Hello and welcome to our Legends Among Us 2.0 exhibit here in the SOUP Offices. We have decided to turn our outer offices into a makeshift gallery of sorts for your viewing pleasure! Each month we shall endeavor to bring you delightful works from your fellow snakes who have been honored with our monthly awards across our various subforums.

So without further ado I invite you to join me at this month's gallery opening! First up, we have our beloved Heir of Slytherin for the month of August 2023, Maggie_Lestrange!

This month's Heir is someone who is both extremely creative and passionate about their house.
As one of the most helpful and driven Slytherins you could hope to meet, she is always friendly and kind to everyone. She has consistently won House Points throughout the year, and always makes an effort to join a variety of contests, raffles, and events. Even going so far as to run a club which focuses on Slytherin and winning House Points, there is no end to this user's enthusiasm. Her success in the Role Playing Centre is also very impressive! So, please join us in congratulating Maggie_Lestrange! Sophie, your hard work and dedication to Slytherin has not gone unnoticed, and we are very proud of all that you do for our wonderful house.

Excerpt taken from the Heir of Slytherin August thread in the Common Room.

Next, we move on to our Snakelet of the Month for August, Heike Black!

Hello, lovely snakes!! My name is Heike, and I'm twenty-two years old, queer, and neurodivergent. I grew up in the midwestern USA, and am now in a liberal arts college in Washington. As a little introduction to myself, I suppose I'll tell you all about what I consider my greatest life achievement, to this date: The Black Web.

Now, I suppose we could've picked a better name, couldn't we? *The Black Web* sounds like we're gonna sell organs and small children, doesn't it? We actually did pretty much the opposite: we were a community support group dedicated to helping people, especially children in our town, have access to food, housing, and education. We started when I was in my freshman year of high school, the ninth grade here. I was a "weird kid", I had a very small friend group, and almost all of us were queer, neurodivergent, or both, like me. One of our friends, James (I have his permission to share this), was trans - FtM. In the fall of that year, James came out to his parents. This went very poorly, and two weeks later, James was homeless.

Our friend group had a very mixed reaction to this. Some, like me, were glad he was out of that situation and unharmed. Others of us mourned the lost relationship. But we all agreed on one thing: James needed us now more than ever before. And we were going to be there for him.
I turned, first, to my parents. Though I was unsure how exactly they would react, I had been raised very gender-neutrally. At the time, a sizable chunk of my wardrobe was built up of boy's clothes, and my brother had worn dresses when he was young, with their encouragement. But my parents couldn't do much more than offer him a bedroom and food and bring forward charges against his parents. He moved in with us, and his father was happily done with him. His mother, however, was not.
James' mother, as we later found out, had decided that she could take him back in and "fix" her "baby girl" - whether via some form of conversion therapy or something worse, we don't know. She began accusing my parents of kidnapping and abusing her "daughter", and began to stalk him when she was off work. We would have none of this.

We banded together closer than ever, and as we began to meet to discuss the matter ourselves, we decided that we needed a name, and a name we created: The Black Web. We were the web of support our friend needed - moving through the shadows (we were a little dramatic) and, though one of us may stumble, the web would hold strong until they could recover. Then we made a logo, to finish it off.

James has told me, now that he lives away from us all, that our little organization was, at many times, the only bright spot in that part of his life (which terrifies me and makes me very proud of us all). We were a group of nine, so we chose an eight-pointed star to represent ourselves - One on each point, and one (at the time, James) in the middle. Of course, we all had our own variations of this design, but the basic star was the one we stuck to for years and the one our child organization still keeps today.

James' situation resolved itself the following spring. CPS got involved as well as a judge, at one point the police got involved, and at the end of it, James moved in with his Aunt, who is a lesbian and lives in Arizona. But the remaining eight of us had now gotten a taste of something bigger and greater than our normal lives. James' situation was, at the time, a terrifying ordeal. What if he went back to his parents? What if he went to a stranger? What if something worse happened? James was not the only member of our community in such a situation, and what had begun as the support of a friend soon became something bigger - we had interested new members, more adult support, and, best of all, community recognition of our name.

After James' situation, we never had to deal with something so dire or dramatic. The days of sneaking and stalking, subterfuge and always watching over our shoulders were over; many of us miss it, in a way. But we grew up. We partnered with local food banks and homeless shelters. We helped found our high school's GSA/Queer Club. Through my remaining three years of high school, The Black Web flourished alongside my friends and me. I officially left the organization when I left for college - we weren't and still aren't ready to branch out of my hometown - but I've visited every summer and the Web has grown even bigger without us. The freshmen I initiated have become leaders, and our community is all the better for it. I'm very proud of them, and proud of myself.

So, now you beautiful people here on HEX know the story of my greatest achievement (and the source of my online surname). As a closing of this story, I'll tell you all the basic eight rules we decided on when we founded our organization as they are today, passed through the hands and mouths of our future:

1. Always be kind to one another. Your kindness will be returned a thousand-fold.
2. Stand together, and when you fall you will always be helped back up.
3. Give what you can spare. When you are in need, others will give to you.
4. Learn all that you can. Try everything. Knowledge is power, and many will not give it for free.
5. If you don't love something, there is always someone who will. Destroy nothing - give instead.
6. Remember those who hurt you, but also remember all you've hurt. None are truly good, and none are truly evil.
7. If you challenge or question, you must be open to change. Don't waste your time on those who aren't willing to learn.
8. Something can be beautiful *and* broken.

Stay happy, stay kind, stay safe, lovelies!
Heike Black
Ps. Owl me your fanfic recs, I'll take anything! : D

Closely tied to our Snakelet of the Month is our newest award, Pythonidae of the Month also over in the Serpent's Nest! Our winner for this award for the month of August is Mandi!

Hey everyone, it's Mandi/Alanna again! I want to start off by saying how honored I am to be Pythonidae of the Month this month. Next, I feel like most of you know of me by now, but if not, I'll do my little intro again. My name is Mandi and I've been one of your Prefects for the last few months. I thoroughly love being able to be a part of our great house and being helpful wherever I can. If you ever have a question or just want to chat, please don't hesitate to owl me. Now onto my art piece for this issue! I really leaned into the Pirate theme this month with my drawing. It was really fun to see the entire drawing come together and honestly; I feel like the little snake is doing a lot of the work, haha.

Join me now as we check out the latest artwork from our Magical Muse for August, lovisphatt!

Hello! It's me Lovisphatt AKA Lovisa. I'm a bit of a lurker around HEX that sometimes pops up when there's a fun competition around. Some of my submissions I share in my portfolio, along with other kinds of art. I'm glad to be chosen as this month's Muse and thank everyone that comments and checks in every time I post something new.

Appreciate it x

I found this drawing I made that was supposed to be a topographic map, but failed miserably, so I just gave up. Lol.

How about we hop on over to an offering from the winner of our Community Hero award for August (and our Industrious Snake for July! ), Taunia xD!

Ahoy, scallywag fans o' the lad who lived! I be Taunia, the Community Hero fer the month o' August 'n also this month's theme picker fer the Pythonidae Nest chat. I hope ye enjoy the theme I've chosen as much as I do. As ye can prolly guess, Pharrell Williams's Happy, featured on the Despicable Me 2 soundtrack, be one o' me fav'rit shanties. One o' the coolest things about this shanty be that it has the world's first 24-hour music video! It's official site is not available fer mobile users though, luckily, a kind heartie from the internet created a YouTube playlist t' share 24 hours o' Happy wit' the world. Skewer here t' see the fav'rit part o' the music video! Last but nah least, Memes make me happy jus' as much as Magic, Minions, 'n Music! The happy Multiplies when the ‘M’s are combined as one in the form o' GIFs or videos. Lemme share wit' ye some o' me fav'rits 'n wish ye a good day:

Last, but certainly not least, we leave you with this XXX written by our Noble Slytherin for August, katie_slytherin!

Mwahahahahaaha I am slowly slithering my way into the other SOUP articles, it's only so long until I take over the whole SOUP Headquarters and turn it into a theme park *insert slash shifty here*. Anyways so uh, I panicked and drew a pirate who I guess is standing in the middle of the ocean with a captive Tom the Bowtruckle holding an apple with a mustache wearing boots. I also drew a classic sun in the corner and a pirate ship. Please free free to owl me with any art school scholarship offers.

I think I can speak for all of us in saying that we wholeheartedly thank each of these brave souls for sharing a bit of themselves with us! Artwork in every form is usually something quite personal to each of us. We here at SOUP absolutely send our deepest gratitude and love to each of these amazing people!

Join me next month as we take a deeper dive into our next award winners in the noble house of Slytherin! This is your resident feline Editor, signing off as it's time for a cat nap!