The Variegated Nasturtiums I planted are blooming!
( Picture! )

I know this is a tiny, pitiful little thing, but I see it constantly in Castiel/Dean fanfiction, and unless someone can actually provide me with a decent explanation for this phenomenon, it doesn't make sense.

"Castiel's hand fit perfectly in the handprint scar on Dean's shoulder."

When Castiel left that handprint, he was in full angel form. The handprint would match the hand of his angel form. When you see Castiel in the show, he is possessing the body of Jimmy Novak. Unless someone can offer a reasonable explanation as to why Jimmy's hand would match Castiel's handprint, it doesn't really make a whole lot of sense.

/pet peeve

So you want to do a songfic. And maybe you're not taking it too seriously and it's about topic A that is really hot in the fandom right now and so you just pick it and run with it.

Fine, okay, whatever.

But I can tell you for certain that if someone has been dead for 4.5-5 years when the song comes out, then that same deceased person's spouse is not going to have happy shiny memories of that song being associated with his lovely marriage and pass on a love for that song to his children.

Especially if the person in question is John Winchester and the band in question is R.E.M.

Even if the living spouse in question was not John Winchester... your extremely witty use of this song cannot be justified with the idea that it's his wife's super special amazing song. Really. She's been dead a while. Like years.

What. The. Fuck.

I just... That was in the first like 3 sentences of this thing, and I scrolled down with my eyes like O.o to see people being like "Awwwwwww!" "Schmoooooop!" "OMG so cuuuute!"

So I, being the person I am, and unable to join in the chorus of glee, copy and pasted from Wikipedia and got out of dodge.

TL:DR: Dates are good for you. You may really like this song, and like the sentiment, and it may be from your troubled youth! Go ahead and put it on a fanmix! Don't try to shoehorn it into canon!

Or. You know. You can. Free Interweb and all that. But. Wow. Fail.

ETA: Edited lightly for clarification of the who's who. Ah, insomnia...

I'm reading this really great story. Really. But I'm not sure why I was just warned for 'tension'. I mean, the other chapters were filled torture and murder. If I've gotten past that, I think I'll do just fine with tension.

"wonderful deux es machinas"

Look, author, I really like your story.
But if you want to go all fancypants and use technical terms, at least make sure you actually know them. Because what you wrote up there is gibberish, and even if you just mixed up the s and the x, "ex machinas" is incorrect in both Latin and Greek. 
Thanks.

I'm a first time poster so if my format/points/gripes go against the comm's rules, please let me know and feel free to delete this post.

Gripe 1
Minor/Side characters deserve love too! Sure, they may have been in only a few episodes of the show but some of them are pretty damn interesting personality-wise, backstory-wise, or hell even appearance-wise. Considering the side characters are one of the most easily open-to-interpretation types, a variety of plot-bunnies could be born if they were just given a chance!

Gripe 2
I love me some shipfic, that's the main reason I go to the Pit but I swear I wish I could find shipfics involving the side characters for a change. Heck, even shipfics involving the minor "villains" are a refreshing welcome to the usual protagonist/main character ships.

Gripe 3
This may be a YMMV thing but writing AU and crack!ship fics does not mean you can just throw out suspension of disbelief out the window.

Gripe 4
To the Ben 10 fandom: I can't be the only MyTrax writer, am I?

Soooo lemme get this straight.

You attack people for telling you you can't play your character right, run off to make your own RP, steal everything from the first one, then continue to play your character like an OC with a canon character's skin?

God made you "special" alright.

Thank goodness snowflakes eventually melt because you're long overdo.

[63] KHReborn icons



here @ my lj

Fandom: Babylon 5
Pairing: Jhon/Delenn
here

I like grocery shopping at 1am. It's quiet and there's hardly anyone around so I stopped by the store for a few things. BBQ sauce, check. Oatmeal, check. Marmalade, check. On my way to the register I passed through the Deli area and noticed a 20-something woman. She was standing next to the olive bar. On the bar she had 10 olives sitting in the bottom of a giant container (no lid) and one large bag of potato chips (opened.) She was holding a glass jar of nacho cheese sauce (unopened.) She saw me and offered the jar out to me, her eyes black and glazed over like a dounut (Henceforth, she shall be known as GOLD.)

GOLD: "Excuse me, miss?"
ME: "Yes?"
GOLD: "Can you help me? Can you help me open this jar?"
ME: "Um, have you paid for that?"
GOLD: "No... but I'm gonna!" :D :D
ME: "... I don't think I should."
GOLD: "Oh. ... Well, I guess you shouldn't then."

I walked away and told a couple of the stockboys what she was up to. They didn't say anything to each other. They were stoic. But their eyes met and one jerked his head in a "let's go" motion. They went to check it out, and I went to check out. I don't know what happened after that.

The Doctor is no more a normal Time Lord than he is a normal human. The Time Lords weren't . . . how do I put this . . . well, they weren't adventurous. Meddling in the affairs of other species was illegal. I think you should bear this in mind when you make a Time Lord OC. I'm not saying she can't be adventurous, but it's not the norm.

By which I mean to say, travelling time and space and keeping them in check isn't what all Time Lords must do. It's what the Doctor does, it's what the Master does, it's what the Meddling Monk does, but, and let's face it, those are weird people by anyone's standards.

Also, I'm pretty sure Romana couldn't possibly have gone to the Academy with the Doctor.



You cannot possibly tell that someone is American just by looking at them. I mean, maybe you can have a guess, but unless they're, I don't know, wearing American military uniform (which this character was not), you can't properly tell. Especially since your character's description is the sort of appearance I associate with Europeans, although that's probably just because of where I live.

Well, this was a fun night at the gas station. It's 11:45pm and I have three customers in line. A guy comes in, heads to the beer. grabs an 18 pack of Miller Lite cans, and heads toward the front. Then he veers off, toward the door. My coworker, saw him and yelled, and he then hoofed it out. She ran out, and I followed (sorry, people at my till, trying to catch the thief :/ ).

Now, these brilliant thieves parked their van right by the door. While the thief was chucking the beer in and hopping into the van, me and my coworker follow him out to the back of the van- hello license plate!

I run back in and write it down, say sorry to my customers who are all WTFing over the guy stealing beer. We call the cops, give them the plate and description, and get on with closing down.

Now what makes this awesome- these two guys had been to ANOTHER gas station earlier and stole from them, but hadn't been home when the cops went by. This time, they went straight home, and the cops were actually waiting at their freaking door for them.

One of the cops comes up to the store for our statement, etc, and wanting a video. So, we have a police officer in the store while another is dealing with the dickhead who stole from us. The description from our store and the one previous matches, the plate matches, and they find the remains on the Miller Lite in the guy's car/house. The guy also has warrants out for him. The last I heard before I left was he was going to get booked and taken to jail, and our store will prosecute him for theft.

Thieves suck, but at least this one is going to pay for his shit instead of getting away with it.

Dear Writer,

I don't care how badly you want to write this plot in this fandom because there is no way, really no earthly way, that Hawkeye's long-lost fifteen year old daughter is going to be sent to a frontline M*A*S*H unit at the height of the Korean War so she can spend the summer bonding with her father.

This is so stupid for so many reasons that it makes my teeth itch.

And then you turn a character as complex and fabulous as Hawkeye Pierce into someone who only exists in order to spank your Mary-Sue, I mean his teenaged daughter, repeatedly with his hands and/or a belt and then cry, hug her and tell her how much he loves her.

Please make it stop.

So I'm on FF.net, I'm replying and answering questions to some reviews on the fic I'm posting, and I see at the top of the page "Inbox, 1 new" I never noticed before, so I check it out.

It's this reply to a review I left telling a fanbrat that badly done transcripts of Torchwood episodes don't belong on FF.net:

A response to your review at http://www.fanfiction.net/r/4680676/

jerk! cool off it, ok?
it was good
no one calls my bestie lazy
cause shes more flipping
awesome then you'll ever

be!!!!

you cant take the heat!


So I go to message her back...and the loser has PMs turned off. So I'm going to rant about it here instead.

Yes. Yes I AM better then your friend. I write FANFIC! Actual fanfic, with plots, and dialog, and snark, and banter and emotions and I put months or even years of work into it. I don't just post a half assed, badly done transcript of a episode. And can't take the heat? Bitch please! At least I'm not a pussy who's turned off PMs so they people you've ranted at can't reply! If YOU can't take the heat, then don't flame people for rather nicely telling someone to take their transcript to livejournal or something.

backstory: sales associate (salesbetch) at a popular clothing chain with talking mannequins. creepy, creepy talking, singing, credit card peddling manneqins.

yes, I just posted, but today was a fun day at work. so fun. have some letters.

( I: babies are a dime a dozen anyway, right? )

( II: naked time! )

( III: we asked for this one. )

Man comes to the service desk to make a return. He has 2 small boys in a cart -they were maybe 3 and 2. He dumps a pile of boys clothing on the counter and has 2 receipts. Of course, he has no idea which clothes belong to which receipt. Also, many of the tags are ripped off.

I sigh inwardly. This is going to take a while, as I have to separate the clothes into piles for each receipt, looking at the small UPC numbers on the clothing. Some things are not from our store, some are 2 piece garments, some are only 1 piece of a 2 piece garment. I warn him this will take a while. Also, the barcode and receipt number on one of the receipts came into contact with something that rendered them illegible, forcing an override and NO POSSIBLE WAY I can give cash back.

While I'm wading through this pile,. the 2 boys are getting very antsy, and are complaining the whole time. Total transaction took about 20 minutes, and by this time, kids are in full meltdown mode.

Dude- if you had separated the clothing at home and come to see me with everything sorted according to receipt, things would have gone a whole lot smoother. Just because you weren't there when they were opened and just took what your wife handed to you? Doesn't cut it. The smoother you make it for me, the quicker you get out and the less your kids scream.

I felt kind of bad for him, as the kids were really being a pain. They weren't "bad" but they were bored and wanted to go.

Nothing huge, just minor annoyances. Today I worked at job #1, at a teen clothing store with a very patriotic name.

A woman comes up to the register with a purchase and four kids in tow. The kids had been pretty crazy the whole time she was shopping, running in and out of the store, which can mess up our numbers. That was pretty annoying, but nothing too bad. I like kids. However, I ask her (as usual) if she has our All Access Pass (rewards card). She says yes, but that she doesn't want to use it. I'm confused... the way the card works is that you scan it every time you make a purchase, get points for each item you buy, and get a coupon once every three months based on how many points you have. There's no reason NOT to use it when you buy something. I politely explain to her that she should use it to get her coupons. She says, "No, I'm using my Visa." Understandable, we have a Visa card associated with the store as well, so I explain to her the difference between the credit card and the All Access Pass. She insists, "No, I'm using my Visa card." At that point, I give up. It's not worth it.

A while later, another woman (maybe mid-twenties or so) comes to the register with a purchase. We have a promotion with graphic tees, buy one get one half off. The woman has two regular price t-shirts and one clearance t-shirt (also in the promo). I encouraged her to get another t-shirt, but she couldn't find one she liked in her size. As I was always told, you should ring up the cheapest shirt (the clearance one in this case) as discounted in promos. The transaction goes on without a hitch. A few minutes later, she comes back with an older woman who I assume is her mother. The conversation is as follows.:

Me: Hi! How are you doing?
Mom: Fine. Listen, here's my receipt, can you check to see if it's correct?
Me: Sure thing! (skims) Yes ma'am, it's correct.
Mom: Why is this one (the clearance t-shirt) discounted and not the other one?
Me: It's customary to take the discount off the cheapest items. Hence, the clearance shirt.
Mom: Okay. I need you to return these and sell them back to me with the more expensive shirt discounted.
Me: (check with manager) Okay. This'll just take a second.
Mom: I mean, it's not a huge deal, but a dollar is a dollar.
Me: Yes ma'am.
Mom: I just feel like it's principle, you know?
Me: (annoyed) Yes ma'am.
Mom: (to woman checking out next to her... possibly a friend?) If you have two different-priced items, make sure you put it in two separate transactions!
Me: (irritated as HALE)

She keeps on complaining about how it's principle and how it's totally unfair, etc. etc. So how much did she wind up saving? Well, the full-priced shirt was $15.50. The clearance shirt was $14.95. That means she saved around ten cents. Bad service on my part? A little. Waaaay overreacting? Probably.

I love my job I love my job I love my job.

44 icons from FMA: Brotherhood - Episode 15
10 icons from FMA: Brotherhood Opening & Ending no. 2

 

Find them over here at br33n 

Another post about phone calls and lies made me remember this.

About 5 or 6 years ago, I worked at a Comic Book Store and the YuGiOh card game was very popular.

A boring Friday and the phone rings.
It's a lady, she's at a competitors store. Her son is playing in a tournament there.
A new booster pack had just came out and the store would not allow it to be used. I don't know why, some date hadn't past I think.
The lady wanted to know if we would let her son use them.
I said "Well, since we are selling the packs, I think we would allow them to be used. You would have to talk to our gamer guy to be sure. He'll be in Sunday when we do our tournament."
She complained about how the store she was in wasn't allowing them to be used.
I said something like "It's their store, so you got to go by their rules."
The lady thanks me and I thought that was it.

About 5 to 10 mins later I get another call. It's an employee at the competitors store.
He wanted to know if what the lady told him was true.
The lady told him that I said "They are wrong, and they should allow the new pack to be used."
I explained to him what I ACTUALLY said, told him I wouldn't tell his store what to do, and don't let her get her way.

Really, why even bother calling if you going to make it up anyway.

Dear author,

( cut because it got a little long )
tl;dr - Your characterization is horrific and your story has no plot. And it started out so well, too.

Really, for a crossover fic that was good. In character, a reasonable if small plot and the interaction between the two shows characters was fun. Then you go and tell me this.

“C, twelve year old son of A and B, has Sickle Cell Anemia. It’s usually fatal after a couple of years and there’s no surefire cure, but they mortgaged their car and home to pay for one that they thought they were getting from [the] drug pushers. Kid seemed like he was getting better, now he’s worse, needs a bone marrow transplant that they can’t afford.”

For those not in the know, sickle cell warps about 20% of your red blood cells so the blood is much less efficient at carrying oxygen/CO2 to and from the body's cells/organs.

It is not "usually" fatal. Sure, it lessens life expectancy but we're talking death in middle age, not pre teen. And if it was really "usually fatal after a couple of years", how come the kid's is 12? Sickle cell isn’t contagious, you don't catch it, it's genetic, you're born with it.

And a bone marrow transplant can cure it in children (not sure if it always cures it or if every sufferer gets one, though) .

And feel free to correct me, this rant is based on my knowledge the disease when studying evolution for my GCSE Biology taken... Well, too long ago ;)

If you're wondering what sickle cell has to do with evolution, as a handy side effect it increases immunity to malaria. In parts of the world where there's is high mortality rate from malaria, there's also a high incidence of sickle cell since the gene is helping those populations survive. In populations that don’t have much malaria the gene is virtually non existent.

( First off, a fandom specific one. SPN folks, a word if you please... )

( Second, if you want to write about protective services or foster care, please take a look into the actual research. )

( Third and finally, a note on slash fen and misogyny. )

ETA: Warning, there are spoilers for Torchwood and Children of Earth in the comments!

I work on the customer service desk and the tills at the local branch of my place of employment. We're a UK based home furnishings retailer, and we're "Simply value for money".
Relevant to this story are the fact that if we don't have a particular item in stock we may be able to order it in for you (unless it's discontinued or a 'Stoke' item) and the fact that we offer custom made curtains to order in store, on our fabrics department and our curtains department.
( Script format ahoy! )
TL;DR : Lady misses a call from us, telling her that her curtains are ready. She rings back and rants down to phone to me about 'harassment' before remembering she'd placed this order.

Does anyone here know Greek? I'm asking because, in an RP I help maintain, there's a class of creatures that eat various energy types, and I'm trying to class them into various categories of "-phage". Problem is, I don't know Greek, like, at all, and my faith in the combination of Babelfish + "Greeklish" converter isn't very high. So, in order to avoid looking like a pretentious twit who doesn't do her research (I'm a pretentious twit who does do her research, you see. Sorta. I guess. I'm a stickler for detail, is all.), I'm coming here to beg for assistance.

This is the right place for that, right? I mean, it has to do with RP quality and stuff.

Dear person,

I'm glad you know how "crappy" my writing is before you've taken one look at it! You should go present your precognitive abilities to the world.

Love,

Me

P.S. Thanks for showing your internet tough guy (girl?) cred by telling me how tough your beta-ing is! You've made people cry, congratulations!

P.P.S. Our fandom is for "adults?" I think that's very ironic considering how it's been marketed for teens for the least forty years.

Just a thought, but if you're posting four chapters a day to a comm (two in the morning and two in the evening), you might want to rethink your posting strategy. Space them out a little or combine chapters. My flist will thank you. Also, headers and summaries are good things. Honest.

Okay. So, maybe I was in the wrong for not being a bit strong but...really. I'm a human being.

So, backstory. I work at a burger restaurant that may or may not have an Scottish sounding name.
I'm a shift manager during the day.
And every week day, this little old man, sweetest man you could ever meet, WWII veteran, just...a big sweetie, comes in, orders his usual, and one of us carries his tray out to help him to his seat. He walks with a cane and it breaks my heart watching him try to walk away with it. He's just...cute.

So, today, he was looking a little more shaky than usual, and one of my co-managers asked him if he was okay. He shrugged it off, telling her not to worry. He's on a new anti-biotic for a little cold her had.

Well, our maintenance lady walked him to his car, like she usually does, and he was just very foggy. he wasn't responsive and she walked him right back inside, and we called an ambulance. So, I'm doing my best, running for both drive-thru and counter, doing my own fries, while having to watch the sweetest old man on earth, be carted off on a stretcher, not ten feet away from me. Ambulance lights flashing and everything.

( dot dot dot )

Dear Author,

I love your fic, really I do. It's engaging (and at 500k+ took up most of my free time for the last few days). But...when I came across this line it just made me want to bang my head against the nearest wall...

“I don’t know,” she replied simply, grin lost. “Babies don’t open their eyes for about a week or so.”

Baby humans...

great fic otherwise though ;)

-chica

008 - Eureka 7
008 - Red vs Blue
006 - Fullmetal Alchemist
006 - Stray Love Hearts
004 - Barajou no Kiss
004 - Pandora Hearts
004 - Luminous Arc
004 - Misc. (Gurren Lagann and Air Gear)
001 - Banners (Barajou no Kiss)

TEASERS


this way @ magicker_icons!

I love playing cute little flash games while I work. Nothing that takes too long or that I can't put down and stop for a little bit. I recently found a designer who made several ones.

Ludus Novis is the site. I really recommend How to Raise a Dragon for something really simple and fun. Bars of Black and White for a really surreal escape the room game. (I Fell in Love With) The Majesty of Colors for a tale about a sea monster interacting with humanity. And Necropolis for a unique randomly generated dungeon crawl.

I have to post this. I'm shaking with anger.

***RING RING***

Me: Cheryl's Apartments
Tenant: Judi? This is Lenore.
Me: Hi Lenore, what's up?
Tenant: I don't appreciate you making comments to my husband.
Me: What are you talking about?
Tenant: John said he walked into the office to check the mail, and that you had said "you don't need to be parading around in your work shirt. There's plenty of people without jobs."
Me: First of all, Lenore, I was on the phone when he walked in. I never talk to your husband. Second of all, I was outside with my friend Morgan and Aj (our maintenance guy) and they'll both vouch for me - I didn't say a word to John. Third of all, I'm your landlord. I'm not here to make sarcastic comments to anyone.
Tenant: Whatever. *click*

My first thought: WTF?! My second: I'm fucking post this on c_s.

ninety-four hetalia icons


here @ shaikos

Regarding the Five Stages of Grief:
Congratulations, people who use this. At least you're using some model of grief as opposed to making it a giant angst-fest with some suicide/healing!cock to top it off (depending on whether it's just angst or hurt/comfort)

To review, they are: Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, and Acceptance.

However, this model is a bit simplistic, as many psychologists will tell you, I'm sure.

( Let's go over why )

Looks like come fall we'll be starting up a morris dancing group in Austin. (About time. I've been bitching about not having anyone to dance with for years now....)

Dear Angry old ass.
I understand we're busy, I also understand the line is taking a little longer because a women spilled her coffee and is cleaning it up herself, because she is a GOOD person and wants to make sure she cleans up the mess she made. How ever I do NOT want to hear you complain and then tell the lady to "Hurry up! and let the employees do it" No sir, she isn't going to slip and fall and sue us. Still yelling at her to "Hurry up!" isn't making you go any faster. In fact if the employees came over we'd be moping it up, which means, the register would SHUT down and you'd have to go on another register. I am extremely glad that the lady told you  that you could shut up and stop yelling at her, and that she really hopes you slip and fall on it. Persoanlly with the way you acted, I secretly hoped you would too. 

No love,
The aggrivated cashier in the next register.


Dear old man,
I understand the lanes are small, but really? Please do not come into the little space I am given to do my work. I couldn't even open my register enough to put the money in. but you apologized so it's ok, just a bit aggrivating.

Some love
Your friendly cashier.

http://feeds.penny-arcade.com/~r/pa-mainsite/~3/X6sUDjEATK8/

http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2009/7/17/more-things-change/

http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic//more-things-change/

Warning for swears

No, just no! Repeat after me,

'Contains swearing' or 'swear words'

Unless, of course, swears are some cute, fluffy but devious monsters who will lurk in the text and leap out and bite the reader when their back is turned.

"Dear member,
Lovers of homosexual love, live in puritan country, need help!!!"

I got this weird piece of spam today. It was followed by a tinyurl link which I didn't click on and won't be posting, unless someone asks. I'm interested in what it goes to, but not enough to risk my computer.

What gets me is the choice of the word "puritan" instead of something more generic like "oppressive." Are there other countries where the Puritans settled that I'm not thinking of? It seems like the email is trying to elicit sympathy. As a lover of homosexual love, apparently, I'm supposed to click the link in order to provide the help. But if he just lives here in America, am I, as a lover of homosexual love, not suffering just as greatly? It's curious.

Once more, for your reminding pleasure — tomorrow I’ll be visiting Salem, Oregon, with Team Seattle for a massive signing event of epic awesomeness! And no, I do not overstate the situation, thank you very much.

We’re leaving this afternoon, carpooling down to Portland, shopping and goofing off, then crashing somewhere in town; and then come noon - 2:00 on Saturday, we’ll be be at Escape Fiction Bookstore, 3240 Triangle Dr SE, with Devon Monk.

But between now and then, you can expect relative radio silence from yours truly. I’m fresh out of bed. I still need to take a shower, get dressed, pack, and meet the crew around noon — and we won’t be back until tomorrow night. I do not intend to take a laptop.

I will, however, be bringing my phone.
That means I might Twitter.
Just sayin’.

Okay. Time to hustle.
You guys stay out of trouble while I’m gone.
(Yes, yes. Do as I say, not as I do.)

[Crossposted to/from my website. If you'd like to comment, you can do so either here or there.]