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I saw a sign at a nearby village advertising a "veillée", a storytelling evening, which sounded intriguing, so I went out of curiosity—it turned out to be an old lady who had arranged a circle of chairs in her garden and prepared drinks, and who wanted to tell folk tales and stories from her youth. Apparently she was telling someone at the market the other day that she missed the ritual of the "veillée" from pre-television days, when people would gather in the evening and tell stories, and the people she was talking to were like, well let's do a veillée! And then she put up the sign.

About 15 people came, and she sat down and started telling us stories—I loved the way she made everything sound like it had happened just yesterday and she was there, even tales she'd got from her grandmother, and the way she continually assumed we knew all the people she mentioned, and everyone spontaneously played along; she'd be like "And Martin, the bonesetter—you know Martin," (everyone nods—of course, Martin) "We never liked him much" and everyone nodded harder, our collective distaste for Martin now a shared cultural heritage of our tiny microcosm. She started with telling us the story of the communal bread oven in the village. The original oven was destroyed during the Revolution; people used to pay to use the local aristocrat's oven, but of course around 1789 both the aristocrat and his oven were disposed of in a glorious blaze of liberty, equality, and complete lack of foresight.

Then the villagers felt really daft for having destroyed a perfectly serviceable oven that they could have now started using for free. "But you know what things were like during the revolution." (Everyone nodded sagely—who among us hasn't demolished our one and only source of bread-baking equipment in a fit of revolutionary zeal?)

The village didn't have a bread oven for decades, people travelled to another village to make bread; and then in the 19th century the village council finally voted to build a new oven. It was a communal endeavour, everyone pitched in with some stones or tools or labour, and the oven was built—but it collapsed immediately after the construction was finished. Consternation. Not to be deterred, people re-built the oven, with even more effort and care—and the second one also collapsed.

People realised that something was amiss, and the village council convened. After a lot of serious discussion, during which no one so much as mentioned the possibility of a structural flaw, people reached the only logical conclusion: the drac had sabotaged their oven. Twice. (The drac, in these parts, is the son of the devil.) The logic here, I suppose, was that no one but the devil's own child would dare to stand between French people and their bread.

The next step was even more obvious: they passed around a hat to raise money, assuming the devil’s son was after a cash donation. But (and I'm skipping a few twists and turns of the story here) the son of the devil did not want money, he wanted half of every batch of bread, for as long as the village oven stood. Consternation.

People simply could not afford to give away half of their bread, and were about to abandon the idea of having their own oven altogether—but then Saint Peter came to the rescue. (In case you didn't know, Saint Peter happens to regularly visit this one tiny village in the French countryside to check that its inhabitants are doing okay and are not encountering oven issues.) Saint Peter reminded them of one precious piece of information they had overlooked: holy water burns the devil.

People re-built the oven, for the third time. The son of the devil returned, to destroy it and/or claim his half of the first batch—but on that day, the villagers had organised a grand communal spring cleaning, dousing every street and alley in the village with copious amounts of holy water. The poor drac simply could not access the oven; every possible path scorched his feet for reasons he couldn't quite explain. So he was standing there, smouldering gently and wondering what was going on, when some passing tramp seemed to take pity on him, pointed at his satchel and told him to turn himself into a rat and jump in there, and the tramp would carry him where he wished to go. The devil's son, probably a bit frazzled at this point, agreed without much thought, became a rat and jumped in the satchel, and of course that's the point when everyone in the village sprang from the shadows, wielding sticks, shovels, pans, and started beating the devil's son senseless. (Old lady, calmly: "You could hear his bones crack.") So the son of Satan slithered back to Hell and never returned to destroy the village oven again—and the spring cleaning tradition endured; the streets were washed with holy water once a year after that, both to commemorate this glorious day of civic resistance when the village absolutely bodied the devil's offspring and to maintain basic oven safety standards. (Old lady: "But we don't bother anymore… That's too bad.")

She told us five stories, most of them artfully blending actual local events or anecdotes from her youth with folk tale elements, it was so delightful. She thanked us for coming and said she'd love to do this again sometime. I went home reflecting that listening to an old lady happily tell stories of dubious historical veracity involving the Revolution, property damage, demonic mischief and baffling municipal decision-making is literally my ideal Saturday night activity.

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Zimbits + florals Drawing credit @queenofthecute

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getting ready for a wild saturday night of tumblr scrolling

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Turns out after discovering fanfiction I still must participate in society. Devastating news.

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You have Joe and Nicky.

Because Quynh needs a hug, and the first movie already established that they are the best at hugging.

(And I had to compensate somehow for not getting my emotional satisfaction of seeing their reunion, or at least a moment between them, a moment dedicated to their deep and close relationship…)

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Are you single?

do these look like the posting habits of someone experiencing romance

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the rundown job aka the episode that just kept on giving

other art

clean version

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Ask game: Bitty and 37

From the head canon prompt list.

37. Vengeance

Bitty doesn't have a vengeful bone in his body. He likes to think of himself as kind, compassionate, a real delight. Oh sure, he can be a little salty when the situation warrants it (especially when he has a couple of margaritas in him), but he's never hated anybody enough to wish ill upon them.

Until pretty, perfect Britt Hewson sashays into Maple Community School from who-knows-where (okay, fine, it's San Diego) and joins the annual school auction committee. Bitty paid his dues taking on less desirable tasks like volunteer coordinator and procurement chair before the committee trusted him enough to turn the social media accounts over to him. A job he excelled in until Annie Hoffman's youngest graduated three years ago and he took over her role as auction chair. Now this woman shows up with her perfect twins and handsome sports anchor husband (though not, Bitty notes, as handsome as his own husband) and expects to be given a primo assignment as chair of the dessert auction committee? Before she's even paid her dues as volunteer coordinator? Oh, honey. That's just not how things are done around here.

"Maybe try playing nice?" Jack gently suggests when Bitty complains about her suggestion that they replace the live dessert auction with a silent auction.

And fine, Jack has a point. Not just because Bitty's planning to run for PTA president next year but because Britt's husband, the sports anchor, keeps harping on Jack like it's his full-time job. During last night's post-game wrap-up he accused Jack of dragging the team down with him, and almost gleefully suggested the Falconers would be better served by taking Jack off the starting line. Jack's usually good at ignoring all the extraneous noise, but he has been in a bit of a scoring slump in the run-up to the playoffs and Bitty can tell it's getting to him. Bad Bob is already fighting back in the comments section of Anchor Husband's Instagram posts, which is very on-brand for Bob but probably not helping Jack's cause. It's probably best if Bitty doesn't do anything that might add fuel to the fire.

So Bitty grumbles about it, but he put Britt's suggestion to a vote at the next auction committee meeting and is smug when everybody agrees it should remain a live auction.

Which ends up biting Bitty in the ass when Britt's mile-high triple chocolate cake ends up going for a record amount. Everybody sees Rob Duncan and Simone Lee attempt to bankrupt each other over that cake. As the previous record holder with his highly-sought-after blackberry lavender pie (which only brings in a paltry $135, the lowest any of Bitty's desserts has ever gone for), Bitty cannot let this stand.

Britt Hewson is going down.

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Don’t let maga see this

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bucktommy hiatus event @bucktommysource ↪ week 2: quotes(s) ♡

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It me.