#but having just dealt with a washer that decided to bug out and refuse to do anything

[dawnwave16]

Frosted Bug

Marinette had always loved the snow. There was just something beautiful about seeing everything covered in a layer of white that seemed to make the world shine in the weak sun that winter brought. When she was 4-years-old her parents had told her the story of Jack Frost. From then on every time she woke up and saw the snow she would call out her thanks to him even as she ran out of the house giggling madly. When she was 6-years-old the snow started to arrive while she was standing on the balcony. Even though she knew she couldn't play in it just yet she still gave her usual thanks to Jack with a big smile on her face. You can imagine her surprise when for the first time ever she got a reply. “You're most welcome!” The voice had come from behind her so she whipped around and was startled to see a teenaged boy wearing a blue hoodie that seemed to be decorated by frost creeping down the shoulders, brown three-quarter pants with tattered hems and holding a shepherd's crook, leaning casually against the wall. What surprised her the most though was the fact that he had white hair and was barefoot.

“Jack Frost,” she breathed out in wonder. This made Jack laugh happily, this child was the first child to see him since he had been born from that frozen pond, something he had longed for ever since. “Are, are you really him?” her voice was soft, still filled with awe as she looked at him. “Well, I'm not the Tooth Fairy,” he replied with a cheeky smile. This made her laugh happily and tackle him, thanking him repeatedly. That night was the start of a tradition for the two of them. On the night of the first snow, Marinette made sure that she could be found on her balcony. As she grew she would make sure she had a gift for Jack ready and waiting for him. It was always something small, sometimes a batch of cookies other times it was a bracelet made with snowflake-shaped beads. Even if she didn't have anything for him, he was always happy to see her and give her something that he had found for her somewhere on his global travels. As she grew, the one night turned to every possible night as the two of them grew closer as friends. He would tell her stories about the Guardians, in turn, she would tell him all about what the other children in her class were doing. It was due to this friendship that she grew out of her love of pink and instead chose colours better associated with winter. Shades of blue and themes of ice decorated her clothing, no matter the season. Even her swimming costume had snowflakes on it. The other children in her class thought her a little weird but she didn't mind. She kept on designing her clothes to fit her chosen theme. By the time she was 13, she had taken to designing for everyone, not just herself. She always made sure that the design of the clothes fit the individual's style not just her own and everyone loved the designs. She had even gained the nickname of Ice Princess over the years despite her very bubbly personality due to her clothing choices. Perhaps it was due to being friends with Jack that when she found the Ladybug Miraculous in her room and Tikki appeared, she didn't have a massive freak out. When Tikki had said that no-one could know her identity, Marinette had asked if that included the Guardians. Tikki had been confused thinking that Marinette meant the Guardian of the Miraculous when Marinette explained that she meant the Guardians of Childhood she had been surprised. Even more so when Marinette had spoken so fondly of Jack Frost, but she had been willing to make an exception to the rules for Jack, which Marinette was overjoyed about. Her first attempts at being a hero were still clumsy and she wasn't fond of the colour of her suit but she dealt with it. A new kid, Adrian something-or-other, had joined her class as had a girl called Alya. Alya had seemed to attach herself to Marinette, much like Nino had attached himself to Adrian. She had been confused by Nino becoming awkward around her but passed it off as a phase when soon after she locked him in the panther enclosure during the Animan debacle, he started dating Alya and his behaviour around her returned to normal. The downside of Alya dating was that she tried to get everyone else paired off too. At first, Marinette didn't mind but by the 10th failed disaster of trying to pair her with Adrian, Marinette was over it. Sure Adrian was cute but she just didn't like him that way. When she had told all of this to Jack when he stopped over on his way to try to break into North's workshop, again, he'd laughed at her and simply offered to help her with her Ladybug duties whenever he could. She had never thought of asking the Guardians of Childhood for help with the Hawkmoth problem, so the fact that Jack had offered his help had come as a surprise, though she had declined it unless it was an emergency. This had raised the question of how to get hold of him in a hurry. They had eventually decided on a magical tattoo on their shoulders. They decided no to chose a design and to simply let magic chose for them, then Tikki, as the Kwami of Creation had talked them through applying the tattoo to each other. It turned out it was as simple as pressing their hands onto the chosen spot and wishing for a mark that best represented themselves then letting magic do the rest. Having Jack hand on her bare shoulder sent a small tremor through her as it was much colder then she thought it would be. She understood that he was the spirit of winter but she simply saw him as a friend, so she tended to forget about the spirit part. The snowflake that appeared on her shoulder was stunning. It had what appeared to be a ladybug in the centre of it and lace that stared away as though protecting it. When they looked at his mark it was also a combination of a ladybug and snowflakes. His, however, had the main part of the mark as the ladybug, and where the spots normally were, were snowflakes. When they looked closely they saw that it was the same ladybug in both marks. Jack had to leave to spread winter soon after that but they soon noticed that although the mark never changed they could feel a small echo of what the other was feeling through it. One evening, Jack could feel the pent up emotions coming from Marinette and quickly made his way to her side. He landed on her room just as Chat Noir did and had to chuckle when her annoyance grew. To try and make her smile Jack moved so that he was standing behind Chat and started making fun of him when he finally saw the amusement in her eyes he decided to kick it up a notch and made some ice slide down the back of Chat's neck and into his suit and down his spine. Chat had jumped and yelped loudly trying to get to the ice but it was useless. There were no zips on his suit and he just couldn't get to it. With all his dancing around to try to free himself from the ice in his suit, he failed to notice the ice form under his feet and went crashing down. Marinette couldn't hold her laughter in, bending almost double while holding her stomach. Chat had pouted and left saying he knew when he wasn't wanted. Being able to sense Marinette's emotions turned out to be a good thing when a girl named Lila joined Marinette's class. The longer Lila was in Marinette's class the more muted the emotions coming from her got and the more worried Jack got. Unfortunately, the Manny had directed him to New Zealand to give them a cold snap despite it being spring so he couldn't do much just then. Once he had completed his task he sped towards Paris to check on her only to find Lila pushing Marinette down a short flight of stairs. Apart from some bruises, it looked like Marinette was alright but Jack was furious. He forced himself to calm down quickly though as they weren't sure if he was immune to Akuma's and he didn't want to fight her. He helped Marinette up and made sure she got home safely, soothing the bruises as much as he could and they spoke until she dozed off. Once he was sure she was asleep, he got to work on his revenge. First, he tracked down the girl, once he found her he went looking for ways to make he life more difficult, but in a way that it couldn't be blamed on anyone else. He used his ice to destroy the washers in her private bathroom's taps, he froze her cupboards closed and then froze the outfit she had put out for the next day, even if it defrosted if time for her to be able to wear it, it would be soaking wet thus impossible for her to wear it. Jack paused for a moment in thought then decided to be spiteful. He knew that due to Marinette's long term exposure to him she could handle colder temperatures, even now that she was Ladybug, but he also knew that this was only due to their friendship. Lila didn't have that advantage. Right before he left, he set a light frost on the bed despite her being in it. The next four years past in much the same way, with Marinette fighting Hawkmoth in her superhero persona and fighting Lila in her civilian one. Jack did what he could to try to help her against Lila. Whenever he was in Paris she had terrible luck with ice, she'd slip on ice that wasn't there when someone else had walked there just seconds before, her hot coffee would be frozen solid when she tried to drink it. Jack even made sure that her locker would ice up and refuse to open. Lila had tried to blame Marinette for all her ice-related troubles, however as it only happened close to or in winter, no-one took her seriously. During this time Marinette and Jack had found themselves getting closer and eventually admitting that they loved each other. Neither knew how things would work for them so they vowed to simply enjoy each moment they had and not think of the future. Little did they know that Manny had been watching them the whole time and had added several abilities to the tattoos they had given each other.

Something that they would discover several months later. Jack had gone back to where he considered his home town to be for a visit while Marinette was writing her final exams for school. He was planning on staying there for roughly a week before he headed back to Paris to spend some time with Marinette. He couldn't wait to tell her about the sledge ride he had just created for Jamie. Sure he was a little upset that they focused on the fact that Jamie lost his tooth instead of the fun they had just had but he comforted himself with the thought that at least he had one person that could see him. He hadn't counted of being kidnapped by North and Bunny, nor had he counted on what would happen while he was there. He hadn't even known that the pain of his staff breaking had echoed through the tattoo and woken Marinette, his relief at being able to fix it had soothed her slightly but the fact that his emotions were so turbulent had kept her awake. Jack, North, Bunny and Tooth were desperately trying to protect a little boy, Jamie, when Marinette had arrived via a portal courtesy of Kaalki. As she didn't know the full situation she hung back out of sight until she knew. She was so tempted to step in when Pitch had said they were making a fuss over just one kid and that there were other ways to snuff out a light, but something told her it wasn't yet time to step in. She almost whooped with joy when Jack nailed Pitch with a snowball and again when they left to round up the rest of Jamie's friends. Something let her knew she needed to follow them as they raced down the street so she quickly followed them by racing over the rooftops. She knew it was almost time for her to step in so she dropped down from the roof and silently walked up behind everyone waiting for the cue she knew would come. “You think a few children will help you? Against this?” She heard Pitch declare and she couldn't have been prouder when Jack had said that they would protect the kids against Pitch. When the kids, who were clearly all scared said they would protect the guardians, in turn, she knew that she needed to step forward. “They won't be fighting alone.” Marinette still dressed as Ladybug, stated calmly as she joined the kids in front of the Guardians and Jack. “Mari!” She heard Jack gasp. “We'll chat later, ne?” She said throwing a wink over her shoulder at him, almost laughing when she heard North and the others trying to figure out who she was and how she got there, let alone how she knew Jack! When the nightmare sand crashed towards them, she unclipped her yoyo from around her waist and started to spin it, only for Jamie to touch the sand, which seemed to purify it. It was then the battle truly kicked off, with Jack going after Pitch, North summoning the yeti's and even Tooth zipping around helping where she could. She had to giggle when she saw Bunny dive under a car only to be pulled out by a nightmare, only this time he seemed to be back to his true form. She stayed with the kids as much as possible, using her yoyo to take out as many nightmares as she could. Either way, she was grateful when the Sandman was able to reform out of the now golden sand and laughed when he took Pitch out of the battle by first launching him in the air then slamming him back down to earth. She stood next to jack, an arm around his waist, watching as Sandy went to work giving all the children good dreams and using his gifts much as she did after an Akuma attack to set everything back to rights again. She and Jack did jump when a Dreadnoughtus* walked right in front of them making the ground shake. She then let him go talk to North as that's what he seemed to want to do. She probably shouldn't have turned her back though as the next thing she knew Tooth was right in front of her, her fingers in Marinette's mouth inspecting her teeth much to Marinette's horror. “Oh, they so shiny! I know just how much sugar you consume, how the heck do you keep them so strong?” Tooth was babbling. Marinette shot Jack a look that pleaded with him for help so he smiled and started a snowball fight. Of course, Pitch tried to interrupt everything and then they had the ceremony to make Jack a Guardian and he had to leave with them but Marinette was just happy to be away from Tooth. She was about to leave when the kids finally noticed her. “Are you one of the Guardians too?” Jamie asked. “Nope, I'm Ladybug.” She said gently before kneeling to talk to them. “I'm one of the hero's who lives in Paris and tries to protect it from a man who is trying to do something similar to Pitch. I came here because I've known Jack since I was 6 and consider him a good friend so I wanted to help out.” She didn't want to say anything about loving Jack to these kids, they had dealt with enough already. “I need to get home soon but let's get you lot home first, does that sound good?” The children all nodded and peppered her with questions as they walked. Eventually, it was just Jamie left. “How are you going to get home?” He asked innocently. “I have a friend who will take care of that for me don't worry.” He nodded accepting that, then turned and headed inside with a small yawn. Marinette watched until his light was turned off again then got Kaalki to create a portal to take her home. Upon her arrival back in Paris, she saw how much lighter it was and spared a thought to be grateful that she got dressed before she left to go help, Jack. She dropped her transformation then walked back home, passing the park as she did so. She had been about to walk through the park but she saw a number of her classmates there having a picnic and she doubted they would welcome her if she tried to join them. If it had been before Lila had arrived they might have but now they would probably politely tell her to leave. She was too tired to deal with them anyway. She had worried that her parents would have noticed that she was missing but they didn't even notice when she walked in. It looked like Lila had gotten to her parents too, she thought sadly. She was glad that she had Jack, at least. She walked into her room and pulled down the map she had of the city. Every time there was an Akuma she had tracked where it had transformed the person as best she could. While there was a disturbingly high number of dots at her school, she had noticed that the ones furthest out had formed a circle around Agreste Mansion. She knew that Hawkmoth wasn't Adrian as he had been in the same place as a person that had been Akumatised and he hadn't left and come back before the Akuma had landed. This left Mr Agreste and his assistant. As there was Hawkmoth and Mayura to consider, she would guess it was them but she wanted to investigate first. She would do that, tonight she decided unless there was an Akuma attack during the day where both Hawkmoth and Mayura were present. As luck would have it there was an attack and both of them were there. She beat the Akuma relatively quickly with Chats help and as neither of them had used their special abilities, they turned their attention to Hawkmoth and Mayura. The civilians in the area had evacuated as soon as they saw what was happening between the four holders which Marinette was thankful for. Chat had managed to grab Mayura's miraculous and had managed to store it in has batton by this stage so they were both facing hawkmoth, however, they were both tired. She'd had an early morning and the fight with Pitch and this fight had been going on for a while. However, she was determined to end the fight. She had just managed to grab Hawkmoths miraculous when she felt excruciating pain in her chest. She didn't look though she simply kept her grip on the broach and stepped away. While this was good in the way that it forced Hawkmoth's transformation to fall, it also caused the stiletto thin blade that had been in his cane to disintegrate. It didn't stop the pain however, so she finally glanced down. Where the pain originated from was a steadily forming patch of red that was darker than her suit. Although she could see what was happening it was as though her mind simply didn't grasp the full situation. She could hear Chat yelling something at her but it sounded muffled, almost as though the sound was coming from within a bubble. Suddenly her vision was filled with blue and white and it took her a while to realise that Jack was there and was also trying to speak to her. However like with Chat's voice, it was blurred and she couldn't understand it. Suddenly she coughed and was surprised to see blood on her hand. “I...” Her voice trailed off as her vision started to blur. When she went to speak again she found she didn't have the strength too. Closing her eyes she let herself relish the feel of Jacks cold hand on her cheek. She was surprised to find that his hand was feeling warmer by the second but she found she couldn't open her eyes. Unknown to her, as she had closed her eye's Manny had chosen to allow Jack to become visible to everyone, even if they didn't believe in him, for that brief moment in time. Mr Agreste and Chat had drawn back in shock as a teen with white hair had suddenly appeared holding Ladybug. Her death had forced Tikki to drop Ladybug's transformation, revealing her to be Marinette which further shocked them. They were even more shocked as he screamed out in denial and tears fell from his face. Suddenly a white light, bright enough to almost blind them, erupted from both Ladybug and the teen's shoulders. The magic that had been held within their tattoos had been released as one large wave and seeing this Manny had decided that instead of letting it all go to waste he would use it and some of his own magic to turn Marinette into a spirit. Her clothes changed from her normal pants and shirt to a pale blue, almost white high low style dress with spaghetti straps, decorated

with creamy pink and baby blue flowers interspersed with mint green leaves. Although her hair colour had stayed the same it was now loose and falling in gentle waves to her shoulders. The ladybug earrings fell from her ears as they became slightly pointed at the tips and the piercings closed over. Jack, who had closed his eyes when the light started, slowly opened them. When he saw the changes that were happening to Marinette, he couldn't help the relieved laugh that escaped his chest. “Who, who are you? And how can you laugh when she just died in front of you?” A voice from behind him said it's tone angry. Jack slowly stood up and turned to where the voice had come from. He took in the sight of the two adults that were tied up as well as the cat-themed superhero. He walked forward slowly without reaching for his staff to show he wasn't a threat. “I am Jack Frost, Spirit of Winter and Guardian of Fun. I can laugh because although my Marinette is dead to you and all the others of this world, the powers that be have made her into the Spirit of Spring, thus she is as immortal as I am.” Having said this he held out his hand to hand Chat the earrings and broach. “I believe these need to be returned to the Guardian of the Miraculous. I will take my leave with her now as she will be highly disorientated when she wakes up and I'd rather have her safely away from here to avoid her panicking.” Chat studied him for a second then nodded. “Take care of her?” “Always.” He replied with a smile. “After all, I have forever to do so.”  Having said all he was going to say, he picked up his staff then he walked over to the still unconscious Marinette, gathered her into his arms and used the wind to take them to Tooth's Palace.  He wanted to make sure she had access to her memories if she woke up without them like he had.

@thebookwormfairy; @evil-elf16; @you-will-never-know-how-i-think; @thebananathatwrites; @zimmidragonslayer   ; @northernbluetongue; @vivilakitty; @krispydefendorpolice; @sneksnacc; @virgil-is-a-cutie; @lusicing; @nillajinx; @ash-amg-blog; @yazi-ing; @abrx2002

#jack frost #marinette #rise of the guardians #mlb #miraculous ladybug #slight angst #major character death #but not really

[hillbillyoracle]

Why I haven’t been posting lately...

I’m putting what I wrote for a reddit post warning people away from my landlord beneath a cut. It’s been pretty hellish and I’ve been scared/nervous to talk about it but I want people to know what’s going on isn’t small. 

In addition to what I wrote below, we realized the stairs aren’t well constructed after I fell down half a flight of them on Monday evening - in bare feet (no socks) on hardwood flooring. The ledges bend in different directions and I slipped/tripped on one that wasn’t level. The whole right side of my body is a series of black and purple bruises, my feet and hands got scraped up by baseboards that didn’t seem to get sanded. I’m still recovering. 

More below the cut:

TL;DR: What we’ve dealt with since moving into a [landlord redacted] place:

- They were hard to get a hold of and now they won’t respond at all

- Multiple code violations they either didn’t fix or placed the onus on us to arrange for

- Zip Code is wrong on the lease which made getting our drivers licenses and such a pain

- Charged us for rent we already paid multiple times; put notice on door

- Charged us for HOA fees incurred before we moved in

- Maintenance guy is incredibly incompetent and condescending

- They’ve failed to do anything about the roach infestation

- They started up a construction project next door that’s active 12 hours a day

Other than what we’ve seen personally:

- They have code violations on record with the city

- The owner's twitter features the line “It’s all about whose ox is getting gored” - guess his tenants are the ox.

- He weirdly almost gloats about kicking people out and upcharging the next tenants

More Info:

We had to move very quickly and weren’t able to research places as well as we would have liked. So I���m writing this to make it easier for other folks to know what they’re getting into with them. If you’re okay with all of this, then by all means, I support you renting from them. But it was certainly too much for us and I wanted to spare other folks what I could.

I’m actually afraid to share this as I wouldn’t put it past them to be retaliatory, to make a up a reason to kick us out over being more public about what they’ve done. Tried to put it on a throwaway but alas.

I think the best summary of both [landlord’s] property and their service is what my partner said - “It’s not really living, it’s surviving, and that’s not really what I look for in a home.”

So many things have gone wrong at this place that I’m going to go thematically rather than chronologically. Which is wild given that we’ve only been living in the place for three months.

The workmanship in this place is horrible. There are shelves falling out of the wall. The dishwasher leaked and then the maintenance guy “fixed it” by having it overflow through the sink which leaves a bunch of crud in it. They didn’t even both trying to make the basement floor remotely level so our washer and dryer are on stilts – the best fix we can manage right now. Every now and then they come off them and rock around which I’m sure isn’t great for the machine.

They got the zip code wrong on the lease which has caused problems trying to get identifying documents switched over and other things switched over. Small but important. Since they’re nigh impossible to contact (see further down) we’ve mostly not bothered trying to get this sorted with them but it’s been a real pain.

When we moved in, we paid 6 months ahead. A mistake, yes, we know. But they kept trying to charge us for rent we’d already paid. We contacted them three times about the charges on the account and still they packing taped a failure to pay rent notice on our door.

They’ve continually tried to charge us for things we do not have to pay. They tried to charge us for a fee they incurred before we moved in and when we pointed it out to them they did not apologize. The second time they did it they didn’t contact us at all and we had to repeatedly check to see if it’d been removed.

We figured out this was because the yard crew kept pulling our trash can out and not putting it back so we asked them to stop yard services - which we never signed up for. We had to ask them 4 separate times and even then we only got them stopped when we paid for a lock and put it on the back gate and the mower came to talk with us.

The maintenance guy is not only very incompetent but completely condescending. He was two hours late and gave no heads up. I had to call to get any updates. When I tried talking to him about it when he arrived, he walked in essentially said that he’d done nothing wrong and walked away while I was in the middle of a sentence. He would not tell me what was going on and flat out ignored my questions. Our dog is epileptic and was getting nervous with all the strangers and loud noises so I decided to take him away from the apartment for a while. I tried to find the man and again was ignored. Once he realized I’d left he called to yell at me for leaving.

When we moved in they pointed out that they were aware that the basement electrical outlets were not up to code and gave us a number of an electrician to call. We called him and never heard back. Our basement is still not up to code.

They also pointed out they knew our backyard was a flood risk and said they’d be sending someone to fix that. They never have. It’s basically a pond out there when it rains and it’s filled with mosquitos.

We asked about bugs well before we moved in. We were assured they’d send someone to spray. We contacted them multiple times about it. They eventually sent their maintenance guy who left us with a couple roach traps and some spray that did nothing. Our kitchen, even after a month of keeping everything spotless is still infested. He said that the root of the problem was the abandoned house next door and he couldn’t do anything about it.

We found out two days later that the house was not abandoned and they owned it so they could do something about it. Because they began very very loud construction without any notice, construction that was happening for 11 hours a day. When we contacted them initially, they were very condescending, saying it was just because it’d been unoccupied for a while and we weren’t used to the noise (we’ve both lived in shared housing for almost a decade at this point) but said that they’d limit the hours to business hours Monday – Friday. But then without contacting us further and ignoring all our calls and emails – they continued to work 11-12 hours a day. I still cannot understand why they promised it at all and then turned around and go against it. It’s just spiteful.

They’ve ignored all of our emails for 2 weeks straight. We cannot get in contact with them.

A person we’ve never interacted with from their company called us to ask about our dishwasher, meanwhile they’d ignored 5-6 emails we’d sent trying to get more information about what was happening. What a blatant way to say we don’t care about you, just our property.

I am disabled, I do what work I can out of my home and my partner works from home several days a week. This has forced me to basically live somewhere else in order to sustain any kind of income and has taken a major toll on my health. Even if I did have a 9-5 job, I’d still be dealing with this an hour before and two to three hours afterward. When I am at the house I’m getting up early and staying out late just to not have to deal with the noise.

In trying to find out what I could about them more recently, I found that they have at least one code violation they were found guilty of and had to pay the city.

We also found that the owner of the company has a twitter in which he kind of weirdly gloats about kicking people out of their homes and doing very little work so that he can charge people more money. His bio features the line “It’s all about who’s ox is getting gored” – guess the ox are his tenants. I’m now very very skeptical of his “trouble tenants” as I wonder if they didn’t refuse to pay for a place he wouldn’t fix and he kicked them out, “upgraded” the place, and upcharged the next tenants. He brands himself as an entrepreneur and adding value but I can tell you this house is made to sell, not to sustain actual human life in them.

A warning to women and queer people: I would especially advise women and queer people away from this company. They’ve been really weird about my partner and I living together. We told them when we moved in we were a couple and yet weirdly we just get referred to as roommates or just grouped together under “ladies”. It’s really uncomfortable. With the maintenance guy being as patronizing and horrible as he was, I wouldn’t want another woman to have to go through that but it’s whatever you’re comfortable with in the end I suppose.

So that’s what I’d want people to know about doing business with [landlord]. More power to you if you want to but I would never ever recommend them to anyone.

If you know of anything we can do about this, let me know but I'm not hopeful.

Editing to Add Some Pictures

We could post a lot more but I feel like these sum it up for right now: https://imgur.com/a/uzXQPzM

#personal