#lucky folks

[fieriframes]

[And the lucky folks who jumped on that bandwagon and the best cure for grief is learning because now you can find them all over town.]

[jolynejay]

Which one is it, Malleus

Malleus & Yuu/MC: having a Gargoyle Research Club meeting (aka going on a stroll at night infodumping at each other)

Yuu/MC: That reminds me, there is something I wanted to ask you.

Malleus: What is weighing on your mind, child of man?

Yuu/MC: Do you like gargoyles because they remind you of yourself - a living relic from a bygone time whose purpose has become largely obsolete due to the advancement of technology and society, only able to watch eternally from afar as people go about their lives without ever truly belonging to that world and no perspective for the future of your own as those you call kin slowly fade away?

Yuu/MC: Or do you like them "just because"?

Malleus:

[hannahssimblr]

“Entschuldigung!” She’s waving at me. I pretend not to see her. Go to the toilets in the staff closet to scroll on my phone. The café is churning that Saturday. A queue outside the door, towers of dirty plates piling in the kitchen sink, pastry flakes and puddles of coffee all over the tables, which everyone is taking issue with. All the baguettes are gone, which pisses everyone off. “No,” I keep telling the customers in my still rudimentary German. “They were sold out by ten this morning.” 

“How can they be sold?” They’ll say, and I’ll be kind of startled by that, how hauntingly dimwitted grown adults can be. Hoping it’s an act—feigned outrage over bread, a performance to bully me into a miracle. The alternative is scarier. 

But I’ll reply to them in a measured voice. “People buy them, and they sell out,” staring blankly into their faces until they walk out muttering. They hate that, the long, condemning silences. It reminds them of their powerlessness. We’re all powerless. I realise that now. It is the degree that varies, the when and where. In the cafe, I have power over the quality of the coffees. The little roll of paper inside the receipt machine. The cleanliness of the floor, the tables, the toilets. Most else, I hold none at all. That’s the issue today, with the woman waving at me. I can’t control how much time the croissants need to bake. They take twenty minutes, and she wants to argue with me about the physics of the oven.

“A customer is asking for you,” Sandra, pounding on the cubicle door. “On table six.”

“Yeah, I’m just waiting for her to leave.”

“No. Get out,” she rattles the door. Sandra is like this every shift. She has no respect for my privacy, and truly, in her heart, believes she’s better than me in every possible capacity. I loathe that. She’s not my manager, she just wishes she was, but we all wear the same shitty apron. Yes, I’m bad at my job, like catastrophically bad, but most of that comes down to effort. I’d rather die than try hard at this, like Sandra. Caring about being a waiter would sink me into a catatonic depression. 

A mark on my knuckle. A scab, surrounded by shiny pink skin, cracked and hardened. Last week, I burned it on a grill. Not on purpose. Sandra acted like I did. Sneering at me and everything, because the chef bandaged up my hand and made me go home. “This is just what you wanted. I hope you’re happy,” she said. When I was outside and knew she couldn’t hear me, I called her an insulting name under my breath. Felt brief vindication, defiance, then very sad and pathetic. This is the new rhythm of my life. 

“Jude, I will report you for this.”

I stuff my phone in my pocket and yank the door. She’s standing there with her arms crossed. “Excuse me, please,” I say.

She looks up at me, face all twisted and incredulous. 

“You’re blocking my way out of the toilet, Sandra.” She moves, and then I’m pushing back into the café. A wall of noise and activity, of clattering ceramic and the scrape of cutlery. Thud and swish of the door. Steamer hissing, milk jug banging on the counter. Ears ringing with the chaos. “Entschuldigung!” That woman. 

“Yes, madam.”

“I have been asking for you repeatedly.”

“What is it?”

“Well, as you can see, I am still waiting for my croissant.”

Checking the clock above the kitchen door, turning back to her. “It’s been ten minutes since you ordered.”

“Yes?”

“And the croissants take twenty. We spoke about this already.”

Trembling hands, palms upward and signaling to me her coffee cup, empty, a brown circle around the rim. “As you can see, I have finished my coffee.”

Wondering if we’re going to do a riddle. “Yes, I see that.”

“I wanted to have my coffee and croissant at the same time.”

“When you ordered, I asked you if you wanted your coffee immediately, or if you wanted to wait for it.”

“I did not want to wait twenty minutes for my coffee.” 

“Okay, then you understand why the coffee and the croissant could not be served at the same time. We were putting a fresh batch of pastries in the oven when you arrived. I told you so.”

Her eyes are watering now. She’s upset, or enraged, both at once. “How difficult is it,” she says, voice climbing with every word, “to serve coffee and pastry at the same time? What kind of establishment is this?”

“You could just have another coffee when the pastries are ready.”

“Oh!” she cries. “So I will have to wait for my coffee, then? Wait for all these people to be served before me?” gesturing around her to the heaving café. Dozens of people, and more crowding inside every minute. “Then I will have eaten my croissant by the time my coffee arrives.”

“You could just not eat the croissant. You could leave it on the plate while you wait.”

Her palm smacks against the table, her teaspoon rattling off the saucer. “How stupid are you?” She says, and I blink. Tears in her eyes on the brink of spilling. Looking into them, I wonder what kind of life she has had to lead her to this specific moment. Deranged, hissing at a foreign waiter in some Berlin café because of her indignant refusal to understand the way things basically work. Does she have a family? Would they agree with this outburst or chide her for it? Bizarre to think of her doing this where others can see her. 

“I don’t know what to do. Maybe it is a problem with my understanding. German is not my first language.”

“Coffee!” she howls, the whole table shaking now under the force of her rage, gripping the edge of it like she’s afraid she’ll take off like a rocket. “And a croissant. At. The. Same. Time. Can you understand that?”

“Yes. In both cases, you will have to wait. You will have to not drink the coffee or not eat the croissant until the other is ready. I honestly don’t see why that’s so hard for you.”

“I want to speak to the manager.”

“She’s having lunch.”

“Then I am leaving!” A threat, she thinks. Excellent news for me. The sooner the better, actually. I tell her she’ll have to pay for her coffee since she drank it. She hates this. Digs her hand into her bag and produces a handful of coins. Someone at another table gasps as she tosses them right at me. I watch one, two, five cent copper pieces ricochet off me and bounce onto the floor, and don’t bend to retrieve them. Wouldn’t dare crawl around on this floor for money. Keep my chin high.

“Don’t think that’s the right amount.” 

She snatches her coat from the back of the chair and flounces off. I just clear the empty cup and bring it into the kitchen. When I reemerge, there’s a coffee order to be delivered. Things just move on like that in here. There’s no time to ruminate. An Americano. Take it to table ten. Easy. Fuck that woman. I hope she has a bad day. I hope her life is bad already, and this day is just the culmination of her choices. 

Someone’s child is plucking the copper coins from the floor around the other side of the counter. Don’t see them until too late. Panic, tripping myself up to avoid stepping on little fingers, and the Americano tips over in its saucer. I cry out, the pain of it, of boiling water spilling over my thumb, the side of my hand. Screaming down my wrist. Too afraid of breaking dishes to let the thing fall, so I just hold it and let it burn me. Watch it doing it, scorching my skin furious red. Toss it onto the counter, coffee splashing over the napkins. 

The intense pain of it. This is the same hand with the scab from last week, and I’m thinking of the dystopian horror of it all. Burning and scarring my body for a job that pays me seven euros an hour. And nobody is helping me. They’re all just having their lunch and gazing on in dull surprise.

“Jude!” Sandra appears. Livid about something as I clutch my throbbing hand. “You spilled coffee on the napkins. That was our last packet.”

“Yeah. I burned my hand.”

“Oh, of course you did.” Now she’s going off. “Perfect timing, when the café is looking like this. When Claudia is on her lunch break. You do this on purpose. And why are the tables so dirty? Why are there coins on the floor? You weren't going to pick them up?”

She’s still going on at me while I turn and walk away from her, my skin on fire, still burning itself. A vicious pain. I hear her ask where I’m going. Into the staff closet, this shitty scrap of space we’re entitled to. Two meters squared, with a toilet. Entitled for fifteen minutes to shovel my lunch into me on a plastic chair underneath the coat hanger, batting scarves and sleeves out of my face. 

“Jude! I’m talking to you. Are you deaf?” She’s followed me in like a hurricane, barrelling through the door. There’s a childhood memory in this scene. It’s in my stomach, too, that lurching, guilty feeling. The knowledge that I’m in deep trouble and I have walked away, and now someone has come to finish me off.

My head’s ringing, but I maintain a blank expression. I’m an adult now. I can do what I want. I calmly remove my apron and leave it on the chair.

“What are you doing? You had your break an hour ago. You can’t…” 

I get my coat and scarf and pull them on.

“Jude, I’m serious. I’m going to tell Claudia and she will not be happy about this,” shaky voice on her. Rules are a big deal to Sandra. She fears losing this job. It makes me feel sorry for her.

Push through the door into the cafe. The café is a furnace behind me—noise, steam, heat, Sandra’s voice. Then the door swings shut. Muffled. Distant. The cold bites my skin, burning worse than the coffee. My bike lock clicks. I pedal away, and I never come back.

Beginning // Prev // Next

[trekkiemage]

[loganslowdown4]

Remus: You probably won’t be surprised nerd, but I did a bad thing. The cops will be here soon—

Logan: Do I need to say anything to them or be involved in any way?

Remus: I mean, no, but—

Logan: Oh… oh the peace and quiet! I can finally read that book! I can hear my own thoughts already!

[hplonesomeart]

Art from today/yesterday! Idk take a silly humanized Puzzle rendition from the depths of my mind (clearly I took some minor influence from others interpretations around the web, so I can’t quite say if it’s my own definitively? But then again isn’t that the case for everything design related in this world lol. At some point your gonna accidentally bare resemblance to pre-existing media)

Just wanted to try and bridge the gap between the child design I gave him a long while ago into a more adult-centric look. Kept the lines on the hat, film reel pattern, and also the braces (the idea is that it would be colored according to how his T.V screen teeth are usually shown canonically. Plus smoking with braces is known to cause discoloration or jeopardize/damage the function of it—kinda similar to how Puzzles has that one crazy realistic-looking crooked teeth screen? Just a thought)

And then pony. I shall name Stratus Stride :3

[sophsun1]

Queer as Folk – 4.07: Preponderance of Death

[seawing-vibes]

Some images of my Tsu plush from Creep Cat Toy Co. !!! I love her lots one of my fav plushes <3 !! Her glow spots are glow-in-the-dark fabric ,, its super neat !

[finelythreadedsky]

baffling to see that most of the scholarly conversations about all my interests in ancient performance and tragic staging are happening entirely in english EXCEPT for scholarship specifically on the ekkyklema, which is evenly divided between italian, french, german, english, and modern greek

[svartalfhild]

Anybody else get any formal requests for collaboration from a supposed concept artist on their old FF.net account recently?

I just got one from someone named Gloria Jenkins, and a quick google tells me that there is a Gloria Jenkins who's been a storyboard artist for many children's cartoons starting in the 90's, and there's a Gloria Jenkins with an Artstation account, who may or may not be the same person, but the art in that account is much more consistent with the "concept artist and fan of high fantasy literature" the person from this message claims to be. (I also can't imagine a veteran children's cartoon artist wanting to collab with me, considering the kinds of stuff I write, unless they have a more diverse portfolio that it would seem lol.)

Anyway, I've been on the internet far too long to not be suspicious of something like this. This Gloria person is messaging from an empty account made a couple of days ago, and there's a few possible innocent explanations for that, but the scam possibility is also high.

[badolmen]

hey you guys know that even if the people inside that submersible are rich billionaires, dying in that metal tube at the bottom of the ocean is a horrific way to die right. like. yeah stupid choices were made by the people in there signing off on a waiver that says the sub is not approved by anyone and they could die. but it’s the fault of OceanGate for knowingly putting people into a Home Depot DIY sub rigged up with an Xbox controller all to make a profit on people’s curiosity.

[captainpikeachu]

Every time someone posts about MCU John Walker being such an asshole, it just makes me giggle because if they thought he was an asshole, they’d never be able to handle if Marvel had gone with Comics John’s attitude because Comics John would have thrown hands the moment Bucky and Sam even had a side eye and made their lives utter hell for it 😆

Comics John at the beginning of his story would have never put up with what MCU John put up with from Sam and Bucky, he’d have never had the patience or even thought about cooperation. He would have raised hell and caused so much chaos.

MCU Sam and Bucky are frankly lucky that they got MCU John who actually wanted to try to work together and put up with their insults for a time. Comics John would have never given them a chance. If they met Comics John, they’d be running back home and be like “yeah we prefer our version better” 👀

Folks have no idea how accurate this picture is 🤣

[roguemonsterfucker]

it really is the worst for your special interest to be your own characters

there's no fandom to scream about them with

there's no content made by anyone but you

[morporkian-cryptid]

Sometimes you get put down for being autistic and weird...

And sometimes your neighbours ask you questions about Japan because they're going there on vacation, and you write them a 14 pages long list of things to visit and cultural tips and vocabulary and a pronunciation guide (while knowing full well this is not a normal thing to do); and they read the entire thing and invite you to their place for dinner to ask you follow up questions, let you infodump about kabuki history and Shinto culture and sound genuinely interested in it, and they learn the Japanese phrases you gave them and ask you to correct their pronunciation.

Sometimes you find people who are genuinely interested in you and happy for you to share your knowledge. Sometimes being neurodivergent is a fucking gift.

[comfyfeline]

I played "leonard cohen" by boygenius to my girlfriend and she said to me "you know, I never thought you'd happen to me" and it is one of the sweetest things anyone has ever said to me. i love her so much