fandomtownies | The Magpie Emporium, Thursday (7/7)

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The Magpie Emporium, Thursday (7/7)

The giant plushie mimic wasn't in its usual spot this morning; it was two shelves down from the loose dice bin now, just chilling in front of the crossword puzzles.

It was highly likely that Little Bot had just pushed it over while doing his rounds yesterday, but... Steph didn't trust it, and kept shooting cautious glances in its direction.

She was in a little bit of a weird mood from yesterday, still, so at least being suspicious of the plushie was a welcome distraction.

[OOC: Open!]

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Blathers was thankfully not as strict about start times as Steven's previous boss had been, so Steven took advantage of that to stop by before work. "Hello? Steph? Are you about?"

Steph popped out of the stockroom with several sets of extremely fancy new dice for the display up at the counter, and headed over. "Steven, hey, what's up?"

Steven had a moment of vertigo as he imagined himself or Marc appearing in the sheer number of reflections from the various shiny dice. He shook it off and tried to focus on Steph instead. "Hoping to pick your brain if you've a moment? Not literally."

It was Fandom, you had to be clear about such things at times.

Steph appreciated the clarity. She set the dice sets, in their little tin and foam cases, down behind the counter and then leaned against it.

"Yeah, I'm free for a few," she said. "Pick away. Oh -- what about?"

Steven leaned against the other side of the counter. "Film recommendations. Or film warnings as the case may be. Watts - " Steven used LLewellyn's last name, since that might be what Steph knew him as " - has a great deal to catch up on. Only cinema isn't precisely Pride friendly, is it? Rather avoid the ones with negative messaging, yeah?"

Awww. This is kind of adorable.

Not saying that Steph had a couple of ranty film studies essays on that particular subject to her name from college, but.

"And that is a lot of them," she said, rolling her eyes just a touch. "I feel you. So you're looking more for a list of stuff to avoid, or suggestions of what's safe enough?"

"Bit of both?" Steven said. "I mean I could go online and get a list, yeah? And I have. But it's different when you've actually seen them. Thought maybe I could send you what I've found in an email or something and we could compare notes? Might not be exactly the same, your world and mine, but somewhere in the middle we're bound to find something useful?"

A thought occurred to Steven. "You know I don't know if I've asked if we're from different worlds. I've been assuming it for everyone, these days. Faux pas on my part if I'm wrong."

Guillermo had listened to the radio and he needed to get better about coming by the store, which also happened to be his favourite place on the island so he decided to stop by since he didn’t have classes on Thursday, especially since he was always on the lookout for new and different horror movies to watch - especially if they happened to involve vampires.

“Er …hello?” He said as he looked around, seeing if there was anything new since he had stopped by last week.

Edited 2022-07-07 09:25 (UTC)

This week? Mostly just a lot of new metal dice sets and a restock on mini paints, although there were a couple of boxes of one very cute board game based on a farming sim that had just come in, too.

"Hey, Guillermo," Steph greeted him. "Anything I can help you with?"

“Oh hey,” Guillermo startled slightly as he turned his attention from the board game to Stephanie, he gave an awkward wave, “um …I …er - I heard you on the radio last week,” he stammered awkwardly, “you said you had obscure horror movie recommendations?”

"Yes! I absofuckinglutely do," Steph said, delighted. It had been a while since she'd really gotten to flex the film side of her media nerdiness, and today was making up for it so far. "I can rec you some really, really weird ~~but mostly handwavey~~ ones... you're mainly into vampire stuff, right?"

[[Today has been ridiculous, I'm so sorry!]]

Guillermo brightened considerably at the idea of there being more vampire movies for him to check out, “I love anything to do with vampires,” he nodded eagerly.

no worries at all!

"I can work with that," Steph decided, nodding. This might have been a little bit easier if she still had access to her dad's video equipment, like back in high school when she got all her pocket money by selling bootleg DVDs to her fellow Blackwell students, but streaming services were much better and had a wider range of content now ~~even if there were way too damn many of them~~.

She pulled a notepad out of a drawer and started scribbling down titles, plus where to find them if she knew off the top of her head. (Which was actually a good chunk of them.)

"How weird do you like to get with it?" she asked. "I mean, like... in terms of how unconventional the vampire lore in some movies gets."

Guillermo had not yet started getting into streaming so he had no idea just how many sites there actually were.

“I do enjoy watching a lot of B Grade Vampire movies,” Guillermo admitted, “especially the black and white ones so I don’t mind if it’s not traditional in the vampire lore sense,” even if he had done a lot of research into vampires, he didn’t realise just how useful it was actually going to be to him one day.

Oh, she'd give him a crash course in streaming movies if necessary.

"Hey, man, the B grade movies are some of the best ones," Steph said, laughing as she scribbled a few new lines onto the list. "No shame there. Okay, cool, I have a few good suggestions that veer way far away from the standard bloodsucking, nosferatu-type lore; I just never know how well those go over with people."

Not that she knew psychic vampires were an actual thing in Guillermo's world, but hey.

Admittedly neither did Guillermo, even though he would eventually get a pretty good crash course on psychic vampires at least to the point where hypnosis would no longer work on him.

“I haven’t met a lot of people who are into a lot of different vampire movies,” Guillermo admitted, “but I’m definitely interested in seeing more interpretations, I mean there can never be enough vampire movies right?” He said with a grin.

Zounds! What a thrilling and exciting day at the Magpie Emporium it was turning out to be that Thursday! But Graham was a man on a mission, even if he was slightly nervous about said mission, so there he was, hopping off Triumph outside the shop, giving him a few pets and some water to tide him over while he went inside to add the small parade of visitors and attend to some Very Important Business.

"Hi, Miss Steph!" he greeted her with a big sweep of his arm in a wave. "How's it going today?"

"Graham! Okay so far," Steph said, as Little Bot zipped by and waved at him. "How about you, man, how's it going?"

Graham spared a grin down at Little Bot and an extra wave for him, too, before his attention turned back to Steph with an eager grin and a big thumbs-up. "Really super-duper!" he said. "It's been a great week!"

He generally felt that way about most weeks. And hopefully, it would continue to be that way after his question.

"But, hey. There's actually something I've been wanting to ask you about..."

Extremely perky people tended to weird Steph out a bit, but Graham always seemed so earnest in his enthusiasm that it wasn't at all weird, and it earned him a genuine grin.

"Sure, hit me. What's up?"

And all that earnest enthusiasm was channeled into Graham's own grin and nodding head in response to that, all ready to launch into it...

....until he opened his mouth, anyway.

"Well, you seeeeee," he started out strong, but it was all downhill from there. "I was just...uhm...well, I was kind of wondering...I mean, that is to say....erm, well, the thing is....I was sort of curious if..I'm been looking into it, a little....I've read through allll the books...so maybe if..."

He rubbed the back of his neck awkwardly.

"Could I maybe get some sort of tabletop game going here at the shop sometime?"

And then his eyes just went wide and hopeful, almost proud that he'd finally managed to get a full sentence out after all that after all.

Steph listened along, nodding more and more enthusiastically as she pieced together what Graham was getting at, until he got to the conclusion and her grin was absolutely blinding.

"Are you kidding? Hell yes, you can do that. What else do we have the whole upstairs for? Seriously, dude, that would be amazing. I am all for it. Hell, if you need any help getting set up, or anything at all, I'm here to enable that."

"Really?" asked Graham, who had clearly been expecting a rather different answer and had to blink a little for his brain to shift gears so he could beam back instead of wincing back a little. And then came the little arm pump. "Yes! That's great! That's really---

"Erm, I mean...."

He cleared his throat, pulled himself up to sound a bit more dignified.

"I always wondered what all that room up there was supposed to be for," he said, with a good natured chuckle. "I think I'll be really good at it, too! I did a practice run with Saffron and Little Bot and Triumph? And it went great!"

Mmm....debatable. No one ate any dice, anyway, so that seemed a solid win.

"Do you think I could do it Fridays? After my shift, or something?"

He could spend his downtime preparing, and it would just be way easier for things like OCD and what have you, after all.

"Is that why Little Bot's been rolling dice as much as picking them up the last few days?" asked Steph, laughing. "I actually really love that."

Little Bot zipped by again, this time carrying another pine cone in one claw and a d20 in another -- which he rolled just to prove he knew how. Arguably the 19 spoke well for his dice-rolling skills. Saffron, who'd hopped on top of him and was now riding around with all the dignity expected of a cat on a roomba decked out like a pirate ship, seemed less than impressed.

"Bro, that is a hundred and ten percent fine," Steph went on. "We can just put you down for a regular Friday evening table, and you're good to go. Do you have a group already, or is that still a work in progress?"

Graham was easily impressed enough to make up for Saffron in the respect.

"Zounds, Little Bot!" he laughed. "Where were those numbers last week, huh?

"And no party yet," he told Steph, practically on the same breath, but with an enthusiastic swing of his finger to show he was on the task, "but I might have a few leads, andI figure, it's my radio tomorrow, it should be a hood opportunity to put the word out there to see if anyone's interested!"

He was pretty sure it would still wind up with just him and Triumph and maybe Little Bot and Saffron if she was in the mood, though, which he'd also gladly take.

"The dice gods are cruel, what can I say," Steph said with a melodramatic sigh, smirking. "Sometimes you can't even make a skill check on the shit you're supposed to be good at, and then you crit on the most weird, random, possibly pointless thing ever."

"I'm pretty sure there should be people interested," she said in the kind of tone that implied that it was their loss if they weren't. "How are you doing with prep? Need any tips or anything?"

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The Magpie Emporium, Thursday (7/7)

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