#side note she’s also just kinda weird with customers in general

[sweetest-honeybee]

Ooooh the fact your manager hasn't gotten fired yet tells me that she's fucking someone higher up, back when I was a hostess we had a guy that was always no call no show, got into shouting matches with the cooks, etc. Only reason he never got fired? We all soon found out he was fucking our manager

LMAO I’d agree if she wasn’t literally ancient 😂

[noellefan101]

Bakery Love

Genshin impact, modern baker au, reader´s family owns(and works at) a bakery + reader works there, gn!reader

characters: Tighnari, Albedo, Kazuha, Cyno, Nilou, Xiao x gn!reader

Warnings: kissing, baking(duh), romantic relationship (+ planoinic in some but not with the main), kissing, , tell me if i missed anything

Note: I'm sorry if there´s any mistakes, english is not my first language and this is not prof-read yeah enjoy ;) and it feels so weird to write for Nilou when the rest is men, i didn´t think abt that. luv you all, mwah ;)

Tighnari

i feel like he would be there to get a birthday cake for Collei, (im sorry it just sounds too cute) and you were at the front desk in your apron talking to a customer, when he walked in and ordered. you looked at him, asked what he would like and wrote a note down so you could remember - he ordered a "healthy" cake with green frosting on one side and red on the other with Cuilein anbars on the green side and baron bunnies on the red side. and then he also leaves his number woth the order bc he thinks your cute so you start to become friends. anyway, thats how you met onto when you start dating

you would come over to his house after your shift, or when you both have time, and bring him some baked goods for him and Collei/i feel like they would live together in a modern au, like Tighnari would still be her caretaker, just like in the game/. you and Tighnari would definitely bake together, and you would teach him how to bake certain pastries and stuff, and Collei/+Cyno maybe/could join if they wanted to (it would be so cute wtf). i also think he would be like a florist or smt, like he owns a flower shop, so he would bring you flowers or just plants in general. so the bakery would have a lot of plants that he´s given you. and your family (lovingly) hates him because where tf are they gonna put all these fricking flowers and stuff he gets you every week. tho their happy for you and they also got free decor for the bakery so they don´t really complain.

to him you´re like a rose, beautiful, even if sometimes you sting, he adores you just as much

Albedo

he was just there to study at first, maybe get some coffee and a piece of cake, when he saw you behind the counter he kinda.. uhm.. fell in love at first sight, yeah... anyway now/because of your beauty/he is there studying more often or when you´re there to be exact. your sibling or parent called it out but you denied it and didn´t think much of it. and then he finally asked for your number

when you finally start dating, he would still study at your bakery but it´ll be a little more often. and not only on your shifts but on other family members too, mainly bc he wants to get to know them better. he also brings his little sister, Klee, with him more often so she can meet you and your family + see the bakery. he also would make some artificial things for you, like flowers and stuff, you could either put in your room or around the bakery. yk the flower he makes in his idol or whatever its called, so like one of those or just anything you want really. he could also paint there, but he´ll just start painting you and he doesn´t want other people to think he´s stalking you.

to him you´re like a painting, pretty in many ways, and perfect in his eyes

Kazuha

he would visit the bakery once in a while, finding it relaxing to be there and finding great inspiration for his poems and stories. and something he has noticed is the beautiful person that is sometimes behind the corner/you hehe/and starts to slowly become his muse. he couldn´t help it its like keeping a secret from someone, but sharing it with the world at the same time. he finds himself going to the same place over and over again, only wanting to see your face one more time. (wtf happened to me) while he was unknowingly falling in love with this new muse, you were falling for him. (ok i need to fricking stop, omg)

when you two finally started dating, he still kept you as his muse, but this time you were both aware and laughed a little together because of it. anyway he would be there even more to just sit and write about something, then later in the day/or week if you both were busy/he would read them out to you. and at some point you would start giving him notebooks every few months just so he could write his poetry on something other than the tissues from the bakery(omg that would be so cute and hilarious at the same time). in return he would gift you your favorite flowers and try and learn to bake, even tho its not perfect he tries and you love it. sometimes you´ll bake something with him and teach him properly how to do something/or do it the way your family does it/and then after you eat it together.

to him you're a miracle, your his love, his life, and his muse, he doesn´t know what to do without you now

Cyno

he´s a policeman (the hot kind) and there was an incident with your neighbor bc their store got robbed/in my mind it's a jewelry store but let your mind go wherever/so you got a few questions since you were on your shift at the time they came in. but you then after went into the back/your home to get your parents. and then after he started showing up more both because of the situation but also because he generally liked your pastries and cakes. even after the case ended he still came over on a lot of all of his breaks, maybe it was sometimes to see you but you ofc didn´t need to know that ;)

so when you guys started dating, he would ofc still come over but also look out for you, your family, and the bakery. also in his free time/even tho its not often/he would "help" you with baking. aka your teaching him how to bake bc he can´t for the life of him, but he brags to his friends abt it "cough". anyway, he would love to try some new recipes you find online or in your family cookbook, and help as much as he can. if you made him some pastries for him to take with him to work, he would fall even more `head over heels` in love with you, seriously do it. he would definitely stop anybody that tries to steal anything from the bakery, and get them arrested immediately.

to him your love is like a drug, addicting, but even if he knows it he will still love you for eternity

Nilou

yk the cake she eats in game, that would definitely be the reason you two met. like it would be in the bakery´s window or smt and she would order that with a smile, while you where on your shift ofc. and she would get all exited and stuff. + she thinks the way you and your family make it is much better, so she´s basically a reguler bc she orders at your bakery so often. and then she starts to fall in love with one of the bakers there (you), and so she tries to find out when your shift is and stuff. (my brain couldn´t stop sry, that was a lot)

anyways, when you start dating she would definitely want to try and learn the recipe and bake it with you, but ofc she needs practice so she´ll eat your portion at the start, but you can´t complain you´ve literally done this your whole life ofc you´re better. she´d also want to meet your family early on bc you told her about some baking days when you test new recipes and stuff, so she´d be the taste tester and give tips if she could. aand you would give her discounts for some kisses. she would also dance in the bakery, with you and your family´s content ofc, so she could attract customers with her beautiful dancing.

to her you´re like cake, has many flavors, not all perfect but to her you are too perfect to enjoy only once

Xiao

i see him getting dragged there by some friends/yk aether, venti, kazuha, heizou and then scara is getting dragged there too. so basically 6rezze(sry if thats wrong) or 5wirl, but they aren´t famous/and they drag him to your bakery. bc they wanted to try the cakes and stuff. and your the one behind the counter(idk if thats a good thing or not, but ig it was?). and so you had to deal with some boys yelling at each other while one of them was completely silent/xiao/he just ordered and explained what the rest/but not for heizou, kazuha cuz i feel like they would already have ordered/you just got the pastries and cakes they ordered, and they then sat down seeming to calm down.

after you started dating he wouldn´t come to the bakery often, but he´ll definitely come over like once a week/before was like once or twice a month/and he won´t order much but is just there to support you. otherwise, if he comes to the bakery he´ll just go straight to the back to see you/they know who he is ofc, but for first-time workers that might be weird/and he would be a little sad if you were too busy to give him attention. if you give him some non-sweet cake or pastries he´ll love you even more(i swear thats impossible). he´ll also feed you, and let you feed him in return. if you want him to learn how to bake he´ll do it, but only if you teach him ofc. so there you are in your kitchen with xiao, trying to teach him to bake the non-sweet cake he likes.

you´re like the cakes you make, sweet, although he doesn´t normally like sweet things, he loves you more than anything else

Author: the sweet things at the end of each one, omg how tf did i come with those aaaaahhhh i´m freaking out right now. also if you want me to do more of these pls tell me + the characters you want in it.

thank you for reading, luv ya-Masterlist

You are welcome to reblog and like any of my posts, but you CAN NOT translate, copy or hate on anybody liking my posts

[iamthekaijuking]

King’s Nightmarish Retail Experience

This post has been a long time coming because I know for a fact that suffering through retail makes for excellent stories and I have cosmically bad luck when it comes to dealing with people, so over the course of like 1 1/2 years I’ve just been stockpiling notes. I had been working with some people who had been working in pickup for five years and by the time I left I had three times more stories than they did. And now that I’ve quit over a month ago I can unleash this upon the world.

This post will only go over my experiences with customers and not people I worked with or how the store was ran. Most people in the store I worked at were either just normal people doing their jobs or the sweetest people you’ll ever meet, and very few people working in my store were actually jerks or gross. That’s actually how it is for most retail shops in general actually. Now I could say stuff about the few jerks (and I’d love to) but I’m not going to just as another way to eliminate any possibility of incriminating where it is I worked. Plus most of that frustration was directed at managers and corporate so you can probably guess why I’d be frustrated.

Also some of these stories are kinda gross so you know, warning. Although I did try and keep it classy.

General weird people in the store.

When I was out on the floor getting items for orders I observed a fair share of horrible and gross behavior. Things ranging from a guy sticking his hand in his pants to directly scratch his junk in public to a woman doing the same but with her chocolate starfish. Sometimes I even saw excellent parenting as well such as the time I saw a little kid pinching his dad, only for the dad to spin around and lift him up by the scruff of his shirt and say “Pinch me again and I’m breaking your neck in the parking lot”. Another time I saw a mom throw her umbrella at her toddlers face because he wasn’t listening to her. Excellent stuff.

This one is actually from one of my coworkers but years ago around the time The Last Jedi released a bunch of blue milk hit the shelves. My coworker was just getting items until a fat scruffy neckbeard guy barged up to her and yelled “Where’s your blue star wars milk?!”. If it happened to me I’d have to try really hard not to laugh at them.

I’ve also just had a customer just walk up to me and demand I clean up a carton of milk a child spilled even when I specified that I was a pickup worker, that wasn’t my job, and I didn’t have a phone to call anyone about it. I ended up having to ineffectively sponge it with paper towels while he watched with his hands on his hips for thirty seconds. Eventually someone came with a mop though.

I’ve had a woman pull me aside wanting me to help her text pictures of her pipes to her plumber. Like… no! I didn’t have time for that! You’d think she was a super old lady in her 80s or something but no she was like late 50s/early 60s! Old enough to know how a smartphone works!

Every customer from here on is memorable enough that I’ve given them their own section.

Memorial Day Farter

This one happened when I was out picking items for orders on Memorial Day.

A woman who, and I really have no other words to describe her, was a hamburger helper of a woman bent over in front of me to grab something and just bayblade let it rip directly on me. I have anosmia but I could tell it was a rancid congalala fart because I could taste it. I swear to god that the gust of intestinal wind that came out of her was powerful enough to blow my shirt back a bit.

And she didn’t even acknowledge it either! She just laboriously got back up and left!

I showered when I got home.

Cottage Cheese Lady

Once again I was out on the floor, this time in the dairy section.

I was grabbing stuff and my cart was parked in front of the cottage cheese. Off to my side an older lady was looking for something. English was not her first language cause she said “Where cottage cheese?” but she wasn’t facing me so I assumed she was taking to herself. But she kept repeating it louder and louder until she turned to me and yelled “WHERE COTTAGE CHEESE?!”. It took me a second to realize she had been talking to me the entire time and in that time she got right up in my face (or as close to it as a five foot person can to a 6ft 1 guy) and almost pinned me against the doors in the dairy section. And for some reason thrusted her chest out at me.

Now she was wearing some fancy v-neck jacket with a very deep v-neck and she was old. So she was thrusting some very unimpressive flabs at me while yelling “WHERE COTTAGE CHEESE”. Overwhelmed, I quickly slid out from in front of her and pushed my cart out of the way and pointed. She then arched her spine the opposite way like a hunchback in defeat and just said “oh…”.

“Bro”

This one also happened when I was out picking items. Occasionally when out picking customers would sometimes ask me where things are, and while I didn’t like it because we were timed on how fast we picked items for orders and the people in charge would get on our asses if we weren’t fast enough for them, I still answered customers if I could, sometimes even taking them to what they wanted if I had time or was in a good mood. Most of the time though people were right in front of what they were looking for and ended up looking like complete idiots.

That said, I didn’t know where everything was in the store. I’m not a robot. But you’d be surprised how downright pissy people get when you tell them you don’t know where something is. This guy is one of them.

So I was picking and a guy twenty feet away from me held his phone up and asked me “do you know where this is bro?”. Now I just want to take a second to describe this man. This guy who looked to be in his forties was in a tank top and had the torso of a really tall broad guy like me, but had limbs so short in skinny that he was only like 5 feet tall, so he had the proportions of a fuckin spore creature. I told him “sorry I don’t know where that is” because one I probably wouldn’t have, two I was strapped for time, and three I can’t see what’s on a phone twenty feet away from me.

This guy immediately raises his voice and yells “Oh so you don’t pay attention when you take stuff off the shelves bro?!”. I was just completely taken aback and a few people were looking at the scene this guy was making, so to get out of the sticky situation I pulled the ultimate get out of jail free card for dealing with customers: I told him it was my first day on the job even though I had been working for over one and a half years at that point.

Immediately this guy’s demeanor changed like a psycho and he started trying to be all cheerful and welcoming me to my new job. He even walked up to try and pat me on the back but I cringed away, and I think he got the message from that and left me alone.

Karen Video Tapes Me

This is the last one where I was out picking for orders.

So it was late in my shift, around 45 minutes before it ended, and I was with another person. It was a pretty good night so I decided that I’d pick for orders the next day just to get us a little bit ahead. So I’m out pushing my cart and getting items and as I turn into an aisle there’s this short old blond lady with a very fluffy expensive coat standing in the middle of the entrance to the aisle. No biggie though, I just maneuver around her and give her two feet of space. But as I pass her she turns to me in disbelief and says “you almost ran me over!” and I just kinda look at her confused and weirded out before continuing.

Now it could have just ended there with both of us thinking the other was weird and kinda rude but continuing on and probably not remembering each other the next day, but this woman was so incredibly personally offended by me. So later in my item wave I’m in the baking aisle bending down to grab something and I noticed out of the corner of my eye someone leaning into the entrance to the aisle and aiming their phone at me.

I got up and walked over and they shrank away, and as I turned the corner it was her! She had filmed me (without my consent which is illegal in my state) and was now scurrying like a fucking rodent towards the front of the store where one of the store managers was at.

I think “hell fucking no she’s not getting away with that” and I end my item wave and bring my cart back to my department to park it while calling who was in charge of the store at the time and explaining everything to her. She asked if the Karen was still in the store and I said I’d check. So I leave my department again to walk up front and see the lady walking up to the guy who oversees the self checkout and asking him to call a manager. I sauntered up with a smile on my face and told him “No no, this is about me. I’ll handle it.”

So I go towards the front office and find the store manager there and explain everything to him. He asks if the Karen is still there and I tell him yes and she wants to meet you, and I’ll take you to her. So I bring him over while making a show out of being polite to everyone around me and saying excuse me to customers in my way all while the lady is trying to burn holes through me with her eyes. I brought the store manager up to her and as he started talking to her I dipped out because my shift was over by then.

I don’t actually know what happened after that but judging by the fact that I heard nothing about it the next day I assume I didn’t get into any trouble and the lady got to die mad about it.

Public Pisser

Every story from now on happened while I was in my department “running desk”, which means I was taking out orders to people in the little pickup parking lot.

This story is also the first weird customer interaction I had.

So I was just watching the camera feed waiting for people to come get their orders when a white SUV pulls up right beside the door we used to go in and out. A guy stepped out of the car but stayed behind his car door so I couldn’t really see him on the camera. He just kinda stood there for a bit and I was starting to wonder what he was doing, so I walked up to the door and flip up a little flap that lets me see through a small window…

And he was pissing.

He was pissing in public on the door. And I saw everything, including how painfully average he was below the belt.

So I knocked on the door to get his attention and his head snapped up to look me in the eyes. I just slowly nodded my head “no” while he started cussing at me, and then I just stepped away from the door and kinda let him get away with it because I was done with the interaction.

Tornado Lady

This one is short and just kinda shows how skewed the priorities of some people can be.

This happened during a tornado that was passing by, and the wind was going crazy and it was raining bullets. At the time the incident happened everyone in the store was in the tornado shelter areas and even the people who had come for their orders moved to park in front of the store to get to safety. All except for one car.

About ten minutes into waiting for the tornado to pass we get a call on our department phone (because people could call us to say they were there although we preferred if people used the app) and it’s an old lady who yells this.

“Um hello?! My husband has been waiting for his order for fifteen minutes! What’s the hold up?!”

My only response I could muster was “Ma’am there is A TORNADO OUTSIDE RIGHT NOW YOUR HUSBAND NEEDS TO GET TO SAFETY.” and she hung up.

The car with the hubby inside didn’t move but luckily the storm didn’t last much longer afterwards and things could continue as normal. In contrast to his wife the man was actually very kind and understanding.

Unactivated Credit Card

So something to note about how pickup worked, at least where I was employed, was that when a customer signed in we had to scan and assemble all the items in their order that we stored after picking, and then process the payment. Sometimes the payment could fail for a variety of reasons though. Like if the customer didn’t have enough money, or their card was locked, or they used a third party payment like PayPal, or their order was so expensive that their bank locks their card to prevent fraud (frustratingly common). When that happened the person running desk had to print off a bunch of paperwork, go out and get the customer’s card, then go halfway across the building to the self checkout to manually pay for the order there. It was an incredibly infuriating process that brought everything to a halt (even while we were still being timed).

One time though a lady’s order failed and I just spent a half hour going back and forth trying to get her card to work all while she kept getting angrier at me. She even accused me of running her card through the scanner wrong, which… there’s only one way to do it so that’s impossible. Eventually she called her bank in a fit and it turns out her card, which was brand new, wasn’t even activated. So she just flipped me off and sped off.

Mulch Lady

So this one took place when a deal was going on at the store. Multiple stores in the chain were having a deal with mulch where if you bought ten you’d get them for ten dollars. However, there was a glitch in pickup where you could instead get ten for five dollars. Management had actually called us to tell us about this and that if people place orders for mulch we’ll have to call the customer and explain to them they will have to pay full price or we will have to cancel the order.

Now a woman tried to place five orders of ten packs of mulch. So I had to call her and explain why if she wanted the mulch she’d have to pay double what the glitch was telling her. Immediately she gets all pissy and throws a fit and tells me that I have to “respect the wishes of the customer”. So when that conversation was over I had to call a store manager about it.

Basically we had to get the mulch ready and she needed to come inside to talk to him about the deal and get stuff sorted out. So that was frustrating because my department had to get 50 packs of mulch, which was so much that we had to borrow a special large trolley from another department. My conversation with the mulch lady went more or less the same as it did before except for one key difference.

She mentioned that her friends did the same thing at a different store the day before so she was extra angry that she couldn’t do the same. And that’s when I realized, the only reason management caught the glitch in the first place is because of her friends and she was trying to pull the same shit they did! Anyways she came for her mulch and went to talk to the store manager about it, and the conversation went in circles because she kept saying “I don’t understand” to everything. Not because she actually couldn’t comprehend anything, but because she didn’t like the answer she was getting and was trying to bait out a different one. She eventually relented though and settled on only taking half the mulch she ordered, which was annoying since I had to remove some from the giant pile of 50 ten pound bags.

So as I’m taking out all the bags on the large trolly I get to the door and suddenly the trolley stops. I took a look and realized the trolley was barely wider than the doorframe and because of the weight it was now wedged in the door and I couldn’t get it out. So I basically had to climb the mountain of mulch to get to the other side and start unloading it into the lady’s van to get rid of the excess weight and dislodge the trolley. It worked but it was really annoying.

Also Mulch Lady didn’t learn her lesson because she tried the same shit the next day.

Taking Offense to a Thanks

This one still makes me mad.

So with how pickup works a customer is supposed to use the app to say they’re on their way and then when they arrive they say they’re here. The idea is to give us a heads up so we can partly prepare an order ahead of time so that when the customer arrives they don’t wait as long and we can beat the timer (because we were timed).

But the longer I stayed at the place the less and less customers did this and it got to a point where only about 1/5th of customers were telling us they were on their way. So eventually I started politely asking customers to let us know when they’re coming, and it was working somewhat until this guy.

Let’s call him Brick. So one day Brick came without letting us know he was on his way and he had a huge order, so big in fact that another coworker went out to help me load it onto his truck (he never helped of course). When we finished I did my usual “You’re all set, have a good day” routine and politely asked him to let us know when he’s on his way. As I turned around and went inside Brick pulled my coworker to the side to complain to her and demand why he had to do that. Even when she politely explained he still threw a fit before driving off, and I later learned that Brick complained to corporate.

A week later when I served him again he actually did use the app to say he was on his way, so I very politely thanked him for doing that and said that because fewer people were notifying us things were getting harder and so I appreciated that small thing. Apparently my thanks just broke Brick because he complained to corporate again but this time said just about every bad thing you could say about an employee short of assault and sexual harassment, so I got written up for it.

I refused to serve Brick again, because he just had it out for me and kept asking my coworkers where I was and kept saying that he wanted a word with me.

Now this story might have a happy ending because it turns out that Brick owns a construction company around where I live and I’m currently trying to figure out how my family and I can review bomb his business without getting sued for defamation.

Nasty Man

Some customers really don’t care to not look like total slobs in front of others or try and have some public decency. One interaction sticks out to me and I’m going to call this guy Cory because he looked like Armenian Cory but somehow even more swollen.

I took his order out to him and he got out of his car to help (which honestly good on him I appreciated that). But he was greasy and his shirt was like three sizes too small and his pants were too big and about to fall down. Cory also wasn’t wearing underwear and I learned that the hard way when he bent over when facing away from me and bared his whole ass. I also unfortunately noticed his fly was down and I could see his uhh… small earthworm.

It was a very uncomfortable situation and I couldn’t tell him to pull his pants up because he could report me and I’d get in trouble! So I had to grin and bear it while this idiot was getting his groceries with his dick out.

Happy Birthday!

This is another customer who had zero shame.

This happened last year on my birthday/national Godzilla Day. It was night and I was doing a later shift and a guy in a truck pulled up and signed in. Things went pretty normally and I took his order out to him. Now I was going to put it in his trunk because that’s usually where customers want their groceries, but this guy said he wanted his stuff in the passenger seat.

I was like “Okay” because that’s not really a big deal, so I opened the door and started unloading his groceries and I noticed he was watching his phone. Now the phone was mostly turned away from me but I could see just a sliver of the screen, enough to make out what he was watching. And he was watching…

Porn

He was watching porn right in front of me while I was giving him his groceries.

Absolutely shameless.

He tried to turn the phone away from me more but I already saw. I basically hurried up with giving him his stuff and rushed back inside. Now I expected him to leave after that… but then his truck started shaking. I eventually called the store manager and we were about to send security out before he finished and drove off. I think he knew I saw because he never came back.

The Time I Was Actually Almost Mugged or Trafficked

I’ve actually talked about this one in the past here before but I’ll just rehash it here, and unlike all the other stories where it’s just about Karens and idiots and gross slobs, this one is actually scary.

So it was late at night and I was covering for my underage coworker so she could take a lunch break. A black SUV slowly pulled up to park and takes up 2 parking spots, and then a woman got out of her car and kinda stumbled over to the signs in front of the pickup parking spots.

I assumed she's drunk and can't sign into the app and is looking at the signs for the number to call us and say she's here. But then she walked up to the pickup door and knocked, and was keeping her face away from the camera the whole time. I grew incredibly suspicious because customers aren't supposed to come up to the door for security reasons, and she's keeping her face turned away from the camera the whole time. So I slinked up to the door and quietly flipped the metal plate to peek out the window.

Her back is still to the door.

I slink back to the curbside front desk and keep my eyes on the camera. After awhile she stumbles back to her car and then calls. I proceeded as normal and get her name, but as I was looking I noticed that her name isn't on the list for the day. I think "okay maybe she's drunk and her order is for tomorrow". I looked all the way up into a week ahead of time. Her name was not on the order list. I told her this and asked if her order was under a different name. She said "Well I used my son's card for the order so maybe it's under that, but his last name is the same."

Btw I could barely understand her and I had to ask her to repeat herself a few times.

I asked what it is she ordered. She said sketchers. I looked for some shoes. We didn’t have any back in pickup for any orders. I told her this and before I could tell her she might be at the wrong store she hangs up. And stayed there for almost ten minutes.

2 customers pulled up and signed in for their orders and I think “okay I’m not going out alone”. So I called the head of the store and she sent a team lead and what I assume was security back there. As I’m explaining to them the situation my coworker gets back from break. So I come up with a plan: we all go out at the same time and my coworker and I give the orders to the customers while the two guys talk to her and see what’s up.

But as they approached her car she sped off.

They're weirded out too and gave me the number for security in case she came back. And for the rest of my shift I did not let my 16 year old coworker take out orders, and when I left I urged her to call security if anything vaguely weird happened.

Now this exact situation could have gone so much worse. What these people like that do is get a woman in on the whole thing drunk and drive them to a pickup parking lot at night. The reason she’s drunk is to make her seem defenseless and to lower the guard of the employees, but she also hid her face from the camera to make it harder to link her to a crime. Everything she did was to get someone to come out to the car where more people hiding in the back of the vehicle would come out to mug the employee, or if they’re underage girls, potentially kidnap them.

This exact scenario has played out before around where I live and I am so glad that my cautious nature picked up on what was going on.

The Worst Customer

I’ve painted a pretty good picture of some pretty terrible people, but this woman is in a league of her own. To give a sense of how awful she was, she is the only customer I’ve ever had who purposely caused me physical harm. I’m going to call her Slattern, because that is the nicest thing I could call her.

She was a regular to the store, but she never did anything to meet us halfway and was so incredibly short fused and rude that half of the people in my department dreaded serving Slattern. So full of anger was she that she could barely keep herself from throwing a fit when we so much as asked her name when we brought her order out to double check that it was hers.

The one time Slattern hurt me was during winter where I guess she was having a bad day or something. As I was leaning into the back of her SUV to put the groceries in I saw her hand fly up and press the button on her rear view mirror that closed the trunk, and it slammed down on my head. The metal edge of it hit me and the only reason I wasn’t cut and bleeding is because I had a jacket over my head, and that jacket got a cut in it afterwards. I almost fell over onto the ice covered asphalt because of how much pain I was in. Her teenage son actually showed concern for me and was asking if I was okay, but when I looked at Slattern’s face through the rear view mirror all I saw was her looking at me with this smug satisfied smirk.

This woman was genuine evil and had some of the worst tantrums the store I worked at ever saw on the few occasions she stormed up to the front to argue with a store manager. Even they thought Slattern was “a complete bitch”, and even her son tried to get her to stop a few times. I quit before I ever saw the end to the Slattern Saga, but I’m certain she’s banned from the store by now. I would have absolutely pressed charges but unfortunately the trunk thing was very easy to write off as an accident.

The Angry Cloudstrike Man

This one happened during the cloudstrike fiasco if you remember when half the internet imploded awhile ago.

During this time working retail was possibly the worst it had ever been, without a properly functioning network we were borderline incapable of doing our jobs but corporate wanted us to anyways. We had to treat every order like a failed order and this resulted in long wait times that made everyone very angry for at least a two days until everyone realized why nothing was working. But there was one older customer who just never got the memo and was just constantly a complete asshole.

Every time he’d get mad at us for our system not working and act like he expected us to magically fix it, and was just so mean and yelled at everyone who served him no matter how many times we politely explained things to him and offered gift cards as compensation. Every time he’d also say he’d complain to corporate on their website and never come back again… but then be back the next day for several days straight. So definitely not a man of his word which was kinda funny.

He was so rude to us so consistently that I was able to get the higher ups to get off their asses for once and begin the process of banning him from the store.

It eventually came to a head one day where he placed an order but we never received it (because again, cloudstrike) and yelled at a coworker who had to go out and explain it to him. When she came back inside he called our front desk and I answered.

Again, I explained to him what happened and that we had no power to fix it, but he refused to listen and the conversation went in circles. It eventually got to the point where he was wasting so much of my time and I was getting so sick of his shit that I realized “okay corporate already knows this guy is an asshole and he’s already getting banned from the store and he already probably spews bullshit when he complains to corporate” and just went mask off.

I personally shrink away from confrontation so this is very uncharacteristic of me, but I just started full blown arguing with him and trying to make him as angry as possible. I didn’t hurl any obscenities but it was clear I was just stirring shit, and oh my god it was euphoric. If you’ve never worked retail you will never know the feeling of having a job where you simultaneously keep the gears of society turning while being treated like the shit stuck on someone’s shoe, and just unleashing that frustration on someone who deserves it. The only way that moment could have been even better is if I could reach through the phone and strangle the guy like Bart Simpson.

I wanted to end on a happy note. That’s about it for the retail stories.

[meraki-yao]

The Princess and the Frog Thoughts 🐸🤍

Alright I'm done and here's a list of miscellaneous thoughts

Tiana is best girl, holy shit this is the type of person I should strive to be like

Her parents are just... so good? This is such a healthy family

Is the implication that her dad served and died in the war? :(

Lottie is best girl, seriously, I really hope she gets her own happily ever soon

I really appreciate the depiction of Lottie and her dad: yeah they're the rich white people, but they're not the white saviours, and they're generous and friendly, and also not racist. Like, take notes, fucking billionaires of the world.

Dr Facilier scares me, and then I think "This is the same voice of Husker from Hazbin Hotel, who I like" and then I feel better lol (when I was little I couldn't watch this or the Little Mermaid because the villains scared me too much)

Naveen is charming, but I like seeing him grow up and decide to get jobs for Tiana.

Okay so I guess my favourite trope is enemies-to-lovers, see Tiana x Naveen, Firstprince, Elizabeth x Darcy, and Beauty and the Beast

Is the central message love is more important than working hard for your dreams? Cause that... doesn't sit quite right?

Holy shit Evangeline is Neverland, the second star to the right

Their swamp wedding outfit, absolutely gorgeous

I miss this style of animation from Disney

The songs are great, but I also somehow get why for this one only "Almost there", "Friends on the Other Side" and "Dig a Little Deeper" are well-known

There is a lot of... butt humour

How does the ending work, Naveen is the eldest son of the King, therefore Naveen is the heir of Maldonia, Tiana you're gone be the queen, how is that gonna work lmfao

Kinda wish the moment Lottie's dog Stella recognized the frog as Tiana amounted to something since from their limited interactions it shows that they have a bond

I wanna try those Beignets

I don't recognise most of the food mentioned 😅 Culture gap really said fuck you in my face

Kinda wish there was more of Dr Facilier? Like, somehow as charismatic as he is, I feel like he's a less compelling villain than say Ursala or Scar. Maybe that's because the cruelest thing we see him do is turn Naveen into a frog and almost kill Lottie's Dad. We don't see him completing any evil deeds the way Scar kills his brother or the way Ursala turned Triton into the shrimp thing (that was what made me terrified of her as a kid)

Lottie why are you calling your father "*Big* Daddy" that sounds really... really... weird, why not just "daddy", is this a culture thing

I was watching while doing my freaking duolingo Spanish and I fucked up and shouted "bloody hell" in my best imitation of Tiana's accent because that kinda something I do, and then I just couldn't speak proper English for like a minute lmfao

Tiana's busy but she still has friends! Like, yeah she's working for tips and stuff but she knows a lot of her customers, and her friendship with Lottie lasted throughout their whole life!

When they made a mention of her being outbid and then the two guys saying "a woman of your background" I went "are we finally explicitly acknowledging racism!?" but that was it lol

What language is Naveen speaking when he's not speaking English?

TZP, there are two Disney princes that suit you. Disney, I hate what you're doing with your live actions, but I will relent a little if you give him one of those two princes

Anyways, seriously, 9/10, I wish more people talked about Tiana because oh, my God, she is such a wonderful character

[casliveblog]

Custom Toonami Block Week 201 Rundown

Code Geass: Rozé of the Recapture: The Seven Stars off-screen kick the ass of one of the Einbergs and the guy his so humiliated at the next Evil Council meeting he’s basically shut out of the group and ends up shooting himself to avoid the shame, like damn Lelouch mentally fucked up some people but the evil organization is gatekeeping their own people now. More importantly Sakuya is FUCKING STACKED and is taking a break to lounge around in her underwear and I am kinda all for it. She meets with the Young Emperor’s new favorite secretary Natalia who’s apparently a double agent and like… idk maybe this café they meet in is a safe location and they DO have her meet in the Rozé disguise but it feels like having the emperor’s secretary meet with flashy twink terrorist is just as bad as meeting with the semi-generic looking presumed dead princess but what do I know, just saying Sakuya has confirmed people that look like her and ain’t NO ONE gonna mistake seeing Rozé on the street. They get Sakuya to act as a maid for the café now that we know she’s hot why not stick her in a maid outfit, also Ash saves the other waitress maid from some guys who threaten her for… having a job? God racists are so uncreative, but it is funny to watch him just take them out in two seconds and be like “I domed the racists, have a nice day”. And she brings Ash back to the café to get the awkward situation of him unknowingly blushing at his female brother in a maid outfit. It’s really funny how Ash is such a sweetheart flirting with her by talking about how he can cook and takes care of lots of puppies and kittens, idk how much Sakuya’s Geass messed with his personality given he’s supposed to be a silent killer but I’d say he’s probably just a killer AND a dork. Also kind of a side note when Natalia meets the Emperor it sounds like they have him voiced by an actual child which is just always kind of weird and puts into context the weird lines adults write for kids because it sounds like things someone with this voice shouldn’t be saying, still he’s naïve and afraid of the Japanese that keep trying to assassinate him for being a racist figurehead so who knows what we’ll do with that. Sakuya kind of wonders to herself what kind of person Ash really is thanks to the killer/dork dichotomy and the fact she’s resolved to kill him for killing her father. Meanwhile Catherine is now Sakura’s personal knight so we’ll get to see even MORE titties bouncing around given she can’t do an introduction without gainaxing like crazy. The Seven Stars regroup with a couple of new Knightmares for the main aces of the group and a flying tactical frame for Rozé so he doesn’t have to double up with Ash, meanwhile Ash tells his brother he’s in love, unknowingly with his alter ego. Before we can go too deep into that though turns out the Child Emperor has been assassinated (as child emperors tend to be) by a drone mosquito thing and as a result Sakura!Sakuya is going to be the next emperor, leaving Sakuya in the awkward position of the person she’s trying to save being the figurehead of the country she’s trying to destroy. Sakuya remembers being granted her Geass by Lelouch and the whole ‘the power of the king is lonely’ speech and I didn’t see Lelouch of the Ressurection so idk how that’s even possible but the “The dead protagonist didn’t die he just became the guy that gives out the powers” theory has always been popular since back when it was used for Death Note so I guess it’s not that hard to follow in the long run.

Ranma ½: Ryoga trains Ranma for the… gymnastics karate… thing, and is nice for all of five minutes before revealing he’s only involved to make sure Ranma loses and breaks off engagement with Akane by becoming Kodachi’s boytoy. Kodachi’s still determined to sabotage the match in the stupidest ways possible and her and Piggy!Ryoga end up aligning for this purpose. It’s kind of wild how much they hype this match up because apparently a local school rivalry is watched by TEN MILLION people and since they can’t give away Ranma’s name they just call her “this girl” the whole time, like how is a last minute replacement that won’t give her name or school ID or anything not immediately disqualified? Especially given several people want this match thrown out against Ranma. Ranma does finally have to give them her name and he’s like “yeah don’t worry it’ll work out” and everyone’s just like “yeah they have the same name, no biggie” because Ranma’s growing aware he’s in a gag show and bystanders have the IQ of a wet piece of wood. Kodachi chains Ranma to Pig!Ryoga which doesn’t matter much since Piggy’s so small and it basically just gives him a pig on a stick weapon. The match itself is really fun, kind of a really good example of what a good fight in a gag show can be like with lots of ridiculous turns and blatant rule-breaking, Ranma even getting turned back into a boy halfway through but getting bailed out from a save from Akane and his dad. Turns out Kodachi actively has her classmates under the ring to move it around so she can’t get flung out so Ranma tears up the whole area meaning only the perimeter is safe now since we’re on Cell Games rules. She eventually destroys Kodachi’s foothold and barely wins, so Kodachi decides to give up on Male Ranma… for like five seconds, yeah we’re not clipping a love triangle that quick this is a Rumiko Takashi work after all.

Arcane: Vander busts Vi’s heroic sacrifice to perform his OWN heroic sacrifice, but Silco busts in with Venom!Deckard to stop that heroic sacrifice and kidnap Vander and cut off the unstable peace deal between the two sides, the first ten minutes up this episode are just a series of people interrupting heroic sacrifices. Jayce and his new boyfriend break into Science Jail to get his shit back and prove Sciencing the shit out of Magic by just sciencing it harder is a great idea trust me bro. Meanwhile Vi goes to get Vander and Jinx gets left behind where she finally figures out the crystallized nitroglycerin she’s carrying is the shit that caused the explosion that caused all this shit and instead of that throwing her into existential dread her new explosion arsenal motivates her to blow some shit up so she’s kind of already a little unstable. Jayce gets the magic shit running because it’d be a short plot thread to say ‘it exploded and they died, the end’. Still Vi comes to get Vander and turns out it was a trap by Silco to frame Vander for abandoning the area since everyone knows he wouldn’t leave without his kids. They work on freeing him and Vi kicks some mook ass until Venom!Deckard comes and kicks her ass and forces them to retreat. Jinx comes in with the REAL villain of Toy Story 3, the cymbal-banging monkey and the resulting explosion kills the two secondary backstory friends and forces Vander to try and fight off Deckard, doing a decent job of it before Silco fulfills their backstory foreshadowing by finishing the job himself and having Vander have to go full Bane mode himself to save Vi before dying. Now with everyone dead but the two characters that actually make it into League of Legends, Vi’s pretty pissed that Jinx set off the direct explosion that killed most of her family though there is some reasonable doubt that they may have been screwed anyway given Deckard still kicked Vander’s ass in the end and having to get three kids out of there definitely would’ve been a lot harder even if he’d somehow managed to Hulk up, so yeah the direct cause of their death is Jinx but it’s sort of a trolley problem situation where her inaction may have still resulted in the same or similar amount of death.Still Vi’s understandably upset and blows up at her and gets like five feet away before wanting to go back to protect her but she gets abducted by the one Piltover guy left standing and Jinx is adopted by Silco to start her true advent as a Harley Quinn expy.

Dandadan: The group continue to fight the Acrobatic Silky and are able to briefly restrain her long enough for Okarun to hit her with his full force and take her out of the fight. Only one problem… Aira’s fucking dead, yeah turns out getting eaten by demons sucks your soul out. Though getting knocked the fuck out gave Silky time to think and now that she’s had a Snickers, she decides to give her aura to Aira to let her live. Though since Momo’s psychic and Aira’s receiving Silky’s entire being, both of them get Backstory Vision and see the spirit’s tragic past. A single mother up to her eyes in debt, she worked a variety of minimum wage jobs and prostitution to scrape by enough for her little girl, piecing together some form of happiness along the way but eventually being killed when fighting back against her daughter’s kidnappers, dying in the streets bleeding out looking for her. Apparently Aira could see spirits as a kid too (maybe kids are more sensitive to that or something since it was established she couldn’t see anything until she touched Okarun’s testicle) and called out to her thinking she was her own deceased mom who she was missing a great deal, fueling rage and obsession in Silky’s heart that festered to turn her into a youkai. Filled with regret for almost killing Aira and failing her daughter in life, the Acrobatic Silky starts to fade away, resigning herself to neither heaven nor hell and finding nonexistence to be her deserved fate. Aira musters her strength and gives her the biggest hug she can, thanking her for being a great mother, knowing they can’t truly fill the holes in each others’ hearts but appreciating the comfort she did give her in seeing a mother care so much for her daughter and knowing she deserves better than thinking she only destroyed her daughter’s life. It’s not known whether it was enough to soothe her spirit and help her find the peace needed to pass on, but Aira hopes she can find her daughter again somewhere soft and warm that will be kinder to them both.

Gleipnir: Claire finishes her Unbreakable Vow with Jason Voorhees lady and she reveals that she actually had a crush on Claire’s sister and doesn’t think she could be a bad person but idk if ‘she asked me to sit with her at lunch’ holds up to forensic evidence. Meanwhile Shuuichi and dog girl run into the evil faction’s ace who happens to have what I presume Sasori’s Susanoo would look like because it’s just a giant parental issue golem and it crushes Shuuichi’s costume like a soda can with dog girl inside. Turns out that doesn’t matter though because this just unlock’s Shuuichi’s Inner Hollow and they basically… fuse, I guess? This is kind of a pretty cool mechanic honestly, like it represents his connection with someone and presumably manifests differently depending on who’s inside him when he does it. But yeah now he’s basically Ultra Instinct Berserker Dog Lady and that’s pretty cool, they manage to put Parental Issues boy on the backfoot for a moment before Claire’s sister stops the fight and dog lady is somehow able to remember parts of Shuuichi’s past that he’s blocked out and sees his relationship with her and presumably why she gifted him the mascot suit powers and is so yandere towards him, so she stops him from trying to kill her. The bad guys escape and Claire and co. find Shuuichi with a naked dog girl still alive inside so that’s good, didn’t want dog girl to die already.

Trigun: Vash and the girls are in a new peaceful town where Vash involuntarily makes friends with the town drunk. Turns out this is kind of the “good guys with guns” episode since the backstory is this gunsmith Vash is looking for to tune up his gun gave everyone in the town a gun to drive off some bandits Seven Samurai style, now given the only important character we’ve met is the town drunk who noticed Vash’s gun was out of tune, three guesses who the old gunsmith is. Turns out turning this town into an average American city had some consequences as a bank robbery gone wrong claimed the lives of Frank the smith’s wife and daughter, resigning him to a stoic ‘do nothing as to no harm’ philosophy. This holds until more bank robbers descend on the town and Vash confronts them, telling Frank letting bad things happen isn’t the equality he’s looking for. Vash’s nobility stirs up the townsfolk who are all still fucking strapped and run the Vash Impersonator of the week out of town (come on this guy wasn’t even wearing red or blonde, they’re not even trying). Frank resolves to quit drinking and go back to the messy process of helping people instead of just stopping trying and Vash gets his gun fixed as Meryl follows him out of town.

Revolutionary Girl Utena: It’s a Nanami episode so get ready for the stupidest shit you’ve ever heard. At one of her fancy parties Nanami receives a designer cowbell as a present and puts it on without even looking at it. From then on the episode becomes a real Emperor’s New Clothes situation with no one quite knowing how to break the news to Nanami that she looks stupid and is wearing farm equipment. It’s really kind of remarkably stupid in a way I’ve only seen from this show’s filler episodes specifically, but wait, it gets worse. Nanami has a dream of Touga shipping her off to be steak and then eating her, Freud would have a field day with that one. And next she becomes more docile and sleepy and just starts BECOMING A COW, like some of it you can chalk up to Nanami being stupid and easily influenced but no by the end of the episode she is LITERALLY A COW. Utena manages to Dios Thrust the bell off her with a pitchfork after doing the Matador thing everyone knows is a myth now (also doesn’t that only work on bulls? Nanami’s clearly a girl cow, she has udders like that cow from Barnyard). And at the end it turns out Anthy named her cow Nanami in a surprising little bit of spitefulness which doesn’t make sense that the bell was ADDRESSED TO THE COW, but that’s fine, I just kinda wanna know WHY WAS IT MAGIC!? Like the rules of this show are so strange it’s just like “Anthy where did you get a magic cowbell?” “Internet” and I can’t, the fucking Nanami episodes break my brain, I can’t.

[starswallowingsea]

It's book review time! This time for a book I actually finished like a month ago and completely forgot to do my review until now!

So I read the Lost Apothecary by Sarah Penner back in August. I got it through Book of the Month because nothing in July (when I signed up) particularly called out to me and this book has been on my TBR for a while so I took a chance on it.

Overall it was... kinda meh. It reads easy enough and I finished it in a week but I wish there had just been more to it.

My overall rating was 3.5/5 stars and I'll get into the details under the cut.

So this book is one of those split historical/modern perspectives books, similar to the Paris Orphan but not done quite as well in my opinion (and a lot of other people's opinions too). The concept is there, an apothecary that helped women kill their abusive spouses or men in their lives, which certainly existed (side note: if that is what interested you about this novel, I would highly recommend the first season of the podcast Criminalia, which was all about lady poisoners and each episode includes a cocktail recipe to go with the story. Anyway,) and are important to study, but the modern perspective was lacking.

I'm in the minority that didn't really mind Caroline, but I kind of interpreted her as being raised in like an Evangelical household where the decisions she says she made with regards to her husband (such as not going to grad school, taking a job she didn't want just for the stability, etc) made more sense? But then towards the end her husband shows up and it just makes everything very, very weird. He admits to drinking some of her essential oils on purpose to get her attention because he thought she was going to leave him for cheating on her (no fucking shit dude). If she wasn't already preparing the divorce papers when you cheated on her with one of your office workers, then she definitely would after you intentionally poisoned yourself and almost died.

The past segment of the book also felt somewhat weak. I understand that it had to take place before the invention of poison detection in forensic analysis during autopsies started getting better and more accurate, but other than that it didn't feel like Penner utilized the setting to its fullest extent. Also the twelve year old character thought her vagina was haunted by the ghost of her old master and nobody explained the concept of periods to her? Why. They kinda just brushed it off as "all girls and women bleed once every lunar cycle" but never explained that it was natural to her.

Finally, my biggest gripe with the book was the absolutely insane focus on pregnancy. It feels like all the characters except the child are obsessed with having children. The old lady who runs the apothecary laments how her lover had forced her to have a miscarriage (which at first I didn't mind as a motivation for her, but then), one of her customers comes in and wants to kill her husband's lover so he'll sleep with her and get her pregnant and she can have children, and the most egregious example of all, the modern character, as her husband was being taken to the hospital, thinks that one of the emergency responder's making a remark about keeping essential oils out of reach of children is an attack on her for not having children. Girly, it's just a statement of fact. You shouldn't keep essential oils within reach of children or they will eat it and die.

I think towards the end Penner was trying to go for some sort of magical realism or just in general actual magic in the setting but it was not very well executed. The only real sign of it was the 12yo girl character believed that magic could save the little hole in the wall apothecary and brewed some "potions" to keep them alive in dire situations and she chugged it before jumping from a bridge into the Thames, which certainly the impact into the cold water should have killed her almost instantly and we have not been led to believe she knows how to swim either. At the end we see that she survived and hinted in the one piece of writing about her that survived to the 21st century that she believed the potion protected her on that day. Yeah. If she wanted to add that little hint of magic, I wish it had more of an influence on the plot and more of a presence in the book or was just left out entirely.

Anyway, it's an easy read. If you need something quick to read and get out of a slump, it'll do that. It's not awful but it's certainly odd and could have done more with the connections between modern and historical instead of just some random tourist coming across one of the old bottles in the river on a vacation away from her cheating husband. It's not the worst book I've ever read but it's also not worth writing home about because it was so good. It's average. It's so unfortunate that it has such a beautiful cover and such a mid-tier story.

[thekitschdiet]

the kitsch diet part II

part one alr posted!! this chunk is about 3,000~ words long... let me know what u think :-) thank u all for all the luv already!!! looks like I really will hit 31 followers by easter!!!!!!!!

  Who is the Kitsch Girl? 

 I think this is more loosely defined, but The Chic Diet did a truly admirable way of reducing a girl to her YSL bag and her really skinny legs. Now, that implies an archetype, or a population in a specific location. I think kitschness is kind of the niche you fill when you’re not really much of anything else, sort of your own conglomerate of mainstream-specific. One major requirement, though, is being a little too into something somewhat uncool. And the whole illusion falls apart if you have any sort of outward insecurity. See, the Kitsch Girl is somewhat undefinable because she is so much of everything. She exists in multitudes, in a way that is also quite simple to understand; think of a list of axioms, or principles to live by. And now add a section to each one that says “but…” to make a collection of verified exceptions. Say, the kitsch girl will never wear jeans. But she thrifted this pair of vintage flares she just loves. She doesn’t reply to texts efficiently, but sometimes she will within a couple seconds. No mascara, no dinner forks, candles are to be collected not burned; but that was a gift, or something. It’s not personal, of course, those are just the contradictions she exists in. Don’t try to understand it, the enigma is essential to the facade. Or maybe she just lives like this, and her character is so homogenous with her inner world there’s no sense in trying to separate it. You have to have a little bit of an individuality complex about the whole ordeal, which is normally so eugh, but if you’re kitschy enough it works on you. Trust!The Kitsch girl is not someone unlikeable, but amiable and well heeled. I double checked that last one, assuming it meant liked by most, but apparently means affluent. I suppose that is an aspect of the kitsch girl too, having seemingly endless frivolous expenses with no real strain, but that’s not important right now. People that don’t like her think so out of jealousy, or something. Envious that her clothes are all kind of shake-it-up-esque and her highlights desperately need touching up, but she still seems so enthralled with the whole of life… How does she enjoy her own company so much when other people want to know her better? Doesn’t she feel weird about blowing people off to make a joke about reading Kafka in the bath? Why would she document her cluttered, unexciting life on Instagram so delicately, so vibrantly? Of course, no one would say this to her face because they are really baseless claims. She’s nice, generous, and valuable to have as a friend. Trade-offs exist, as they do with anyone. But I like thinking it’s easier to overlook a forgotten birthday when your kitschy best friend gave you a multi strand pearl necklace to celebrate the welcome breeze of June. Or some other made-up holiday. She is so unassuming if you’re not really looking. Girls want in on her inner circle. Or they just don’t care. Nothing wrong with being liked or thought of naught, for the most part. Boys are either enthralled or repulsed by her. Her doctor knows her as something of a hypochondriac, but only minorly. It’s just carpal tunnel, don’t worry… The sales staff at CVS turn a blind eye when she slips an eyeliner pencil into her tote bag. She shoplifts on occasion, just to see if she still knows how. But she is not a shoplifter. $9 here and $6.45 there doesn’t really add up to much. Everywhere she goes, she makes a tertiary friend or two. The term of friend is loosely used here, of course. But it is nice to tell a stranger you like her earrings. Or her phone case is so fun, is it Wildflower? The kitsch girl has an eye for this kind of detail. Simply put, she is sort of unspectacular. But in a way that makes you sort of wish you knew her better.

Phone cases

The phone case is, like, religious for the kitsch girl. Sorry, but there’s just no other accessory as flippant and expensive and single-purpose as a trendy little iPhone case with some semitacky stickers plastered over the design. I used to have an iPhone XS- extrasmall-  with like, 18 phone cases. It was kind of a sordid affair. I jest, but really… owning that many phone cases was kind of sick. We get it, you are frivolous and spontaneous and sooo stylish! Stop posting mirror selfies on your Instagram story, your crush isn’t going to see it. Kidding again. Having an extensive collection of phone cases is just so fun because while attainable, most people just simply do not partake in it. That makes you kitschy and unique. I really thought I had more to say about the IDEA of the phone case, but I guess in practice it is all very, very simple. You can slide your driver’s license in the back of a clear case. At what point does it stop being cool to have legal operational control of a vehicle? I don’t display mine because I don’t really like the photo. I look round. In the eyes but also just in general, swollen, unglamorous. Whatever. Not like I drive a Nissan or anything. I drive my *Mom’s* Nissan. Playing Bladee in the car seems sacrilegious. She would hate it.Back to phone cases. Sonix ones are cute but kind of overpriced retail- unless you have like, an iPhone 12 Pro Max or whatever the fuck is new this year, just go to Winner’s. They always have Xs and 11 cases. I had a cherry one for my previous phone, like the exact one Lana Del Rey had? Thank god I sold it before she got outed as a copfucker or whatever. Casetify is for an inadvertent flex. Flexing your lame, lame taste. Sorry, I know you bought it because you liked it, but what you failed to consider is just how un-Kitsch they are. SO common, and they advertise on Instagram. Sorry, I just can’t get into it! Kind of how I just never liked the Brandy Amara tanks. Or lowtop converse. Otterbox is just distressing. Like, if my boyfriend gave me an otterbox phone case I would probably break up with him because somebody clearly isn’t paying attention- one of my favorite, potentially overused joke is how Otterbox cases are the equivalent of orthopedic insoles. Sorry but if you have poor arch support or whatever, but no pain is worth giving up a good pair of Margiela slingback tabi heels. Obviously I couldn’t afford that right now because all loose income goes directly to Wildflower and my cig boy. But like, one day. I hope you want to punch me in the face a little bit after reading that.  If Wildflower isn’t your thing, at least have the decency to get a beaded phone strap. But not from String Ting. Pray tell you aren’t keeping score, but they are one of my several parasocial enemies. That should have been ME collaborating with Wildflower! Should have been ME mailing shit to Caroline Calloway (more on her later, but she is the only blue check I follow. I adore her! I was on her patreon for a bit I thinkl!!) …. Side note. Phone cases are cute but there is no way to properly protect your laptop without looking just absurd or colossally lame. The foam sleeves… ick.

Having the shittiest music taste ever

So like, here’s the thing. I’m an Apple Music user, which sort of reinstates my status as an unironic My Bloody Valentine Hyperpop Death Grips kinda gal. Read; volcel. My most recent conquest ended up being a huge L on my part, but also… I totally dodged a bullet. The guy had an iPhone 11 (female trait) and didn’t know who Rei Brown was, which just seemed suspicious given his Niche. I just know he had a “making out playlist” comprising entirely of like, Joji. Which isn’t a bad thing I guess but so unembarrassing it horseshoes back to being humiliating.Like I said. Having the worst music taste. It’s nice how subjective and deeply personal your music taste can be; no one really Needs to know you’re a die hard drainer. But there’s also no point in being a die-hard drainer and Not capitalizing off it somehow. I added it up and I have well over 150 hours of just Bladee and Yung Lean. Which is so yass? The more I write, using myself as a case study, I realize just how desperately jobless I am. And Yogenfruz isn’t even hiring! UGH!I think there is something very kitschy about liking hyperpop in the least ironic, least obnoxious way. Sort of feeds into a “I’m not like other girls” thing, but I mean… That’s kind of the idea of kitsch, isn’t it? Be a little different but also the very same as your lipgloss brethren?!Side note. If you make monthly playlists I am genuinely kind of afraid of you. That is just so organized!! I just make playlists with esoteric titles and then make a new one when I’m sick of the stuff on the last. I have exhausted most genres but I think my favorite is the “I’m wearing f****ng air forces and my teeth are SO white”. Guess what genre it is. Or don’t, but it’s probably what you think is. Okay, moving on….

Curating a scent

I like thinking I smell like mango and peach, Glossier you, whatever citrus is in that Lush shower jelly and mint 5Gum. But of course it is probably less distinct and just kind of generally fruit-floral-mint. Anyway. I think Glossier You is the perfect scent for anyone with a rather elementary understanding of the whole.. Perfume business. Every bottle of intentional fragrance I own was made via aesthetic choices… it really helps that Glossier You is so cute And so universal. Now, Glossier is kind of interesting to me because it really is at the intersection of cheugy and kitsch. Kind of basic, overplayed, unspectacular. But also…. Often popular things are popular because they are good. Glossier has excellent customer suurv, they ship SO fast (and no import duties! W!) and their stuff is just so sweet and nice if not unoriginal, in kind of the same way strawberry ice cream is. Which is still my favorite, of course, especially if there’s a vegan option. I was talking about Glossier. What the hell! It’s really worth trying out. A huge principle of kitsch is just… having as many possible layers and appendages to your composure as possible. And adding a signature scent just really completes that! When curating your own, I say this as a complete amateur, know-nothing; make it something that comes kind of naturally to Your Character. Like, I’m just not a Chanel No 5 kind of girl. Odds are you aren’t either. My bottle (before she asked for it back when I told her I didn’t use it, in exchange for a Nordstrom’s gift card) was from my grandmother. Ummm.. Yeah, I really have no expertise in curating a scent. But it is nice to have a signature. And having a bottle displayed on your dresser next to your aughties McDonald milkshake themed beanie baby and a handful of lip products is just way too fun! This is the kind of girl I am, everyone! Cluttered, but prioritizing pretty-delicate things!

Cheugyism

Cheugy is a relatively new word that has unfortunately wormed into my vocabulary to replace ��uncouth”. Which I use to mean graceless or tacky, but if that isn’t what it means…. Don’t tell me. That would hurt more than weighing myself after a “feast” slash pastry binge at my dear Grandmothe’s house. Like I was saying. Cheugy. It’s sort of a fucked up concept to me because it is a critique on consumption, but not the pace or volume or magnitude of it. But rather… the idea of not being “good” enough at engaging in microtrends, or involvement in the fast paced fashion cycle. Don’t get me started on TikTok, or do, but… yeah,. No. That will require a cigarette because I’m so sorry, but writing a thinkpiece on social media is so lowbrow I would need to find about six ways to aesthetically counteract it…. Moving on.  I think the idea of cheugy is good, we really do need a word to simply and efficiently define “out of date/uninspired/lame”. But the way it is used to shame others for not liking the same trends or whatever is kind of gross. If you use cheugyism to put other people down and not as a neutral identifier umm… you will become what you fear. Sorry, that’s what happens. Some things that I think are cheugy or embarrassing, or just not part of my stylistic lexicon are… 1. Hooded or zip up clothing, or things with a large graphic on the back. Bingo if it's all three! I just can’t get behind it. Side note, my summer home outfit is brandy sweats and a tube top (Urban Outfitters tank I ripped the straps off) and a large cardigan that should have belonged to a stoner, but probably didn’t. I can dunk on bulky, uninspired clothes because I would honest to God NEVER be caught DEAD out of the house wearing any of it. I’m so serious. Next segment should be about the kitsch girl’s inadvertent affinity for diuretics. Remind me….. One of the ports of my laptop is dead. Not really sure what to do about that.

Eye makeup and what it means to me….

Personally, I am one of those people who never wears foundation and kind of has a complex about it. The kitsch girl wears fluffy eyelashes and owns a plethora of sparkly eyeliner. Or maybe she doesn’t, but she has something distinct and a little ritzy, if not haphazard. We all saw Euphoria and it like, totally imprinted on us. The way glitter sits on your face after a long day is so resplendent. When it’s shining and a little bit melted off from your long, semi-productive day… ugh! Just made for film. Pictures on film. But not the Prequel app. I keep getting fucking ads for it. But it’s so embarrassing. Like, isn’t the whole point of film the authenticity of the moment? The texture of the afternoon? Why would you fabricate that? Prequel is just so cheugy. More on that later. But anyhow. Wearing a ton of eye makeup kind of fits with the idea of film too I think. Like, look at you, in the moment. With your strip lash falling off! It’s all so tres-chic. Plus, for whatever reason, it’s kind of unique or notably dedicated to ~Pull up to the function~ with more eye makeup on than everyone else. Sorry, but it really doesn’t take that long! But yes I will gracefully accept your praise… it’s kind of like the dropshipping of complements if you think about it. Easy to source with little to no effort in the curating. Side note, lashes are like $20 for 40 weeks if you cut them in half and use each pair about 5 times. You could probably do more but I lose track. How the fuck is it almost June? I was trudging through the snow to check the mail for my Online Ceramics shirt just last week, I swear. The trick to cutting your lashes (the way I do it anyway) is pretty simple. Get out two lashes that are symmetrical. Find the middle and cut one slightly to the left and one slightly to the right. This means you have two sets (one set is a little more dramatic than the other but at least they are symmetrical) with longer outer edges. Glue this to the outer corner of your eye and you will look so Composed… obsessed with how this layers with three eyeliner tails (one traditional one pointing up and one pointing down directly below it, sort of like the tail light on a 2019 Lexus UX) and one below your eye, like a clown. Fun, irrelevant fact, is the first time I added this third tail to my eye makeup, my dad had just gotten home from the hospital because he was sure he had like appendicitis or something and it was actually.. Not that. Typical indie hypochondriac. He made me bring him cottage cheese on a plate with a teaspoon that evening. I put black pepper on it for flair, which he hated. Walking up and down stairs with a plate of cottage cheese is much more imprinting than most of the multiplication tables. Don’t forget to use a bright shimmer eyeshadow in your inner corner. It really opens up your eyes. I recommend Too Faced.  One time I got a little bit too high and tried to film an “editorial” makeup tutorial. You will never, ever, ever see that video. But I essentially covered my whole eyelid in the ABH shadow “palermo” and smudged out the edges with a tan Tartelette Toasted shade, coupled with my long-expired Milk Makeup holographic stick. Lopsided lashes and near-blinding eyeliner experience aside, it was kind of cool. My point is, you really cannot go wrong with an arsenal of shimmers, taupey mattes and a good eyeliner pen.

[miracle-sham]

Memento Mori Cries Our Shattered Souls.

| {Jasonette July 2021, Week 1, Day 3: Grave} |

| [Ao3 Link] | | [Masterlist Link] | | [Spotify Playlist Link] |

| Soulmates, are a tricky thing. It's said they're the person who best fits you. Everyone goes through life with half of their Soulmate's soul beside them in the form of an animal that represents the soulmate. |

| Marinette always thoughts she'd get to meet her Soulmate and the other half of her soul one day, and now she never will. Jason never wanted to meet his soulmate or be reunited with the other half of his soul. And now, like Romeo and Juliet, they've truly become star-crossed Soulmates. |

| Word Count: 1,371. |

| Warnings/Tags: Soulmate Au, Major Character Death/Implied Death/Temporary Death/Not Really Dead, Death Related Injuries/Injury Recovery, Miscommunication, Loss of Soulmate, Angst, Emotional Hurt, Explicit Language/Swearing, Starcrossed Soulmates, Wakes & Mentions of Funerary Customs/Traditions. |

———

| A/N: Okay so there's only one song on this one's playlist but c'mon, look my written words in the eyes and tell me that isn't the perfect Jasonette song. Yeah, exactly. Also Choo Choo dear readers, I'm back on the angst train. Grab your tissues and some liquid to hydrate yourself because if you aren't crying by the end of this, then I've failed my job <3 |

| If you want to be tagged in future oneshots/fics or a specific Au, then feel free to send me a dm and or ask! |

| Also side note, Don’t Like? Don’t Read. Also also, please do not criticise any of my writing. This was written for fun and receiving criticism, even in a compliment/criticism sandwich, is the exact opposite of fun. |

———

It isn't a grave. An important difference, Marinette thinks to herself hollowly. There's a dull pang in her chest, and the constant ache of all her many, many still healing injuries. She shouldn't be up and about yet, it's only been a day since she was discharged from hospital. Her parents and the doctors would have kittens. But Marinette needs to do this. And she's already crawled her way up to her balcony chair (though with a little miraculous help of course). Because it isn't a grave but it might as well be one.

It's a simple little thing really, and yet… Yet it's a lot of things.

A shrine, well an altar. On the half wall besides her balcony chair. It's a small stone slab with a lit incense holder in the middle, and a few lit candlesticks in each of the front two corners of the slab. Behind the incense holder, in the back two corners are two bouquets of marigolds, white lilies, and yellow and white chrysanthemums. And in front of the incense holder, is a single photo of her soulmate familiar and all that she has left of her soulmate; Buddy the german shepherd.

Five days ago, her soul bond shattered. Her soulmate familiar nearly shattered too. It was a miracle Buddy only fell into a pseudo-coma instead. Unlike her though, he's yet to wake up. And considering the situation, he may never. One of the doctors—a soulmate related injuries specialist—had said it's rare but not unheard of for that to happen when the human counterpart to their soul familiar dies. And the final damning nail in the coffin was Marinette's own soul familiar counterpart appearing at some point after she had fallen into the three day coma. After all, it's common knowledge that once a soulmate died, you become reunited with the other half of your soul—your soul familiar counterpart.

Marinette doesn't know what happened to her soulmate's body (if there even is one left, considering the injuries found on her and her soul familiar counterpart). Nor does she have any memorabilia or anything that once belonged to her soulmate. And she certainly doesn't know where he was from and if he would've had any preferred cultural funeral rites. So the best she can give him right now, are the typical funeral flowers her parents both recommended, alongside candles and incense. Somewhat plain and generic almost but it's something, and it's better than nothing.

She chokes back a sob and rubs at her red eyes. “It's not fair… I thought Ladybug's were supposed to be lucky.”

There's a faint pitter-patter and a few droplets splatter against the altar. She blinks and glances upwards, briefly wondering if it is starting to rain. But the cloudless sky is all an answer she needs, along with the realisation of dampness on her cheeks and hands. She blinks again, and a few more tears fall.

Tikki makes a small noise of sadness, and gives Marinette one of those tiny little hugs she always gives.

Still, the grief hurts. Marinette will never get to know who her soulmate was. His name, what he looked like, how he smiled, his accent, what he liked, his favourite things, any stupid habits or mannerisms.

And she will never get to know if her soulmate even has a grave already. She could always ask Tikki, she's right there. But the kwami is stressed enough as it is that Marinette fell comatose for three days and nearly died from the injuries inflicted on her soul familiar counterpart. And five days without a proper Ladybug (and not just Master Fu stepping in out of necessity) protecting Paris has started to visibly take its toll on Tikki.

So, Marinette's little altar isn't a grave but it's where she's burying her grief and wishing the ladybug miraculous could do something to fix this.

———

It's not a fucking grave. If Jason had a choice, he'll never let his soulmate be buried in one of those fuckers ever, y'know just in case she ever ends up like him and is forced to crawl out her own grave. But he hasn't got a fucking choice because who knows who or where his soulmate is and what happened to her after he became a dead robin.

Well other than the fact, she's un-fucking-doubtedly dead and it's all his fucking fault, obviously. It's been six months since he crawled out his grave, and Talia had said the Lazarus Pit could heal broken soul bonds and soulmate familiars that died with the soulmate. Clearly fucking wrong seeing as his bond is still shattered as fuck and there's been no sign of Jules—the naturally shifting little soulmate familiar he used to adore. The kinda weird and scrappy looking calico tabby kitten that according to the internet was a cornish rex, that would sometimes shift into an even tinier, very round and fluffy hamster.

And Jason's spent enough time on the streets as a kid to know what happens to the human counterpart when their soul familiar counterpart snuffs it. If he's lucky, she'll be in a coma and will never wake up. And if he's unlucky, then she'll be six feet under like he was. Either way, she's paying for his fuck ups and deserves way better.

A small part of him wonders if that makes them star-crossed lovers. Like a reverse Romeo and Juliet—fucking ironic considering R&J were the inspiration behind Jules' name. He died, and came back only to find irrefutable evidence that his soulmate's dead—or might as well be—because of him dying first, and she'll never know he survived dying.

“It's not fair!” Jason snarls at his fate, vision staining green for a split second. He grits his teeth and glares down at the little altar he's set up in the corner of his room in whatever league of assassins' compound this is. It's got a single lit candle in each corner of the altar—a substitute for how there's supposed to be a burning candle at each corner of a coffin. Still doesn't make it a fucking grave though.

There's also a few bunches of flowers scattered across the middle of the altar—mostly marigolds, with a few white lilies, a couple black roses, a single pheasant's-eye, and a small handful of asphodels. It hadn't been easy to get them, especially since he couldn't exactly leave the compound yet. But Jules and his soulmate deserved this at least.

Marigolds for grief, white lilies more for the funeral staple than the meaning, black roses for death and mourning, pheasant's-eye for painful recollections, and asphodels for my regrets follow you to the grave.

Fucking ironic, seeing as it's on altar and not a grave.

The worst fucking part of being here, was losing Jules. The one fucking constant in his shitty life. Batman replacing him fucking stung alright, and he's never particularly cared for soulmates, yeah. He's seen and heard more than plenty horror stories growing up, and considering how small and cute Jules is, no way would've his soulmate survived Gotham. It's not like he cared too much about meeting her or whatever, but she was fucking innocent and now she's fucking dead. So yeah, she gets asphodels on her altar because he regrets being the reason she and Jules got shattered.

And the pheasant's-eye, well Talia and all the fucking assassins in this hell hole aren't giving him the chance to hold a wake for either of them. And it's not like he knows shit about her or has anything of hers to sit on the altar. He hasn't even got anything left of Jules 'cept his fucking memories. So all he can really do is recount his own memories of her to himself. Maybe he should write 'em down in a book or something…

All in all, it ain't a fucking grave. But it might as well be one because it's where he's burying his memories and feelings. After all, an assassin without a soulmate familiar, or a soulmate, is a lot harder to kill. 'Least he's got that going for him now. But Jules and his soulmate still didn't fucking deserve dying only for him to survive alone.

———

| Thank you for reading! I hope you enjoyed this little fic! Comments, likes, and reblogs are much appreciated! |

| Quick reasons behind the Soul Familiar names and species, whilst I know Jason canonically is bad at naming, he's also a literature nerd so hence why he called his soulmate's familiar Juliet, also because it shifts form he can't call it Cat or Hamster. The hamster is because well this is half of Marinette's soul, let's be real, and the cat is because Calicos are seen as lucky and also I thought a Cornish Rex because they're highly intelligent, active, and affectionate and I think that fits Marionette pretty well. As for why Marinette has Buddy, it's purely because Jason reminds me of a German Shepherd and I feel Marinette would've wanted to become friends with her Soulmate as soon as she understood it as a kid, so hence the name buddy. It's not fully accurate to her canon naming skills, but that doesn't matter. |

| If you've been around since the early days of my Maribat/MLB Tumblr side acc, then this premise might sound familiar. Yeah, you've guessed it! It's the Jasonette version of my MTSPY au (rip, I'll get to writing it one day, maybe), aka/originally called LYLaLYL or Lose Your Love and Lose Your Life. I decided since I love the au but I want to re-use a lot of it but with some minor to significant changes. Anyway, if those au names are familiar/you've been around for my last year's content, then here have a virtual hug from me! 🫂 If you can't see this emoji, it's the weird two blue humanoid blobs hugging emoji. Yeah. |

| On a sidenote if there's an obvious difference in writer's voice for the end/beginning notes, tags, and summary, that's because I'm writing this very sleep deprived at 4am and may have gone slightly feral. Yeah. Don't do what I'm doing, get some sleep folks. Half the tags were written at the much more reasonable hour of ten to midnight instead though. |

| Also feel free to send me any comments with any questions you have regarding this fic, I'll be more than happy to answer! |

| @jasonette-july-event |

[egcdeath]

a date with destiny

pairing: ransom drysdale x reader

word count: 1.9k

summary: fate brings you to a... questionable man more than a few times. 

warnings: lots of fluff, enemies/strangers to lovers, kind of cringe

a/n:  i swear my new thing is poorly writing every played out fanfic trope on the planet, i'm so sorry guys. maybe hallmark can hire me to write a few movies for them

You definitely could’ve avoided this situation if you didn’t wait for the weekend before Christmas to go shopping for your family’s presents.

You had no idea why your time management had to be so bad, but in the midst of working way too many hours in an effort to get promoted, you had completely forgotten about the fact that Christmas was literally right around the corner. And to make it worse, you had a flight tomorrow that you’d also forgotten about.

You sulked to yourself while walking around Nordstrom, waiting for inspiration to strike you for a semi-decent gift for your mother. The whole world seemed to be out that day, and you watched a plethora of shoppers pass you by, with their sour faces and unruly children. After eventually deciding on a black winter sweater for your mom, you went on your way to the candle section, knowing exactly the brand and scent that your sister would love.

This candle was the definition of a non-negotiable for you, and had been the reason you came to a Nordstrom in the first place, and when you found it sitting on a shelf by itself in all of its glory, you had simply become transfixed.

As you walked toward the candle, you didn’t notice that another customer was going for it as well, leading both of your hands to land on the candle, the absurdity of the situation making you blush. This was just your luck.

“Oh, this is awkward,” you played off the encounter, then attempted to subtly pull the candle your way, and away from the man.

“Yeah, it kinda is.” The man whose hand was also placed on the candle said shortly, before attempting to pull the candle his way.

“Hey man, I’m kinda on a tight schedule, and I really need to get this like… right now. I have a flight in like.. An hour,” you exaggerated.

“That’s too bad, ‘cause I really need this candle too.”

You took a deep breath, only you would find yourself in this kind of situation. “To be fair, I definitely saw this candle first. I’m its rightful buyer,” You attempted.

“Mmm, I definitely had my eyes on it first, so with your logic, I deserve this candle.” The man narrowed his baby blue eyes, and put a hand on his hip.

“Oh my god,” you groaned, hoping that maybe if you acted dramatic enough, he’d leave you and your candle alone.

“Sweetheart, can you even afford this kind of thing? I’m sure your friends or family, or whoever the fuck you’re getting this for, would rather you not go into debt over a candle. Just let me have it,” he responded cooly, as if he hadn’t just called you poor to your face.

You looked at him with an open-mouthed expression, completely shocked at the nerve this man had. “Fuck you, you asshole!” You attempted to yank the candle out from his grip, and you could begin to tell that the man’s resolve was beginning to fall.

“Fine. Take the damn candle. But maybe you could give me a little gift in exchange, and go out with me sometime,” he offered, slipping his now free hand into the pocket of his tan peacoat.

You were honestly shocked by this whole exchange. How did he go from insulting you and calling you poor, to asking you on a date? Men are so weird, you thought to yourself. He really isn’t that bad looking, you also considered. “Eat shit, guy,” you told him before flipping him off, and walking away.

-----

Imagine your surprise when you saw the same man from the store sitting in a local Massachusetts restaurant, with whom you assumed were his family. With your sister sitting across from you, you couldn’t help but be gossipy and point him out.

You scoffed and leaned over to your sister once you saw him, “See that guy over there?” You whispered to her, gesturing your head in his general direction.

“Which one?” she asked. “There are like five guys. Are you talking about the dude with the goatee? That old dude with the grey hair? Y/N! I didn’t know you were a grave robber!” she giggled and poked your side while you rolled your eyes, “Or, are you talking about that sexy beast in the white sweater?”

“The se- the dude in the sweater-”

“Oh yeah, he’s pretty hot. You should go talk to him,” she began to scoot out of her seat.

“No, you idiot!” You whisper shouted to her. “That guy basically attacked me in the store the other day. And then, he had the nerve to ask me out on a date!”

He must’ve felt the two of you’s stare, as he turned around and gave you a brief surprised look, then a twisted smirk.

“Oh my god, Bea, act natural,” You whispered before turning your head so fast that you nearly gave yourself whiplash.

You brought a hand up to your face and rubbed your browline in a fit of embarrassment. You looked down, then began to shovel pasta into your mouth at an ungodly fast rate.

“Oh come on, Y/N, he’s cute. What did he say to you that was so bad that you turned down his hot ass?” She asked, glancing back over at the man who was still occasionally looking over at your table.

“It’s kinda a long story. I’ll tell you later,” you mumbled, trying to ignore the heat steadily growing on your cheeks.

Beatrice shrugged, and a waiter approached your table.

“Ma’am, the man over there wanted me to give this to you,” he said before awkwardly placing a glass of white wine in front of you, along with a ripped napkin with a note and number.

We started off on the wrong foot, give me a call sometime?

Ransom

XXX-XXX-XXXX

-----

You looked at the note for so long, that it would’ve been better off being tattooed on the back of your eyelids.

“Just text him, Y/N,” your sister told you, her sentence a bit muffled by the toothbrush dangling from her mouth.

“He really seems like a dick,” you groaned, before rolling onto your back and throwing an arm over your eyes. Your sister rinsed out her mouth in the ensuite before returning with some advice.

“Well, he’s hot. Maybe you can bring him as a date to the Holiday party or something,” she stated before sitting down on the foot of your bed. “What’s the worst that could happen, Y/N? If he hurts your feelings, you can throw a hot drink at him and walk away. At best, you get a hot piece of ass to be your boyfriend.” she squeezed your calf reassuringly.

“Ugh, fine,” you huffed. “I’ll text him tomorrow.”

“That’s my girl!” Beatrice cheered, then placed a kiss on your forehead. “‘Night, Y/N,”

“Goodnight,” you mumbled before attempting to fall asleep.

-----

The funny thing about you, is that you were a master procrastinator. So after a day and a half, you’d put Ransom’s number into your phone, but had contemplated so many different opening texts, that you’d just completely given up. Besides, you had your parents’ holiday party to be attending and to be caring about.

You did some final touch ups of your makeup, before heading downstairs, and watching guests arrive from a safe spot in the kitchen.

Sometime after talking to about seven of your childhood friends, you felt a large hand press against the satin material of your short, red, tie-waisted dress.

“No way, girl I see everywhere?” The man who you know knew was Ransom, asked.

“It’s Y/N. Hi, Ransom,” you bit the inside of your cheek to hold back your laugh at the absurdity of it all, the fact that he was standing in your parents’ home, the fact that he was literally everywhere you went, and because you’d never in your life been called ‘The girl I see everywhere.’

“Why didn’t you ever call me? I mean, not even a text? Also, why are you following me everywhere?” He inquired, moving to stand in front of you.

“Well, I uh.. I forgot. Sorry, I’m a super busy woman. And I also live here... sometimes.. so if anyone is following anyone else, it’s you following me,” you tried to say this confidently, but something about Ransom really threw you off your game.

“You live here? No way. Is this like your family home?” He asked, and you nodded. “So our parents have been friends this whole time, and we had no idea.” He gestured to a doorway, where your mother and his were talking with flutes of champagne in hand.

“This just keeps getting weirder and weirder,” you said quietly, mostly to yourself.

“Maybe, this is just fate. We’re meant to be together, and that’s why we keep seeing each other everywhere,” you raised an eyebrow and tilted your head when he said that to you, genuinely confused at why those words would come out of his mouth. “Oh, lighten up. I’m just kidding,” he said with a bemused smile.

“You have a weird sense of humor, Ransom.” You told him plainly, trying to act disinterested, though you were rather endeared. He definitely saw right through you, as he gave you a little grin before he began to speak again.

“So tell me about yourself.”

-----

After a few too many drinks, you were walking down the sidewalk, hand and hand with Ransom as you searched for any sort of restaurant that could be open at that hour.

Finally, you found a quaint and rather empty 24-hour diner with its lights on. The two of you sat down in a booth, and struggled to contain giggles as you sipped from mugs of stale, lukewarm coffee. Why you were giggling, you weren’t completely sure.

“You know what, Ransom, once you get over the asshole-ness, you’re not that bad,” you reached out a hand, and set it on top of Ransom’s, that was idly sitting on the table.

“Wow, thanks,” he chuckled, a dark pink dusting his cheeks.

“Why did we even come here?” You groaned, “No offense, but this coffee tastes like ass,” you whined,

“And how do you know what ass tastes like?” Ransom burst out giggling at this.

“Shut up. Are you twelve?” You pretended to be annoyed with him, before giving in and laughing along with him. “Can you take me home?” You asked with puppy dog eyes.

Apparently, one for the dramatics, Ransom tossed a $50 bill onto the table, then stood up from his seat at the booth to swoop you up in a bridal style.

“Ohhh my god,” you slurred as he carried you out the door, then eventually set you back down on the pavement once he became tired.

-----

While you walked up to your doorstep, Ransom stood on the sidewalk, watching you contentedly. As you got to your door and turned around, he gave you a big, goofy smile and a wave.

“Well, what are you waiting for? Come in with me,” you invited. It was safe to say, Ransom happily obliged.

[palettepainter]

Gonna post some Zoophobia art here to tumblr since I always seem to forget So what started off as sketches turned into a small headcannon I made for Francesca, her older design in my NGAU has since been updated compared to when I first drew her. I changed up her hair style and clothes to give her a more matured look, also, pointy vampires ears, I had to add them. Sum notes on her -Francesca runs an independent hair salon in Safe Haven. Though she runs her own business she is a fierce supporter to her younger sisters Pepper's and Bamibi's species appreciation acceptance club. Francesca gives me a laid back and relaxed vibe, she's chill. She'll show up to events hosted by her sisters, sporting their species acceptance t-shirt merchandise and blow into a party horn with a lazed smile on her face. Despite her lay about arguably lazy side she is very caring, being a big sister, and is often the voice of reason among her two sisters when they're thinking about doing something crazy. -Francesca is hella gay, in her first years of ZPA she was a bit of a closet gay, not really confident to talk to girls she thought where pretty. It wasn't until she had her first fling with Camilla did she finally embrace it, Camilla and herself had a friends with benefits sort of deal during their years at ZPA. They'd laugh together, do dance class together, judge people together, fuck together: you know, typical best friend things. In Francesca's third year she began to grow a bit more confident in herself, and in the end her and Camilla stayed as very close friends. -Not shown above but Francesca is married to Spring, Autumn's sister. Spring works as a professional yoga instructor, hosting yoga classes out in the middle of sunny fields to be one with nature, her powers making her perfectly skilled in the art of growing and nurturing flowers and plants of all kind to bloom, a perfect relaxed environment to practice the art of yoga. The two met when Summer dragged her older, slightly anti social sister to Francesca's salon for a hair doo. Though scatter brained and a little forgetful Spring means well, embracing her hippy dippy ways to be one with nature. Her siblings are all generally okay with this, buuuut because of how much time she spends in nature Spring sometimes forgets to trim that mane of hair, and more often then not one of them has to drag her out to get a trim. Francesca is not intimidated by the tall women with a head of green hair flowing to the back of her knees, and confidently arms herself with her scissors and hair ties. It took a whole day for Fransceca to tame the hair into a more manageable style, Spring's siblings simply said that they wanted Spring's face to be visible, and that Fransesca had free will to style the hair how she liked. After she's finished and Fransesca gets her first propper look at the timid customer, she's already drawn to her shy nature. Francesca, though being a bit of a wild card, has a thing for shy people, perhaps it's a bit of vampire quirkiness, perhaps she likes the idea of someone shy and timid when she flashes all but a single toothy grin (Simon was and still kind is a bit of a sadist, he had no issue biting Fabian or restraining Zill, heck he even seemed pleased at the idea of drinking Carries blood cuz she was a demon - he's got some sadist nature in him, and it rubbed off on Francesca just a wee bit). Fransesca is laying out her smoothest flirts and pick up lines, all of which Spring replies too with a flustered deer whinny sound. Fransesca confidently gives Spring her card with a wink, and Spring hurriedly leaves. In the end Peppers and Summer got fed up of Spring pinning for Fransceca who was having way to much fun getting Spring all flustered that the two put them up on a yoga date. Fransesca had been pretty stressed out lately with helping Peppers and Bambi with big events at the centre, and so Spring gave her a full yoga therapy session. Fransesca at first doesn't really see the point in sitting in a field in some weird robe thingy, or walking calmly through the grass bare foot, or listening to the sound of a stream - yet, she tries anyway, mostly going into this yoga session thinking it would be all laughs and jokes. She's very surprised at just how..good Spring is at getting her to relax, there's something so soothing about Spring's voice it actually lulled her to sleep at one point, her snoring kinda broke the atmosphere Spring had going. They're happily married, Fransesca loves her dorky deer wifey -Blaire has a somewhat tense relationship with her mother Camilla, with the lack of a motherly figure in her life Blaire unconsciously seeks approval from the older female figures in her life: those two being Rosie, and Fransesca. Blaire is currently studying beauty and fashion at ZPA, despite what others think she's actually really found of exploring different fashion themes and playing around with hair dyes. She currently has a job working at Fransecsca's hair salon, she has yet to actually do any styling herself and works mostly behind the till. It's not the job she wanted, and it's pretty sucky, pretty damn boring. Fransesca sees that Blaire is obviously not having fun, not like Blaire was trying to hide it, so Franscesca one day gives Blaire a mannequin head and wig, and tells her to 'show what shes got' Blaire was a bit nervous at first, feeling as though this was some test, didn't help that Fransesca was watching silently the entire time. By the time she's finished Fransesca walks over to inspect her work, Fransesca doesn't sugar coat, she's to the point and Blaire may have been a little hurt. Then Fransesca gives her shoulder a friendly punch and admits that she's seen worse, and that Blaire has some potential for this kind of work. She takes Blaire on as a sort of apprentice, but it doesn't take long for the two to have a more relaxed bond then a worker and boss one. Francesca comes to enjoy the snarky brat, she sees a lot of herself in her DO NOT REPOST/EDIT/COPY/TRACE MY ART Franscesca/Bambi/Pepper/Spring/Simon/Camilla - Zoophobia Blaire - me

[highladyluck]

Mat/Tuon meta: Will He/Won’t He (Stage A Military Coup)

Back on my Mat/Tuon meta horse! This is about why Tuon is absolutely convinced Mat won't mount a military coup against her, and under what circumstances he just might, actually. Obviously, ‘ware series spoilers. The personal/political dynamic Mat and Tuon have at the end of the series continues to fascinate me. Tuon is well aware that Mat’s prince-consort position, Prince of the Ravens, is a position that could lead a military coup against her leadership; she knows all about the power struggle that imperialist, expansionist government leaders face with respect to their armies and the generals that lead the armies. She also knows at this point that Mat specifically has the skillset to pull that kind of thing off; he has demonstrated political skill even if he's not used to Seanchan customs (she noted that the way he diffused tension in the hell boded well for his ability to handle Seanchan court politics), he quickly inspires personal trust and loyalty in his troops regardless of what troops he's actually leading (see: when he meets back up with the Band in the Altaran wilderness, plus how quickly her own armies took to him), and of course he is brilliant at tactics and strategy (see: the entire series starting at book 4). She is also *certain* that he won't actually use that power against her. He has shown her personal loyalty on numerous other occasions, and Tuon's entire brand and survival strategy is generating personal loyalty due to her power (or potential power), skills, and personal integrity. She knows what personal loyalty looks like and she knows how it works. She's a little appalled at herself for not being afraid of Mat staging a coup, and she even thinks that it's probably not good for her or the empire to *not* be constantly threatened by her top military commander, because she's been conditioned to believe that external threats keep her sharp and focused- but she absolutely does trust him not to be a threat to her. Which is wild!!! You have to understand how wild this is!

Tuon previously only trusted her personal safety to people she thoroughly controls- Selucia, Karede, her damane. She does have a kind of control over Mat, but it's not based on anything she's done or her position, it's based on his personality and choices, and I don't think she thinks she controls him. (I think she believes she has authority over him, and that's at least somewhat true, but that's much different from the total control she has over enslaved people, or even the political control she has over the Blood.) She does also trust people she doesn't entirely control- the people who are almost her peers- but notably she doesn't trust them not to hurt her. She trusts that they'll act in ways benefiting their own self-interest or the interest of the empire, which could mean they might hurt her.

Mat, on the other hand, she trusts not to hurt her except accidentally, by making choices that have implications for her standing. (That's what all the manners lessons are about, she's trying to protect him so he doesn't leave her exposed.) Again, THIS IS WILD. Tuon’s an autocratic empress raised under the threat of assassination from birth, she has MAJOR trust and control issues, and here is someone she does not fully control but whom she implicitly trusts not to physically or even intentionally harm her. Do you think she's ever had that experience in her life before? I can't see how she would have. I think there's room to explore this in a way that would be therapeutic for Tuon, but it's also an extremely tempting vulnerability to exploit narratively. Either way, it's fascinating. So what's Mat's motivation not to harm Tuon, and how much of it does Tuon know? It's both a character thing and a situational thing, and I think Tuon knows about some of it, but not all of it, and she also has some major blind spots about what Mat is capable of. Mat won't intentionally harm her for a couple of general character reasons: he's in love with her, which she knows about and is like 'weird flex, but ok'; I don't know if she really knows how to parse it tbh. Also, because he won't kill a woman, which she knows about and is like 'this dumbassery is going to get my himbo straight-up murdered; however, it's kinda cute'. Also, because he has a saving-people-especially-women-thing, which she may or may not know about; I forget whether it came up in any of her surreal chats with Mat's childhood friends, but even if it did she may not know enough to give it proper context in his motivations, or understand how truly generalized it is. He's also promised to protect her from harm in the past, and while that may have been a time-/situation-limited thing, she's seen that he keeps his promises, assuming he gave the promise in earnest. So while he hasn't necessarily made such a promise recently, she knows that he keeps his word and that's something she values as a mark of integrity and a reason to trust someone. The other reasons she trusts him are more down to circumstances: the Last Battle had him temporarily siding with the Seanchan against their common enemy, the Dark One. I think Tuon's aware that he's not fully committed to the Empire yet, but possibly she doesn't realize the extent to which he is ambivalent, or she thinks it's the kind of thing they can compromise on, like the uniform design, rather than a fundamental disconnect in goals. Or she thinks that once he understands what his responsibilities are, he'll absorb himself into the role the way she has, which is... uh... rather optimistic of her, but we all have our blind spots. Finally, I don't think Mat's fully realized that a military coup (which would likely look like a situation where he spares Tuon's life but gets her off the throne) is an option for him. Or, it's occurred to him, but the circumstance has not yet come up that would justify him taking that path. And I do *not* think Tuon has considered this! She might think he knows that the Prince of Ravens is traditionally a threat to the Empress, but I don't recall that she's actually said that to him. And I don't think she sees a difference between her not being Empress and her being dead- she's conflated 'being in power' with 'staying alive' literally her entire life, and she probably thinks any situation where she's not Empress but still alive, if it's even possible, would be so shameful/painful it would be better to be dead. So it wouldn't occur to her that one outcome of a coup would be to replace her as government head but still keep her alive. And Mat hasn't yet faced a situation where he might have major ethical issues with not just the structure of the army but also the goals of it. (Even his iconic ‘I am accidentally leading an army despite really not wanting to lead an army, because I can’t let these dumbasses get killed’ move was ethically consistent, since he was just trying to run away/save people.) And, as I will never shut up about, he’s done literal war crimes to achieve his goals before- he didn’t stop to give aid after he ambushed the Seanchan in the Altaran forest, even though Teslyn specifically says this is against Randland military convention. And given Mat’s early canonical history of being railroaded into leading military campaigns, I don’t think Mat’s going to balk at leading the Seanchan army just because he doesn’t like the Seanchan empire, though it will matter what specifically he’s asked to do with it and why. I think Mat's way more likely to be willing to lead the reunification of Seanchan than to deal with local Westlands slave uprisings or rebellion. You're going to hit his moral breaking point a lot sooner if there's domestic civil crises. An actual slave revolt or rebellion would get hit with military force, and Mat says as much to Beslan so he's well aware that he'd be, if not in charge, certainly culpable for the Seanchan government response to it. (They might try to prevent it from happening at all with Seekers; but Seekers are mostly focused on the Blood, I think, so I think it's possible that if there's minimal Blood involvement they might not know about it in time to nip it in the bud.) So if you wanted to force Mat to have a crisis of conscience that's one situation you could set up, and I think it's even somewhat likely. Post-TG Seanchan-Westland politics are going to be a Cold War, and many entities in the Westlands would be happy to lend plausibly deniable support to an organic citizen and/or slave uprising! The other thing is, Mat needs to be constantly occupied and he does like using his skills; if he gets an 'acceptable' target for military force he probably will go for it. So if the forces in Seanchan unified under a rando warlord, he'd probably be ok leading the Westlands Seanchan troops there, reasoning that Tuon is probably a better or at least more influenceable ruler than that other guy. (Might be complicated if it was a female unifier, but probably not that much.) He would not be keen on enslaving the free Westlands- not that that’s going to happen as long as the Dragon’s Peace is going on- but a ‘peacekeeping mission in a foreign land’? ...idk, I can see him going for it, especially if he doesn't have enough political capital yet to back up an outright refusal. Mat was conflicted about using the damane he captured in the Last Battle, but he did use her. She was a prisoner of war from the enemy side, which probably eased his conscience a little re: personally owning her, but I don't see anywhere in the text that he had issues commanding Seanchan sul'dam and damane in a less personal way. The Last Battle was an unusual situation, but we've also seen Mat willing to ally or at least put up with plenty of people he dislikes- on personal and ideological grounds- to achieve a goal (see: rescuing Joline) or just figure out his options (see: all that card-playing with nobles in the Stone of Tear while he had emotions about Rand. XD)

So if you wanted to force Mat to have a moral crisis while fighting in Seanchan, you'd make the people he's fighting in Seanchan be people he sympathizes with more than he sympathizes with imperial Seanchan; let's say it's a coalition of rebels who want a different, more equal society. Mat's got gilt by association (thank you for that amazing phrase, Terry Pratchett) and he's not pleased about it, and unlike Tuon, he can envision a situation where she's still alive but not Empress. So I think that'd be another situation that would force him to have a crisis of conscience and start planning a coup or at least using his considerable power for leverage. The key in both cases is that it's not just Mat randomly deciding to take a stand for freedom; frankly, I don't think he would, unless he thought it was the best way to 'rescue' Tuon, and even then he would wait or maneuver until the tactical/strategic landscape was as much in his favor as possible, which is where the external circumstances weakening the Empire come in.

[starrysupercell]

To add even more to the "Byron is Colette's and Edgard's weird uncle" I propose adding Belle to the mix. Idk, I just like to think about them trying to embarras them, or just being their "Cool" older figures. Like, its kinda there already. Maybe Belle decided to take Edgar to a trip with her gang cuz he was bored and she wanted to show him "How adults have fun"

Or maybe Byron trying (And also trying to appear like he wasn't trying) to teach Colette how to do something similar to his potions, but failing miserably cuz she sucks at mesurements and math in general.

Also Belle is the kind to give herself nicknames, maybe she could call herself "Auntie" or smth, like "Kids its yer auntie Belle!" and they just humo staright into her arms while Byron is just looking while trying to avoid thinking how much he would like to join but having to massive of an ego to do so, and Belle discretely making fun of him while they dont look not helping at all

And if one day they came specially tired or pissed and ranted to them about it, the next shift Griff acted weirdly nice to them, and when they checked his back they could see what looked like a bullet wound with some neon green splatters. And even if they know what happen they just... Dont sa anything because why would they. It feels good to be protected like that, so why make them stop yknow

Too much text I know, I just love this headcanon man

🦝🐍🧣💝

Read more for convenience in scrolling -w-

While I have different interpretations of the characters, I still like this! Belle + Byron working in synch is always great. I like to think they both set out individually to seek "justice" and met up there, then having to semi-work together.

I think Edgar drags his heels more and wouldn't be up for hugs, but he would give the "They may look and be weird, but they're cool. I guess." (Even though Belle didnt tell him to wear that colorful get up, the dork. <3) He looks up to them more than he lets on.

Colette defintely gives hugs and calls Belle Auntie though. She just had to learn to calm down and treat the sibs like actual people instead of idols before that, being Brawlers. As a side note, I actually think she's good at math, because of her percentage hits and working as a cashier. You quickly pick up on money counting when working a customer service job. But, that's just my headcanon :3c

I already had plans on how to include Griff in my series, but maybe between this and the other ask, I might have fun with including an extra scene.

(For any Griff fans reading this, no, it's not bashing. There's a story to be told with him, but I just don't like the guy as a part of my Gift Shop staff, plain and simple.)

Man I think I can just about talk forever about all these characters and their dynamics.

[bamfdaddio]

X-Men Abridged: 1968

The X-Men, those ever-so-slightly exhausting mutants that have sworn to protect a world that hates and fears them, are a cultural juggernaut with a long, tangled history. Want to unravel this tapestry? Then read the Abridged X-Men!

(X-Men 40 - 51) - written by Roy Thomas, Gary Friedrich and Arnold Drake. Drawn by Werner Roth, Don Heck, George Tuska and Jim Steranko

Did you know Frankenstein’s monster was an android, sent to earth by aliens as an ambassador?

My English Lit professor LIED TO ME! (X-Men 40)

Whereas last year served up a cohesive narrative by making it all about Factor Three, 1968 gives us a hodgepodge of clumsy and confusing storylines. This might be due to the different writers at the helm: last year was all about Roy Thomas, this year we’ve got three dudes pulling it in different directions.

What doesn’t change is the prose. So much purple prose.

Anyway, this year is all about THE DEATH OF PROFESSOR XAVIER and THE RETURN OF MAGNETO! (If you think this is terrific foreshadowing and not something that kills all narrative tension, boy howdy, you’ll love reading comics from this era.)

The best kind of foreshadowing drags you into an alley, punches you in the nose and steals your shoes. Fuck subtlety and proper twists. (X-Men 41)

Anyway, Xavier is acting all out of character: cranky, angry, impatient, barely using his powers for immoral purposes… He pushes the X-Men to the brink and continually sequesters himself with a troubled Jean.

Meanwhile, Bobby and Hank’s date with Zelda and Vera is interrupted… again. At this point, I just have to believe that Zelda and Vera are embroiled in some torrid lesbian relationship, while Hank and Bobby serve as their beards.ANYWAY, their date is interrupted by the Grotesk, the last remaining heir to an advanced subterranean species who have recently been slaughtered by an earthquake machine of human making. Look, how many underground societies does the Marvel Earth even have? Did these Grotesks live next to the Molemen? I…

In defense of Grotesk, spinning him around like a fucking bola is one of the top three things I´d like to do with Angel too. (X-Men 42)

The X-Men try to stop the Grotesk from sinking the Eastern seaboard into the Atlantic, and in the end, the Professor sacrifices himself to stop him, paying pays the ultimate price!

OR DOES HE

To make it even more tragic, apparently Xavier was dealing with some mysterious illness that neither human medicine nor mutant powers could cure. But before he died, he somehow transferred his powers to Jean. (Either pretend this happened or retcon it him awakening Jean’s latent telepathy.) Anyway, Chuck wanted to prepare them for the return of… Magneto. (Also Pietro and Wanda.)

Quicksilver crashes Xavier’s funeral, unsure whether he should ask the X-Men for help. He doesn’t. Meanwhile, Magneto somehow has duped some hapless time-displaced TikTokker into filming the grisly affair. (X-Men 43)

What follows is a sort of confusing crossover with the Avengers where the X-Men mostly get sidelined in favour of some drama involving the House of M. Wanda has some temporary mental damage that only Magneto can cure? Also, Pietro hates humans now, which, given the state of the world in general, I can only concur with.

Magneto captures the X-Men in customized cages, designed to be unescapable, but Angel escapes by simply pushing the right button. He flies off to get help, stumbles upon a weird and ultimately meaningless side quest and finally returns with the Avengers!

But! Magneto turns the X-Men against Earth’s Mightiest Heroes! Just kidding: the X-Men pretend to go along with Magneto’s mind games, but this was all a plot concocted by the heroes to make Magneto feel like he’s winning. Instead, the heroes attack and drive Magneto back. Toad, who finally is fed up with Magneto’s abuse, emancipates himself and defies Magneto, kicking him out of the helicopter he, Wanda and Pietro flee in. Magneto seemingly falls to his death in the water.

OR DOES HE.

First of all: why would Magneto just make a non-ferrous aircraft? Second of all: why would he then BRING IT ALONG? Big mad. (Avengers 53)

Following Xavier’s death, Foggy Nelson reads his will. The Professor bequeaths the school to the X-Men! Fred Duncan, Professor X’s FBI liaison is also there! And then! Juggernaut briefly returns from the dimension of Cyttorak, stirs up trouble and is then sucked back into the ruby of Cyttorak thanks to a Professor Ex Machina from the grave. This somehow convinces Fred Duncan that the X-Men should split up, fearing they may be too big a target for evil mutants and thinking they might be better at responding to threats spread out over the continent.

Yeah, Angel will be so much more effective when he isn’t part of a team of much more powerful individuals. (X-Men 46)

So, the X-Men split up! In NYC, Bobby and Hank battle Warlock, the most forgettable villain ever, when he interrupts their date. They also get into a fight with hippies because of… poetry?

Yeah! Put the slam in poetry slam, odd beatniks! *aggressive finger snaps* (X-Men 47)

Jean and Scott ‘go undercover’ in California, with Jean becoming a model and Scott ‘pretending’ to be her superjealous boyfriend. So, instead of actually forming a relationship, they just pretend to have one? Fuck, these two are exhausting. Jean also forgot she attends a university, apparently. Which is just as well, because it means boring Ted and his boring brother disappear from the narrative.

They are attacked by an increasingly silly string of villains and it’s obvious that nobody really knows what to do with this book. They even skip an issue: the preview for issue 49 is something completely different than what we’re getting.

The year ends of a sort of high note, however, introducing two familiar faces. Mesmero,a hitherto unknown follower of Magneto, is amassing an army of would-be mutants by… hypnotizing them? Through their… X-Gene? Among them is a curious gal named Lorna Dane, who is rocking the brown hair. Bobby saves her from her drone-like state and keeps an eye on her while the rest of the X-Men investigate Mesmero.

Lorna meanwhile takes a shower, washed out the cheap dye and is revealed to have green hair. (Fuck yeah! But also maybe buy better dye?) Bobby and Lorna are captured by Mesmero and his cronies, and Bobby warns the other X-Men telepathically. They let themselves be captured by Mesmero too, figuring it’s the easiest way to find his lair. There, Mesmero awakens Lorna’s latent magnetism powers, and bestows on her two sweet titles:

Somewhere in Kenya, Storm is upset and doesn’t know why. (X-Men 50)

And, in another shocking twist (gasp²), Magneto’s alive!

You say ‘aura of unspeakable evil’, I say ‘prime dom top daddy’. (X-Men 50)

He fights the X-Men while Polaris tries to determine who she holds allegiance to: the father she just met or these other randos she just met. You’d think she would maybe not want to hang out with the raving demagogue, but hey. Maybe it’s magnetic attraction. The X-Men flee, forced to regroup, and we end the year there, with the ‘innocent’ Lorna Dane under Magneto’s thrall.

Didn’t you take Art History? Oh! Issue 50 has the familiar logo for the first time, created by Jim Steranko!

So one cape tassel goes over the shoulder and one goes under it? Why is there a little skull with horns in the middle? Why the strappy sandals? Mesmero, sashay away. (X-Men 50)

Ugliest Costume: It’s a toss-up between Mesmero and Polaris, but since I assume Mesmero designed Polaris’ outfit, we’ll just give it to him.

Best new character: I didn’t think she’d earn it, because I’m not the biggest fan of Lorna Dane (most writers use her as a plot device, rather than a character), but otherwise this would go to Grotesk and that’s never going to happen.

Most audacious retcon: Jean is able to psychically penetrate Juggernaut’s helmet, which used to protect him from Charles’ influence.

It’s also kinda funny how after years of retcons where Polaris, Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver sometimes are and sometimes aren’t Magneto’s kids, how it is right now is the same as when it started: Lorna is Magneto’s daughter, the twins aren’t.

What to read: Nothing. This is not a great year.

Death proof: ‘Chuck’ kicks the bucket for the first time.

[satoriberry]

HELLOOOOO OMG IM ACTUALLY SO EXCITED TO SEE YOURE MUSLIM because hi hello bestie I love to see representation <33 I hope you’re doing good, and I was wondering if I could request a male romantic timeskip matchup! I’m female and my pronouns are she/her <3

So for my personality, I’m an enfp, social and outgoing. I love to laugh and laugh super easily at that too(also, I cry super easily). I get annoyed super quick(have a bad temper), but my mood also gets better just as quickly. I’m super laid back, kind of irresponsible and usually go for the easy way out 😗✌🏽 I’m also super loud and I’m mostly happy(have an optimistic streak within me too). I’m a huge daydreamer and spend half of my day envisioning stuff very unlikely to happen. Im spontaneous too and I loveeee teasing my friends!!!!!! I can be clingy too(mostly physically because my love language is physical touch). I’m also usually super energetic and enthusiastic and my friends say I’m the ‘child’ of the group(probably because I cry too much and am a teeennnnssyyyyy bit spoiled because of my south asian parents and their love for daughters). Some hobbies of mine are playing volleyball(despite being smol for it), baking(I love sweet food) and reading fantasy books!! I really love cats and actually animals in general but cats have a special place in my heart. Some songs I listen to on repeat nowadays are guy.exe by superfruit(pls it’s so catchy and relatable 😭✋🏼), I don’t do drugs by doja cat, sun kissed by khai dreams and cigarettes and feelings by the haunt.

A lovely stranger named @ydyf came up to me today and asked me for a new path in life...

↬ Berry's note: AHHH ive been so eager to write this matchup! Sorry for the late response, i got busy from school and other life stuff but here it is!!! Thank you for the request 

What do you know! You’ve the won the heart of the calm and collected, yet out going, Miya Osamu! Would you like to take a deeper look?

- WOOWOOO LETS GET INTO THIS >:] First of all, the reason I chose Osamu is because you two really complete each other. As you’ve mentioned in your ask, you’re a really extroverted, bubbly person that’s very social. Osamu, on the other hand, is more reserved (not asocial or timid). So being with you will bring out his louder, more social side (like we’ve seen him with Atsumu). You two are also very similar in being laidback and always choosing the easy route.

- I like to imagine that you two met each other at his shop. Like, one day you and a friend decided to have lunch together and you chose this "Miya Onigiri" shop that looks kinda dope :D

- Osamu was wiping the counter top, when he heard the jingle of the door's bell. As he usually does, he turns towards the new customers (or casuals) to greet them with a homey voice. "Welcome to Miya Onigiri. Table for how ma-" then he stopped in his tracks.

- Mf gazed at you for one second and he almost dropped to the floor. His lifespan multiplied by 5 after he saw you because oh.my.lord. You're so dazzling? What? Is this God finally giving him some fortune?

- No but seriously, the guy had to compose himself and repeat his welcome before running off to the kitchen (pussy-)

- You and your friend ordered some food and enjoyed your lunch, and Osamu tried to slip into the conversation so he can get to know you but he was too shy to do it 💔. So, to be more clever, he gave the two of you free desserts.

- "It's a tradition of mine to give new people a cake that's on the house, so enjoy." It was really sweet and you appreciated the thought!!.....then you saw that he had slipped a tiny paper with his number scribbled under the cake slice....it was weird but cute <3

- You added his number of course because 1) Cute guy and 2) Cute guy that owns a shop and 3) Cute guy that owns a shop that also gave you free dessert. He was so happy when he received that first phone call from you.

- Osamu is usually very composed and prefers to take his time with things, but he broke that habit when he asked you out on a date during the 5th walk-and-talk hangout you two had.

- He didn't pressure you, giving you the full option to reject him and keep being friends. But who could say no to his handsome face and attractive personality <3

- And really, after that, you two hit it off right away. So that's the getting together part, now, the actual relationship part!!!

- YOU TWO ARE THE COUPLE EVERYONE WANTS TO BE LIKE!!! SERIOUSLY THO!!! Extroverted girlfriend + Hubby material boyfriend that's also a fucking food shop owner??? Power couple shit.

- LOVESS it when you drop by at his shop and stay with him until his shift ends. You give him a sense of security and he really wouldn't trade it for anything else, and it really makes him work in a better mood.

- If you two aren't at his shop together, then you're definitely lounging around at your home. Listen, he's a shop owner AND chef, he wants some rest 💔

- Loves cuddling with you so much. Turns into a whole spider with his arms and legs looped around you, will NOT let you go.

- Reading together!! I headcanon him as someone who likes to read from often than not, so he adores lounging in the living room with you, books in hand and pinkies intertwined <3

-HE LOVES GOING TO THE FOOD MARKET WITH YOU!! Listen it's so cute 😭. At least twice a month, he wakes you up early (forcefully) and gets ready to take you to a fresh produce market so he can go around and get a bunch of stuff in adorable lil baskets <3

- Yes, the baskets are his favourite part. The apples are fucking shit and aren't as delectable as the farmer made them out to be? Doesn't matter, the basket is cute.

- Gatekeeps you from Atsumu. The second you met his blond twin, Osamu knew it was the biggest mistake because you two shared the same brain. He had to deal with two Atsumus that day 💔

- Househusband LMFAOOO. You're like the girlboss in the relationship, so he likes to play the role of the multitasking, reliable husband that does all the house chores, but you two share the load equally in the end

- Osamu + You = Cute couple with an even cuter dynamic. He really loves everything about you. Your face, your hair, your smile, your laugh, personality, everything. Will sell his soul just to have you smile everyday :]

Runner ups!

➵ Miya Atsumu (LMAOO)

➵ Tendou Satori

➵ Sugawara Koushi

↬ Berry's after-writing note: *cutely returns after 3 weeks of inactivity* hola chicos.....this is so embarrassing wtf 😶 I went through a shitty week and then 2 weeks of academic pressure woowoo. But here I am again. I'm so sorry for making you wait for your matchup and I feel like I couldve done better but shsksgishsjs here it is. Thanks for sending in your request MWAH <3

[clawsandblood]

4 - “Do you trust me?”

link to ao3

first part on tumblr   previous part on tumblr

Once both men were awake enough, Borna told Steven of his strange encounter last night. Steven’s face grew more and more alarmed as the story progressed.

“You won’t believe this,” he slowly said, “but I also had a weird encounter last night and-” He stopped. “There was this woman, looking kinda how you said yours was looking, and in the end she gave me a huge tip, saying that both me and my friend could use some money.” 

“How huge?” Borna asked, brows furrowing.

Steven stood up, walked over to his jacket and dug out his wallet. “This big,” he said, showing Borna the hundred dollar bill.

“Fuck,” Borna swore under his breath. He took his phone, frantically going through his browsing history until he found a picture of Madam Reid. “Is that her?” he asked Steven, showing him the screen.

“Yeah,” he said hoarsely.

They exchanged looks. “How the fuck did she know we know each other?” Borna asked.

“Oh, shit.” Steven was staring at Borna. “You’ve already got a job interview with her company, right?”

Borna nodded. “Tomorrow. They were in an awful hurry.”

Steven collapsed on the couch. “What if they’re some sort of human trafficking ring?” he asked. “What if they’re with the mafia?”

“I think they won’t do anything after one interview,” Borna said. “Or I could just cancel.”

Steven nodded. “That would probably be the safest, yeah.”

Borna opened his phone, thumb hovering over the number that called him earlier in the morning. He sighed, putting the phone down. “But I’m curious,” he said. “Maybe one interview won’t be that bad.”

“Borna,” Steven pleaded.

“I can just decline afterwards.”

Their eyes were locked in a staring contest.

“If your kidney gets sold on the black market next week I won’t help you, I’ll just say that I told you so.”

Borna’s lips twitched into a smile. “Note taken.”

---

It took some digging through their shared wardrobes to find a presentable pair of trousers and a shirt for Borna to wear to the interview. Steven did have some semi-formal clothes, but Borna somehow felt like most of Steven’s patterned shirts were a touch too vulgar for the occasion.

“How do I look?” he asked, giving a little twirl.

Steven chewed on his lip. “Presentable,” he finally said.

Borna nodded. “I feel like a tuna fish in a can.”

“Meaning?”

“Stuffed, uncomfortable, about to be half-eaten, half-thrown away.”

“Having last minute jitters?” Steven smiled at Borna and clapped him on the back. “You’re gonna go there, snoop a bit during the interview, go home and tell them you’re actually going to Russia.”

Borna snorted. “Sounds good.”

They went to the building where the interview was going to take place together. It was a modern office building, fairly boring and unremarkable. The entrance had plaques of several different companies on the wall, Northwest Holistic Natural Remedies being among them.

“Well,” Steven said. “This is kinda anticlimactic.”

“What did you expect?” Borna asked him.

Steven shrugged. “Something more glamorous. Or completely rundown. I don’t know how human organ traffickers work.”

Borna elbowed him. “They’re not gonna sell my organs,” he grumbled.

“Yeah, yeah,” Steven mumbled. He gave Borna one last look-over, fixing his hair a bit. “You’ve got this,” he said and patted his shoulder. “Good luck.”

“Thanks.” Borna walked in, going to the reception desk.

Steven stood for a few moments, looking after his friend, and left. There was no need for him to keep loitering and there were groceries to be bought.

---

Borna found the office that the receptionist directed him to. The doors were slightly open and the plaque on them said “Northwest Holistic Natural Remedies - Madam Reid.” He tentatively knocked.

“Come in,” said a voice.

He entered, closing the doors behind himself. A different lady was sitting behind the desk, looking at him expectantly. There was a sign on her desk that read “Natalie Adams, secretary.” The walls were decorated with various pictures of nature, keeping a cohesive theme. It was terribly bland, yet tasteful.

“Madam is already waiting for you,” she said, gesturing to the doors to the side.

“Thank you,” he said and walked in.

Now that office was a lot different. The furniture was darker, sturdier. Decor was still revolving around nature, but this was darker, feeling more like antiques rather than mass-produced photos printed on canvases. Behind the desk sat Madam Reid, as sharp and poised as the night he met her.

“Hello, Borna,” she said. “Please sit down.”

Borna obeyed, drawing the heavy leather-padded chair. “Good morning,” he said.

Her pronunciation of his name was miles better than what he was used to, though her decision to use his first name rattled him. Maybe she just didn’t want to deal with pronouncing my surname, he thought, suppressing an amused huff.

“It’s two in the afternoon,” she pointed out.

He chuckled awkwardly. “Had another night shift,” he explained. “Those tend to mess with perception of time.”

She nodded. “Understandable.”

“I brought my resume with me in case-” he started, but got silenced by a hand gesture.

“I think both of us know that that’s not why you’re here now,” she said, fixing him with her stare.

“Then what is it?” he asked. He grew hotter in his shirt and dress pants.

She took his hand, unbuttoning the cuff and rolled up the sleeve until the bite mark was fully exposed. “When was it?” she asked, examining the scar. “Three days ago? Four?”

“Four,” he answered. “Are you also a…” He trailed off.

“A lycanthrope, yes.”

“Okay,” he said, still staring at where she was holding his arm.

She rolled the sleeve back up, buttoning it. “We need to keep together,” she said. “Lone wolves don’t survive for too long.”

“Meaning?”

“There’s an organisation that I’m a part of,” she explained. “It connects people like us all over the continent. We could help you out with things.”

His brows furrowed. “What things?”

Madam Reid gave him a look that he’d describe as sarcastic if she was literally anyone else. “Money.”

“I can get by,” he protested. “I’ve got a job, I can pay rent-”

“You work the graveyard shift at the carwash and have to live with a roommate,” Madam interrupted.

Borna swallowed. “How do you know about my roommate?” he asked quietly.

“I met him the same night as you.” She smiled, but it just looked like a beast baring its teeth. “He is a very friendly man. You two spend too much time together, you smell like each other.”

“We smell-?”

She nodded. “It should come to you soon,” she said soothingly. “You’ll get used to it.”

Borna nodded, staring at his own hands, trying to process all the given information.

“Borna?”

He looked up.

Madam Reid was looking at him, features soft and relaxed. For the first time she didn’t look like she was about to swallow him whole, though her eyes stayed the same. “Do you trust me?” she asked gently.

“I don’t know,” he replied softly. “I think you’ve been truthful, but I don’t think I should trust you just yet.”

She leaned back in her chair. “Smart,” she commented. “Not the smartest, but admirable approach.” She drummed her fingers on the table. “I’ve got a proposition,” she said, leaning forward again. “On Friday we’ve got a meeting. I’ll have Natalie email you details and you can come see how things work for yourself. How does that sound?”

He took a moment to consider her offer. “Okay,” he conceded. “Maybe I’ll come.”

“That’s all I ask for.”

He slowly started getting up.

“And Borna?”

He looked at her.

“I don’t think I need to tell you to come by yourself, right?”

He shook his head. “You don’t.”

“Good.” She also got up, offering him a hand. “Hopefully we’ll see each other soon,” she said.

He just nodded wordlessly.

“Goodbye,” she said and then he was already through the door. The secretary gave him a friendly smile and a goodbye of her own as he exited the office.

---

“How was it?” Steven asked him when he got outside.

Borna took a deep breath. “She’s also, uh-” he gestured at the bite mark on his arm. “She offered help. She knew we live together because we smell like each other.”

“Wait, what?” Steven was staring at him, nose wrinkled, and mouth falling open. “We smell like each other?”

“Yeah, I know.” Borna sighed. “She said I should be able to… detect these things soon too.”

“Ew.”

“Yeah.”

They stood in contemplative silence for a few moments.

“We should go home,” Borna said and Steven nodded. He had his arms occupied with bags from the grocery store and he handed over one to Borna, who automatically took it.

---

He was working the night shift again. Again, he couldn’t understand why would a carwash service need to be open at such unholy hours. Again, he was reminded that the wealthy, the weird and the criminals were also paying customers.

So far he had to deal with only a few people that seemed a bit too inebriated to be anywhere near car keys. He did have to watch himself physically way more than usual, but the drunk were usually quite generous tippers and that night didn’t prove any different.

He had a long period of nothing, where he almost nodded off several, but the noise from the neighbouring gas station managed to keep him up. Then, just a one hour before the end, a car drove in.

---

Dorian’s phone rang. He groaned, looking at the caller’s ID. Three poop emojis were displayed on the screen. He groaned again, louder, then finally accepted the call.

“Hi, Gary,” he said. For a few moments he was quiet, listening intently. “Fuck,” he finally said. “A feral one?”

He got up from the couch and turned off the TV, which was showing some shitty horror flick. He sandwiched the phone between his ear and his shoulder as he started pulling on his pants.

“Yeah, give me ten min, I’ll be there. Bye.”

He disconnected the call, putting the phone down. He dressed up, sturdy, warm, practical clothes, and left the flat, remembering at the last moment to take his phone and wallet.

He rushed downstairs and walked briskly to the main street. A car was already waiting for him. 

“Move it,” Gary said, poking his head through the window.

“Yeah, yeah,” Dorian grumbled breathlessly. He sat down on the passenger’s side, fastening the seatbelt. The moment he was done the car peeled off the curb, making Dorian swear quietly, which in turn made Gary cackle.

The car sped through the streets, out of town to the forest road.

“Do you know where it’s supposed to be?” Dorian asked.

“Somewhere in the west,” Gary answered. “Near one farm, the owners complained about the cattle being killed.”

“Not regular wolves?” 

Gary shook his head. “The tracks didn’t fit, plus there’s been rumors of Bigfoot in the woods.”

Dorian snorted. “Of course that’s what they say.”

Gary shrugged. “Not that far fetched in comparison to the truth,” he said.

Dorian sighed. “Fair point.” He started rifling through his pockets for the cigarettes. “Sometimes I still can’t believe this is my life.”

“Yeah,” Gary said absent-mindedly. Then he noticed the cigarette pack in Dorian’s hand. “Hey, fuck off with that,” he grumbled. “No smoking in my car.”

Dorian rolled his eyes. “So sensitive.”

Gary glanced at him with a poisonous look. “Don’t you dare,” he growled.

“I can open the window.”

Gary puffed out an angry breath. “You won’t you-” He pawed at Dorian, trying to take away his cigarettes, when something collided with the car loudly, making Gary swerve and brake.

“Fuck!”

They stopped abruptly and jumped out of the car. There was a dark figure lying on the side of the road, whining loudly.

Gary glared at Dorian, who awkwardly stuffed his hands into his pockets. They tentatively approached the lump. Coming closer, it was visible that it was a sort of a wolf, only larger and as much as the moonlight permitted to see, with a different coat colouring.

It started snarling as they approached.

“I think we found our feral wolf,” Dorian said quietly and squatted down, facing the creature. Gary stayed a bit behind him, standing.

“We got you pretty hard, didn’t we?” Dorian asked quietly.

The wolf growled in response.

“I know, I know,” Dorian said soothingly. He got up and started taking off his jacket.

Gary groaned. “I’ll get the stuff from the car,” he said and left.

Once Dorian stripped off all his clothes he squatted down, tilting his face towards moonlight and began to change. His body grew, transforming into a lupine form, growing thick fur all over.

He slowly walked over to the hurt wolf, sniffing softly. The wolf whiled quietly, but let him close. Dorian carefully nuzzled the other one and gave the bloodied fur a few careful licks. Finally, he settled, laying down next to the hurt wolf.

Gary sighed. He had thick gloves on and a gun in his hands. “Dorian,” he said disapprovingly.

Dorian looked at him and just gave the wolf another gentle lick.

Cocking the gun, Gary took aim and fired.

With one last whine, the wounded wolf died.

Dorian slowly got up, nudging the wolf with his head, giving it a few small, affectionate licks, before leaving it, walking over to Gary.

“You know I don’t like shooting when you’re right there,” Gary said.

Dorian in between transformed back to human, panting slightly from the effort.

“He was so scared,” Dorian said. “And hurting.”

“We did hit him with a car,” Gary pointed out.

Dorian shook his head. “It was something from before,” he said. “We should take a look at the body before we get rid of it.”

“I’m not hauling a huge wolf back to the city for you to play a doctor,” Gary said. He went back to the car, putting the gun away. “Come help me get the covering, I don’t want blood all over my car.”

Dorian sighed and finished dressing up. Gary had a waterproof tarp in his trunk and they used it to protect the interior of the car before they dragged the cadaver into it. They had to put it on the backseats, the trunk of the car being too small to fit a grown werewolf.

After some more driving they found a muddy road through the forest. Gary parked in the undergrowth and they spent the better part of the night digging a large and deep enough hole.

Dorian wiped sweat off his forehead. “We deserve a bonus for all this,” he groaned.

Gary glared at him. “Like you’re doing that much,” he grumbled.

They were hauling the body out of the car now, Dorian desperately trying to carry an equal share, but he was mostly getting covered in blood seeping from the plastic while Gary was supporting most of its weight.

“Not all of us spend all the time in the gym,” Dorian bit back.

They finally hauled it to the grave and rolled out of the tarp, pushing it in.

“You put the tarp in, I’ll take care of this,” Gary said and started pushing the dirt onto the dead werewolf. Dorian nodded and started folding the plastic, trying not to get blood everywhere.

They were finished soon, getting back in the car. Dorian had the bloody tarp resting in his lap, clothes almost equally as dirty.

“You look like you showered in blood,” Gary said after a while. They were still driving through the forest.

“I kinda did,” Dorian replied.

“My car must look like shit.”

Dorian shrugged. “It’s just some mud.”

Gary huffed. “And blood too.”

“It’s just some bloody mud.”

---

The car was covered in more or less fresh mud, with a bump in the front that looked suspiciously bloody. Borna approached the driver’s window, squinting at the bright headlights.

“Good evening,” he said automatically.

“Do you guys have anything extra for mud?” the driver said.

Borna barely heard him, because in the passenger’s seat was an unmistakable figure.

Fucking hell, why Dorian covered in blood?!

Alarm must had been written on his face, because the driver laughed awkwardly. “We hit a wolf,” he explained. “Hauling one of those beasts off the road is a nasty business.”

Dorian met Borna’s eyes and quickly looked away.

“I see,” Borna said. “I could clean the dirt manually but it would take longer and cost more.” He tried not to stare at Dorian, who was very stubbornly pretending not to see him.

“Eh, I’ll just take the basic automated wash,” the driver said.

Borna nodded. “Okay.” He directed the car where to go, turning on the wash cycle. The overwhelming smell of the detergent finally overlaid the stench of blood, but Dorian’s blood-soaked image still danced in front of his eyes. Once the car was clean the driver paid, leaving a small tip and left. The entire time Dorian pointedly avoided Borna’s eyes.

Once they were gone from the station, Borna took his phone out, opening the text messages.

“what the fuck was all that??” he typed out, sending the message to Dorian. He leaned back on the wall, waiting for the response and staring at the clock.

[douxie-casperan]

I’ve been thinking a lot about timings, specifically Douxie in Arcadia in regards to just the Trollhunter’s series and generally what he was up to at the time. He was clearly in the area before we saw him in Season 3 though his day to day was shown more by comparison in 3Below and thus thanks to an initial ramble in the tags I decided to go ahead and figure things out that make most logical sense to me and could well be completely wrong. As you do.

Prior to the start of Trollhunters it is very unlikely there would have been too many problems as all factions were largely keeping to themselves and under the radar of the others. However after Kanjigar fell, Bular was a LOT more active in Arcadia because of hunting down Jim and in turn because of trying to stop the Killahead project Jim was most active within town it's self at weird hours. As a result this greatly increases the run in risk with Douxie’s own night time wanderings however regular they were for dealing with non-troll related beings that are likely being attracted by the native magic (Ley-line) of the place. The changelings could clear up the messes a certain troll left behind, sure, but somebody who knows enough about trolls would start putting two and two together that the dynamic had shifted somehow and not in a particularly good way.

The easiest way to solve this problem would Douxie happening to be out of the area at the time and quite handily in his first appearance Claire mentions a tidbit that could easily do just that: Ash Dispersal Pattern was the opening act for at least one Papa Skull concert (Highly likely the one she went to with Steve) and it'd make sense to be fronting for more than one and it would keep him safely out the area for a while. After Bular is killed, it is much easier to again hand wave Team Trollhunter and Douxie/the hedge-witches simply not running into one another when something was happening on the Surface given the locations various things tended to happen with a lot less environmental destruction compared to recent times.  

In the first episode of Season 3 we see the kids have been placing warded signs under the guise of supporting Ophelia's campaign to help ward off Gumm-Gumms and that’s a giant neon sign something is there you're trying to protect for anybody with any magical knowledge. It's unknown how long they have been doing this though given Claire and Jim are planting them in the neighbourhood it's likely they started branching out after experimenting with the original hiding spot for Trollmarket (If with a few hiccups given one troll managed to stumble over them anyway) pretty recently which gives ample time for the source to be spotted before the sudden increase.

It stands to reason that around this period is when Douxie would have likely picked up there was now a human teenager running around as the current Trollhunter which I have no doubt he did side eye a bit as uh what and that Trollmarket had an emergency exodus to the Surface even if not knowing the reasoning behind either. Word will be passed on but it's still troll politics at the end of the day, nothing to do with us but worth keeping tabs on.

A few days maximum prior too will be also when a new unknown witch in Arcadia was noticed (Something I touched on here) whom he could just have easily innocently passed in the street. With Zoe's help they would be able to slowly pin down a bit more information (Teenager, likely in High School so gotta check 'em all) until through using Battle of the Bands as a ruse find out that person is Claire. Jim’s attempts at dissuading her joining in (The so-called ”after school activities”) would have confirmed any suspicion that she was also part of Team Trollhunter too which would stand out given they tended to be more solitary in that job role. While he did use very archaic terms (To us), he was being exceedingly respectful of another unknown magic user as appearance is no judge for true age as he proves himself.

Douxie is not seen again until he's on waiter duty at Mr. Benoit's and it's likely thanks to Darci's presence they don't fudge any mention of Trollhunting duties and not give him any tip offs/confirmation that Toby is also involved. Claire's initial outburst would have been very ?? but if you've been in customer service long enough it's a bit on the worrying side sure but not an immediate red flag. That said given the complete change in demeanour afterwards with very wrong vibes being given off to boot that would have been a whole nother kettle of fish easily leading to stealth texted Zoe while back inside say a bit of a situation was developing with the new witch and how best to handle it. I actually had a rough mention of this scenario here.

The next time he would see them, in passing or otherwise, whatever the situation was has been resolved thanks to the help of Strickler meaning whatever plans they had to research more or help would have been rendered unneeded which is good or bad depending on how you look at it. This would also mean the other magic users of Arcadia remained completely in the dark that both Morgana is actively in play and that she was right there in front of Douxie without him even realising it.

~

Author note: Due to the weirdness of the in the UK aired version, I cannot accurately speculate on Douxie seeing 100% possessed Claire as there are two jump cuts. The first during the bathroom scene just after Morgana leaves the mirror then where it then suddenly jumps to showing a few seconds of "I feel like a whole new girl" then a second jump to everybody walking home. I think there was a "Silence, peasant" in there from gif sets I've seen but aside from that I genuinely have no idea! Tried to do my best with what I know for certain.

~

Then you get the Eternal Night and ho boy this is precisely why I’m writing about it in a one shot and have previously had a mention of the situation here as well. Given Douxie’s outburst at the start of Wizards it stands to reason that Merlin never contacted him and this poor guy in turn had absolutely no idea that he’d awoken nor was in Arcadia. This meant that he (And very likely Hex-Tech too) were completely caught out when it hit which would match up with his being completely without the bracelet leaving him to defend Mary and Darci with a freaking flying kick and belting a Gumm-Gumm with his guitar. Honestly it does show he's not defenceless without it but damn what an entrance. Plus the little slip up with calling the attacker twits, that wouldn’t have registered with the girls but had Claire or Toby still been there? Oh that’d have been very interesting as that is not a term you know without knowing outting him on the spot very much like how it did for us as viewers. Alas they were elsewhere, his secret remains intact.

It’s very possible during this entire mess he might have seen Morgana too, distantly perhaps but very there given her colour of magic and the golds are very distinctive, leading to one very awful blast from the past but right now your focus has to be on getting these kids and any other stragglers to safety because that is where you can help right now and not on the field. Head down, keep going and freak out about it later. Oh and whenever get a spare minute text Zoe to check both she and any of the Coven in the area currently are holding up okay and if they need backup.

At the very least none of them would have to pretend they don't know what trolls are anymore, handy given at least two plus the two changelings who stayed behind though the same hat syndrome between Strickler and Douxie would be an absolute goldmine about now if they hadn't manage to have a run in prior. I am a simple person, I find the concept hilarious.

Finally there is one other little issue needs resolving. After the arrival in flying Camelot, Douxie much like the others appears far more worried about seeing Jim inside a crystal and not about the fact he's no longer human. Steve? There’s every possibility he found out along with Eli at some point from Toby but in the wizard's case, he would never have been in that friend (Or even kinda) circle to get that bit of information nor does Merlin pull him aside to mention it either. That leads me to suspect he may have briefly glimpsed Jim during the battle and put two and two together much like Aja did that they are the same person. It’s highly unlikely he knew of the Eclipse armour existence given how secretive Merlin tends to be (Plus he was 19 at the time not to mention a bit of a disaster but we love him anyway) however there would be absolutely no mistakening that it is the Trollhunter in a new coat... and new bluer form. Follow that train of thought enough and it leads to the fact there is only one person alive that could have pulled that one off: The very same one who created the amulet in the first place.

Oops.