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mostlysignssomeportents · 4 months ago

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FTC vs surveillance pricing

Support me this summer on the Clarion Write-A-Thon and help raise money for the Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers' Workshop!

In the mystical cosmology of economics, "prices" are of transcendental significance, the means by which the living market knows and adapts itself, giving rise to "efficient" production and consumption.

At its most basic level, the metaphysics of pricing goes like this: if there is less of something for sale than people want to buy, the seller will raise the price until enough buyers drop out and demand equals supply. If the disappointed would-be buyers are sufficiently vocal about their plight, other sellers will enter the market (bankrolled by investors who sense an opportunity), causing supplies to increase and prices to fall until the system is in "equilibrium" – producing things as cheaply as possible in precisely the right quantities to meet demand. In the parlance of neoclassical economists, prices aren't "set": they are discovered.

In antitrust law, there are many sins, but they often boil down to "price setting." That is, if a company has enough "market power" that they can dictate prices to their customers, they are committing a crime and should be punished. This is such a bedrock of neoclassical economics that it's a tautology "market power" exists where companies can "set prices"; and to "set prices," you need "market power."

Prices are the blood cells of the market, shuttling nutrients (in the form of "information") around the sprawling colony organism composed of all the buyers, sellers, producers, consumers, intermediaries and other actors. Together, the components of this colony organism all act on the information contained in the "price signals" to pursue their own self-interest. Each self-interested action puts more information into the system, triggering more action. Together, price signals and the actions they evince eventually "discover" the price, an abstraction that is yanked out of the immaterial plane of pure ideas and into our grubby, physical world, causing mines to re-open, shipping containers and pipelines to spark to life, factories to retool, trucks to fan out across the nation, retailers to place ads and hoist SALE banners over their premises, and consumers to race to those displays and open their wallets.

When prices are "distorted," all of this comes to naught. During the notorious "socialist calculation debate" of 1920s Austria, right-wing archdukes of religious market fundamentalism, like Von Hayek and Von Mises, trounced their leftist opponents, arguing that the market was the only computational system capable of calculating how much of each thing should be made, where it should be sent, and how much it should be sold for.

Attempts to "plan" the economy – say, by subsidizing industries or limiting prices – may be well-intentioned, but they broke the market's computations and produced haywire swings of both over- and underproduction. Later, the USSR's planned economy did encounter these swings. These were sometimes very grave (famines that killed millions) and sometimes silly (periods when the only goods available in regional shops were forks, say, creating local bubbles in folk art made from forks).

Unplanned markets do this too. Most notoriously, capitalism has produced a vast oversupply of carbon-intensive goods and processes, and a huge undersupply of low-carbon alternatives, bringing the human civilization to the brink of collapse. Not only have capitalism's price signals failed to address this existential crisis to humans, it has also sown the seeds of its own ruin – the market computer's not going to be getting any "price signals" from people as they drown in floods or roast to death on sidewalks that deliver second-degree burns to anyone who touches them:

https://www.fastcompany.com/91151209/extreme-heat-southwest-phoenix-surface-burns-scorching-pavement-sidewalks-pets

For market true believers, these failures are just evidence that regulation is distorting markets, and that the answer is more unregulated markets to infuse the computer with more price signals. When it comes to carbon, the problem is that producers are "producing negative externalities" (that is, polluting and sticking us with the bill). If we can just get them to "internalize" those costs, they will become "economically rational" and switch to low-carbon alternatives.

That's the theory behind the creation and sale of carbon credits. Rather than ordering companies to stop risking civilizational collapse and mass extinction, we can incentivize them to do so by creating markets that reward clean tech and punish dirty practices. The buying and selling of carbon credits is supposed to create price signals reflecting the existential risk to the human race and the only habitable planet known to our species, which the market will then "bring into equilibrium."

Unfortunately, reality has a distinct and unfair leftist bias. Carbon credits are a market for lemons. The carbon credits you buy to "offset" your car or flight are apt to come from a forest that has already burned down, or that had already been put in a perpetual trust as a wildlife preserve and could never be logged:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/03/18/greshams-carbon-law/#papal-indulgences

Carbon credits produce the most perverse outcomes imaginable. For example, much of Tesla's profitability has been derived from the sale of carbon credits to the manufacturers of the dirtiest, most polluting SUVs on Earth; without those Tesla credits, those SUVs would have been too expensive to sell, and would not have existed:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/11/24/no-puedo-pagar-no-pagara/#Rat

What's more, carbon credits aren't part of an "all of the above" strategy that incorporates direct action to prevent our species downfall. These market solutions are incompatible with muscular direct action, and if we do credits, we can't do other stuff that would actually work:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/31/carbon-upsets/#big-tradeoff

Even though price signals have repeatedly proven themselves to be an insufficient mechanism for producing "efficient" or even "survivable," they remain the uppermost spiritual value in the capitalist pantheon. Even through the last 40 years of unrelenting assaults on antitrust and competition law, the one form of corporate power that has remained both formally and practically prohibited is "pricing power."

That's why the DoJ was able to block tech companies and major movie studios from secretly colluding to suppress their employees' wages, and why those employees were able to get huge sums out of their employers:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_Litigation

It's also why the Big Six (now Big Five) publishers and Apple got into so much trouble for colluding to set a floor on the price of ebooks:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Apple_(2012)

When it comes to monopoly, even the most Bork-pilled, Manne-poisoned federal judges and agencies have taken a hard line on price-fixing, because "distortions" of prices make the market computer crash.

But despite this horror of price distortions, America's monopolists have found so many ways to manipulate prices. Last month, The American Prospect devoted an entire issue to the many ways that monopolies and cartels have rigged the prices we pay, pushing them higher and higher, even as our wages stagnated and credit became more expensive:

https://prospect.org/pricing

For example, there's the plague of junk fees (AKA "drip pricing," or, if you're competing to be first up against the wall come the revolution, "ancillary revenue"), everything from baggage fees from airlines to resort fees at hotels to the fee your landlord charges if you pay your rent by check, or by card, or in cash:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/06/07/drip-drip-drip/#drip-off

There's the fake transparency gambit, so beloved of America's hospitals:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/06/13/a-punch-in-the-guts/#hayek-pilled

The "greedflation" that saw grocery prices skyrocketing, which billionaire grocery plutes blamed on covid stimulus checks, even as they boasted to their shareholders about their pricing power:

https://prospect.org/economy/2024-06-12-war-in-the-aisles/

There's the the tens of billions the banks rake in with usurious interest rates, far in excess of the hikes to the central banks' prime rates (which are, in turn, justified in light of the supposed excesses of covid relief checks):

https://prospect.org/economy/2024-06-11-what-we-owe/

There are the scams that companies like Amazon pull with their user interfaces, tricking you into signing up for subscriptions or upsells, which they grandiosely term "dark patterns," but which are really just open fraud:

https://prospect.org/economy/2024-06-10-one-click-economy/

There are "surge fees," which are supposed to tempt more producers (e.g. Uber drivers) into the market when demand is high, but which are really just an excuse to gouge you – like when Wendy's threatens to surge-price its hamburgers:

https://prospect.org/economy/2024-06-07-urge-to-surge/

And then there's surveillance pricing, the most insidious and profitable way to jack up prices. At its core, surveillance pricing uses nonconsensually harvested private information to inform an algorithm that reprices the things you buy – from lattes to rent – in real-time:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/06/05/your-price-named/#privacy-first-again

Companies like Plexure – partially owned by McDonald's – boasts that it can use surveillance data to figure out what your payday is and then hike the price of the breakfast sandwich or after-work soda you buy every day.

Like every bad pricing practice, surveillance pricing has its origins in the aviation industry, which invested early on and heavily in spying on fliers to figure out how much they could each afford for their plane tickets and jacking up prices accordingly. Architects of these systems then went on to found companies like Realpage, a data-brokerage that helps landlords illegally collude to rig rent prices.

Algorithmic middlemen like Realpage and ATPCO – which coordinates price-fixing among the airlines – are what Dan Davies calls "accountability sinks." A cartel sends all its data to a separate third party, which then compares those prices and tells everyone how much to jack them up in order to screw us all:

https://profilebooks.com/work/the-unaccountability-machine/

These price-fixing middlemen are everywhere, and they predate the boom in commercial surveillance. For example, Agri-Stats has been helping meatpackers rig the price of meat for 40 years:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/04/dont-let-your-meat-loaf/#meaty-beaty-big-and-bouncy

But when you add commercial surveillance to algorithmic pricing, you get a hybrid more terrifying than any cocaine-sharks (or, indeed, meth-gators):

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/tennessee-police-warn-locals-not-flush-drugs-fear-meth-gators-n1030291

Apologists for these meth-gators insist that surveillance pricing's true purpose is to let companies offer discounts. A streaming service can't afford to offer $0.99 subscriptions to the poor because then all the rich people would stop paying $19.99. But with surveillance pricing, every customer gets a different price, titrated to their capacity to pay, and everyone wins.

But that's not how it cashes out in the real world. In the real world, rich people who get ripped off have the wherewithal to shop around, complain effectively to a state AG, or punish companies by taking their business elsewhere. Meanwhile, poor people aren't just cash-poor, they're also time-poor and political influence-poor.

When the dollar store duopoly forces all the mom-and-pop grocers in your town out of business with predatory pricing, and creating food deserts that only they serve, no one cares, because state AGs and politicians don't care about people who shop at dollar stores. Then, the dollar stores can collude with manufacturers to get shrunken "cheater sized" products that sell for a dollar, but cost double or triple the grocery store price by weight or quantity:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/03/27/walmarts-jackals/#cheater-sizes

Yes, fliers who seem to be flying on business (last-minute purchasers who don't have a Saturday stay) get charged more than people whose purchase makes them seem to be someone flying away for a vacation. But that's only because aviation prices haven't yet fully transitioned to surveillance pricing. If an airline can correctly calculate that you are taking a trip because you're a grad student who must attend a conference in order to secure a job, and if they know precisely how much room you have left on your credit card, they can charge you everything you can afford, to the cent.

Your ability to resist pricing power isn't merely a function of a company's market power – it's also a function of your political power. Poor people may have less to steal, but no one cares when they get robbed:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/07/19/martha-wright-reed/#capitalists-hate-capitalism

So surveillance pricing, supercharged by algorithms, represent a serious threat to "prices," which is the one thing that the econo-religious fundamentalists of the capitalist class value above all else. That makes surveillance pricing low-hanging fruit for regulatory enforcement: a bipartisan crime that has few champions on either side of the aisle.

Cannily, the FTC has just declared war on surveillance pricing, ordering eight key players in the industry (including capitalism's arch-villains, McKinsey and Jpmorgan Chase) to turn over data that can be used to prosecute them for price-fixing within 45 days:

https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2024/07/ftc-issues-orders-eight-companies-seeking-information-surveillance-pricing

As American Prospect editor-in-chief David Dayen notes in his article on the order, the FTC is doing what he and his journalistic partners couldn't: forcing these companies to cough up internal data:

https://prospect.org/economy/2024-07-24-ftc-opens-surveillance-pricing-inquiry/

This is important, and not just because of the wriggly critters the FTC will reveal as they use their powers to turn over this rock. Administrative agencies can't just do whatever they want. Long before the agencies were neutered by the Supreme Court, they had strict rules requiring them to gather evidence, solicit comment and counter-comment, and so on, before enacting any rules:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/18/administrative-competence/#i-know-stuff

Doubtless, the Supreme Court's Loper decision (which overturned "Chevron deference" and cut off the agencies' power to take actions that they don't have detailed, specific authorization to take) will embolden the surveillance pricing industry to take the FTC to court on this. It's hard to say whether the courts will find in the FTC's favor. Section 6(b) of the FTC Act clearly lets the FTC compel these disclosures as part of an enforcement action, but they can't start an enforcement action until they have evidence, and through the whole history of the FTC, these kinds of orders have been a common prelude to enforcement.

One thing this has going for it is that it is bipartisan: all five FTC commissioners, including both Republicans (including the Republican who votes against everything) voted in favor of it. Price gouging is the kind of easy-to-grasp corporate crime that everyone hates, irrespective of political tendency.

In the Prospect piece on Ticketmaster's pricing scam, Dayen and Groundwork's Lindsay Owens called this the "Age of Recoupment":

https://pluralistic.net/2024/06/03/aoi-aoi-oh/#concentrated-gains-vast-diffused-losses

For 40 years, neoclassical economics' focus on "consumer welfare" meant that companies could cheat and squeeze their workers and suppliers as hard as they wanted, so long as prices didn't go up. But after 40 years, there's nothing more to squeeze out of workers or suppliers, so it's time for the cartels to recoup by turning on us, their customers.

They believe – perhaps correctly – that they have amassed so much market power through mergers and lobbying that they can cross the single bright line in neoliberal economics' theory of antitrust: price-gouging. No matter how sincere the economics profession's worship of prices might be, it still might not trump companies that are too big to fail and thus too big to jail.

The FTC just took an important step in defense of all of our economic wellbeing, and it's a step that even the most right-wing economist should applaud. They're calling the question: "Do you really think that price-distortion is a cardinal sin? If so, you must back our play." Support me this summer on the Clarion Write-A-Thon and help raise money for the Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers' Workshop!

https://clarionwriteathon.com/members/profile.php?writerid=293388

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/07/24/gouging-the-all-seeing-eye/#i-spy

#pluralistic #gouging #ftc #surveillance pricing #dynamic pricing #efficient market hypothesis brain worms #administrative procedures act #chevron deference #lina khan #price gouging

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cursecuelebre · 3 months ago

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Here Me Out:

Thrift stores but for witches/pagans/Spirtiual fellows.

Imagine during this age of consumerism especially on the rise of witchcraft and tarot lately there should be a cheaper and affordable way to get supplies and items than paying a fortune. Yes used but it can really help the community! Today People are spending money like their life depends on them especially on witchcraft tools and items a lot of sellers are taking advantage on those in the community. To be less involved in consumerism and help the environment and the community we should start donate to stores of used witch items, books, decks, statues, instead of having people rely on Amazon or other retailers who don’t give a rat ass about these items, overprice, not knowing if the item is fake or not, plus where they get these items can be shady and unethical. Of course support your local metaphysical shop, heck you can donate used items at your metaphysical if they let you ofc just ask before hand. It’s super helpful and more charitable as well. I don’t ever throw out my tarot decks or burn them, but cleanse them and resell them on Poshmark, Etsy, any websites that may pay for used items.

Of course this is just a suggestion and my thoughts! You don’t have to people may have other reasons or beliefs why they cannot donate which is perfectly okay. Just sharing my two cents! :)

#hellenic polytheism #paganism #witchcraft #norse pagan #tarot decks #charity #helpol #hellenic polythiest #hellenic community #norse heathen #norse paganism #spiritually #traditional witchcraft

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disillusioneddanny · 10 months ago

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People Watching (Jason/Danny)

Jason leaned back in his seat at the bookshop, his eyes no longer on his book but the couple in front of him. They were around college age, from what Jason could see. He had started watching them when blond girl started laughing at a joke until she started to cry. It hadn’t been an all that funny joke, either but it was cute the way she seemed to hang on the brunet man’s every single word. From what Jason got from their eavesdropping, they had been together for four years. Or well, forty nine months since they had decided to loudly count out the months.

She had a ring on her finger but she still called him her boyfriend. And they had talked about meeting in some class, metaphysical philosophy, the guy had supplied. Jason’s heart felt light as he listened to them, he was happy for them, he was.

It was why he was watching them, why he was listening to the guy, his name was Jeremy, apparently, as he teased Hannah, the blond, about how she acted around the holidays. His heart felt light and he felt a longing that he recognized so insanely intimately. It was the same ache that he got any time he spent time people watching.

He wanted to feel all that love and emotion for himself one day. Dreamt of the day that he would be able to be attached to the person he was holding, not just having someone warm his bed for the night. He wanted to fall without caution, to be so utterly in love with someone that he laughed at their bad jokes.

He didn’t know if that would ever actually happen for him, though. How could it when he had screwed up so many things in his life? He had died, come back, become a murderer, a crime lord and practically ruined any chance he had at a normal life. Jason had dreams once upon a time, hopes that he wanted to accomplish one day. He had wanted to go to college and fall in love like the couple in front of him had. That wasn’t in the cards, though, not for someone who was still considered legally dead.

“They’re so cute it’s disgusting,” a voice said with a snort. Jason looked up from his book to find someone taking a seat beside him on the plush couch, a coffee mug wrapped in their hands. “But yet, I still always get wistful when I see couples like that,” they said softly.

“Yeah, me too,” Jason said quietly, picking up his mug of tea.

“I’m Danny,” the man said as Jason took a moment to look over his new people watching partner. He was just a little shorter than Jason, dark black hair was pulled back into a bun at the back of his head. Jason could just barely see a hint of a tattoo peeking out from the collar of Dnany’s shirt. But the thing that really got him, was the crystal blue eyes that seemed to shine in the low lights of the cheesy hipster coffee shop they were sitting in.

“Jason,” the vigilante said with a small smile. “So, I’m assuming you’re a people watcher too?”

Danny let out a hum. “I suppose, I mean, I’m only looking just to live through them vicariously. I’ve never really been in love, at least not seriously,” he said quietly, his eyes glued to the couple, a familiar longing in his eyes.

Jason gave him a small, tentative smile. “No I get it,” he said with a soft laugh as he looked back at the couple, the man now holding the woman’s hand in his and staring at her like she was the only person in the world. “I have a problem with cutting people out if they get too close. I end up all alone each time, but for some reason I just keep hoping that I’ll find it one day.”

Danny nodded and took a sip of his coffee before he looked over at Jason and gave him a kind smile. “It’s scary,” he admitted quietly. “To let someone get so close, to let them love you, even the bad parts of you that you try to keep hidden away.”

“It is,” Jason admitted, carefully closing his book, taking note of the page he had left it on. “It’s funny, I read so many romance novels, I love romantic comedies but to actually allow myself to feel vulnerable like that in my day to day life? It’s fuckin’ terrifying.”

At that, his new friend let out a soft laugh and nodded his head. “It’s so scary to let someone know me. It’s just so much safer to just not allow people to get close and know all of my secrets. But at the same time, it’s all just so monotone and lonely,” he said, his eyes still shining with an unspoken sadness.

Jason knew what he was going to say next was going to sound cheesy as fuck. Knew that there was a chance that Danny was going to laugh in his face. But he had to try, had to just give himself a moment to shoot his shot and see if maybe it would work. How could it not? Even if Danny didn’t know Jason’s exact problems or hangups, he still understood where Jason was coming from. Knew just as well at how terrifying it was to let someone know him.

“I know we just met, and I started this conversation in a really depressing way,” Danny started, turning to fully look at Jason. “But I actually came over here to get to know you. I saw you when I was ordering my coffee and I just, I wanted to get to know you,” he said before his face turned a bright red as he looked down at his coffee and blushed. “I’m sorry, I’m being weird.”

“No,” Jason said with a small smile. “You’re not, not at all. I’d like to keep talking to you. You get it,” he said, feeling his own cheeks heat up slightly at the admission.

“I get it,” Danny asked, the corners of his eyes crinkling. Jason just snorted and shook his head. “What are you reading?”

“Anna Karenina,” Jason admitted, showing the cover. “It’s considered one of the greatest pieces of literature ever written.”

Danny smiled, a beautiful thing showing off dimples in his cheeks. “Tell me about it? I’ve never read it.”

A wide grin spread on Jason’s face as he launched into an in depth summary about Anna Karenina and why it was one of his favorite novels of all time.

Somehow a coffee meet cute turned into a coffee date, and then a coffee date turned into a dinner date. The dinner date led to Danny inviting Jason over for dinner and a movie. And that led to book dates and movie dates, it turned into spending more days at Danny’s house than he did at his safe houses. It led to nights in bed, the lights out and the blankets over their heads as they learned each others deepest secrets, whispering childhood stories and childhood traumas to one another in the safety of the dark.

Jason found himself falling more and more as each day passed by. He found himself holding Danny in his arms as he dreamed about a house behind a picket fence, and started building a home for himself in Danny’s embrace.

“I love you,” was whispered between the two of them late at night. Soon Jason found himself meeting Danny’s family, a sister and two best friends who were like siblings to him. And Danny found himself being dragged to the manor to meet the insane hoard of siblings and an emotionally repressed father.

Secrets were passed between them, talks about their deaths, their lives as teen heroes, the desire to just have something normal. That led to the agreement of being one another’s something normal.

It eventually led to Jason moving into Danny’s home, boxes carried between them and friends as they unpacked Jason’s things and melded their lives together.

“I can’t believe we’re doing this,” Danny said with a laugh as he fell onto the couch beside Jason, throwing a blanket over their legs after. He smiled as he held out his hand to show off the silver band that Jason had just given him hours before.

“I can’t believe you walked up to a random stranger to talk about people watching and it led to this,” Jason murmured, nipping at Danny’s earlobe. Danny snorted and turned his head to give the vigilante a soft kiss.

“Worth it,” he murmured, cupping Jason’s face in his hands. “Completely and absolutely worth it.”

“I love you, Danny Todd,” Jason murmured, rubbing his nose against Danny’s.

“I love you too, Jason Todd,” Danny whispered, his lips a hair’s breadth away from Jason’s. “Thanks for letting me in.”

Jason just smiled. “Thanks for not cutting me out,” he murmured before closing the distance between them and kissing his husband deeply.

Come chat with me on the new DPxDC 18+ SFW Discord Server! Dm me for an invite if you're 18 or older<3

#dpxdc #danny phantom #dis writes #dis dreams #dp x dc #dc x dp #dp x dc crossover #dc x dp crossover

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gallifreyanhotfive · 2 months ago

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Random Doctor Who Facts You Might Not Know, Part 67

Penelope Gate's first son died when he was less than a year old. (Novel: The Room With No Doors) This is significant because according to some accounts Penelope was the Doctor's mother, which would have made this son the Doctor's half-brother.

Susan was once seriously injured in a building collapse, getting a concussion, a fracture to the parietal bone that put pressure on her brain, major fractures to her clavicle, a few ribs, radius, ulna, tibia, damage to her spine, blood loss, shock, etc. While in a healing coma, she was replaced by an android duplicate, who helped save the day and pilot the last ship off the planet even though she wouldn't be able to be repaired by the people she was helping. (Novel: City at World's End)

One of the Doctor's Tutors at the Academy was called Professor Findle. Once while the Sixth Doctor was seeing vision meant to frighten him, he saw things like Cybermen, Daleks, Davros, and Findle. Findle had chided the young First Doctor for being a "nasty piece of work" with only a desire to meddle. (Short story: Power to the People)

Meg Carvossa was a friend of the First Doctor's. He offered to take her with him with Dodo in the TARDIS, but when she saw the interior, she ran away from fear. Becoming leader of New Houston, she falsified records to make it appear like there are more people than there are in order to send more supplies. She later encountered the Second Doctor. Her falsification of the records caused the servant robots to think like humans, and they wanted to become citizens. After the Doctor let them speak, the robots showed a video of Carvossa confessing to the falsification. She said that the Doctor ruined her. (Audio: The Yes Men)

The Seventh Doctor, after hiding his mind from Sutekh for 20 years, was intended to marry Hatshepsut. He eventually visits Hatshepsut in her dreams, tells her that he would have broken the Laws of Time for her, etc. She kissed him. (Audio: The Eye of Horus)

Ossu had been a warrior kidnapped by the War Lords, being returned afterwards with a cybernetic implant that caused violent, murderous behavior. After being returned, Ossu ate Issu-mul berries to become thinkers like the female members of the tribe. Partway through hir transition, Ossu-hir was "not male or female, not suited for war or thought, or for land or sea." Hir then died at sea. (Short story: War Crimes)

The Eleventh Doctor once told Caitlin that while he was not like Harry Potter for being able to talk to snakes, his uncle had locked him under the stares when he was younger. (Novel: Horror of the Space Snakes)

By one account, Susan's parents owned a concept shop that sold metaphysical, religious, and philosophical concepts. (Short story: Gallifrey: A Rough Guide)

Chloe was a Gallifreyan who survived the destruction of her planet in the War. She was trapped in the body of a little girl, and her second heart withered away and needed to be removed. She got a book that showed her the future, but when she tried to look at the last page, the book took both her eyes and twisted them, bending them out of shape. (Novel: Timeless)

The Tremas Master once sought out the Fleshsmiths after his Cheetah virus infected body started dying. The Fleshsmiths had the technology necessary to create any body regardless of its complexity, including Time Lords (using the Doctor of course). (Novel: Prime Time)

There are horror stories on Gallifrey about Time Lords being forced into a regeneration chain in an alien environment (like the vacuum of space). Each regeneration in the resulting chain would take them further and further away from the norm as they struggled to adapt to the environment. In the early days of travel, early Time Lords would return to Gallifrey and be either quietly killed or trapped inside their TARDISes. (Novel: The Taking of Planet 5)

The Doctor was considered to have failed his time travel proficiency test because, as the Fourth Doctor put it, he didn't take it. He didn't show up because he considered it pointless. Romana believed his behavior was the result of an inferiority complex resulting from his regret over his wasted years at the Academy. (Novel: Festival of Death)

One time while caught in a decompressing air lock, the Seventh Doctor declared, "I will not die while listening to elevator music!" He had been listening to Madame Butterfly by Puccini. (Audio: The Death Collectors) He would later regenerate a while after Grace performed surgery on him (and then got lost...) while listening to Madame Butterfly.

Before being transported to Iceworld, Ace saw Withnail and I in the cinema. She fancied Richard E. Grant. She wondered why the Doctor couldn't be more like him because Richard E. Grant wouldn't treat her like a "educationally sub-normal infant." (Novel: Independence Day) This was likely a joke in reference to Grant's role in The Curse of the Fatal Death, but Grant would go on to play the Doctor again a few years after this novel was published in Scream of the Shalka.

The Seventh Doctor once sent Ace and Hex to steal a crystal called the Veiled Leopard. After having an argument with himself, the Fifth Doctor sent Peri and Erimem to prevent it from being stolen. While Peri and Erimem prevented it from being stolen by a jewel thief, Ace and Hex worked with the thief's accomplice to swap the crystal out for forgeries. (Audio: The Veiled Leopard)

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flyawaybird444 · 1 year ago

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[11:11] make a wish

✩•̩̩͙*I see forever in your eyes*•̩̩͙✩

⋆⁺｡˚⋆˙‧₊‧˙⋆˚｡⁺⋆ ⋆⁺｡˚⋆˙‧₊☽ ◯ ☾₊‧˙⋆˚｡⁺⋆ ⋆⁺｡˚⋆˙‧₊‧˙⋆˚｡⁺⋆

{Description} Stray Kids with a spiritual S/O

This was just a ✨shower thought✨ i had earlier, and I figured it was the perfect thing to kickstart my blog or whatevs 🤷🏻‍♀️

{Warnings} None? Maybe religious themes? Tarot reading?

——— ⁺⋆ ⋆⁺｡˚⋆˙‧₊☽ ◯ ☾₊‧˙⋆˚｡⁺⋆ ⋆⁺ ———

When you first brought Hyunjin home, he spent a long time looking through all your crystals. He was interested to learn what they were, but he didn’t really care about the spiritual properties. Our boy just likes pretty things ok TT

Even years later he still loves going into crystal shops and apothecaries to see the handmade jewelry and other trinkets. He 100% thinks it’s so cottagecore. He takes candid polaroids of you while you’re meditating or walking around your favorite metaphysical shop because he thinks you’re so beautiful when you’re in your happy place, and your devotion to it is attractive to him. Hyunjin really likes candle spells because he says they’re romantic. He asked you once as a joke if you put a love spell on him and you said yes. He didn’t realize you were kidding at first and had to contemplate his life for a second.

Han is always happy to talk about the things you love. He likes the surface level stuff like crystals and meditation/manifesting, and even some spell work, but do not show this man any type of divination because he will be terrified. You once pulled out your pendulum to ask it a question, and as soon as it started swinging he was ready to call a priest. He’d probably take a lot of convincing to let you read his tarot cards. He has a lot of anxiety about the future as it is, and he also doesn’t understand how a deck of cards could possibly know him that well.

Supportive boyfriend award goes to Felix on this one. He wants to know anything and everything, will ask to look at your grimoire, wants you to read his tarot cards literally all the time.

“Y/N, I don’t know what i wanna eat for dinner, can you ask your cards what i should have?”

“I- Lix that’s not how that works”

He absolutely love’s apothecaries and metaphysical shops because he says they feel happy inside. You ignited such a love for incense in him, when you guys go out he always smells like smokey vanilla and it’s great.

Chan Is an old soul. If he hasn’t already delved into spirituality himself, he’s the most likely to become spiritual when he starts dating you. He’s very respectful and mature about it, and knows not to touch anything on your altar. Chan also loves to meditate with you in the mornings. You told him once that you felt a connection with the moon, and since then he always sends you photos of the moon when it looks pretty. 110% he wants to get high with you and talk about your ideas on the afterlife and the multiverse. Tarot readings help ease his mind when making tough decisions, so every now and then, the two of you will sit down with a glass of wine and do a reading.

Changbin doesn’t believe in it at first. He thinks tarot readings and divination is an act, and he’s definitely the type to ask the typical “well how do you explain __” questions. Then the day you gave him a really detailed tarot reading and the situation played out exactly as the cards said it would the following week, he started to realize it was very real. He’s really interested in divination because it challenges his logical brain. He likes looking at the forged weapons at your local metaphysical supply shop, and is secretly dying to play with the Tibetan singing bowls.

For Minho, he likes candle spells, but not for the same reason hyunjin likes them. He thinks they feel powerful when you do them, and that’s the thing he likes most about your practice. Wants to learn about hexing. He likes the comfort in your protection spells, and he thinks money and luck spells are really cool. He once watched you do a money spell and then find a $100 bill in your coat pocket, and he was sold immediately. Tries to manifest really random things into happening like finding stray cats to pet when he goes on walks.

Seungmin is so attentive with you, and he’s supportive boyfriend number three out of the group. He’ll ask you questions all timidly because he doesn’t wanna accidentally offend you or sound dumb when he doesn’t know something. He also frequently brings home cool rocks he finds for you because he knows you like them. Seungmin likes that you’re grounded and connected to the earth, and really loves going on nature walks to forage with you.

Jeongin is confused. But he’s also easily impressed by everything you do. The first time he sees you open a circle before doing a spell, he’s so hype.

“WOW NOONA THAT IS SO COOL, but also what is it?”

He acts like you’re doing a magic trick when you’re reading his cards. Will literally give you a round of applause when something you say resonates with him. He’s also the type to want to touch and play with literally everything in the apothecary. Once, he accidentally put his candy wrapper on your altar without thinking and was paranoid for like a month after.

[AN: Hi, if you like this ily and you should send me requests for more. Mwa 💋]

#stray kids #skz #skz smut #stray kids smut #skz fluff #idol x reader #kpop #skz headcanons #lee felix #bang chan #han jisung #hwang hyunjin #sub!skz #dom!reader #lee know #yang jeongin #kim seungmin

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teawitch · 1 year ago

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Sometimes I think the problem with witchblr is that none of y'all had to track down your first witchcraft supplies armed only with a physical copy of the local Yellow Pages and a city map.

(I'm probably only half-joking. You'd search under M for metaphysical shops. Then you had to check the city map to figure out where it was. Which was probably not the best area of town. What you found when you got there was anyone's guess. Local tarot reader? New Age shop? Weird occult bookstore? Empty building because they closed a year ago? Some older witchcraft books actually included the address of established stores so you could call them and ask if they could ship you things.)

#teawitch #witchcraft #witchblr #babywitch #witch community

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honourablejester · 6 months ago

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Some of my favourite bits from the landmarks/setting of Heart: The City Beneath:

The starting layer, Derelictus, was originally intended to be the massive central station for the cursed Vermissian train network, but it was never connected to the system, so it remained intact when shit went tits up and everything else got metaphysical. It’s a mini-city, the City Between, that’s arranged on the four massive vertical platform levels of a train station.

I fucking love the Vermissian stations in general: there’s the one precariously arranged around massive crystal stalactites that continuously threaten to fall and crush the station, there’s the flooded one with broken pumps and intact vending machines, there’s the one that’s a terrifying amusement park, there’s the one with glass floors suspended precariously over an artificial lake containing a captive sea monster, there’s the one that’s an eerie fake city where there’s nothing unique, all the tiles, streets, shops, etc are the same one tiled over and over again, and then there’s the crown jewel, Terminus, the metaphysical turntable station where the turntable can be rotated dimensionally to hook up to every single possible line. I love the Vermissian. I adore this mad train network so much.

There’s a grove full of aggressive drug dealer druids who supply the Cities Above and Beneath, and one of the suggested quests you can get is from a burly naked druid who has to get a shipment of hallucinogenic mushrooms to a Vermissian Sage, but he can’t be having with that technological hellscape nonsense, so he hires you to ship it for him.

There are seven temples to the Moon Beneath, one central one and six subsidiary ones each devoted to one of the six Damnic Virtues. My favourite is Athane, Temple of Sagacity, which has developed into an endless debating floor because the priests have come to believe that something catastrophic will happen if the debate ever ends, so one of them always has to be standing and lecturing on something. They are desperately grateful if literally anyone else would be willing to stay a while and hold the floor on any subject for long enough for them to get a break.

In the Tunnels of Wet Filth, where the sewers from the City Above flow down to and where the ground is covered in liquid filth, there’s a doctor named Aster who advertises his ‘purgatives’ that can cure you of any illness. Since witchdom is a blood-borne disease in this universe, you can meet a witch who would like to be rid of it, and asks you to escort her up there. The thing is, apparently his advertising is absolutely not false, as she actually can just hyurk up her magic after his purgatives. So, like. He lives in a literal cesspit that can curse you with eternal stench to enter, but he is absolutely not lying about his product?

There’s a mobile predatory library stalking around tiers 2 and 3 of the Heart with a dragon-larvae at its heart hungering for knowledge. The librarians are all mind-controlled slaves, and that is absolutely a fate that can happen to you, if you spend too long or take too much damage in there. But it has an absolutely staggering collection, and if you’re looking for answers, it genuinely is the place to go.

The headquarters of the Hounds, the cursed remnants of a massacred army sent to conquer the Heart, is the Bunker, a central command structure in the heart of a web of trenches and razorwire, because the Hounds are basically WWI vets cursed to immortality by an ancient sentient hellscape. I’m going to give you one of the potential quests here verbatim from the book, because it’s fantastic: “A one-eyed quartermaster hires you (D10, Haven) to carry a single bottle of rotgut whiskey to the Bunker so the commanders of the 33rd have something to drink. Can you make it there and keep the bottle intact?” Followed by: “That quartermaster shouldn’t have paid you up front, and you drank the whiskey without ever going to the Bunker. Now you’re being hunted by thirsty and unpleasantly sober immortal soldiers. How are you going to make amends?” Rule one: do not deprive immortal traumatised vets of their alcohol, what’s wrong with you?

The Ghastling Plain down in tier 3 is a sea of ash underneath a perpetually burning ceiling-sky, where people live in stilt houses and ‘fish’ for eyeless lizards and strange land-squid in the ash beneath, or sail on skiffs across the surface of the ash. It’s desolate and beautiful.

There is another mobile rogue library called Papilous, this one extra-dimensional, where dream moths suck secrets like nectar out of people’s ears and librarians gently brush the thought-pollen from the moths into books. It’s actually Silent Hill, in that there is a benevolent and a malevolent version of Papillon, nested inside each other, and one can cross between them by accident. The inhabitants of either version do not believe that the other exists.

There are eight extra-dimensional Heavens you can access (especially if you’re a Deadwalker), and my favourite is the Source, which the gnolls of one of the surface nations discovered through their mechano-occult investigations, and from which they draw the energy that powers their machinery. It’s a great mechanical labyrinth of electrum and gold that courses with energy, including lethal surges of it, and is defended by constructs that prevent mortals from messing with the circuitry, as Expedition 23 found out to the tune of a single survivor. The gnolls have been sending living expeditions into it from the ziggurant in their capital city in the south, but delvers in the Heart can also make their way in. The twain can meet, which I find amusing: two different blasphemous mortal expeditions into a heaven meeting accidentally in the middle.

One the subject of what happens if you die while already illicitly in an afterlife, the book has this fantastic note: “Short answer: we don’t know. Make it up. No-one’s supposed to get into heaven while they’re alive, let alone get stabbed in the gut and bleed out there, so metaphysics tends to handle it on a case-by-case basis.” Which, you know. Fair.

This is such a gnarly setting. I deeply enjoy it. Especially the trains. I just. I really, really love the trains?

#ttrpgs #heart the city beneath #worldbuilding #setting #such a cool setting #very darkest dungeon meets sunless sea #i love it

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fallen-starling · 4 days ago

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A real witches guide to Salem, Ma

**Disclaimer I am writing this as someone who is a Salem local, who goes to school AND works in Salem and through that has gotten a behind the scenes look at the local businesses through word of mouth

🪄

Metaphysical Stores

Okay so there are SEVERAL purely metaphysical stores in Salem and the real bummer is most of them are not any good. Most of them you can tell through just looking at them that they are trying to scam you with poor quality products but I’ll list a few that are problematic for other reasons

• Hex: pretty much all of the locals hate this business owner, a lot of the local witches have had bad experiences with him and on top of that they sell a LOT of merchandise that comes from closed practices

• Coven’s Cottage is one of the most beautiful stores in town without a doubt, however I was told by a good friend that they have been selling books that include f@scist/n@zi Ideology which as I’m sure you know is a real problem within the community

Now I will name some of the “good” witchy stores in Salem:

• Nocturne: pretty much everyone in the community loves them. They don’t sell purely witchy items but they do sell a lot of cool stuff such as hard to get small business perfumes, candles, incense etc. they also have a small library in the back which sells all the cool classics as well as some witchy books AND books written by local authors

• Artemisia Botanicals: as the name suggests, they sell pretty much every herb you can think of, great for stocking up on supplies. I also got my first tarot deck there.

• L’appel Du Vide: a family owned store with SO MUCH great witchy items. They are a bit pricey but it’s all local and homemade. Personally I bought some soaps there and the cashier told me his mom made all the beauty supplies in store.

• Black Veil Shoppe: just opened but these guys are really cool and they’re from a local family. They also own black veil tattoos which you should look up because their designs are SICK. They sell a lot of their original designs as shirts but also some witch supplies as well as books. The visuals in store rival Covens cottage. So artistic.

• Pyramid Books: Okay this one is not great but it is the only real bookstore in Salem that sells legit witchy books. If you ignore their products from closed practices then you will see they have a vast selection of books that cover a lot of different elements of the craft. They also sell spell candles and crystals for cheap. But yes they do have a lot of merchandise from closed practices. I haven’t heard any of the locals talk about them good or bad. They also do affordable readings.

• Witch City Wicks: primarily a candle store with some witchy items in it. The owners are really cool and the candles are amazing quality.

Food

So there isn’t much in the way of affordable eateries in Salem. And the ones that are I’ve either heard bad things or had bad experiences with

• Gulu Gulu Cafe: very popular in town however the owners are transphobic and horrible to their employees

• Koto: locals love this place but personally one of their main waitresses tried to scam me and my friend bc we were high and she was trying to take advantage of us 😭 low key hilarious in hindsight but im never going back

• Blackcraft Cafe: local business owners hate them and imo not worth the $$$. They’re drinks are higher than Starbucks prices and as someone who worked in a store across from them I’ve had many people ask me to throw out their drinks from there and most of them weren’t even half way finished 😭

On to the good one (just one lol)

•Jaho! We have three jaho locations here and they are all great. The food (such as sandwiches) is not that good but the bakery items as well as all the drinks are great. They’re decently priced.

Gift Shoppes

I have to shout out a non witchy store I love:

• Roost and Co: this is a gift shop whose main appeal is selling jellycats! I added them to this list because they are so kind to me, on my third visit their the manager asked me my name and now always greets me when I come in (and all the employees let me know when they got new jellycats in) they also have a lot of great locally designed art and jewelry.

#salem #salem massachusetts #witchy #witchblr #witch community #witches #town of salem #witchcraft #witch

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sylverra · 2 years ago

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Hiwa Kai black salt at sylverra

Link above | $5 flat shipping all US orders | Free US shipping over $50

#black salt #hiwa kai #witchcraft #witchcraft supplies #witch supplies #witch shop #spell supplies #spellcraft #spells #warding #witchy #witch store #witch stores #shop small #small businesses #metaphysical

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cx-boxbox · 8 months ago

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Big Things Are Coming, Scorpio

(Lando/Oscar, T, ~4.2k)

For someone who doesn't believe in magic, Oscar sure does hang out in Lando's shop a lot. It's almost like he's not there for the crystals or the potions at all, but of course, Lando doesn't know that.

Lando's a witch, Oscar isn't, and there is a love potion involved... or is there?

I would be a terrible person if I didn't write a wlw version, so I put it under the cut for whoever might be interested.

“Big things are coming, Scorpio.” Lando scoffs to herself as she almost violently refreshes Co-Star. “Oh, that’s bullshit, that is. ‘Big things’ could mean literally anything!”

Someone behind her clears their throat, startling her. With a high-pitched scream that she will deny letting out for the rest of her life, Lando flails as her chair, which was already precariously balanced on two legs, tips backward and dumps her onto the floor in a vaguely witch-shaped pile. Her phone somehow bounces off of her face, which just adds damage to her pride.

“Lando?” A familiar face appears over the counter to stare at her. “You alright?”

“Oscar!”

Scrambling to her feet and brushing herself off, Lando puts on her most winsome smile, bats her lashes, and holds back a wistful sigh. Oscar looks as nice as ever, especially with that adorably concerned expression on her face. Concern for Lando. Ugh, she’s swooning.

“I’m fine, but more importantly, what brings you back here?”

Oscar fixes her with a blank look. “Clearly, I have to make sure you haven’t managed to kill yourself every once in a while.”

How romantic.

Lando leans forward on her elbows. ��I mean, for a non-believer, you’re here pretty frequently. Or have you finally changed your mind? My love potions are the best in the country for a reason.”

Technically, love potions are considered dark magic—they’re in the same category as curses and things like that because they can potentially take away one’s autonomy—and having those available for purchase technically categorizes the metaphysical supply shop as illegal. But Lando never claimed to be the strictest follower of rules anyway.

As for her being a witch, she would keep it a secret from other supernaturals and humans alike, but she’s terrible at keeping secrets, and Oscar’s just the sweetest girl. Not to mention, she’s also very much convinced that Lando is just keeping up a farce because magic surely cannot exist when there’s science—humans and their silly beliefs—and that she might be a little crazy in the head.

Lando is perfectly capable of being crazy and a witch at the same time, thank you very much.

“Ehh,” Oscar says with a shrug, in lieu of a proper response. She picks up a crystal and examines it. “What’s this one allegedly for?”

“Green aventurine is for luck,” Lando recites. This is stuff she learned a decade ago, before she left the nest to find herself and settle in. Her mother made sure that she and her siblings knew the basics of witchcraft like the back of their hands.

“Luck… I could use some of that,” Oscar mumbles to herself. She shakes her head, and the swoopy ends of her wolf cut bounce with the motion.

Lando tilts her head curiously. “Why? Project gone wrong?”

“Something like that. Nobody’s listening to my ideas, and everyone keeps brushing me off. Just because I’m the newest member of the team and a woman doesn’t mean I’m fucking dumb!” Oscar throws her arms into the air for extra emphasis before sheepishly lowering them back down to her sides. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to blow up in front of you.”

Oh, Lando doesn’t mind at all. She was actually busy eyeing the stretch of Oscar’s sleeves around her biceps, and she coughs once to hide the fact that her eyes enjoy straying a bit too much. “Don’t apologize, Osc. Y’know, when I was a fledgling witch, everyone doubted my abilities too, but then I brewed the most discreetly potent uglifying potion known to my kind and slipped it in one of the coven elders’ tea. He had warts in places I don’t even want to think about, and he couldn’t sit properly for days.”

“Hm. Too bad I can’t just give my boss warts.”

“Hah, you definitely can. That brown bottle on the shelf behind you contains just enough for one dose. Just make sure you don't get caught.” Lando looks Oscar up and down. “Yeah, nah, you wouldn’t stand out at all, aside from, y’know, being a woman and looking extremely queer. Can’t guarantee you’ll be respected any more, but at least your boss would suffer.”

“Thanks,” Oscar replies dryly. She looks skeptical at best, but she places the bottle on the counter next to the aventurine. “I’ll take one of these then. And maybe this crystal too. For luck, apparently.”

Lando claps her hands in excitement because what a development this is! Oscar has never bothered with purchasing anything from her shop before! “Perfect! Let me wrap these up for you, and you can just put as much as you think your goods are worth in the till for me.”

“That can’t be a good way to run a business,” Oscar remarks as she digs through the pockets of her unforgivable drawstring jeans—but hey, they come with pockets, at least—and comes up with a twenty-pound note. “You don’t take card?”

“Oh, I do. I just knew you had cash in your pocket, so.”

“Huh.”

“Sometimes, I send the customer along their way without asking for money in return, and when they come back because they always come back, I ask for payment based on how satisfied they are,” Lando adds. She drops the neatly wrapped parcel with the giant purple bow directly into Oscar’s waiting hands and maybe lets their fingers brush. Just for a moment. “It’s not like sourcing objects and ingredients is that expensive, anyway. Well, unicorn horns and dragon scales are near impossible to find these days, but I don’t use those as often. It’s unethical too.”

Oscar blinks at her in disbelief. She does that a lot. “Um, okay, whatever you say, Lando. I’ll be back next week either way, whether you’re scamming me or not.”

“You just say the sweetest things, Oscar!” Lando chirps, and the blush that colors Oscar’s cheeks is payment enough for a lifetime’s worth of sage bundles and love potions.

As soon as Oscar walks out the door, Lando folds herself into her chair, letting it tip backwards to rest on two legs instead of four once again. Perhaps Co-Star will give her a better reading now.

─── ･｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───

“Your life is about to change, Scorpio.” The app crashes on Lando, who is incredibly tempted to chuck her phone across her shop. “Frickin- update? I just updated it yesterday! Useless piece of shit-”

“I hope you’re not talking about your supplies. Or me, for that matter.”

Lando glances up, pleasantly surprised to see the object of her interest peering at her. Ooh, she's in her leather jacket today too. Delicious. A bisexual witch’s wet dream. “‘Hi, Lando. How ya goin’, mate?’” she mocks in a terrible Australian accent.

“I don’t say that.” Oscar rolls her eyes for good measure. “But hi, Lando.”

“And the loveliest of hellos to you, Oscar. How’s your boss?”

She shrugs. “No idea. He didn’t come in at all this week. Kept nagging us through the online portal, though.”

Lando hums thoughtfully. The poor lad was probably too horrified by the results of the uglifying potion to even show his face. “And did the crystal work?”

“No idea,” Oscar repeats before her face suddenly brightens. For a woman of so few words sometimes, her facial expressions so easily betray her emotions. “I did get another assignment, though. They want me to lead the next project because they ended up testing something I suggested last week, and to everyone’s surprise, it actually worked.”

It’s rare that Oscar says so much at once, but she continues detailing this new thing she’s working on, which Lando can very confidently say she knows nothing about. Engineer-y, science-y things that have nothing to do with alchemy tend to fly right over her head.

“I’m probably boring you,” Oscar says, gauging the blank look in Lando’s eyes. There’s a twist to her mouth when she gestures to the incense burning on the counter and points out, “I guess our interests don’t exactly align.”

“You’re not boring me!” Lando quickly exclaims. She widens her eyes convincingly and looks up at Oscar from beneath her eyelashes. That move always works on men and women alike. “I just have no idea what you’re talking about, but, um, I like listening to you talk…?” Her voice trails off into a meek little thing at the end. “And how boring would it actually be if we were interested in the same exact things? I wouldn’t get to tell you all about the uses of all these different crystals and impress you with my bountiful knowledge of witchcraft, and you wouldn’t get to impress me with all your fancy friction and force things.”

“That’s basic physics, Lando.”

“Which I never had to study!” she protests. “I’m also very easy to impress.”

Oscar looks at her so fondly, it hurts. “I’ll still try my hardest.”

“Yeah, you do that,” Lando mumbles, sniffing haughtily to mask the way her heart flutters at Oscar's words. She checks her phone, notices that it’s still updating Co-Star, and promptly throws it over her shoulder and definitely doesn’t wince when she hears it crash into something. Oscar, on the other hand, jumps and stares with her brown eyes wide.

“Did today's horoscope reading piss you off or something?”

“It keeps telling me the vaguest bullshit!” she whines. “How am I supposed to let it guide me on a day-to-day basis when it won’t tell me anything useful?”

“I mean, you can always just… not?”

Lando gasps, affronted. “No, no, mate, I’m not taking advice from someone who doesn’t believe in horoscopes.”

“Do what you will, then,” Oscar says with a sigh. “I’m just saying that my life is perfectly fine without an app dictating my every action.”

“And mine isn’t,” Lando retorts. She’s trying to get the love of her life to maybe look at her in a way that isn’t only friendly, for fuck's sake, and she hasn’t the slightest idea how to begin, so naturally, she looks to the stars for guidance. “But enough of that. Aside from letting me know that the potion and crystal worked-”

“I didn’t tell you that.”

“-and wanting to see more of my beautiful face-”

“You are really pretty, yes.”

“-what are you here for?” After a beat, Lando makes a flustered noise and flaps her hands at Oscar, who looks quietly amused at her antics. “You can’t just say things like that, Osc! I’m fragile.”

“The truth, you mean? Fine, I’ll lie next time.”

Lando blinks. Next time!

A blush is slowly settling into Oscar’s cheeks at Lando’s continued silence, and she reaches up to run a hand through her shaggy hair and scratch the back of her neck. “Um, you mentioned love potions last week? Hypothetically, if you’re not making things up, how do they work, exactly?”

Lando blinks again. “Love potions? The hell do you need those for?”

“Irrelevant,” Oscar immediately answers. And then, “I’m just curious.”

Refusing to think too much into it, Lando clasps her hands together and begins, “Well, I won’t tell you the specifics on how to brew a love potion because I don’t want to risk a non-witch attempting it and fucking it up. A fucked up love potion bears serious consequences, and my shop is already ‘illegal’ enough without others getting seriously harmed in the process.” She tips forward in her chair and uncrosses her legs for good measure. “You spike exactly four drops into the drink or food of whoever you want in love with you. Hm, oh, have you studied basic chemistry?”

“Of course I have. But what’s that got to do with love potions?” Oscar asks, and she looks properly curious now.

“Turns out we do have something in common! Except I was tutored by an alchemist… anyway. Administering a love potion is like doing a tie... what is it?"

"A titration?"

Lando clicks her fingers and points at Oscar, who blinks at her, bemused. "Yes! A titration- 's not exactly the same, but the accuracy needed is still there. Any less than four drops results in infatuation, more than four results in obsession. If that person is already in love with you, four drops won’t exactly do anything, can’t make someone fall in love with you if they already are, but more or less than that will still put a problem in your hands. Love potions are virtually undetectable, which makes them so dangerous, and how potent they’re made determines how long they last.”

Oscar exhales. “Whew.”

“Mhm. I keep the things that could get me in trouble off the shelves, so if you ever need a love potion, you should let me know beforehand, and I’ll brew a fresh one just for you.”

“I don’t have your number, though. Or do witches communicate by smoke signals?” Oscar asks, sarcasm bleeding into her voice.

“No, silly. Smoke signals are for wizards.” Lando produces a pen from the pocket of her apron and neatly scrawls a series of digits across a sheet of purple stationery. “You've been coming by for over a year, and you've never asked me for my number? I don't know if I should be offended or not... and wait, you’ve literally seen me use my phone!”

Ah. Speaking of her phone. She grimaces and slides off her chair to look for her phone, cursing out loud when she sees that the screen is cracked and that there’s a dent in the corner. It’s nothing a little repair spell can’t fix, but it did also leave a sizable hole in the display case behind her, and now there are glass shards on her amulets.

Oscar nods at the phone. “Right. Good luck with that. I’ll see you next week?”

“Count on it, Osc.”

Lando hates to see her leave, but watching her go is always a pleasure, especially when she drives her motorcycle here instead of walking from wherever she works, presumably. As Oscar swings a leg over the bike to mount it and revs the engine, Lando twirls a tendril of her hair around a finger and sucks her bottom lip between her teeth while she carefully observes through the window. It’s terribly attractive.

Motorized vehicles have nothing on her fastest broom—why remain grounded when she can fly instead—but she isn’t terribly picky about what she rides… not like that, oh my God.

─── ･｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───

“Things will get worse before they get better, Scorpio.” At least it’s something substantial this time, but Lando doesn’t feel very comforted about her predictions today. She pockets her phone and shuffles over to the shelves near the back, humming to herself as she lights a stick of incense and sneezing when the smoke gets in her nose.

Everything gets dusted and put in its proper place. Little jars of oils are gently set out on the shelves, and bundles of sage and other herbs are stacked in neat piles. It’s not the most glamorous part about owning this shop, but it's peaceful, and Lando likes these small tasks as much as she does making potions and performing rituals.

“Lando?”

“I’m back here!” she calls out, smiling when she spots that familiar head of fluffy brown hair weaving between the displays. “How can I help you today, Osc?”

“Hey.” Oscar glances around. “It’s a lot bigger than I thought back here.”

“Ooh, that’s what she said. But yeah, you’ve only ever been in the front of the shop, and I don’t blame you because that’s usually where I am,” Lando responds with a cheeky little wink.

“Uh huh. Um, this is me letting you know that I’d like a love potion, by the way. And before you ask, I didn’t try texting the number you gave me because knowing you, you probably wrote the wrong one by accident. I didn't want to call someone that isn't you and risk sounding insane by asking for a love potion.”

“...”

“No offense!”

Lando brushes Oscar aside along with her slightly wounded pride and swans over to her work bench in a flurry of black fabric. She rolls up the sleeves of her dress. “Take a better look around,” she sniffs, feigning hurt. “I won’t be long.”

Oscar opens her mouth, like she wants to say something else, before closing it with a snap and nodding. Hopefully she’s aware that nothing she can possibly do or say would ever make Lando truly upset with her.

Hm, that’s a lie.

She could request a love potion because she’s in love with someone who isn’t Lando and wants her affections returned. And Lando loves her too much to deny her that request, especially since Oscar rarely asks anything of her, so she begins gathering ingredients from various jars for a love potion.

“I hate being in love with a woman,” she mutters under her breath as she takes her trusted knife out. “I’d do so much for her, and she doesn’t even believe in magic… wait.”

Oscar doesn’t even believe in magic. Lando can work with that.

─── ･｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───

“It’ll all be okay soon, Scorpio.” Lando stares at the words on her cracked phone screen, wondering whether she should trust today’s horoscope reading or not. Co-Star hasn’t exactly been wrong, per se, but it really needs to stop making her read between the lines. She’s dyslexic, for fuck’s sake!

The matter of Oscar’s love life still weighs heavily on her mind, along with the guilt of sending her home with a vial that doesn’t contain a dose of love potion at all. A placebo, if you will. Lando did brew an actual love potion just in case she couldn’t follow through with her own stupid plan—tricking Oscar was far more difficult than anything she has ever faced—but she still ended up handing her a bottled up shot of vodka instead. It’s clear enough and odorless enough to resemble a love potion. She hates that she had the completed potion in her cauldron and everything, the most potent one she’s ever brewed, yet she selfishly couldn’t bring herself to give up the love of her life just like that.

Her actions may make Oscar hate her if she ever finds out, but she’s willing to take her chances.

The bell tinkling merrily fishes her out of her misery, and she wearily lifts her head off of the counter to greet whoever just came in with the fakest cheery voice she can muster.

Much to her dismay, Oscar is the one who peers back at her with a worried look on her face. It’s a really nice face. Too bad Lando isn’t the one who gets to stare at it for the rest of her life.

“Are you okay?”

No. “Yeah, everything’s mint.”

“That’s debatable because you don’t look okay.”

Really. What gave that away? Lando lets her head thunk back onto the counter, and a few stray curls that escaped her bun fall into her eyes. She blows at them. “Didn’t sleep at all last night. Was thinking about too many things… and I hate thinking!”

Oscar makes a sympathetic noise. “Anything I can do to take a couple of those things off your mind?”

“You can tell me what’s in that bag.”

As if suddenly remembering that she’s holding something, Oscar sets a small paper bag on the counter. She nudges it encouragingly towards Lando, who probably looks like a deer caught in headlights at the moment.

“My family’s visiting from Melbourne,” she explains. “My grandma likes baking, and she couldn't make the flight, so she made my parents bring me some stuff too. They’re rum balls—non-alcoholic ones, despite what the name suggests.”

“Oh.”

“I mean, I know you don’t have as much of a sweet tooth as I do, but they’re good, I promise, and-”

To save Oscar from embarrassing herself any further, Lando bites into one and chews, all under far too much scrutiny. She swallows. “Jesus, you don’t have to stare at me like that. Makes me too nervous to eat.”

“Sorry,” Oscar says, glancing away. “Are you feeling better now?”

“Maybe.” It was a sweet gesture. Lando frowns at the remaining half of the brown sweet in her hand, examining it. “Are you sure it’s non-alcoholic?”

“Yeah, why?”

“It… burned like alcohol does. Oscar, I told you that witches are sensitive to alcohol. And seafood. Did you-” Clocking the lack of a distinct alcoholic taste, she puts two and two together, and her eyes widen at what might be going on. If her assumptions are right, she should be more offended than she currently is—she would be if anyone aside from Oscar attempted to feed her a potion—but all she feels is elation and a tiny spark of hope. “Osc, I need you to be super honest with me, and I’ll be super honest too.”

Oscar looks a bit nervous now, but she nods reluctantly. “Sure.”

“Did you, by any chance, spike this with the ‘love potion’ I gave you last time?” Lando asks, trying to keep her voice neutral. Unfortunately, she has never been as good at doing that as Oscar, so a bit of excitement bleeds into it.

“I’m sorry, I-”

“Shh. It’s fine. Seriously. Better than fine, actually, if it was intended for me. I suppose I should apologize too.”

“Huh?”

Lando paces back and forth and bites her nails, but as soon as she drops her hands, a torrent of words come flooding out of her mouth. “I didn’t really give you a love potion. And even if it was a real potion inside that bottle, the witch that brews the potion would be the first to notice its presence, so I would've known immediately if you were trying to give me my own brews. Forgot to tell you that bit. Sorry. In fact, all this is what’s been on my mind recently. Just me being a selfish idiot. But, ugh, I couldn’t think about anything other than you being in love with someone who isn’t me because they won’t love you like I love you- wait, you are in love with me, right?”

Finally, Oscar’s expression settles back into one of calm exasperation. Familiar ground. “Yes, Lando. I’m so in love with you that I asked you for a love potion that I didn’t think would actually work to use on you because I was that desperate. And it looks like we’ll never find out because it wasn’t a love potion to begin with.”

“How many times do I have to tell you that none of this is a farce?” Lando cries, throwing her hands into the air in frustration. “I’ll spend the rest of my life convincing you that I'm a frickin' witch if that’s what it takes- mmph! ”

She’s rudely interrupted by a pair of hands yanking her forward by the front of her apron and a pair of lips pressed firmly to hers. Oh.

Before Lando can even react, Oscar pulls away, red-cheeked and breathing deeply. “Erm.”

Helpless to do anything else, Lando makes a noise in the back of her throat because she loves this dumb, smart woman enough to drag her into another kiss. It’s better this time, their lips slotting together perfectly. After a moment of hesitation, Oscar puts her hands on Lando’s waist to pull her closer, and Lando, made clumsy by the warm mouth on hers, helplessly stumbles and falls into her chest. They nearly knock over a shelf full of candles.

“Please be my girlfriend,” she gasps in between kisses. "Oh God, please."

Oscar smiles against her lips and runs a gentle hand up her back, playing with the hairs at the nape of her neck. “I honestly thought you were never going to ask.” Another kiss. “I thought I was being obvious about how I feel about you, but turns out you’re just oblivious.”

“Hey!” Lando protests, stepping backwards. She still ends up very much trapped in the circle of Oscar’s arms. No complaints there. “Okay, fine, maybe I am, but Co-Star didn’t prepare me for you potentially loving me back. Though when I think about it, it didn’t prepare me for much at all…”

A faint shattering sound by Oscar’s feet makes them both look down, nearly bumping their heads together in the process. Green shards litter the carpet, remnants of a crystal that has been drained of its beneficial properties.

“Was that your aventurine?”

Oscar feels around in her pocket and raises an eyebrow when she comes up empty. “Huh, I suppose it was. Must’ve used up all its luck." She smiles and kisses Lando's cheek. "Eh, it’s not like I need any more of that when I already have everything I could possibly want.”

And, oh, that is by far the most romantic thing that Lando has ever heard, and she covers her face to hide how giddy Oscar's words make her feel. She peeks between her fingers and tilts her head questioningly when Oscar peels one of her hands away from her face and places a ten-pound note in her palm. “What’s this for?”

“Consider me a satisfied customer. I don’t suppose I’ll need to pay for the ‘love potion’ too?” Oscar asks, sounding a little smug.

“I already told you that it’s just vodka, and you can have your money back. Take whatever you need as long as you keep kissing me as payment. For the rest of our lives, preferably.”

“Lando, that’s really a terrible way to run a business.”

“Funny, that- oh, wait, I still need to check my daily horoscope!” Lando scrambles for her phone and opens Co-Star, shoving her new girlfriend’s face away to give it her undivided attention. Oscar makes a disgruntled noise.

“Lan-”

“You finally managed to find love and get yourself a girlfriend, Scorpio. Fucking congratulations.”

#landoscar #twinklaren #my fics

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