#retail is killing my soul

[thesmilingfish]

Yesterday at work I went over to the women's jacket section and found it in ruins - almost two dozen jackets unzipped and thrown on top of racks just piled on one another. I started trying to find their hangers in the mess and was eventually joined by Betty, the assistant manager. The ONE woman who made the entire mess came back from the other side of the store with a handful of jackets and just sort of thrust them at Betty before walking away empty handed. Betty and I looked at one another in astonishment for a second but a moment later Betty asked me if I saw what her baseball cap said. Under my breath I said "Hi. I'm an asshole." I didn't realize there was another customer nearby but I heard her snort really loudly and when I looked at her she was biting her lip and smirking.

[mmhawkes]

Guess who is going to be a librarian instead of a bookseller!

[wxtchpilot]

[ Having to work on Sunday is a crime. G Witch season 2 just had to fall on Easter Sunday when I'm 10000000000000000000% certain I'm working. Might have to try and watch it before my shift or I'd be watching it super late at night haha (my personal definition of late at night anyway).

I won't be able to talk about it properly until I get home but at least I wouldn't have to avoid spoilers everywhere. ]

[noisy-weasel]

Man how do you explain to your parents that no I don't have a future like stop pitching all these ideas to me because you sound insane. Like I guess they genuinely don't realize how close to death I am. I'd already be gone but there's no knives in the house Sharp enough. Like that's the ONLY reason I am alive. Period. And the fact I'm still here is so fucking stressful because every second I'm still alive is money and energy my family is wasting on me and I fucking hate hate hate it. Honest to god forcing people who are horribly suicidal to continue living is a crime like every year I'm still here increases how awful I feel tenfold and I should be able to buy pills that can kill myself just over the counter and there's just no excuses that I can't

[dykedykegooses]

very stressed ab my job rn :(

[vulturereyy]

I WANT A REFUND ON MY SLEEP TONIGHT... Not only did daylight savings whatever the fuck rip an hour of repose from me like a wolf tears a lamb from the flock, I had an INTENSELY vivid work dream that was so realistic and normal I thought I worked my full shift and when I woke up and found that was not, in fact, the case, I bolted upright in sheer panic because I was almost late.

The only difference from my work dream to my real job was that Lurien the Watcher (spider edition) was also there and my dream self was just like. This is normal.

[mooreaux]

Would you mind sharing your story on how you managed to commercialise your art for a living :0?

Short answer: I did comms part time then COVID forced me to make it full time.

Explanation under the cut!

Long answer: I amassed a fan base of people who liked my art enough to ask for commissions when I was far too insecure to offer them myself. I steadily figured out how I could best produce them, and balanced posting fanart to stay current with trends and relevant to new followers, as well as keeping the soul of my art alive by drawing shameless OC content even if it got only a fraction of the attention. Then I just... Kept doing that. For years. I worked retail and did comms on the side. I worked as a florist and did comms on the side. Then COVID killed the flower shop and unemployment allowed me a brief window to draw what I wanted (wayhaven chronicles at the time) as much as I wanted. People went nuts for shippy art, and the increased price of couples commissions allowed me to springboard into making it a full time gig. I have now done over a thousand commissions and keep thundering along this path even if I trip, stumble, make stuff I don't like, sometimes even stuff the client doesn't like. I learned to take critique and not take it personally, and even still I fumble and get hurt by things I shouldn't let bother me. But over everything else: I don't stop. And that relentless slog has given me the ability to do what I love despite everyone telling me I couldn't.

[marauderswolf22]

UQUIZ (don't kill me i can't take a screenshot)

bread being cooled on the stovetop.

you are the gentle soul who will welcome everyone into their hearth and home so long as they don't make a deliberate mess of it. you're the porch grandma who offers fresh squeezed lemonade on the hottest day of the year, free of charge. you're the little kid who says the kindest thing when someone needs it, because you don't know what to do elsewise to being honest and blunt. you're the college kid who doesn't get mad at retail workers because those same people were just in your class the other day, half passed out, and they almost cry at the tip you're finally able to leave. you're warm and soft and gentle, and you bring people to you with the feeling of belief and hope.

feel free to join even if not tagged, and im also tagging my newest follower @vellichorius @captainspectrumreportingforduty @crikey01 @brokendoor16 and @droptheknife

[thesmilingfish]

I was helping a customer today and was actually being sort of pleasant until she told me she was going to Hawaii. Oh the restraint I had to call on. Unbelievable.

[ididntorderthesoup]

Some delusions I've had in no particular order:

-I wasn't human and had a past life of a serial killer. This caused me a lot of trouble as people from the past contacted me astrally and wanted justice. Also my boyfriend at the time told me he also wasn't human and fed into that delusion for years.

-I'm trapped in a retail hell realm where time doesn't exist and the demons (customers) are trying to steal my soul.

-A pair of elderly shoppers were going to steal my teeth at work.

-I was being hunted by parasitic supernatural creatures. There was a lot of intricate pieces in this one. It was also my longest reoccurring delusion.

-There's a creature in the drains that want me to feed it my blood.

-I will die if I go to sleep at night and must wait for the sunrise. Also I'll be unsafe if I am not home before sunset.

-The stores are selling human meat.

-The landscaping crew at my apartment was spraying poisonous chemicals around to slowly kill us.

-That my hands were so hot I could melt plastic and combust oil if I touched it. I was scared to touch anything thinking I'd melt or burn it.

-I've died and I'm trapped in limbo.

-My voices are actually alters and I had DID, first proposed by a therapist and after trying to "connect" with my voices it opened up a delusion with a rich inner world and I believed I was getting possessed (passive influence) by the "alters" when really I was just dissociated. There was a parallel storyline in the inside "headspace" that was dangerous and caused a lot of stress.

-I believed I was psychic and could bless water to have healing properties and I was meant to save the world.

-Food/drink is poisoned.

-Other people are going to kill me/I will die if I leave my apartment.

-I can read secret signs and messages from the universe that no one else can.

-My blood is poisoned or bad and I need to get it out to repent.

-People in poster ads are watching me. The faces in the hair dye boxes watch me and cause bad things to happen.

[tobiasdrake]

We've had a hell of a day and I want to go home. And pour one out for a dear friend.

His death is a heavy weight on all of our hearts. He will be sorely missed. By us. By the Master Detectives. By every booze retailer in town. Truly, Kanai Ward is lesser without him.

That doesn't sound like good guy talk. We've succeeded in bringing an end to the internal strife plaguing Amaterasu, and helped Makoto to consolidate his power into an unapproachable citadel of control.

...let's hope for the best! d(^_^d)

EVERYBODY DIED MAKOTO.

Our boss DIED.

The scientist we were supposed to question DIED.

Vivia LIVED and he's mad about it.

I'm glad you're happy but this was a complete shitshow on my end. Even if you wind up being a well-meaning saint I still kind of hate you for manipulating us into this.

Yomi manipulated Yakou into killing Huesca. Makoto manipulated Yuma into distracting Yomi. The entire Nocturnal Agency was the ball in a game of power between these two rich dipshits today.

I'm mad about it and I want to hit something, but I'm powerless in the face of the corporate machinations that have taken place here. All I can do is go home, cry about it, and pour my grief into a big pot of my arsenic and battery acid stew. T_T It was Chief's favorite.

Maybe YOUR FACE is just a rumor.

...

That comeback hits so much differently when delivered to a man never seen without a mask. At this time, Makoto's face is, in fact, a rumor. There exists no evidence of it being real.

So what I'm hearing is "Anywhere but the Restricted Area." Not the Restricted Area, where we're at now, but the Restricted Area Restricted Area. The one nobody ever goes to, not even Peacekeepers, but there are allegedly shipments of corpses being trucked in.

Where we will most likely find the secret secret lab, instead of this classified secret lab.

Of course, even trying to go there at all is fucking reckless. I don't know how we're going to sell that to Yak--

...

...

T_T

Makoto, that looks like a ring box. So help me, if the next words out of your mouth are "You can give this to Kurumi when you propose" then I'm going straight to prison in the cell next to Yomi.

Yomi: The hell are you in for? Yuma: Punched Makoto square in the dick.

I hope it's a bomb.

I mean. I do not. Hope it's a bomb. For obvious reasons. Because I do not want to open a bomb present.

But if it is a bomb, then at least we'll be able to brush away the ambiguity and know exactly where to stand on the Makoto subject. I would rather know that he's the enemy than continue to have to wonder.

Halara, Yakou's been stone dead for at least ten minutes. You can stop with the chest compressions. There isn't a medical technician in this world that can bring him back from what I-- uh, the deadly assassin Fink did to him.

In seriousness, I talk a lot about how much of a poser Halara is. That they are not an emotionless stoic mercenary but try very hard to give off the image of an emotionless stoic mercenary. The traumatized desperation visible in Halara's unceasing attempts to resuscitate a body that has to be cold by now speaks volumes to the character buried beneath their façade.

We'll go home and pour one out for him.

...does anyone else drink alcohol in this group? We may wind up pouring a lot out for him.

It's okay. We got to say our goodbyes. Don't ask what that means.

BESTIE NO. There's a very important moment of frozen time in recent events! If you make me have to do the Mystery Labyrinth and kill Yakou all over again, then so help me I will give you passive-aggressive silence for at least three days.

...

Come to think of it, Fubuki would be a perfect lifehack answer to the whole "Mystery Labyrinth reaps the soul of the victim" conundrum. We use the Labyrinth, find the deeply held secrets, and then grab her hand and skip back a few seconds over that frozen moment. Bob's your uncle, we know everything and no one had to die for it.

Fubuki can fix the central moral conundrum baked into the premise.

No, he's been through a lot. We spent hours undergoing an important emotional and philosophical journey five minutes ago. He's exhausted. I can't blame him.

This is, once again, the recurring theme. The Mystery Labyrinth reveals tons of information but doesn't help. Whoop-de-dee, we learned about Yomi's corruption in the most secret hidden truth the Labyrinth held. Didn't matter. Makoto already got that information another way and confronted Yomi without our involvement.

The effect is mitigated only because Yakou was already dying. But otherwise it'd be another reaping of a soul for no goddamn reason whatsoever. In chapters 1 and 2, we reaped souls that didn't deserve it. In 3 and 4, the killings we committed contributed nothing of value whatsoever to the predicaments we were in.

Going into the Mystery Labyrinth never does anything good. How could it? It's a murder weapon. That's all it can be. I've been saying non-stop about the Peacekeepers that they are an institution of violence that exists for the sole purpose of violence and cannot be anything but violence. The same is true of the Mystery Labyrinth.

It only exists to kill.

Oh good, Kurumi's here to offer half-informed advice about how it's super-virtuous that Yuma's killing people like this.

Okay Kurumi, I'm not gonna be too hostile 'cause I like you now. Let's hear what you've got.

Oh, no, that has nothing to do with us. Don't even try to blame yourself for that.

In fact, it's the biggest irony of the case. After all that fuss we made, running out the door and trusting that his lanky bones won't keep up with us, it barely even mattered. Yakou's plan for tonight's entertainment was to round everyone up and take them to the same place I snuck out to visit anyway.

In fact, if we hadn't roped Makoto into our shenanigans, everything would have played out the way Yomi planned it, and it would have ended with all of us being shot Halara putting a few more dead cops on my tab.

If you think about it that way, your questionable plan to go ask Makoto to his face if he's doing shady shit was the curve ball that saved the day, Kurumi. You should take a victory lap. You gambled it all on black and came away with a big score.

In a roundabout butterfly-effect chain-reaction sort of way, Kurumi Wendy took down Yomi Hellsmile. Don't fuck with high school girls, man. They're feral.

Do YOU have the answer to Photo Lady's identity!?

Kurumi, you are this close to getting Best Informant in Kanai Ward validation from me. That's not an accomplishment. You're the only informant in Kanai Ward. But still.

BOOM, Photo Lady. Figured it was something like that.

Unfortunately, Huesca was conspiring with Yomi, the head of the Peacekeepers. So. Obviously. The Peacekeepers weren't going to arrest Huesca over it, were they?

No, when you're in a pincer trap like that, there's only one outcome. She fell off a balcony onto some bullets. Accidental death.

Yakou is no different from the Theater Girls in chapter 2. Someone close to him was murdered in a city where justice is a farce. Abusers thrive and victims get fucked. Even murder's just part of the game that unchecked capitalism is playing on its people. What other recourse did he possibly have?

When murder gets rewarded and cries for justice are brutally punished, the only option left to you is to become a murderer.

It explains a lot about his behavior since we got here. Ever since the WDO burdened him with this huge investigation, Yakou's position has effectively been, "Guys, I'm begging you, PLEASE don't get me killed before I do."

I'm not onboard with the overarching message of "Conviction is more important than being right or wrong," which keeps getting brought up. I think a lot of people have done terrible things with absolute conviction in what they were doing. It's good to doubt yourself and question if you're making the right choices.

But as a character beat, I respect this for Yakou. I honestly think, like the Theater Girls, Yakou did nothing wrong. But I can believe that Yakou believed that what he was doing was immoral. That on some level, a part of him was like, "Dude, we're really going to go full murder-suicide?"

But he chose to follow his feelings and do what his gut wanted him to do, even if it's "bad". He was true to himself, to the very end. That's why he was able to face Shinigami's oblivion with a smile on his face.

In a roundabout way, I think Yakou came close to my own philosophy of morality. He just phrased it differently.

[decepti-thots]

I hope you’re enjoying your paint stripper. Cyclonus/whirl

to put this into perspective, with inflation in the UK right now, i paid almost as much for my thing of pepper that i actually went in to buy as i did for this reduced wine. i looked at it like. hm. why the fuck is that reduced 75%. in this economy. and now i know. i think they made this wine with grapes someone had already fucking eaten. i think this is a social experiment.

anyway. cursed cywhirl au. whirl works for one of those places that you sometimes find in shopping centres/etc that sells godawful swords and knives and related dumb bullshit. it's wall to wall mall ninja ft terrible overpriced reproductions of stuff like Terminator skulls. cyclonus is the guy who keeps coming in JUST to complain about how all of the swords are bad. why does he even keep coming when he knows exactly what sort of establishment this is and claims to know about Real Swords. nobody knows. all the employees hate him except for whirl who pretends he thinks the dark souls replica sword being sold for $99.99 is a real antique and keeps making up bullshit about it, and this is the only thing that keeps him going working retail. cyclonus doesn't know what dark souls is. he thinks video games are still all Pong, you could not possibly persuade him to google it. he's genuinely insulted whirl is so dumb he believes this CLEAR FORGERY is an antique or whatever. eventually whirl will be like 'sure you can show me your Real Sword, meet me in this alleyway after work' thinking this is very funny. cyclonus shows up with a very unblunted illegal twohander that whirl is pretty sure he killed a guy for. they don't even fuck in the alley, cyclonus didn't pick up on that at ALL, he just sits there for three hours arguing with whirl about swords and nothing else. whirl is fascinated. one day when they have been together for fifteen years he will tell this story and this is how cyclonus discovers whirl was fucking with him the WHOLE time.

[tauforged]

like the thing that i think a lot of ppl gloss over is that a large majority of the talon aligned heroes have little to no interest in the actual ‘goals’ of the organization (to the point where we still don’t entirely know what talon wants or why they exist, lmfao) so much as it just being a means to an end. like we can all conceptualize that sombra is pretty much just there because it gives her access to more resources she can use towards her own goals, moira is there for research opportunities and funding that she’d never get elsewhere due to the nature of her work, i can only imagine that ramattra’s alliance with talon (and thus null sector’s as a whole) is purely situational because it provides advantages he considers useful, reaper is pretty much just there because they’re against overwatch therefore he can use it as an avenue for his revenge, even doomfist doesn’t really seem to hold as much stock in talon as an organization as he does use his position as a tool to achieve his goals, if it stopped being useful he would likely just walk away.

in opposition to the overwatch aligned heroes who all seem to be coming together solely for the sake of this like, ideal of Overwatch as a concept being this paradigm of good and justice and doing what’s right, and rallying behind their faith in the organization and what it symbolizes… i genuinely don’t think any of the talon operatives really care all that much about talon at all. it’s just a job. like, sure, we’re doing cartoon supervillain shit, but the pay is decent and we’ve got benefits and i can continue to do my own thing on the side, no questions asked. it’s honestly a pretty sweet deal.

all of that to say i really don’t see why people seem so averse to the idea of sigma having that same mindset. like yeah, he’s not exactly thrilled to be using his research and abilities to assist in acts of violent terrorism, but does he have many other options? he says it himself in that interaction with baptiste, talon gives him everything he needs - funding, resources, something to fall back on after being in total isolation for decades and coming out with absolutely nothing. it’s a guaranteed safety net — so long as he’s with talon, there’s absolutely no chance of anyone dragging him off or locking him up again, and so long as he contributes when he’s needed, he’s free to pursue his research to his heart’s content. does he regret it? sure, sometimes. i think they all do. i doubt there’s a single talon-aligned hero who genuinely believes what they’re doing is genuinely morally correct and sound. but ultimately in his mind he didn’t have many options left, so he had to settle for something he knew would at least guarantee his safety and continued freedom. it doesn’t really mean he’s being manipulated or held against his will any moreso than most of the other talon heroes, imho. he’s not proud of it, but hey, it pays the bills.

i feel like he regards it with a similar level of resentment/annoyance as i felt towards my horrible soul sucking corporate retail job of several years - like don’t get me wrong, the company i worked for absolutely sucked and i HATED how they operated, policy was bullshit and so much of it was unnecessary and needlessly counterproductive. but i also really connected with my coworkers in the same situation AND i got to get paid to do stuff i already would have been doing on my own anyway, and ultimately the experience i got and connections i made were really helpful in pursuing what i actually wanted to be doing with my life. it’s like if your shitty day job required you to kill people but they also like, got you hooked up with a place to live and a healthcare provider and all that shit and paid for all of your living expenses no questions asked AND gave you a decent budget to screw around with so long as every now and then you showed them what you were making and maybe used it to kill people more efficiently sometimes. i wouldn’t exactly feel any amount of loyalty to the company paying me but i wouldn’t exactly be in a hurry to quit either

[mariana-oconnor]

The Six Napoleons pt 2

Last time many people had plaster busts of Napoleon, which one of the owners admitted had no value. It was very strange.

And Lestrade is getting a bigger role, which I will always support.

For the first time our eyes rested upon this presentment of the great Emperor, which seemed to raise such frantic and destructive hatred in the mind of the unknown.

Do not understand why Napoleon is being referred to with such respect. Historically the British have not had the most positive relationship with the French. It's been super messy. But I guess if you rule enough places in the world and fight enough people then... Victorians thought you were cool? Even if you were French? And some of the people you fought were their grandparents?

This whole thing is strange to me.

Apart from the fact someone is dead. That I got.

“The most practical way of getting at it, in my opinion, is to identify the dead man."

That does seem like an important step in the investigation.

“No doubt; and yet it is not quite the way in which I should approach the case.”

I know that this is because Holmes doesn't think the dead man is linked to the case beyond being there at the time, and he cares about the puzzle here. But I do still believe that identifying the body is important.

"Tell him from me that I have quite made up my mind, and that it is certain that a dangerous homicidal lunatic with Napoleonic delusions was in his house last night. It will be useful for his article.”

Don't give my favourite character a false lead, Holmes!

"Let us make for Mr. Morse Hudson, of the Kennington Road, and see if he can throw any light upon the problem.”

This time I will not be taken in. Those are both surnames. I am sure of it!

"Disgraceful, sir! A Nihilist plot, that's what I make it. No one but an Anarchist would go about breaking statues. Red republicans, that's what I call 'em."

How times have changed! It's definitely the republicans who smash the statues of military dictators. Lolol.

"Do I know that photograph? No, I don't. Yes, I do, though. Why, it's Beppo. He was a kind of Italian piece-work man, who made himself useful in the shop. He could carve a bit and gild and frame, and do odd jobs. The fellow left me last week, and I've heard nothing of him since".

The 'no, I don't, wait, I do' is very realistic. I appreciate that. And clearly Beppo is a bad guy here. He just left his job right before all of this started to happen. He's either on the run from our Napoleonic Bust Buster or he is the Bust Buster himself.

"...we came to a riverside city of a hundred thousand souls, where the tenement houses swelter and reek with the outcasts of Europe."

So it's an immigrant area. And it's a shitty place to live. Surprising absolutely no one.

Their wholesale price was six shillings, but the retailer would get twelve or more.

Maths time

I believe that should be approximately £60 RRP per bust. So that doctor spent the equivalent of £120 on busts of Napoleon that were destroyed.

Sucks to be him, I guess.

The work was usually done by Italians in the room we were in.

Ooh, where did we last see an Italian? Or not see him, actually, because he had mysteriously and suspiciously disappeared a few days prior.

Beppo, what have you done?

"Beppo was his name—his second name I never knew. Serve me right for engaging a man with such a face."

Excuse me?

Oh, this is the guy that Watson compared to an ape, isn't it. Oh good grief. Seriously? I'm kind of on Beppo's side right now. Sure he killed someone, but you're clearly a dickhead. In fiction, the second one is definitely a worse crime.

If you weren't conventionally attractive according to Victorian values, you just died, I guess.

"No, I have never seen this face which you show me in the photograph. You would hardly forget it, would you, sir, for I've seldom seen an uglier."

People really need to stop saying things like that. If I were Beppo and I had to put up with that constantly, I would have knifed someone in the street, too.

"His name is Pietro Venucci, from Naples, and he is one of the greatest cut-throats in London. He is connected with the Mafia, which, as you know, is a secret political society, enforcing its decrees by murder."

The fact they have to explain what the Mafia is. 😂

And it should be noted, that Lestrade is at least also on the Italian path through his investigations. Yes, he's ignoring the busts, which is strange, but he's definitely sniffing up the right kind of tree.

I assume that whatever was hidden in the busts after the infamous knifing of June 3rd has some connection to Mr Venucci.

“Is a very simple one. I shall go down with Hill to the Italian quarter, find the man whose photograph we have got, and arrest him on the charge of murder."

OK, now he has skipped out a number of steps in the 'proving Beppo committed the crime' process.

Lestrade, I was rooting for you!

"I can't say for certain, because it all depends—well, it all depends upon a factor which is completely outside our control."

All the best plans rely on things that are completely outside of your control. I assume Holmes' plan is to lie in wait at the house of one of the other bust owners and hope that Beppo didn't find what he was looking for in the last bust he smashed.

For my own part, I had followed step by step the methods by which he had traced the various windings of this complex case, and, though I could not yet perceive the goal which we would reach, I understood clearly that Holmes expected this grotesque criminal to make an attempt upon the two remaining busts, one of which, I remembered, was at Chiswick. No doubt the object of our journey was to catch him in the very act...

It seems like you do, in fact, perceive the goal, Watson. The goal is to catch the criminal in the act. You don't perceive the criminal's goal, which is an entirely different thing.

I was not surprised when Holmes suggested that I should take my revolver with me. He had himself picked up the loaded hunting-crop which was his favourite weapon.

How does one load a hunting crop?

Oh... it has a steel core.

Well that doesn't seem very nice.

But I suppose neither is a revolver.

[whatthefishh]

Hi Mona <33

You're so cooool (and im proud of you in case you havent heard yet!!!)

Okay so exams are killing me even though they actually haven't STARTED yet its just the prep and the stress yknow!!! Anyway you also know I'm very much a slut for Rydal and the way you write him bc uhh he's just so fcuking fine and I love your writing!!

I know you aren't doing drabbles right now but would you spare this desperate and tired soul a few cutie pie Ryda hcs. Just a few smol cute ones abt his soft caring and hnghgnghgng during the high stress school seasons (yeah im projecting whatever.)

ANYWAY!! I LOVE YOU!!!!!

-Clem <333

Hi cutie

Thank you 🥺 and WDYM COOL LMAOO

Exams and exam prep can be super stressful, hope you’re taking care of yourself sweetie. I can definitely spare some Rydal HCs, and I know @campingwiththecharmings @xbellaxcarolinax and @melodygatesauthor have been asking me to drop stuff for our fave nepo baby hehehe

Random Rydal HCs:

Going out for something as simple as a drive isn’t just going for a drive with Rydal. The man puts on cologne and special sunglasses that he says work better for driving but you know it’s bullshit, he just thinks he looks cooler with them on in his vintage and unnecessarily expensive car.

Is the boyfriend that puts his hand on your thigh while driving. Buys you a drinkie drink and critiques your DJ skills loudly and rudely.

A trip to the mall usually means you have to block off a whole afternoon for it. Rydal tries on more clothes than you thought was possible, requesting certain cuts from the retail workers that you don’t even recognize. He definitely tries to fuck you in the changing rooms when the staff leaves you alone, claiming he could make it worth it for you to sit through his little fashion show.

You let him.

The first time you take Rydal thrift shopping he refuses to touch anything in the store. You think he’s mad at you for how little he speaks and how he glared at you when you ask him if the top you’re holding up would look good on you.

To make up for it, he forces you to get a pedicure with him. You thought he was joking but he’s dead serious, his face growing more irritated when you tell him you’ve never had one, opting to save your money and take care of them yourself. He scoffs and essentially drags you by the wrist (why does that action alone have your knees knocking together—) to the salon and picking out your colour for you. You feel quite pretty after you can’t deny but the memory of his face dropping never fails to make you laugh.

Playing board games with Rydal meant screaming matches that ended with the board game toppled over and his lips pressed against yours angrily

Movie nights found you both ripping on the movie choice of the night, commenting almost through the whole thing and making claims of what you’d change, what he thinks would’ve been a smarter decision of the main characters, taking sides and arguing them whole heartedly as if the people in the films and their actions had a direct connection to your lives

Sometimes Rydal would come over while you were in the shower. Sometimes he’d join you, finding it hilarious that you thought he was a serial killer but soon distracting you by dropping to his knees for you.

Sleepovers found you either on opposite sides of the bed or breathing in each other’s skin, arms holding the other close, legs tangled. The nights you spent laying with him were usually the sweetest mornings. Sometimes he’d wake you up with kisses, borderline ticklish movements, not letting up even while you squealed for him to stop. He didn’t let up until he pulled peals and peals of laughter from you, sharing syrupy kisses after and causing early morning butterflies to stir as your heart swelled with affection.

These were extremely random and scatter brained and I’m sorry because I really should be sleeping but I love him so much and I miss him and I promise I’ll work on my WIP soon ❤️ love ya

[lalogawrites]

Since I'm very new to tumblr, I've mostly been lurking, trying to figure out a) the community culture so I don't make an ass of myself, and b) what exactly I want to use this app for.

While I figure that out, here's a little about me if you're curious: Like it says in the little tagline up there, I'm a writer. Though I'm new to this platform, I'm not new to writing; been at it for decades. I started writing original stuff and fanfiction, though for many many years, fanfiction was my refuge, my safe haven. I met and made lifelong friends through writing it, and had a ton of fun in the process.

But, as is human nature, I had a dream of more. I wanted to be a Professional Author, so I stopped fanfic and turned all my attention to the original stuff. And I succeeded - to an extent. I published six novels and dedicated several years to being a full time indie author. But despite my plucky, can-do attitude, the actual money making part of this venture went...badly. 😆 I'm proud of what I accomplished, because I gave everything I had, but as it turns out, (to no one's surprise), the stuff I want to write isn't the stuff that makes money.

The books are good. This isn't the books' fault. Macro-level, I blame capitalism, but the reality is that I'm not cut out for the indie author life. Everything I created needed a plan to be monetized. Every ounce of energy went to "honing my craft" and figuring out marketing "strategies." It was soul crushing, almost as much as the shitty retail/officer worker jobs I left to fulfill this "dream." Writing became work, and I started to resent every word.

The end result? I *almost* killed my life long love of writing and storytelling. Thankfully, I pulled my head out of my own ass and realized I didn't want whatever this was. So I pulled the plug on the business, let my mailing list know I was taking a hiatus, and completely stepped back from everything. Even writing.

I spent most of 2023 trying to refill the creative well. Fanfic helped. A lot. I started a Mandalorian fic that I may or may not continue, (depends on where the show goes lol), but it was the Ninja Turtles who really rescued me.

The first fic I ever posted was TMNT. And in November of 2023, when I sat down to do NaNoWriMo and finally write book 2 of my second original series, I instead started the sequel to that first TMNT fic. Then I went back and started "revising" the first one, because if I ever posted the sequel, it just made sense. 😆 (Even though I swore I would never touch that story again!)

I'm currently working on both of them now, and it's fair to say my love of writing has been rekindled. I'm still debating on what (if anything) I'll do with either fic, but I'm leaning toward maybe one day sharing some of my work publicly again. (That's another blog post/journal entry entirely haha.)

If you've made it this far, thank you for reading. Stay awesome. 💜