Author: plotdesigner

Diamonds For Destiny: London

Diamonds for Destiny

(82075 words) by

magicgenetek

Chapters: 30/?

Fandom:

Kingdom Hearts

,

The Princess and the Frog (2009)

Rating: Teen And Up Audiences

Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings

Relationships: Dr. Facilier/Luxord

Characters: Luxord, Dr. Facilier, Dr. Facilier’s Shadow, Zexion, Vexen, Lexaeus

Additional Tags: Slice of Life, Cultural Differences, Alien Cultural Differences, Pre-Kingdom Hearts I, Family Drama, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Disabled Character of Color, POV Character of Color, White Privilege, Racism, Period-Typical Racism, Magic, Materia, Aftermath of Violence, Childbirth, Mild Blood, Clones, Baby Names, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder – PTSD, Nightmares, Past Violence, references to lynching, Asexuality, Misunderstandings, Gift Giving, Slow Burn, Canon – Kingdom Hearts I

Series: Part 4 of

Dead Men’s Party

Summary:

Luxord is an undead creature, soulless, a demon hunter capable of going toe to toe with the biggest and baddest in New Orleans. He’s also paying Doctor Facilier a gemstone an hour to take him to the best restaurants in the French Quarter while he gossips about his annoying co-workers, and trains Facilier in magic – real magic, not sleight of hand – in preparation for recruitment into Luxord’s Organization. It’s Facilier’s favorite job.

But the keyblade has chosen a wielder, and now Luxord must balance his duties observing Sora and his desire to bask in Facilier’s presence. The days are counting down to when Facilier realizes what helping the Organization really entails…

Or, Facilier gets a slightly more literal kind of heart to heart with Luxord when he communes with his Heartless.  

Pavlov had it all wrong

curlicuecal:

foobar-the-great:

lasrina:

I am a single adult human living in a house with two corgis. Got Girldog from a shelter when she was about a year, year and a half old maybe; got Boydog a few years later as an 8-week puppeh. And let me tell you something, from Day One, this has been a three-way psychological experiment. I no longer know who is manipulating who on a daily basis.

  • One of the first things I trained Girldog to do was not to bark at the dinner table; if she barked at me while I was eating, I put her in The Quiet Place (her crate) where she couldn’t see me. She learned almost immediately to subvocalize her barks, to let out a breath with just enough vocal cord vibration that I wouldn’t QUIIIITE consider it a bark and move her further away from the food. It’s a sound like this: “Hrrrr. Hrrrr. Hhhrahhh.” I didn’t realize how odd this was until my aunt came over and said, “That dog hissed at me.” “Yes,” I said, “she does that.”
  • Boydog learned to do tricks by watching Girldog. I never taught him to sit. He learned by watching Girldog get a treat for sitting. Once, I told both dogs to sit at the same time, while I held a treat in each hand. When Girldog didn’t sit quick enough, Boydog put his paw on her butt and pushed her down.
  • I hung a bell on the door and taught Boydog to ring it when he wants to go out. Girldog sees no reason she should ring the bell, as it is beneath her dignity, and she can get her way by barking instead. Boydog, however, will ring the bell for Girldog when she lurks around by the door, although he has no interest in going outside himself. Girldog has made Boydog her personal slave in this matter.
  • Boydog rings the bell when he doesn’t need to go out but thinks I have been at my computer too long. By the time I get to the kitchen, he’s nowhere near the door, but hey mom, as long as you’re up, let’s play! He obviously does not believe I can see through this extremely clever ploy.
  • Girldog once climbed onto a sofa, crossed the back of it, leapt from the sofa to my desk chair, leapt from the chair to the desk, and knocked all my stuff off the desk. (I wasn’t there, but it was obvious from the trail of destruction what route she had taken.) Then she got down and proceeded to ignore the bag of corn chips she’d encountered and focus her attention on biting my phone charger in half, chewing up a USB memory stick, and eating a pen. I still have no idea how she could be so smart and so dumb at the same time.
  • Boydog will chase a laser pointer (not uncommon for dogs introduced to them as puppies! Pro tip) but only when Girldog is not around, because she hates it for some reason and will tackle him for it. Girldog also likes to be outside while I want to be in, and Boydog prefers to have us both inside. Boydog will lead me to the laser pointer, pester me until I get it down, and then run around chasing the laser and barking madly. No matter how stubborn Girldog has been about staying outside, she wants to know what he’s barking at and immediately comes inside. (It is always the laser pointer he’s barking at, Girldog. Always.)
  • There is a chair in my bedroom that I cannot sit on. The dogs take turns sleeping on it, depending on who gets there first. The only hard and fast rule is that if the human sits on the chair, they will both lose their cool. The chair is for dogs only. I have not even tried to sit on the chair for about six months now.

I suspect I’ll be adding more of these as the three of us continue to train each other.

When my pet rat was young, I had to train her to not try to eat ANYTHING AND EVERYTHING, like my shirt while I’m wearing it and she’s sitting on my shoulder. Before I got to this point, I managed to train her to get into the cage when we got near it by giving her a piece of popcorn, which she would then take to a safe spot on the cage to eat it.

For the “don’t eat my shirt” training (and house-training too), whenever she tried to eat something she shouldn’t eat (or peed/pooped anywhere not in the cage), I would immediately pick her up, tell her “NO”, and take her back to the cage and not give her the popcorn like I normally would. She caught on within a week or two regarding what she shouldn’t chew on and where it was okay to go to the bathroom.

And then she started chewing on my shirt again. But it wasn’t really chewing, per se. She would grab my shirt with her teeth, pull like she would if she was trying to get a piece to eat, and then I’d take her right back to the cage like usual. Except sometimes I’d be lazy and not take her to the cage, I’d just say “no” and push her away a bit. And she’d do it again.

That’s right, MY PET RAT TRAINED ME to take her back to the cage when she tugged on my shirt, because she would get bored of sitting on my shoulder or running around on my bed and want to go home.

When my dog was a puppy, she used to play with her water bowel when it was empty, which would make a lot of noise, so I’d get up and fill it so she’s stop doing that. She very quickly taught herself to play with the water bowl when it needed refilling, and then to actually bring us her food or water bowl when it was mealtimes.

We have cats now, and we wait to feed them until they’re not meowing or bugging us so that they don’t harass us about food (at least until we’re actually doing the mealtime thing).

But my dog still does the food bowl thing, and as my dog has a much better handle on when meal times actually are this is a nice reminder to me. She’s an old lady now, though, so if she’s napping or comfortable she sometimes won’t bother to grab her bowl and get my attention until she’s actually ready to get up.

One of my cats figured out that bugging her makes her get up, and that when she gets up she sometimes gets her food bowl, and when she gets her food bowl I initiate ‘feed the pets’ time. So sometimes he’ll just start meowing insistently and wrapping himself around her and following her from room to room on the off chance it will make dinner happen sooner.

This is how my cat learned to beg my dog for food.

mirioes:

All Might has a Twitter account and it doesn’t have any posts and he doesn’t follow anyone and the account hasn’t been touched since it was made back in like 2011. Everyone thinks it’s an inactive account and it’s kind of a joke to send it kinky messages, but one day a meme account sends it a version of that “only villains do that” meme and all of a sudden the account updates for the first time ever and changes it’s icon to the meme and makes a single post thanking the meme account for sharing such an ‘encouraging’ image.

It makes national news because the media is convinced that the account is now an elaborate form of performance art, and a lot of people are spamming the account trying to get a response too, but in reality Izuku just helped Toshinori finally figure out how to get a new password and the meme account was the first message request to pop up when the account was accessible again.

Toshinori forgets the password again within a week.

alleiradayne:

feynites:

Man I have never known straight dude writers to shy away from putting out stuff like ‘my thinly-veiled self-insert goes on a mediocre adventure but more importantly ends up in a love quadrangle with these four female characters who are all incredibly hot to me’, but most of the lady writers I know get nervous if they write one (1) love story where *gasp* two whole dudes compete for the same lady’s love!

So listen.

Listen.

Go out and give your warrior witch lady a magic talking panther that flies and five hot elf boyfriends (or girlfriends, or datemates, whatever) who all happily share her. Or fight over her. Whichever. Make each of them as smoking hot as you please. Indulge yourself. Live.

And this goes absolutely double for WoC and trans ladies and queer ladies and everyone else who has extra troubles with being shamed for your indulgence.

If you’re going to worry about stuff in your story it should be things like ‘is that trope racist?’ or ‘how do I fix this plot hole?’, not ‘am I putting in too many elements that I personally enjoy?’

221cbakerstreet:

hexalene:

I accidentally deleted the ask, but anon basically said “do you have any more florist anecdotes?” And YOU BET I DO!!

–

So one day this girl walks in, wet rag to her face, and rushes over to me, phone in hand. “HAVE YOU HEARD OF THIS….eey-low veer-uh plant??”

I had. As we’re headed to the succulents, the story comes out. She’s heard that aloe vera is good for soothing pain and….she leans close, super embarrassed, and whispers that she just went and got her mustache waxed off, and….she shows me her lip. Huge, swollen, little red bumps. She’s tried to cover it with makeup, and that’s made it worse. She’s getting teary, because she’s scared, but she’s lucky because she’s talking to me!!

We talk about a lot of stuff, skin care, hair removal, I won’t bore y’all since it’s not flowers, but I was able to give her some advice on it, and I’m thinking “okay she might not need a plant, but whatever” but she’s DETERMINED TO COMPLETE HER MISSION.

We get to the succulents, and I give her my whole aloe vera spiel (I love these plants!! My mom has a huge one that’s almost 25 years old!!) and the girl nods very very seriously, and buys one.

Before she leaves, she comes over to me, dead ass serious and informs me that this plant is her “super buddy” now, and she’s named him Ralph.

–

In my previous post I mentioned a nervous husband with his wife on their first Valentine’s Day. Here’s that story:

So the guy, for a mental image: mid-30s black man, very well dressed in a nice work suit, leather laptop bag. Normally I’m MILDLY wary of v well dressed men, because a lot of them are uh…Difficult.

This wasn’t one of them! He was super nervous, looking through all the mason jar arrangements Very Seriously. He looked super focused and was having trouble picking through them, so I went over to help.

This nice man has four ladies to get flowers for. His wife, and their three daughters. He wanted to get mason jars for the girls (all under ten) and he was hoping to find them in their favorite colors.

I realized what he was doing, which was trying to find jars with predominantly pink, red, and purple themes. And since it wasn’t super busy, I just smiled and told him we could rearrange the jars in the color themes.

He was so BLOWN AWAY. I think he wanted to cry when I busted out the ribbons and made big bows for each jar! (Appropriately colored!!) (also while I was scavenging for flowers, he whipped out his phone and showed me some of their pictures. They’re so cute!! These girls are his princesses, for sure.)

So now His Wife. We were already on a roll, so once his jars were ready we started patrolling for The Perfect Bouquet. And as it happens once you start talking about personal stuff, his story came out!

So the girls are from Wife’s previous marriage. He married her last year, and he really wants to show them that he Really Loves Them. Like, these girls are His GIRLS. His phone still has their entire wedding album!! He shows me her bouquet, and he wants to get flowers that are like the bouquet, but MORE.

So we have the choices down to three big bouquets. He legit stands there for a solid FORTY FIVE MINUTES, just comparing and thinking about it. (I left him to it, obv.)

He then comes up, very serious, and asks what it would cost to combine the two bouquets he’s picked. He’s also picked out a vase and a card, and some chocolate.

I quoted the price (Not Cheap) and he just nods, dead serious, and walks away and pays for it. Like up front. And I’m like, well shit, this needs to be the most amazing thing I’ve done. So I clear the counter, because this is a man on a mission, and we put those flowers together into a MASTERPIECE.

It’s hard to explain size, but these flowers were big enough to hide behind!! I got him a nice box and we carefully packaged this sucker for safe transport in his tiny sports car (the jars for his girls all fit in the drink holders, which was hilarious for reasons I can’t explain. Also hilarious is that he had to manually take the top off of the convertible to fit the flowers and was totally willing to drive home IN THE COLD with it down if he had to, luckily he didn’t)

I sent him on His Odyssey. He was SO HAPPY, and I was so happy because I love good experiences that have triple digit sales, and he was so patient and nice!! Love is real.

(He came back with his friends about three hours later, and they got nice flowers as well! They were all calling me Miss Hexalene by the end, and their good moods infected every other customer in the store, which is the best infection we get in flu season)

–

One of my favorite customers is this nice old lesbian who comes in and has one of our potted orchids in hand, big smirk on her face.

“My wife hates roses, so I’m getting her thi—“ she breaks off and her eyes go HUGE.

So she’s carrying this normal orchid, about a foot and a half tall, purple, v cute. She has just spotted our cymbidium orchids behind me, which GOOGLE THESE PUPPIES!! Ours came in, they’re THREE FEET TALL without the pot. Half of the plant is bloomed into these big beautiful brown/orange flowers, and the other half is still growing. They’re massive and I love them.

So this old lesbian (she’s about 60, cute boycut with all white hair, nice mom jeans and one of those balloony pico shirts) very deliberately sets her Lesser Orchid down, and points to the cymbidium orchids. “THAT. I need that.”

She’s got the absolute best shit-eating grin on her face, btw. She can’t stop laughing. She’s even crying with laughter a bit and while we’re strapping These Beasts (SHE BOUGHT FOUR OF THEM??) into her truck, she tells me about how her wife hates roses because she got a thorn tip stuck in her hand permanently as a kid. So every Valentine’s Day she goes on a hunt for the weirdest flower/most out of season flower she can find. These orchids are the best find she’s had since the 80s, when she brought home a massive Silver Vase Plant that’s still alive 30 years later.

–

So I’m gonna stop with these three before I obliterate everyone’s dashes!! 8) thank you for the ask!!

Please don’t stop these are so wholesome and good