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[hazellum]

whenever i'm trying to talk myself out of buying something i don't need i always hear my old russian professor's voice echoing in my head: "WHAT??? WILL YOU DIE THE RICHEST MAN IN THE GRAVEYARD?" and then i make an unwise financial decision

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What's the trope name for when someone finds out they're the Chosen One(tm) and is like "No, thank you" and goes and does something else

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The default length of pasta is designed to fit on a supermarket shelf, not to be the best length for cooking/eating.

Feel free to break it to any length you want (don't let the Italians know I said this)

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One of the things I’ve noticed working in a bookstore is that a surprising number of people are completely unfamiliar with the normal way books are organized.

(I mean, in the part of the store where we keep the used books, I frequently have to assure people that the books are organized at all, but that’s because we have way more books than we have shelf space and there’s no way to handle that without it looking a bit of a mess.)

On one hand, we get customers who are apparently a completely blank slate in this area. I frequently have to walk people through, like, “Okay, it’s organized by subject / genre, then by author. Oh, ‘by author’ means in alphabetical order by the name of the author. No, their last name.” (Most of the people I give this talk to are, I think, college kids — it’s a bit strange to me that you can reach that age without knowing how bookstores work, but then again, I can kind of see how these days it’s possible to mostly get your books online where you just use a search function.)

One customer responded to the above explanation with “oh, it’s the Dewey Decimal System!” and I had to be like… no. Similar in broad concept, yes, but the Dewey Decimal System is a very specific thing (involving… decimals) and it’s really only used in libraries, not bookstores, because it kind of requires you to label the spines of your books, which bookstores generally don’t like to do for obvious reasons.

On the other hand, we also get customers with pre-existing incorrect assumptions, which are so often similar that I think they’re being imported from other media (though I’m not sure what).

People seem to expect the organization of Fiction to be much more granular — e.g., “where’s historical fiction?” “oh, that’s just in with general fiction.” I think some of that comes from movies (people ask where the “rom-com” section is, and that’s definitely a movie thing), but I’m not sure that’s always the reason.

(Admittedly the fiction organization is a bit more granular in the Used Books area than it is in the New Books, but that’s because there are certain genres that we get tons of from people selling us their old books, but we don’t buy enough of on purpose to justify giving them their own section in New Books.)

At the same time, people have the opposite assumption about Non-Fiction — i.e., they expect there to be one singular section labeled “Non-Fiction”, which is not the case. I’ve had multiple conversations that go like:

Customer: Where can I find non-fiction books?

Me: You’ll have to be more specific.

Customer: You know, non-fiction.

Me: [gesturing at the signs hanging from the ceiling that say things like “science”, “philosophy”, “art”, “history”, etc.] All of these are non-fiction in their own special way.

I try to be nice about it, but I don’t think I always succeed, just because I’m so often legitimately surprised and confused when someone just doesn’t know How Do You Books. I’m getting used to it now, but I’ve been working there for almost five years, so there’s been quite a long adjustment period in between.

Anyway. Just some observations.

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A Vulcan named Stork works at the Terran adoption agency. Parents always request that he be the one to deliver their child to them.

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Dracula vs Carmilla

The writing in Dracula:

"Day 1 of the Castle, the Count is a strange but friendly man, I think my employment here shall be fine and nothing will go wrong. Gosh I really love my fiance, Mina."

"Day 4 of the Castle, he's climbing down the fucking wall again. Gosh I really love my fiance, Mina."

"Day 6 of the Castle, he just fed a baby to his sexy roommates and I am thinking of jumping out the window."

The writing in Carmilla:

"Carmilla did something strange and inexplicable, and I was suspicious, but then she said she loved me, rubbed herself all over me, and sobbed into my hair. I was confused and not at all horny and forgot entirely about the other thing. Also, the General stopped by and told us this long, waffly story about a masquerade ball. Let me reprint it word for word here..."

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Goth girls love trains

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Combining my two biggest fixations atm <3

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Reblogging would be a great help, but don’t feel pressured to

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Being as Dracula Daily is starting up again in about three days, I think this is a perfect opportunity, as we follow along this year, to play the PG-13 game.

For the unfamiliar, the PG-13 game is as follows: you are allowed to insert one and only one instance of the word "fuck" into the text as written. For maximum impact, where do you put it?

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Mortal Astarion X F! Human Tav. Ummm, angst.👀

For decades, this manor offered him a place to call home in the truest sense. 

The hallway was a sacred gallery, adorned with paintings that were not mere canvases, but tangible echoes of their life together. Each brushstroke, lovingly rendered by her hand, captured the essence of cherished memories.

Whenever he opened the door at the end of the hallway, he was greeted by the radiant smile of his beloved, and the hearth beckoned him to surrender to its comforting embrace. Yet, it was the vast window next to it that held the greatest significance. The tender caress of sunlight danced across his skin as he lost himself in the pages of a book beside her. It was here, bathed in the golden rays, that he could truly revel in the miracle she had bestowed upon him – the cure to his vampiric curse, a gift of life, a reminder of the depths of her love and the power it held to transcend even the most insurmountable of boundaries.

Here at home, he had found everything his heart desired.

But nothing is ever truly perfect. Life simply doesn't work that way.  Even the mightiest of fortresses cannot withstand the relentless march of time.

He thought he was ready for it, but not like this.

Never like this.

_________

The poem cited is "When You Are Old" BY W.B. Yeats. One of my favorites.❤️

Alright, thanks for reading the second installment of my "this did not really happen to my couple". After delving into the mortality of my Tav, Amaara, I found myself confronting a fear more profound than death itself – the fear of morbidity, of life's vibrancy fading before its inevitable end. So I decided to yank my CP around this theme. Self-indulgence at its finest.😊

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a party of very mature adults

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he taste like shit. 🩸

Fix-it AU

one comment made me think what would happen if Astarion brought my Durge to Cazaldor before the main story.

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this is how it felt looking thru the forcemasc tag

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