This is today's freebie, inspired by a prompt from starbit . It also fills the "firmness" square in my 8-2-19 card for the End of Summer Bingo fest. "Fatherboards and Other F-Words" Thor was a complete and utter slob. It took the Avengers very little time to realize this about their teammate. Perhaps it was because, growing up in a palace, Thor expected other people to pick up after him all the time -- which superheroes had little interest in doing. None of them liked it, but it drove Betty berserk. One morning Phil went into the common room to find her screaming at Thor and throwing things at him. She grabbed magazines and empty Pop-Tart boxes and everything of his that lay strewn around the room. A pair of jockeys flew through the air and got stuck over Thor's head. "You learn to pick up your own goddamned crap, because I am not picking up after you, Thor Odinson," Betty roared, hurling shoes. "I am not your mother, I am not your maid, and this is NOT a fucking frat house!" Thor cringed away from her rage. The other Avengers, coming in behind Phil, simply snickered. Clearly Phil would have to sort out this unfortunate situation by himself. "I understand your frustration, Betty, but yelling doesn't help," said Phil. "Perhaps you could ask nicely." "I did that yesterday. And all last week. And every motherfucking day since Thor got here," Betty snarled. "I have lost count of how many things I've asked him nicely for and he hasn't done a one of them." "One thousand, two hundred and sixteen," JARVIS reported from the nearest speaker. "Positive response rate: zero percent." "Well then, perhaps Thor will learn that when asking nicely gets no response, people tend to stop being nice about it," Phil said, looking at the young god. Thor merely shrugged. "It matters not," he said. "She is a woman, and not a warrior. What else are they for but our care and comfort?" The look on Betty's face reminded Phil of the Black Widow taking aim at a target. But she wasn't looking at Thor. "Oh, if you think he's being rude to me, you should just see how he treats JARVIS," Betty said, looking across the room at Tony. "What difference does it make?" Thor said. "Invisible servants have no feelings. Every child learns this about them." "JARVIS? Are we having a problem here?" Tony said. "It is of no concern, sir," said JARVIS. "Interactions have not yet crossed into hostile parameters." Phil winced. He had hacked into JARVIS once and not gotten classified as a hostile intruder, just unwanted beyond a certain threshold. JARVIS had inherited some of Tony's boundary issues. "Perhaps an explanation would be --" Phil began. "Yeah, no," said Tony. "JARVIS, reset Thor's status from Core User to Guest. He has to earn his way back up. Also, notify Housekeeping that he's on his own. I don't trust him with the maids anymore; they shouldn't have to put up with this shit." Thor puffed up like a horned toad about to start spraying blood in every possible direction. "You would have me live as a peasant?" he said. "You have a fine palace! I know you pay your servants well enough to do their work." "JARVIS, how often has Thor left a tip for the maids after he comes home extra messy?" Clint asked, rolling his eyes. "Positive response rate: zero percent," JARVIS said. "I dislike being spied upon," Thor said. "Man of Iron, will you not alter your spell to make the invisible servant more discreet? And biddable?" "A great big fuck no to that," Tony said. "Thor, JARVIS isn't whatever 'invisible servant' you're used to back in Asgard. He is a person, just not made of meat." Thor chuckled. "I know that the people of Midgard are very young, but most children outgrow that belief by the time they can dress themselves." "I know that JARVIS is a person because I made him that way," Tony said, narrowing his eyes. "I took personality imprints from myself and Edwin Jarvis to put on fatherboards so that JARVIS would have examples to grow on. He is my son, and if you diss him, I will dump you out on your divine ass." "What he said," Clint added. "Thor better learn how to treat everyone as a person," Betty said. "I'm not the only feminist around here. And that's not the only F-word I know." It was very clearly the Black Widow and not Natasha who sat on the back of the couch and drew the whetstone over her knife with a steely slither. "Oh, don't mind me," she purred. "I'm sure that he'll figure it out ... after I cut off a few tidbits." This was all getting out of hand, Phil realized, and he had better get a lid on it very quickly. It called for more firmness. "All right, Thor, you've seen that your behavior doesn't fit into the team culture," Phil said. "Everyone else, please remember that Thor had a difficult childhood which did not help him learn some of the skills we expect. Let's work on filling in the gaps, not picking at them." "You have user tutorials, right JARVIS?" said Clint. "You could put the first few of those on Thor's schedule today." "Schedule updated," JARVIS said. Phil smiled. Core Users could make changes to Guest files. "JARVIS, what does Thor's bedroom look like right now?" Bucky asked. The nearest viewscreen filled with an image of rumpled cloth and bits of garbage everywhere. "A pigsty," Betty observed. "I'm not wasting the emotional labor to put it any more politely." "The room would be cleaner if Thor did not kick the broombots," JARVIS said. "I had to remove them." Tony looked like he was about to blow his last gasket. "That's about what I expected," Bucky said, throwing a metal arm around Thor's shoulder. "Come on, buddy, and I'll teach you how to make a bed." "It is made," Thor said, baffled. "I have put the top on the bottom as Lady Jane instructed me." Everyone looked at the bed with the comforter dumped on it. Bucky patted his pockets, shook his head, and then turned to Steve. "Can I borrow a quarter?" he said. "Sure," Steve said, handing him a quarter with a smile. "Let's go," Bucky said to Thor. "This is gonna take a while." * * * Notes: The motherboard is the foundation of a computer. There is no fatherboard in local computers. However, Tony uses the term fatherboard for the circuit panel that holds a personality imprint of a human parent to provide a new artificial intelligence with a template of personhood. JARVIS has two daddies: Tony Stark and Edwin Jarvis. Feminism is often referred to as an F-word . Housework is a common point of contention . In a mixed household -- especially in college -- one or more of the women almost always winds up doing the vast majority of the work. Men tend to have a higher mess tolerance on average, which allows them to ignore it until someone else does the work for them. I have found that an excellent definition of feminist is a woman who confronts a man and tells him to clean up his own mess instead of doing it for him. Which is why so many men pronounce the word as "bitch." Another thing women are expected to provide free is emotional labor . Now, Betty will do that for Bruce-and-Hulk because they invest in the relationship too, making it an equal exchange. She won't do it for people who don't reciprocate. Betty is a scientist, not a housewife. A reader pointed out this example of how Thor and Loki tend to treat servants . Horned toads really do squirt blood in self-defense . Read instructions on how to make a bed that will bounce a quarter , and watch a video of a quarter bouncing .