#i miss that job sometimes

[kroas-adtam]

I was a manager at Hot Topic about five years ago and one of my associates always wore a single white eye contact. I didn’t get it then, but thanks to Ghost, I absolutely get it now.

[sweaterkittensahoy]

Got reminded of when I worked at the comic shop way back when, so here's a story:

I was the only female employee at the shop. It wasn't on purpose given where I lived at the time and the time I was there, but it was, in general, considered an anomaly. There were people who were a bit shocked (or worse) to see a femme* behind the counter.

A few different stories that I recall with fondness:

The ladies who read comics including Tarot: Witch of the Black Rose and Witchblade and were CERTAIN I'd love them, too because they DID love them but had no female comic fans to talk to about them, so they'd recommend them with a deep intensity that I have never forgotten. I had zero interest. Mostly naked "empowered" female protags have never been my bag, but I always replied with something along the line of "I read a few issues, but not my bag. But I've talked to several women who love it," and that always made them happy. And the truth was, I HAD talked to several female regulars who loved it. I just didn't. (Although, shout-out to Tarot: WotBR for writing the greatest line of dialogue ever: "You have to get out of here! Your vagina is haunted!!")

The car salesman (hand to god) who LOVED Tony Stark and even had the special-cut goatee to prove it. Let me tell you, that fucker pulled it off like a champ. He also had his suits tailored and was just a very sweet, funny guy. Like, in the midst of the Civil War comics event, he and I had a sincere conversation about signing the accords (he was on Tony's side) versus not signing (I was on Cap's side), and in the end, we agreed that Mark Millar was not a great writer and that the event as a whole was a mess, but The Bendis one-shot where Tony talks to Steve's corpse is a fucking heartbreaker. He also picked up a couple of comics I recommended that he said, "I'm not sure it's my thing, but I like you," and they got added to his pull list the moment he finished the trades.

Every single woman who came in with a well-meaning boyfriend who loudly announced to me, "SHE AGREED TO TRY COMICS!"

Me: Cool. What are we starting with?

Guy: A MAJOR EVENT THAT ABSOLUTELY DOES NOT STAND UP ON ITS OWN WITHOUT READING A YEARS WORTH OF THREE DIFFERENT BOOKS.

Me: Oh, absolutely fucking not. Go to the back of the shop while I talk with her.

Guy: "...What? But she--"

Me: "Name me everything you need to read to understand EVENT."

Guy: HERE IS THE LIST.

Me: BACK OF THE SHOP.

He'd go to the back of the shop. I'd approach the friend/girlfriend/wife. "Hey, I'm Gayle. I'm sure he said it was an event you could pick up and understand, but he's blinded by his love for it. Tell me, what do you usually read? Sci-fi? Fantasy? Got a superhero you like from cartoons?"

She'd respond with details, and I'd narrow it down. "Oh, okay, so you're up for a group book and find the overall idea of the Green Lanterns interesting. This is "Recharge." It's the restart of the Green Lantern Corps as a whole. Very easy to jump in on, and if you have questions, you can ask that guy you know or check wikipedia."

"Oh, okay, you like fantasy and fairy tales. "Fables" is really popular for that. It's all the public domain fairy tales hiding in modern-day New York."

"Standalone stories you can just read as they are? Here's the original graphic novel section. They're all one and done. Or maybe two and done. The point is, they're very contained stories."

*I was using female pronouns and identifying as a woman at the time and as femme as I am now as an enby (femby)

[cupiidzbow]

we’re autism4autism have i ever mentioned that

[luck-of-the-drawings]

smth smth about 'the thing that the character did that you thought was rly rly funny in the moment is actually linked to a terrible trauma that lies within said character.' or wahtever.

[mildmayfoxe]

series of meals

[ablog]

Girl help I wish to travel to different dimensions just to watch a movie/show I really like a little to the left

[gideonisms]

Want to go somewhere and see different things than my apartment walls but if there is a sound or anyone looks at me I will die right there. And if I go outside today I step into a sauna. Also nearly everything besides restaurants closes at 8 despite the fact that the roads are hell 24 hours a day. You can see how this leaves me with limited options

[mimdecisive]

does anyone else find it kinda weird that SPOP just casually dropped in the fact that there’s a Prince who can see ANYWHERE in the world magically, aka the perfect spy, and Glimmer just… didn’t think of recruiting him?

Why wasn’t Peekablue already part of the Rebellion??? What is he using his powers for that’s soooo important? He could literally see all of the Horde’s plans and warn the Rebellion and give them a HUGE leg up on them, and he wasn’t even mentioned until S5.

I know he was a hermit almost never seen but are you telling me Glimmer wouldn’t even TRY to find him and convince him to join?That’s a mystery in itself; where IS Peekablue, and why does no one care? Is he literally missing? Because if he’s literally missing, maybe someone should help him.

[nowimhaunted]

me anytime I am in a bad mood: what if I moved back to Kansas City

[b4kuch1n]

“Abstracting the Wolf killed It,” murmured the Crow. “Do it to me, and it’ll only turn me red.”

[erabu-san]

petition for you to post that sketch that explained a sethoscara scenario when?????? 🤨?! (it's adorable! istg 😭

Like a comic ??

I already thought abt it but I NEED TO FINISH MY COMMISSIONS FIRST HUEHUEHHE I TAKE SO MUCH TIME ALREADY 😭😭 and my waiting list just keep growing OOF

[taxinealkaloids]

my take on the agnes/gertrude/elias situationship is that gertrude seems like the most normal one to outsiders (she's less prone to arson/creepy mind reading at inopportune moments), but she is still the archivist and therefore kind of eldritch. everyone in the institute has just sort of accepted that yes, the archivist does sleep with her eyes open/is muttering incantations, and it's the least weird thing she's done this week

ok the funny thing is, technically, if by "most normal" we're going off of who is the most human, Gertrude is the normal one. but I don't believe for a second that that's how she's perceived among the rest of the archive staff lmao. like...all her assistants wind up dead, she actively works to make sure her filing system is the least effective one possible, she takes random mysterious vacations and comes back looking like she's just gone ten rounds with a tornado...I absolutely think that Gertrude has the reputation of being the eccentric on staff. I've prepared this diagram to illustrate my point:

[tj-crochets]

Hey y'all! I have a question that (judging by how my mom reacted when I asked) is going to sound like a joke, but I am genuinely asking because I really don't know what's funny about it and I would like to So the other day at work a contractor called me, asked one question I could (and did) answer, and then spent 10 minutes complaining about his phone, insisting it was a problem on our company's end. The problem is his phone not dinging to alert him when he gets emails from us, and after I gently tried explaining a couple times that the issue is on his end, not mine, he just kept getting angrier and insisting that is was not on his end. I finally said "I'm sorry, I can't fix that. Is there anything else I can help you with?" He said, angrily "Well there's no need to be sassy about it" and hung up on me And like, I get that it's funny he hung up on me after calling me sassy of all things (far from the worst thing I've been called at work) but both my boss and my mom separately seem to think my response is funny??? I thought I was just being professional! Am I missing something?

[umemiyan]

yuuji sketch!!!!!!!!!

[kinley-cafe]

No reason in particular, but Buck is wondering when probie @evansboyfriend is going to pick up another shift.

[this-user-is-always-bored]

how do you guys think jade and june would change classpect-wise in kidswap. considering that this adds another 3 years to their non-SBURB life, i got to consider how the different circumstances and extra time would come to change their personalities (and along with that, their classes).

not to go into detail with the strilondes here because this is a harleybert-focused post, but to sum it up i made rose a rogue of light to reflect how she tried to imitate roxy in mom lalonde’s absence, while also displaying her own feelings of inadequacy when it comes to what she’s naturally proficient at, knowledge (light), due to err, apocalyptic circumstances. dave would be a page of time, to demonstrate how without bro, he wouldn’t have absorbed the kind of self sacrificial ruthlessness that a prince of heart would have, instead gaining more self loathing from the fact that dirk is a knight, and try as he might, dave feels as if he could never live up to what he thinks he should want to be. okay recap done with back to the prospits

i think another 3 years of isolation would have legitimately driven jade fucking crazy. we can see from the epilogues and hsbc how being essentially quarantined from the rest of humanity pregame, and then losing the first source of consistent social interaction she has for another 3 years during the retcon ship trip has made her incredibly desperate for any scrap of affection and/or human interaction that she thinks she can’t ever lose. even pregame we see that jade’s only been comforting herself to avoid her loneliness through the skaian prophecies of being able to meet her friends. that’s all she has. adding the fact that bec now can’t really stay with her 24/7 and another 3 years on to that pile and you can see how quickly it fucks over her mental health to the point where i’m pretty sure my kidswap jade is more close to hsbc jade than she is to og jade. funnily enough though i don’t think i’d change her from witch of space to anything. jade’s class being the witch is tied to her complete lack of autonomy in regards to something ruled over by her aspect (which is something she shares with her fellow witches, feferi and damara!), while also referring to how in a trade off for immense power (with witches being consistently in positions of power, either in class or raw potency of ability) she loses any agency she may have gained previously, and is pulled along by the strings of the narrative until it’s done with. (again, another thing she shares with feferi and damara). this isn’t to say the robbing of jade’s autonomy and agency in the narrative in exchange for power and/or the ability to create life is solely from the narrative implications of her classpect alone, but it does play a big part.

with june it’s quite similar, since even at the very first section of act 1 we see how hollow her ‘normal suburban life’ is, despite its normalcy. i think something to note is june’s melancholy about how empty everything seems to be despite things being like they should be is something that remains (despite being repressed and then touched upon and then repressed even harder this time) through hs, culminating in her depressive spiral in the epilogues— these seeds of dissatisfaction and restlessness appear in her since the very beginning, and i feel like they would eventually result in her being depressed nonetheless, with the game or not. another 3 years of mundane, supposedly acceptable suburban life would probably drive her to the same brink as original jade, just maybe the brink could be less tall. like, 50% less. or 30%, depends on how you interpret her depressive spirals in the epilogues. again, the thing is, i can’t really find it in myself to change her class either. this seems very fitting for an heir of breath, and i don’t think the extra years would cause anything to change for her class-wise; she’d probably hold on to that sense of detachment and apathy to not lose her mind at how hollow everything around her is.

and isn’t that harrowing? three whole years of extra time, a whole different set of circumstances and yet neither of them change very much fundamentally. sure, they may be a hell of a lot more desperate and introspective (questionable. is facing the endless hole of loneliness/emptiness within the world around you and yourself introspection?) now, but as who they truly are deep inside, nothing has truly shifted. the world changed, the people around them changed, and yet they still stay the same.