#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.

[thricekursedthor]

[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.

[themultifandomfreak]

Hi king! What is SCP? And how do your OC's tie in? (Permission granted to blab as much as you want abt it)

Greetings the OC slorper xoxo

Idk how to explain what scp is but i can use this as an excuse to write whole paragraphs to explain my oc and a bit of his lore 😎

Uh basically

Naythen Graham Smith, born [REDACTED] Smith on April 30th 1977, was the 2nd of 6 children born to Percival and Mary Smith.

Not much is known about his childhood, other than that he was heavily mistreated, which ended in the murder of his family when his family died in a car crash.

After this event, Smith was left homeless until he had enough money tomove from his small house in Portsmouth, to somewhere in New Jersey, where he managed to get a scholarship for Biochemistry, something he excelled at.

He did normal college stuff, like drinking and hanging out with friends. An example of this is when he was dared to eat gross things on the side of the road (this would never lead to life changing consequences!).

When he was 18, he met someone. He didn’t exactly have a crush, but he did care very deeply for her. She was in most of his classes, so they managed to become friends. They shared the same last name, which is because it’s a common last name, but they still jokes that the reason why they were so close was because they were secretly twins.

She gets pregnant (not by him, don’t worry.) but soon after the baby is born, oh no! She dies in a fire. Only her child lives. Now, smith is excellent at forgery, an example is that he never legally got his name changed. Anyways, he decided “well I am NOT letting her child go up for adoption!!” And he forges her birth certificate into saying his name as the father.

Little side note, the woman was a little mad, and was testing on herself/her child WHILST she was pregnant, and was seeing how she could change a human embryo’s dna without killing it. Some bits of dna include wolf, dog, cat, bird, other human, lizard, and axolotl. This causes Maddison(the daughter) to have some slight birth defects. Such as, an allergy to chocolate and grapes, amazing hearing and sense of smell, slight sight issues (she doesn’t like using glasses though), the ability to grow certain things back when cut off, she also sometimes grows useless feathers, which she usually plucks out. She also has a tail and ears, similar to a wolves or a dog’s. She normally hides this (when required) by wearing hats and long dresses

Btw she was made by my little sister!

Anyways he doesnt actually care for her properly (basically the bare minimum) until he is almost 21. At that point he ditched the friends that made him eat random stuff off the road (again, will NEVER have life changing consequences), and he somehow figures out a way to stay in college and also look after a 2 year old??????????? Anyways he graduates at 22, works at smt like fast food or retail for a year, and then somehow gets hired by the foundation??!???

This is where i make him fit into the lore. Somehow.

Luckily for me, whenever I make an oc, I make an au so i can rewrite characters to make him fit. If only i can figure out how i’ve rewritten them. Idk. All ik is that he kind of uses his job to an advantage, because OH NO!!! THE CONSEQUENCES OF HIS ACTIONS!! OF BEING DARED TO EAT STUFF OFF THE FLOOR!! HE ATE AN INCURABLE PARASITE! AN ANOMALOUS PARASITE!

So he tests on himself to figure out a cure. He only finds a treatment which is still only ever temporary. This testing actually causes a cursed gene in him to activate, because the bloodline he was born into was cursed by an entity to be immortal and be able to heal quickly and shit. This gene got turned off at some point, but he’s managed to turn it back on. He also finds out he keeps being reincarnated because of a curse on his own soul by the same entity. He only finds that out because people in the past have been documented of having the same birthmark, having a second birthmark that represented the way that life died, and having some slight memories of the life before them. He has the same birthmark, a birthmark shaped like a knife slash across his chest, and wow! Memories of his past life.

You might think “oh what a coincidence! He has 2 curses from the same entity!” WRONG!

The parasite was actually ‘blessed’ by the entity.

This is actually pure coincidence though, the entity told me.

Anyways that was like in the 2000’s. He lives in the modern day!! Ish. It’s more like august this year. Anyways he’s 47 now, and he directs the anomalous and scientific research department (is that a real department! I don’t know, i just wanted to make him be a bit higher up than a normal scientist.)

Does any of this make sense? Hell no! Do i care? Hell no!

Random fun facts about him but my phone is lagging oh dear oh no

He is allergic to aspirin, ginger, and pollen.

He will absolutely brush off his trauma. Do not expect what he is saying to be the actual truth. It will only be a really washed out version of it (washed out? Washed up? Ehhh idk the phrase)

His healing is actually sped up by the treatment. The only special thing about his healing without it is that he can heal from fatal injuries and stuff.

He can also still get sick.

He actually needs many things, like a pacemaker and a cane, but he will NOT ever get them or acknowledge he needs them until its actually a diagnosed full on problem

The parasite causes a sort of rotting (ik quite a few do but this one is special shhhhh) which looks like the host is wasting away. The rotting is normally pure black. It is also only ever able to be in 1 host at a time. It also acts like a sort of hivemind, and has an almost human-like sentience. The queen of the hivemind is immortal. Whoops! It can do many things to the host. An example is being able to manipulate the host’s body, basically called possession. It can also sort of sometimes melt the rotted flesh into a black tar-like substance. On the rare occasion it can do that, theres a rarer chance that it’ll be able to melt the whole body into the substance. When it does this, it can sort of change its shape and form into what it wants. This involves being able to break the host’s bones just so it can do that. Of course, this is normally at the final stage of the parasite being there, and is normally deadly, but oh no! Smith is immortal.

He does still die, its just more where he can be unconscious for a bit, sometimes. Like I said, only sometimes. There is a chance he can just be walking around with a bullet hole in his head waiting for the wound the heal up or smt

Self inflicted injuries are more likely to scar up compared to when someone else injures him.

He did his own top surgery because of this. Owie.

He once had something not work in his body, causing him to do the thing where he dies temporarily, and so he decided to basically do an autopsy on himself so he could see what happened.

Every time he does something like this he will either be in extreme pain or he will put himself on so many pain medications that he’s surprised he’s able to move.

He can play the piano, and a little bit of the violin.

Like i’ve said before, he WILL insult you if you tell him to not wear his bowtie.

He likes the paisley pattern. His bowtie has a faint pattern of it

He started out as a “what I want to look like as an adult” oc on gacha, and them i decided i wanted to make him look more interesting, and it’s gone on from there.

He wears gloves not for anything like germs or smt, but just because he doesn’t really like his hands. This was originally because they were almost fully rotten but now i’ve just made them heavily scarred with a bit of rot.

Do NOT ask for photos of him when he was in his early to mid 30s. Bc that was when some of the real parts of his features were changing. His canines had fallen out and were slowly being replaced by the sharper versions, his scleras were yellowing, his pupils were also sharpening and becoming more white. He also didn’t really take any pictures of himself in that time.

He is missing an eye. This was more because it was becoming so rotten that it was unusable

He can loose blood faster than he can regenerate it.

He is afraid of being buried alive, fire, and heights.

If he thinks he has no other choice in attacking you, he will probably bite you. He doesn’t like this though because his teeth are sharp enough to draw blood and he doesn’t like the taste of blood+it’s unhygienic

Says he hates the cold, but his office is constantly freezing, even in winter.

He most likely has PTSD, possibly C-PTSD. He also has Bipolar II disorder, NPD, ASD, ADHD, and a couple other stuff. However, he refuses to get diagnosed for some reason.

There is probably more fun facts but ive forgotten right now. Oops.

I will probably edit this when I want to change his lore or add a new random fact about him or smt.

[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.