#working in a bookshop

[myrxellabaratheon]

I just has the weirdest interaction in my whole life!

As part of my university course I have to do an internship and for this reason I’ve been working for a couple of weeks in the bookshop and office of a small publisher specialized in art books in Florence. People come in asking for books which have nothing to do with what we sell, but that’s ok. It’s also close to an American school so many students mistranslate “libreria” (bookshop in Italian) and think it’s a library (it would be “biblioteca”), asking if they can study there, which actually we don’t mind and let them.

So… I’ve seen weird stuff. But now… enters this man with a bunch of people behind him (they all stayed outside) singing something in French— I don’t understand French that well and my Italian sense is already tingling because he’s an older man and I KNOW he won’t speak any of the languages I speak; for context, my French is close to no-existent… I can like order a salad and say I do not speak French, but I understand it, especially when it’s written.

So, as I prepare myself to mix Italian and Spanish in hope he will understand something, he looks at me and asks, with a strong accent, but in Italian: can you make photocopies?

I explain to him we do not offer this service, but I know a shop close to us that can, and I tell him how to reach it. As he’s listening, another man of his group walks in, singing the same tune in French, while outside there are like still 3/4 people. The first man repeats what I said to him in French (and singing) to the newcomer, then turns to look at me and says: we’ve already passed that street, that place is gone for us! It was worth to come in just to have this pleasant conversation with you. Have a nice day.

And then the both of them left STILL SINGING! I’ve been as polite and nice with them as I had to, they didn’t do anything and were nice for the average kind of people who walk in daily (I’ve been insulted cause we don’t sell popular narrative!!) but it weirded me out A LOT

[musubiki]

more timeskip mochi outfits and doodles 🐈‍⬛

[sunderwight]

Thinking about the weird camaraderie that exists between demons but not angels in GO.

Have we ever seen two angels who are actually friends? Or even friendly to one another? We have met angels with a capacity to be friendly in general, but I think the closest we've come to two angels actually getting along would be Gabriel making a point to laugh at Sandalphon's terrible "can't have a war without War" line in S1.

Most scenes between the angels actually seem to have an undercurrent of absolute hostility. Teeth-clenched teamwork. No wonder it took them so long to notice that Aziraphale wasn't on the same page as the rest of them! The rest of them are barely on the same page as one another, either! When Gabriel goes against the majority vote, no one bats an eye at demoting him and wiping his memory. Michael and Uriel immediately begin vying for his job. The only times we've seen angels team up is when they're working together to bully someone else, like when they're trying to intimidate Aziraphale in S1 or going to the aftermath of the bookshop raid in S2.

Saraqael's overall neutrality towards Muriel is the closest we get to two angels in Heaven getting along, and it's more a lack of hostility than any kind of friendliness. At least until Gabriel loses his memories and Muriel shows up to spy on Aziraphale, and Aziraphale decides to be kind to both of them.

Demons, on the other hand, actually seem to form alliances and even friendships among one another. Hastur and Ligur are awful, but Hastur seems genuinely distraught over Ligur's death, not just fearful of suffering the same fate. Shax and Furfur conspire together and even though the 1940's investigation into Crowley's fraternizing doesn't work out for Furfur, it's not due to any double-crossing on Shax's part. Unlike the angels, who stick almost exclusively to making threats until the Metatron decides to try dangling a carrot at the end of the season, demons actually offer rewards to other demons when trying to work together. Beelzebub offers Crowley a promotion if he can bring them Gabriel, Furfur offers to back Shax up politically if she goes for the Duke position opening, and Crowley successfully stalls Hastur in S1 by pretending everything was a test and he's going to be put in charge of a legion as a reward for passing. They're still not great at socializing, but they're significantly ahead of the angels.

Of course, it's a fact that demons are awful to one another (Eric's treatment is really bad, they throw that random demon into holy water just to test it, "it'd be a funny world if demons went around trusting one another", etc) but they still seem more capable of forming friendships than the angels do.

I think that's because Hell cramps and crowds everyone together to try and increase their suffering and hostility, whereas Heaven isolates angels to decrease the odds of questioning or rebellion. Hell's methods are unpleasant, but it still ends up putting demons together, and some of those demons inevitably forge alliances and make friendships. Because as Crowley and Beelzebub demonstrate, demons are still social creatures with the capacity for love and affection, even if it's strongly discouraged and buried under nine million layers of trauma and a cultural mandate against kindness.

Angels are the same, but isolation makes is harder to form connections than overcrowding. Muriel and Jimbriel are both so eager to make friends, but Muriel's spent the past millennia shut in an empty office, and Gabriel has been distanced from his peers both through his position and also through Heaven's culture of fear and surveillance. He only breaks away from it when he finds something that's stronger than "choosing sides" (stronger than the fear of being rejected by Heaven and Falling, in fact strong enough that Falling seems worth it if he gets to be with someone he loves). Both Muriel and Gabriel are only able to start forming connections when they're away from Heaven.

I just think it's interesting that demons, despite being supposedly devoid of love, have an advantage in forming relationships compared to angels. Angels are supposed to love, but have far fewer opportunities to actually do so. Demons aren't supposed to love, but they make connections anyway.

[youryurigoddess]

“I'm afraid we're quite definitely closed.”

Milo or @forsssnaken, pictured here as the new Assistant Bookseller at the A. Z. Fell and Co. bookshop, was going to celebrate his 18th birthday today with no expectations of anything special, but miracles do happen. If you want to make his day even better, visit his AO3 profile (ForSnaken) and read some of his works!

[albatris]

I was not built for work I was built for drinking 1.5L of iced tea and watching the x files

[haridraws]

Cool news: I have persuaded my publisher to do bookmarks.

The first few pre-orders from this nice queer bookshop get one free!!

Out NEXT WEEK (in the uk). You can also see a juicy promotional panel reveal here, if you're willing to brave instagram for a moment

[introspectivememories]

cannot stop thinking about loguetown shuggy and im not talking post-execution shuggy. loguetown shuggy as in the two-year gap between reaching raftel and roger's execution. like that was it!!! that was the universe giving their chance to be together!!! to get it right!!!! except they were what? 14? 15? so of course they got it wrong!!!! of course they fucked it up, and now they've spent decades apart and buggy's got a good thing going with crocodile and mihawk and shanks is finally ready to claim the one piece or whatever and the last time they properly talked was at their captain's son's execution. funny how the only thing that seems to bring them together is death

[nuclearanomaly]

Oh, bookstore girl I wonder what your name is

[batwingsandblackcats]

I’ve recently started working at an indie bookstore and I have to be so real I can’t fucking wait to start writing bookshop au during my bookshop shifts

[lulululovegood]

It pains me that the Marauders never got a chance to have proper careers, like they're all nepo babies but I like to think they would've done something with their lives if things were different so I'm assigning them careers

Lily - I can see her in some kind of civil service job. Maybe like a bookkeeper for the ministry or something to do with the postal service.

James and Sirius - Auras. I can't really see them as anything else, if these two didn't have active careers I think they might combust.

Peter - He'd probably be a civil servant too but he wouldn't have as good a job as Lily because um. I don't like him.

Remus - I think he'd still be a teacher at Hogwarts, he'd probably get a permanent position as defence against the dark arts teacher. He'd also anonymously publish a series of books about werewolves which become popular and are instrumental in destigmatizing lycanthropy in the wizarding world.

Snape - Still potions professor vying for the defence against the dark arts job. Dumbledore would have no reason to keep him away from the DADA post I just think it wold be really fucking funny if he still couldn't get it.

[moonwoodhollow]

WIP - Exerzierplatz 1:

This place includes the bookshop I shared yesterday, a delicatessen/corner store, whose post is in my drafts and a small café in the early stages. Also included are 4 apartments that currently have a somewhat awkward layout. I will keep them completely unfurnished and only focus on getting the café ready in a somewhat reasonable time.

[sentientsky]

When she first Fell, the sky had been all embers, all vicious touch. They’d felt nothing but the bite of flames and gore and the sulphuric acid of a mother’s love turned corrosive. Crowley had burned—heavenly bone, muscle, flesh, the chemical antiseptic of the ether stripping away to bare nerve tissue.

In the eternities since, they’d held their breath, kept herself small. They’d learned to amputate the desire that settled in the tips of her fingertips and in the scarlet ends of their hair. She—alone, ever alone—had dragged herself from the brimstone and out of the bonfire. She’d taught herself to exist in the jaws of an unmuzzled universe, under stars that no longer called their name. Now the sky is blue, and the bookshop burns. The bookshop burns and Crowley’s heart is in her throat, eating its way out of their body. The bookshop burns and yet their angel must be fine. (He has to be fine because the world still spins on its axis and the sea hasn’t swallowed her whole. And if breath still lives in her body, and the universe has yet to collapse in on itself, then their angel has to be fine). But something coils deep in her belly: an oil-slick, a poisonous berry. They bite their lip a brackish silver, the taste of ichor rotten in her mouth.

As though in a trance, she presses forward, and the frantic thrash of panic in her chest forces the double doors wide without so much as a thought. The interior of the shop is all orange-red teeth and flaming claws, tearing into bookshelves and loveseats and oh. Oh, the two of them had just been sitting there not three days ago. (Crowley had tried so hard to stay on her side of the room, to keep her fingertips from brushing the edge of Aziraphale’s as they passed silver-stemmed goblets between them. Skin to skin, breath to body—the indirect touch of their mouths. The passive desperation of six thousand years of want left fermenting under their skin).  

They call for him, heat searing her lungs. It comes out ragged and desperate and too late (always too late). 

Heat knifes clean through her now—a gutting sensation, a disembowelment in the middle of an already-burning funeral pyre. For as long as they had been on Earth together, she’d always been able to sense their angel from anywhere in the world—a steady, beating heart of a presence. An inevitable gravity that wrapped itself around her arms and tugged her forward. It had been axiomatic, a fundamental truth of how the universe functioned: a hand extended always finds purchase. A heart in motion remains in motion. 

So, in a room choked with smoke and two hundred years of memories, she reaches out, expanding the edges of her consciousness, pressing her mind into the outer reaches of the bookshop and Soho and the whole, cluttered universe. She searches for a pulse. And then something within her is breaking. Something is shaking apart in the depths of Crowley’s being—a star turned supernova turned withering, all-consuming black hole. No heartbeat, no flickering warmth, no pull in the periphery of her awareness. The corpse of gravity turns to dust in the corner of the room. 

And she knows—knows with the unflinching inevitability of too many questions, of an ink-winged angel falling from grace—that Aziraphale is gone. Outside, the sky remains blue. The world stays upright. And the bookshop still burns.

(thank u to the incredibly talented @actual-changeling for helping me fix the first part of the fourth paragraph)

[ashfae]

So, uh. I got to do a thing last weekend.

Yes, that's the set in Bathgate. I was one of 75 people who won a contest to go visit. We had an amazing afternoon getting shown around. The level of detail was beyond even my wildest dreams. We had drinks inside Give Me Coffee Or Give Me Death and got to sit inside the Dirty Donkey pub to be shown episode 2.1. I very very much want to babble about all of it but have been threatened with Extreme Sanctions and am restraining myself until after Friday at least.

...but after that I am going to babble so much about that record shop in particular because it's FANTASTIC. Not even in spoilery ways, just in "Ohhhh they had so much fun making this and I love it" ways.

The Amazon Prime and Good Omens crew who were there that day were absolutely amazing, they took incredible care of us and had so much enthusiasm for the show. We met up with the set designer Michael (edit: had his last name wrong) (in the bookshop! I've been in the bookshop!!!), costume designer Kate Carin, lead decorator Bronwyn Franklin, the head of the graphics design whose name I can't remember for certain which kills me because talking to them was the highlight of the day and I want to sing their praises (Edit: Mickey!), and several of the producers, as well as numerous unnamed generally helpful awesome people who were there to keep us from licking the books (sigh). If any of them spot this from @goodomensonprime: thank you!!

And yes, for those of you who've been following stories of my 8yo the comic-drawing fellow GO addict, she's never going to forgive me for doing this without her. Sorry, sweetheart, but it was 18+. (I'm getting her one of the t-shirts to make up for it)

[brazilian-whalien52]

You must love that for a show about learning how to work with your disabilities we actually hardly see Day doing that. I mean, they just show him miserable being blind, working the first steps towards accepting it and BAM time skip now he graduated and has a bookshop BAM not blind anymore

It's like the show itself can't see him being mature and functional while being blind

[dk-thrive]

"I had thought of work as stairs. Stairs to climb to reach the top. Now, I see work as food. Food that you need every day. Food that makes a difference to my body, my heart, my mental health, and my soul. There is food you just shove down your throat, and food that you eat with care and sincerity. I want to be one who takes great care in eating simple food. Not for anyone, but for myself."

— Hwang Bo-reum, from Welcome to the Hyunam-dong Bookshop in a book review by Apoorva Tadepalli in "What Comes After Workism?" (The Atlantic, March 18, 2024)

[icewindandboringhorror]

"We can get through this by working together, reach out to your friends, community is all we have, a social network will be your security in the world, now is the time to lean on others!"

I do agree, and it's scientifically sound (pretty sure there is data about how people with better social networks live longer and etc) but also....augh..... what about the severe social issues, difficulty to leave the house, physical issues which lead to like zero socialization energy a majority of the time, etc. etc. Social support can be a replacement for structural support, but.. I guess I just wish it didn't have to be. Community is extremely difficult to build, even moreso if you're someone who has issues with social cues or group conversations or even just being around others in the first place. And blah, nuance, of course I'm just complaining or maybe being too negative or maybe misunderstanding, but, I hardly have the energy to brush my hair once every 2 months.. how am I supposed to maintain a wide social network and be active in a Community and Join Groups lol... sometimes it kind of feels like "er.. well if thats my only option then...... ruh roh". It's overwhelming