenly not a coward?"

"Wait, Constance, are you scared?"

Constance opened her mouth to retort.

"SHUT UP!" Reynie yelled.

They all froze in surprise, even Kate, who was midway through removing safety screw number 4 of 4.

Reynie breathed deeply, his face twisting up in shame. "Please, guys. We need to work together."

“Sticky and I are on the same page. This can work! We can find somewhere quiet to hide, I can replace the window, and they'll have no idea where we went!”

“Kate knows how to fall with people from the circus, so she can jump with Constance and help her land safely.”

Kate nodded enthusiastically. “It'll be fun, Connie!”

Constance crossed her arms, pouting. “Don't call me Connie.”

A furious pounding a few compartments down made them all jump, turning fearfully to the door. Constance’s eyes widened for a moment before she schooled them back into a scowl.

“Fine,” Constance spat.

Kate untwisted the last screw with a flourish. “Alrighty! Let's go!”

[binnudacademy]

Oh interesting… for the ask game I like to give options, so I’ll say kidnapping and/or supernatural body features for any TMBS characters you want!

“It's simple.” McCracken leaned forward, bending so he was eye to eye with Kate. She fiddled with her chains again, even though she hadn't noticed any give the first three dozen times she tried them. “We need to convince your father he should hand over a certain valuable asset. And the simplest and least painful way to go about it is through you, my dear.”

“I'm not giving you anything!”

McCracken sighed, a weary, condescending sigh, like a babysitter whose charge had declared an undying vendetta against bedtime. "While you insist upon being stubborn, I do believe you. For what it's worth, kitten."

He smiled. "But cooperation is truly your best option right now."

"Do your worst," she spat.

McCracken laughed. "I will. But not to you. Kid out there, the average looking one. He could use a couple scars to make him look distinctive." He twirled a pencil over and between the fingers of one hand, and Kate felt her eyes drawn to it as it performed complex, hypnotic pirouettes.

"I probably won't even have to touch the one with the glasses. Just hold a stapler to his face and he'll be a blubbering mess."

Kate rankled at this insult to her friend, but fear swept through her, too.

“So really, this is the best option. You're braver and stronger than all your little friends. But what's your pride compared to their safety?”

McCracken tossed the pencil, and they both watched it flip six times before he caught it easily. “It's alright if you have a bit of stage fright, ducky. I can give you a bit of coaching, me and my assistants here.” He tapped his briefcase.

••••

Without Kate the room was nearly silent. The light clink of chains as they shifted and Sticky's desperate attempts to calm his breathing were the only sounds. Reynie strained to listen past them, for any hint to Kate’s wellbeing.

"Be quiet, George!" Constance hissed.

Sticky froze guiltily.

Reynie suddenly had a suspicion that just as he was trying to listen past the chains, Sticky was focusing on them, drowning out any bad noises with smaller ones.

A scream, earsplitting and uncontrolled, so unlike Kate and yet unmistakably hers.

Sticky's chains started rattling again, harder than before, fast and loud, as if it could convey all of his dread and worry while he was struck dumb.

"She's lying," Constance insisted, but her lip trembled. "She's lying."

Another scream.

[binnudacademy]

The Washingtons. You know?

Imagine finding out that your kid is extraordinarily gifted, and having no idea what to do with that. Wanting him to be challenged and learn and have all the opportunities that maybe you yourself didn't have.

You're elated that your child has found something he loves and excels at, and a little unsure of how to raise him. After all, you've never seen this kind of genius before, how are you supposed to support it? None of the other families you know, not your parents, or coworkers, or neighbors from down the street have ever seen anything like this. They're all astounded.

And when you ask other people what they think or what you should do, seeking advice the way any parent would, you receive jealousy. Thinly veiled in people who praise your still very young son with cruel, covetous words, and open in those who accuse you of harboring some secret, asking why he is so gifted when their own children are not.

You're scared, and you're utterly alone in trying to raise this boy who meant more to you than life itself, even before he spoke a single word. You're scrambling to find anyone, any resource, that can advise you, and in all the chaos, you make a fatal mistake.

It's not intentional, and it's certainly not malicious. But in the whirlwind of confusion and panic and the ever-present suffocating notion of "You're his parents, you need to raise him right, anything you do now could have devastating consequences in the future", you fall back on the long-held and entirely false belief that a smart child is capable enough to raise themselves.

Just because your boy can recite the entire periodic table forwards and backwards at age six doesn't mean he has the ability to look out for himself. Just because he can orate like a professor when he's eight doesn't mean he knows how to be a miniature adult.

Before you know it, the idea comes into your head to enter him in a competition. It's not a big deal, but the pressure from all those people you told in your initial befuddled excitement, not to mention the idea of winning money and prizes that would otherwise be quite hard to attain, is more than enough to turn your head.

Of course, he wins. And, of course, you're elated. You've finally found something that challenges him, and each competition is an investment in his future. Suddenly, colleges and internships and whole career fields that would never have been available to someone coming from such an average family are at his fingertips. It seems you've hit on a perfect solution.

But, the pressure keeps growing. The jealousy and envy and resentment from those around you, even parents of other quiz competitors, who you hoped might finally understand what it was like to be responsible for such a gifted child, has reached exponential rates. And your son hasn't missed a beat.

He keeps winning and winning and winning and your mind is so dazzled by possibilities that you don't even consider the creeping anxiety that has already made a home in your mind.

He stumbles, once, and recovers, answering the question correctly, as always, but in that moment you realised. Something is wrong. The world is going wrong, the government is failing, the banks might be next. Once your son had won so much money that you were certain to be financially stable for at least the better part of a year, you took a break from work to support him.

But was that the right decision?

There's something coming on the horizon, and the slightest mistake now could lead to destitution in the future. He can't risk a mistake. You can't risk that.

So you keep pushing him. You're more than confident he has the knowledge and skills to win and keep winning, but he doesn't have any confidence. Maybe if he keeps practicing, he'll realise how good he is. Your career has been put on hold to become what is essentially a campaign manager and PR liaison, and still the kid is growing.

He's barely challenged by the informational portion of the quizzes anymore, and that scares you. This is the only solution you could find, and now too quick it has become obsolete. You desperately want what is best for him, but you also know that when catastrophe strikes you need to be prepared, so you keep pushing him.

You don't want to explain potential financial worries to a child, especially when he's so anxious about everything anyways, but the anger comes out regardless. You begin to see that you really don't know him anymore.

When he was younger, if you had been angry or he had been scared, you knew what to do. Making cookies together, doing a puzzle, reading a book, any of these activities were common enough apologies for a lost temper.

But now. You hardly recognise this boy who stands on stage before you.

And then, just as you barely start to see it, he's gone.

You almost don't notice for a day, and that's what terrifies you. You'd become so used to him studying and hiding away and even skipping meals on occasion to read and practice and be better, that it takes hours for you to realise he isn't in the house.

You can't find him. No one's seen him, and it is with dawning horror that you suddenly see that you don't know your own son well enough to guess where he might have run to.

The police are no help, and you can't stop yourself from bitter thoughts about how he's probably smarter than all of them put together (Or thoughts that are quickly smothered out about how he probably isn't going to be found unless he wants to be)

And then, the first donation comes.

It's thrilling. It's exhilarating for a moment to have that peace of mind that being rich gives you, even if it's short lived. Now you can search for him without worrying about losing what you already have. Things will be more or less the same when he comes back, with the big house and all the books and the fancy stuff filling each room.

It's such a nice feeling that for a second, you don't catch what you are doing. You don't see how this is the same feeling you chased in the quizzes. The horrible ouroboros of seeking riches only to be forced to spend them in the quest to amass more. The irrational way your mind has been slowly poisoned against what truly matters to you.

And then you are ashamed.

In the blink of an eye, you see all that you have done to your child. Everything you took away from him (And every moment that you yourself lost), all this time he should have spent growing up and learning to be who he wanted to be, and you had forced him into a mold.

Setting him up in a hypercritical and excessively competitive environment in the false hope that being around like-minded children would finally bring him a friend who understood him, when in reality it only isolated him further.

You see that you have become exactly like all those jealous people who looked at your son with a greedy covetousness instead of seeing him for who he was: a child.

This is when you decide that he's probably better off away from the awful mistakes you've made. You can't bring yourself to look for him anymore, not when he might finally be happy, away from you. You sit in your big, empty house, with rooms filled to the brim with things that you don't even remember owning. There are no signs a child lived here. No art on the walls, no homework on the fridge, no toys or clumsily made crafts. You realise that you've been living without him for quite some time.

It takes a little while, but then comes the day when all of that grief and despair and fear for this boy who you once loved so desperately (And still do, you just forgot how to show it) is too much. And you start searching.

Wildly. Recklessly. Against all advice from everyone who knows you, from everyone warning of the impending doom looming over everything, you search. You waste no time draining your bank account, selling your big, empty house, and taking out loans. Most of the prizes from past quiz shows have done nothing but sit around and collect dust, yet you are hesitant to pawn them. Some part of your mind wonders if they might have been important to him, and you were just too blind to see.

In the end, every possible possession of yours that can be exchanged to pay for more private investigators and detectives is gone.

And this brings you to a rambling old house, in a small seaside city.

It takes a while to drive there, but you do, keeping on all through the night and only stopping to sleep a few hours on the side of the road when exhaustion threatens to overtake you.

Right about the time you reach this "Stonetown", you feel something in your mind clear. You aren't quite sure what it is, as sick with worry as you currently are, but there is definitely a difference.

You disregard it as you hurry to the house of this enigmatic "Mr. Benedict", hoping against hope that he might have some clue, some scrap of a sign that your son is safe. You've long ago made peace with the fact that he might never want to see you again, but you couldn't rest until you were sure that, wherever he was, he was safe.

Standing outside the gate, you look up at the house, you can't help but think this would make a good home for your son. You hope he's happy here (If he is here)

You think about all that has happened in the past few years. You think that, were you to do it over again, you would do without the big house and the cash prizes. The fame and the fast car. It didn't do you any good anyway. A small house, next to a good library full of all the books your son could read. That would be enough. If only you had known what heartache your mistakes would cause.

You knock on the door

[binnudacademy]

Put That Guy in a SituationTM Ask Game/Prompt!

For when you want to put your favorite little guy (gender neutral) in a fanfic-type Situation. Send in a fandom, character(s), and/or relationship/ship as well as a number (or a few!) Feel free to use for fanfic, art, or whatever you choose!

Touch starved/cuddle curse

Time loop

Misunderstandings

Mind meld/telepathy/mind reading

Amnesia

Reverse amnesia (everyone else has no memory/recognition of your character)

Trapped in a room/closet/elevator

“Who did this to you?”

Sleep deprivation

Framed for a crime they didn’t commit

Hiding from pursuers

Turned invisible

Drunken/drugged/sleepy confessions

Role swap

Soulmates

Meeting past/future self

Tending to an injury/wound/illness

Possession/Mind control 

De-aged

Personality swap

Fear poison/gas

Truth or dare/party games

Loss of powers/abilities/skills

Showing up injured at their friend/mentor’s house

Showing up injured at their enemy’s house

Group project/team effort

Demon summoning

Curse of obedience/can’t disobey a direct order (the “Ella Enchanted”)

Time jumping/time travel/fix-it

Only one bed

Cursed/turned into an animal

Body swap

Reincarnation 

Love spell/curse/potion

Hatred spell/curse/potion

Avalanche/huddle for warmth

Secret relationship

Multiverse/meeting alternate version of self

Avoiding a conversation

Identity reveal/major secret revealed

Panic attacks

True love’s kiss/breaking a curse

Fake dating 

Arranged marriage

Realization of feelings at the Worst Possible Moment

Confessions during an argument

Sickfic/caretaking

Enemy caretaker

Self-sacrificial

Meet cute

Meet ugly/awkward first meetings

Fake death/presumed dead

Wings/supernatural body features

Kidnapping

Mutual Pining (+ Oblivious)

Mutual platonic/familial yearning

Accidental hand-holding

Crying

Lying curse/forced to lie about something

Truth Serum/spell

[binnudacademy]

realized that the "problem of susan" misinterpretation is going to explode when the new narnia reboot drops and started chomping at the bit

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@lee-thebee I couldn’t reblog your post for some reason (I think it’s something on my end dw) but here’s a video of the scene

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i love the idea of number two and rhonda being extra protective of mr. benedict, so he has to take his tea on the floor rather than at his desk

[binnudacademy]

god i forgot about this wip. i'm wheezing

(most of it below the cut bc idk when/if i'll ever finish it but my god is it funny)

the summary for this one is just

It's a lovely day at the Learning Institute for the Very Enlightened, and you are a horrible psychic. Or: Constance Causes Problems On Purpose, Somehow Defeats Supervillain In Process

[binnudacademy]

you know how Reynie misheard Kate when she was explaining the Ten Men to him and thought they were called Tin Men? I think everyone should have just committed to the bit and collectively decided to call them Tin Men. It's subtle enough that you can't really tell unless you listen really closely, and then once you think you heard something off you've got to listen at least three more times just to be sure, and- yup, alright, Milligan's definitely calling us Tin Men. But then they can't unhear it. It's only ONE letter off and it haunts them, every single time, over and over again, and applied with enough pressure and persistence eventually all of the Ten Tin Men will simply disintegrate on the spot, leaving both the Whisperer and Mr. Curtain vulnerable to attack. in this essay I will-

[binnudacademy]

i have genuinely one of the weirdest skills to be able to brag about

[binnudacademy]

Reynie Muldoon, drawn for @mashpotatoequeen’s mbs blog. Go check out her writing, she’s awesome!

It’s been more than three years now since she came into my life—and she’s been aggressively encouraging, inspiring, and flustering me ever since. She is one of the kindest, sunniest, most talented people I have ever met, and I am blessed to call her my friend <3

[binnudacademy]

rereading the hunger games and i CANNOT stop thinking about what haymitch and peeta’s individual interview training session must’ve gone. like

haymitch: so what’s your angle you wanna go for how do we want to portray you

peeta: I Have Been In Love With Katniss For 12 Years

haymitch: oh word?

[binnudacademy]

8. "What do you mean by that?" and Sticky? Have a lovely day <3

Thank you, Moth! I hope your day was lovely too! Enjoy some Angst

"You don't have to worry too much about your friends anymore, Mr. Washington." Curtain's confidence seemed so easy, so effortless. A harsh contrast to how much Sticky's voice was shaking.

"What— What do you mean by that?" He swallowed hard, attempting to stand up straight and defiant, even in the face of Curtain's anger, but he knew he was failing.

"Oh, just that they aren't going to be too worried about you anymore either," Mr. Curtain grinned and his mirrored glasses flashed, like some twisted and menacing Cheshire Cat. "You see," He continued, almost conversationally, "I've already brainswept them. They don't remember you, nor anything else before arriving at the Institute. Perfectly capable of being wonderful students, and, perhaps, Executives."

"But you," And, again, he said it with that same venom, as if Sticky had personally wronged him in some horrible way, "You I need for information. I want to interrogate you, since you are the brightest out of all of them, right?"

"I'm— I— I won't give you anything!" Sticky ignored how high and reedy his voice had become, struggling to get the words out around the lump in his throat. "You're probably lying! My— My friends are fine. They're okay. They're okay..." He repeated to himself softly.

[binnudacademy]

Ooh! Ooh! #23 with Constance! So sassy, so true! I would love to see what you do with it!

"I can see you, you know."

Constance stood with her arms crossed, looking at the silhouettes of the poorly hidden boys peeking out from behind the curtains.

Kate tumbled out of a nearby air vent and landed on her feet like a cat. "Come on, guys, what did I tell you?" She cried, "You've got to get better at hiding. Looks like we're going to have to do some Sneaking and Lurking lessons after all."

Reynie and Sticky, who had just emerged from behind their fabric covers, winced at this.

"It's not our fault," Sticky said hastily, "We were trying to hide from Constance. She would have found us even if we were behind a brick wall." Reynie nodded.

"True." They all turned to Constance. "This was a spectacularly bad plan. What were you even trying to accomplish?"

"Well," Kate began, sounding as if she was about to launch into a very long and complicated story. But, at that moment Mr. Benedict entered, bearing a cake and followed closely by Number Two, Rhonda, and Milligan.

"We were a distraction!" Reynie called happily. "And it looks like it worked. Happy birthday, Constance."

[binnudacademy]

I am so happy that TLS gave us Sticky, like "Here's a kid who is incredibly traditionally smart and basically has an eidetic memory" and then he also went on to say "And he deals with a lot of anxiety! He gets mixed up a lot, and he gets scared. Sometimes he messes up. But that's okay. And his friends love and support him regardless"

Just thinking about how so many "Smart" characters set really unrealistic expectations, and when they do make mistakes it's kind of excused by them being Smart? "They got too obsessed with a tiny detail; They saw too many options; They just got bored because the MC's concerns were too beneath them"

It's really nice to have a character who is easily recognised as smart, but is also still a human. And a child! Being good at school does not make you a mini adult!! He still has a lot to learn and he holds his friends' hands and that isn't bad

Anyways, I was just thinking about how I was interested in stereotypically "smart" characters when I was little, because I wasn't athletic or charismatic or brave or funny, and how I always felt like I wasn't really smart either because I kept falling short of the cartoonishly one-dimensional caricatures I was looking up to

I just really like Sticky

[binnudacademy]

Spending years toiling at wizard school in the notoriously elitist necromancy department, barely scraping by for several years before they begrudgingly give me my necromancer degree, all so that I can go sit on the beach and revive ediacaran fossils on the beach and look at the creatures.