I am the clown

Then there's Jack Frost. Smart and devious and the talk of the school for how he gets into mischief. He's somehow a troublemaker that everyone loves (minus authority figures. Even then, they have some fondness for him). It's infuriating. He messes up and everyone just laughs with him.

Hiccup messes up and he's reminded why he's named Hiccup in the first place.

Hiccup envies hates Jack.

One day he's had enough of Jack playing with paper planes and throwing things at his friends during their free period while Hiccup is trying to study for a college exam he doesn't even care about. A stray pencil falls onto his textbook. He chucks it at Jack and the boy gets that stupidly bright grin right before saying some teasing line. Hiccup can't even remember what it was.

He shoots back, "ha ha. You're so funny."

"At least I have a sense of humor," Jack hums.

"yes, that's why you're best friends with 10 year olds." Hiccup mutters, attempting to read the same line of text for the fourth time.

"Problem, Haddock?"

"No, no. I'm enjoying every second of being reminded why I'm studying in the first place. Can't really put paper planes on my resume. Don't think they'd take me seriously." It is said with more bite than Hiccup meant to. Sue him. He's exhausted.

Jack, apparently, is a lawyer. It quickly devolves into an argument and voices raise. They're given detention before Hiccup can care about the consequences.

Hours later, they sit in detention. Hiccup's head lays on the desk. His father is going to go on another long rant. He didn't even finish his notes.

From there begins the two month long feud between Hiccup and Jack. They trade snide remarks, sarcastic passes and several glares though that's mostly Hiccup. Jack smirks every time he gets a rise out of Hiccup. They're put into detention more times than Hiccup can count. His father is livid, but his disappointment isn't anything new.

"Why do you keep getting me in trouble? Do you hate me or something?" Hiccup asks after an insufferable hour of staring at the wall. Jack spent it making faces at him. No, Hiccup didn't laugh. He only chuckled twice.

Jack gives him a confused look. "Why would I hate you?"

Hiccup throws his hands up. "I don't know! You keep throwing things at me! You call me Hiccy and go out of your way to annoy me. You tell me what I'm supposed to think."

"Jeez. Loosen up, Hiccy."

Hiccup gives him a flat stare he hopes conveys his ire.

Jack snorts. "See what I mean? So serious all the time. You act like you hate fun. I take that personally."

Well that made no sense. This guy is nuts. Maybe he needs to stop interacting with Jack all together. Clearly, there's more than several screws loose. Hiccup turns to leave.

Jack falls into step with him. Like an idiot. "Are you going home now?"

"No, I'm planning on visiting Odin."

"Perfect. Then you have time to swing by the skate park tonight."

Hiccup stops in his tracks. His mouth hangs open half way between a sigh and asking 'what!?' Instead, a strangled noise comes out. His holds his hands out as if the answer will fall into them. Jack laughs.

"8pm. Off West Court and James street. Dress like you're going somewhere that isn't school." He waves back, still walking towards the exit.

Hiccup finally finds his voice and gives an eloquent, "huh?"

"If you're late, I'm not going to wait for you!"

"What? I'm not going. I didn't agree to this."

"Then stay home. Maybe you'll draw enough dragons that they'll bring you anyway!" Jack laughs and exits the building. He rounds the corner leaving Hiccup more confused and embarrassed than he's ever been in his life.

LINK: In The Eye of the Beholder

Sneak Peak:

This moment cracks me up every time.

1. He just throws a grandfather clock in the Primordial Spirit of Halloween's face.

2. Danny's little pose like he's squashing a bug. Like "Ew. No. Shoo."

3. Fright's flailing body as he DOESN'T BOTHER TO DODGE! Like Danny was holding the clock for at least 10 seconds before he threw it! He was having a whole conversation! There was plenty of time to account for the fact that he was going to throw a clock in Fright Kight's face!

4. CLOCKWORK IS WATCHING ALL OF THIS ON HIS TIME MIRROR!!! PROBABLY WITH THIS EXPRESSION!

Like, that's right bitch, get CLOCKED!

He didn't really know what the cause of his brokenness was, just that he clearly and obviously was. Even before he died, he couldn't see color.

Unlike Jazz, whose soulmates began with their parents and continued to appear into her life and then stay in her life, Danny appeared to be soulmateless if it weren't for the fact that he still couldn't see color. Jazz, and everyone else in Amity, had the full rainbow and then some available to her before she even made it to middle school.

Jazz's soulmates were an easy and short list. Mom, Dad, her friend Kyle Weston, and her friend Spike. She had met Kyle in kindergarten, and Spike in third grade. All of her soulmates were platonic and familial, though there was still a chance that she was seeing darker shades of colors than they're supposed to be - it was more common than not for a romantic soulmate to brighten up the world that someone could already see.

Danny was in high school. And all he saw was grey, grey, and more grey. Occasionally, he could even tell that he was looking at black. It was unusual. He was broken. What else was he supposed to understand from that?

"Maybe your soulmates are somewhere else? Like, your soulmates are all French or something," Tucker suggested, offhand.

"Maybe," Danny pretended to agree. Frankly, though, he wasn't holding out hope.

He was already dead, after all.

If someone's soulmate passed, they just lost the ability to see whatever colors their soulmate had given them. Danny doubted that him being dead before meeting his soulmates would affect that specific phenomenon in any meaningful way. He would just never know.

So why the hell could he suddenly see this- this- this beautiful color after meeting some dude? He didn't seem to have noticed the change of colors, rushing off with a bright apology for running into Danny, as Danny's whole world flipped on its side. He- he had no clue how to find that person again. What was he supposed to do now?

Maybe... maybe start with googling what this color is.

Blue. Blue was the color of the sky, of oceans, of brightly colored birds and butterflies. It was so beautiful. Danny's eyes were blue! Danny decided just then that blue was his favorite color.

Who knew he'd finally find a soulmate after moving to Gotham? Maybe, just maybe, he'd find his other soulmates here too.

He shook his head; Danny knew better than to hope. Danny was dead. He can't have soulmates, now. Even if Danny could now see colors- or, well, one color, that didn't mean whoever was connected to him could also see their missing color(s). So even if Danny was connected to them, they... probably weren't connected to him.

...

"Sorry, Jay, I got held up at wor-" Dick trailed off, looking at his little brother's eyes.

They weren't that green before. He knows they weren't; after meeting Damian, Dick could see green. They could all see green after meeting Damian. Jason and Damian's eyes were both an olive green, only a slight shade difference between them, everyone in the family agreed. Not... not this neon bright green.

Jason's gaze snapped to Dick from where he'd been glaring at someone across the diner, and the brightness dulled. It didn't go away, but calmed down. No longer seemed like it was lighting Jason's face up. "What?"

"Well, no," Dick admitted, before gesturing aimlessly, "I figured you could probably just look at security cameras or something until you found someone that acts differently after I interact with them."

Tim sighed, looking burdened with the entire world, before doing a quick 180 to face the Bat-computer. "Do you, at the very least, have a time frame?"

"Uh... I mean," Dick shrugged, "I hadn't seen either Jason or Damian since two weeks ago, so..."

Tim's head hung down, before muttering something under his breath and pulling the Bat-keyboard closer to himself. "Gimme, like, three days or something. I'll skim through the footage I can find, see if I can find them."

"You're the best, baby bird!" Dick wrapped his arms around Tim's shoulders, Bat-chair included in the hug.

"Yeah, yeah," Tim grumbled, ignoring the hug from his older brother/soulmate.

It took less than a day for Tim to decide that he needed a break - because, man, Dick interacted with a lot of people every day. He could rule out most of the people that're working at stores and cafes and restaurants that Dick frequently visited, unless they were new at the job - luckily, not many new workers at those locations in the past month. There were quite a few people who reacted strangely after meeting Dick, but it was clear that they were simply reacting to having talked to an attractive person - gross. And really, he could probably ignore the people Dick talked to at his job, too. It's not like there were any new students or new parents in Dick's classes.

"Ah, thanks," Tim offhandedly said, meeting blue eyes of the person who'd held the door for him.

"No problem," the teen was distracted by something on his phone, so Tim didn't bother him much longer.

Really, there were too many candidates for Dick's new soulmate, and it was just a massive pain to try to figure it out.

...

Danny shot off his last reply to the group chat from his friends back in Amity, glad that Val had managed to catch Boxy before Danny's parents or the government did. Sam had volunteered to put Boxy back through the portal, and Tuck was currently sending Danny's parents on a wild goose chase around the city. It was...

Well, it wasn't exactly a good alternative to Danny being there, but like... at least they had it under control, from what he could tell.

Putting his phone away, Danny looked up to admire the blues and- and- he had another color. What was that color? Wait, when did he meet his soulmate?? Did he actually meet someone today?? The only person he'd interacted with was a barista and he probably held the door open for some people, but. But. But anyone he actually noticed didn't seem to change his vision any?

He whipped his phone back out, googling for that website that provides color names for the newly soulbound for the second time this week. His hands were shaky and- and weren't grey? But it was a dull version of that color so they weren't exactly that color- yellow. He... he must be missing a color or two, to be able to know what color his skin is. But... yellow was the color of sunlight? And, and it was the color of sunflowers, and bees, and ducks, and cheese - yellow was so- so cool!

It's common sense here, except for USians, so I'll analyze it a bit more for the dominant demographic here. In a globalized setting, the most dominant culture affects the others and sets the trends. The way our language works, how we think, our levels of politeness and intimacy, and our levels of respect. (flash news, they are going down 😂)

I don't want to imply that there is nothing good in the US. There are plenty of positives in the country. It's just that for the rest of the cultures online it's a constant daily fight to not forget our roots, with the degree US media and brands have permeated our lives. In Greece at least we watch more US American media than Greek media nowadays, and many of our shows are rip-offs of USian ones, with little adaptation to Greek reality and culture.

And to demonstrate the amount of this exposure, a 22-year-old Greek asked me the other day "if something happens we call 911, right?" This might have literally cost them their life, in a dangerous situation! Because all the movies and songs they consumed (not an unusual thing for the Greek youth) were what they knew. And I found a similar comment in this comment thread.

It's about American media drowning out native language media all over the world, and workplaces requiring the English language in your repertoire more and more. It's about proper translations and foreign language dubbing of films disappearing because "everyone speaks/should speak English anyway." All of this is leading to the deterioration of native speaker groups of languages worldwide.

In my country, Dutch language courses can't find enough people who want to study the language, while English language courses are overflowing with people who want to study the language. There is even widespread distaste for the Dutch language for being crude or sounding rough or what have you. That's our native language!!! That is our culture in its purest form!!! That is knowledge we inherit from our parents as they did from theirs!!! That is how we learned fairytales and folk stories and myths!!! That is the language that shapes our communication and our way of thinking!!! To hate your native language is to hate yourself at the deepest level.

And yet it's so normalised. Droves of foreigners living in the Netherlands will never learn a word of Dutch, because "everyone speaks English anyway." We are the world's leaders in non-native understanding of English, but it comes at a cost. A grave cost we will continue to pay.

If you're looking to support your non-American friends in any way that is not performatively shouting "I hate being an American" into the void, first of all, unlearn that hatred of yourself and your culture. You are of no help self-flagellating, and there is a difference between holding your country accountable for its issues, and denying yourself your culture because your country is doing and has done bad things.

(I am not going to get into arguments about whether or not US American culture exists. It does, and if you think differently you are welcome to change your mind.)

Secondly, learn about other countries. Learn a bit of Chinese. Take an interest in the Italian political system. Ask your friends about their countries' folklore. Watch documentaries about art from Nigeria. Absorb information that is not fed to you by American media.

And thirdly, quit expecting your non-American friends to communicate in a way that appeals to you. The French and Dutch will always seem rude to you because our way of communicating is far more direct than the way you communicate. People from other cultures may seem vague to you because their way of communicating is far more indirect, and you're not used to that either. Quit being frustrated when you don't get what we mean exactly. Quit assuming we mean the absolute worst thing you could imagine just because you didn't get what we meant the first time. Ask us to explain if you need us to, and learn to accept that we are different from you.