Chibi-Mathilda

A baby pangolin is born quite helpless, other than the ability to suckle and cling. Until the baby is big enough to travel on its on, a mother pangolin will tote it around on her tail.

ok cringe instagram harry potter frappucino drinker. ok. die. "Ive never had this drink before" yeah I can tell due to the fact that it didnt exist until someone posted a #aesthetic photo of it to instagram 14 hours ago ok. ok,

but whatever, Im paid to put up with this shit. so I add the ingredients all up on my computer and congrats! ur harry potter cringe social media drink has $10 worth of syrup in it. are you happy??? is this what you wanted??? a $10 frappucino??? $10. for a drink. you doubled the price of this drink for ur off-brand "harry potter and the legend of the overpriced starbucks drink" drink. you doubled the price!!! is this how u imagined spending ur day? is this what u wanted to do when u woke up this morning? $10 for a 24oz drink?

and u know, you KNOW the influencer making this recipe doesn't even work at a starbucks cause when it was all said and done the drink looked like shit. my blender was straining against the weight of your sins (and syrups) and Im sweating, Im an animal, Im losing my mind and my blender is getting watered down frappucino syrups everywhere -- u put so much shit liquid in this blender it doesnt even fit in the cup btw. it's making a huge mess. but is it instagramable? no, its fucking ugly. #trending #foryoupage #cringe $10 harold potter drink for adult children,

Its not that baristas hate Harry Potter specifically to spite you, its that people who don’t even work in a cafe come up with drinks without knowing how any of it works, knowing what ingredients the store has, or how any of it will taste together and post it online for thousands of other people to see and decide they also want to try it,

and 

it 

is

hell.

It is absolute hell on the baristas, because we are trained in a SPECIFIC way on how to make drinks. All the drinks made by Starbucks follow incredibly specific recipes with specific proportions of ingredients, so that they taste good, are made the same every time, and stay as that kind of drink. Half the customers I deal with every day don’t know the difference between a latte and an iced coffee, do you really think they’re in any way qualified to be coming up with their own recipes? A good portion of these secret menu drinks, because they aren't made by baristas, end up being impossible to replicate because there is no set standard on how to make them and they end up being something else entirely, with and I am not kidding, more syrup and fruit in them than the original drink, wasting ingredients and tasting like shit.

Its hell on the baristas because its impossible to train staff on how to make these, because there are a shit ton of variations to these drinks because they are NOT made by the company. Just three of the ‘Butterbeer’ ones I found in a few minutes:

All of these are fucking different. All of them will taste different. They’ll all look different. Two of them just say ‘order a creme frappuchino’ which ISN’T A THING. It is NOT a specific drink, it is TYPE of drink and us, the staff, will have to figure out what one you’re looking for and you WILL NOT KNOW THE ANSWER AND NEITHER WILL WE.

Its hell on the baristas, because about 2 dozen people come in daily just at my store asking for things that are not on the menu, never were, or were region locked and get pissed because we have no idea what you’re talking about. Butterbeer is not a flavor. Cotton Candy is not a flavor. Oreo, Twix, Cinnamon Toast Crunch, Cheesecake, NONE of these are actual flavors and never have been and it gets worse when someone makes secret menu items that depend on seasonal or regional ingredients. These secret menu drinks often use shit that was discontinued YEARS ago and we cannot make anymore, no matter how much you insist because someone on instagram or tiktok said they just got it. We can’t make you the Hokkaido, Tokyo, Ibaraki, or Fukui fraps because those were NEVER available in the USA, they were exclusive to SINGLE locations, but the customers do not listen and they do not care, because someone with thousands of followers said so, so WE must be lying.

Its hell on the baristas, because most of these fucking drinks use ingredients from every single station and end up taking three times as long to make as they should so the entire line of other customers who are also waiting on drinks end up waiting longer and it cascades when a new 'secret menu' drink goes viral and EVERYONE starts ordering it. We end up running out completely of certain ingredients for weeks to months because they get popular and then no one can have any. You know how Starbucks is having nation wide outages of just about every flavor? This is part of the reason why- We literally cannot keep up with the demand for certain ingredients we ordinarily would not use in that kind of quantity, and oh yeah, we're still in a GLOBAL PANDEMIC as people make up random shit when they get bored and want fandom points so they make an imaginary drink go viral.

It’s hell on the baristas, because WE end up getting bad reviews by customers who understand none of this, try to do it anyway and end up with essentially a cup full of vomit or told no entirely, and they get pissed at US and slam us on yelp or outright call our bosses to scream at them because Starbucks stopped using mango syrup 6 goddamn years ago and you REALLY REALLY wanted it for your Harry Potter House or MHA or BTS themed drink that costs four times as much as it should because of how much shit you put in it and you don't want to pay for it!

Its hell on the baristas because you come in, order something that doesn't exist, treat the employees like shit for it, and then get holier than thou on the fucking internet claiming that we must just hate your precious Harry Potter and call us a made up insult after we have repeatedly, desperately, insistently told everyone the Secret Menu is not a thing and neither are any of the drinks on it, especially branded, trademarked things Starbucks did not, does not, and never will have the rights to.

Or if it's easier to understand,

She said some customers showed her drink pictures they found online that had "clearly" been edited. "And then people got really upset when we can't do that," she said.

Starbucks staff members generally have targets of around 45 seconds for each drive-thru order. Large numbers of modifications slow baristas down, Sarah Ann Austin, a North Carolina barista, said.

A Starbucks representative said: "We ask our baristas to make the moment right no matter the order and would expect a highly customized beverage to take longer to make."

Eric Fellner, a former barista in North Carolina, said that complex requests would "totally screw with you" by deviating from Starbucks' standard base recipes.

"The reason why it causes such an issue is that everything is based on times," he said. "The whole thing is about being as fast as possible, and so in order for that to work, everything has to be systematic."

"If a drink looks complicated, assume that it's complicated," a current barista in British Columbia said.

Once, when we were trying to close because the store was actively flooding, the last customer forced me to walk back into the lake of water to remake a heavily customized Frappuccino because again! It didn’t look like the picture and I’d misread some of the ingredients in a very badly-written recipe.

1. This is working under the assumption that tumblr is a space solely (or at least primarily) for teenagers/kids and that simply isn’t the case. Historically the creation of fanfiction, fanvids, fanart, etc. has been done by people in their twenties and older.  Think about how many years it takes to learn how to craft a good story. Think about what you need to pull something like a con together. That person with the Skill you admire? There’s a very good chance they’re an adult. It used to be that kids pretended to be 18+ because they knew online fan communities were adult spaces. I’m not sure when this switch happened, but it needs to stop.

2. It is not “a little weird” that people don’t put their age on their blog. I have mine because I’m comfortable sharing it and my fan identity/irl identity are already really conflated, but a lot of people - most people - want to keep personal information to themselves. There’s nothing wrong with that and insisting that we reveal that information is all kinds of wrong. Can you ask someone their age? Certainly! Maybe they’ll tell you, maybe they won’t, but regardless you are not entitled to that information. 

3. The children on here? They are not my responsibility. If kids/teens are worried about who they’re talking to then they should either a) be careful about who they interact with or b) not use this website. If they’re too young to understand this then they’re too young to be online without parental supervision. Now, how can a teen be careful about who they interact with? Check the person’s blog. See the kind of content they post. See if there are any hints about their age (mentions of school, job, birthdays, etc.) - or again, just ask! I’ve had plenty of people on here decide they only want certain types of interaction with me after discovering my age and that’s fine. But it’s not my job to monitor everyone else’s internet use.

4. Finally, I find the language here to be rather concerning. “A little weird,” teenagers are “lured,” leading to things that are “much more insidious”… all of this, whether intentionally or not, frames anyone 20+ as intrinsically predatory. It also takes agency away from anyone under 18. Teenagers aren’t “lured” into talking to me, they make that decision on their own. They are their own person capable of making their own decisions, gathering information before making that decision (like asking someone’s age) or, if they can’t do these two steps then again, they should not be online. We’ve come right back to point #1: this is not your space. It’s our space. I’m not some trespasser here who only gets to stay provided that I cater to those younger than me. If anything, based on how much of online content is geared towards adults, kids should be working under the assumption that they are speaking to an adult until proven otherwise, especially on websites like tumblr that cater to all ages. Don’t assume you’re talking to another teenager. Don’t project onto a person and then get mad when you find out you’re wrong. That’s not them tricking you, that’s you failing to take responsibility for yourself. 

Little and vocal

A capybara with an orange on its head in the annual capybara open-air bath at the Izu Shaboten Zoo 🍊

A huge thank you to those who have contributed to the Merlin Hurt/Comfort Fest! In case you missed them, you can find a link to the fantastic fanworks below ❤️

If you’d like to hang out and chat about Merlin stuff with other fanwork creators, you can join us on Discord (18+) for other events such as Writing Sprint Weekends and more!

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Fanfiction

Title: To Be The Last Creator: TheCourtSorcerer Rating: Teen & Up Length/Medium: 1,915 words Pairing(s): Merlin/Arthur Pendragon Warning(s): No Archive Warnings Apply; Mentions of Parental Death. Summary: Something was wrong with Merlin. “Something is wrong with you,” Arthur voiced his thoughts after zero consideration for how the words may sound.   –OR– It’s the that time of year again, the time when Balinor died. And even after all these years, Merlin grieves what could have been had he not lost his father as soon as he got him those years ago. Link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29151606