Fear Is A Superpower

Supergirl: The World (2026) #1

At the start of my employment, my boss showed me videos of people stealing, and we both had a chuckle about it. How silly they were! There was a camera overhead, and it’s not to watch the shoppers. See, we can’t actually stop shoplifters. They get away with it maybe nine out of ten times. But we, who are watched and tallied and witnessed? We are always caught.

At first it was hard to hold one hundred dollars bills. An amount I had never seen before. An amount that didn’t exist in my household. It’s normal now. Here is something that is not for me.

“What the hell, I’ll take another,” says the man, pondering our 200 dollar watches. What the hell. Total comes to 580 and not even a flinch in his face. I have been working for 11 hours today and made only 110 dollars. It will go to my rent. Today I work for free, it feels. When I get my check, I will have 35 dollars left for food and saving.

The six hundreds he hands me go into the cash register. For a moment, I imagine having money. Then I put it away, counting out his change.

I know for a fact we sell our products for double what they are worth. That I could be making commission. That they could hand me those 580 dollars and change my life and not even mark the difference in their checkbooks. He’s not the only sale they make today, but I am the reason they made it. He’s not the only one spending 600 dollars, but if I hadn’t spent two hours with him telling me about his life, he wouldn’t have spent any. I go home. I don’t own a watch.

I have watched and rewatched a video on how to make salmon four ways. My shopping list is always the same. Pasta. Rice. Tuna. If I can afford butter it was a good week. I dream of the world I will never walk in, where I can throw the best fish fillet in the cart with a shrug. I hold hundreds in my hand and look up at the camera. I put them under the cash drawer.

I go to work. I scrap together my savings. I eat my bowl of rice slowly. My manager takes a paid week off from work just for his birthday. He owns a yacht. 

i was part of their college program. i moved to the state for it. they legally owned the building i was living in and still charged me rent. i ostensibly was being charged to work for them. it was a 2 bedroom apartment and they placed 6 adult women in it in forced triples.

as many as one in ten disney employees have experienced homelessness while working for the company. despite huge efforts to unionize, strike, or otherwise demand fair treatment; disney has refused to increase employee quality of life.

disney admits publicly that a good portion of their success is because the employees (“cast members”) are dedicated, passionate, and selfless. this is never reflected in pay. even “face” characters (ie those that are princesses etc) make barely above a minimum wage.

at the time that i worked there, i made $8.50 an hour. at one point i was asked to create a human shield around a bag because a bomb dog had alerted to it. for eight fucking dollars an hour.

i now work a very cushy office job. i have bought the salmon and cooked it all four ways.

i go to the store. i am nice to the person behind the counter. she looks up at the camera while she counts out my change. there is nothing fundamentally different about her and i.

-client with tiny yorkie tucked IN HER BRA and his foot got stuck and she absolutely could not get him out and he was scratching her and she started crying so yeah...I unhooked the dog's hock from her bra

-my tech was holding a big somewhat aggressive rottie who was, unfortunately, only actually handleable if the client was holding her head. client proceeded to fart. in my tech's face. I felt so bad

-too many cats that velcro onto their human or the tech when you try to examine them so you have to either examine them with their tiny needle claws dug into the human's shoulder (inevitably copping a feel) or having to peel the poor kitty off the person while getting in REAL close and often pulling clothing in very awkward ways

then there's the unfortunate times you need to provide canine sex ed to clients who are not breeders, have no interest in breeding, and had no idea that their neutered dogs could still have sexual reactions. this means I've had to:

-inform one client that his dog was, in fact, sucking himself off (I said it nicer than that; the client's response was, "Oh. oh I'm rather proud of him actually.");

-another that yes, prostate stimulation will cause erections when I was doing a rectal exam and she was really confused about that and then had the revelation about how anal penetration works for men in real time in the exam room;

-and just today, that yes, neutered male dogs will still hump other dogs and can in fact get erections and sometimes you need to lube those penises up and stuff them back in if they won't fix themselves or your dog needs to come in for urgent care. she sighed, looked at her husband, and said, "well, I guess we need to go buy some KY."

Which she did! She did do that, but with one hand and the other was more on his flank. Which was against my chest. And she was rubbing her fingers up and down his side to calm him so I got a very gentle, accidental tit massage.

"Ma'am? That's my arm. That's my arm? You have my arm? Can you let go that's my arm?"

Hey husband had to tell her that she had me and not the dog and she was so embarrassed but good natured about it.

You can find these on Archive.org, thanks to the preservation efforts of user Uncommon Ephemera.

I'm actually planning on doing something based on this later on, that I want to keep a bit of a surprise for now. As well as being tempted to make animatics similar to this instead of full animations, for my Persona mods. But I havent decided that yet.

Katie Mcgrath as Lena Luthor