#but i worked on this for some two weeks and learned a LOT

[this-machine-runs-on-coffee]

1. Probably my clocks, I love them even tho they aren't working rn (one's batteries are dead and the other has to be charged through winding up a thing. I want to take that last one apart and put it back together to learn how it's made)

2. Embarrassing but Freeze Your Brain

3. Passing ones but recently got failing ones. I'm very unfit.

4. My longest streak on an app is probably WhatsApp because I log onto it every day but I don't really use apps that count streaks. I once used Duolingo for a week (three days...) intensely, got bored of it and barely got through another month with minimal xp. I got a shit ton of xp in those few days. I'm not very proud of it.

5. Some of Rick Riordan's I have never read

6. Hades and Artemis

7. Wolf cut of the ones I've had. Idk about other haircuts' names tho, because it they weren't the ones I've had then idk.

8. Cola! Very fizzy sour ones. I love sour things

9. So many books I haven't read yet. It's been two years or more

10. Kinda. I like a lot of food but I will not eat anything other than the food I know I like unless I can back out or know the food I'll be eating but have never eaten has ingredients I like

Thank you so much for tagging me!

Do you like fruit?

What's your favorite food?

What's your favorite book/movie/musical?

Do you have a favorite kind of object? (Clocks for me. I love them. I don't know a lot about them but they are so cool)

Do you like warm or cold lights best?

What's your favourite character from your favourite book/movie/musical?

Have you ever used Duolingo? If yes, what's the highest amount of xp you've gotten in a short time? (I read what you said, @a-fucking-tornado, also consider yourself tagged if you want to answer any of these questions!)

Favorite candy or snack?

Do you prefer the beach or the mountains? Something else if you've never been to either

What's your favorite color?

Open tags!

Ten questions to ask a mutual

Instructions: prev asks ten questions and you answer them, then ask ten new ones and tag ten people to keep the chain going! I’ll go first

What is the weirdest thing you’ve eaten? (For me it’s the time I accidentally drank ants)

do you like purple or green more? (For me it’s a 50/50 I love them both)

what is your favorite two color color combo? (For me it’s purple and gold)

are you a cat or dog person? (Dogs 100%)

what is your favorite painting (Miranda by John William Waterhouse)

Mountains or beaches? (Mountains)

what’s your favorite dessert? (Lemon bars)

are you right or left handed? (Right but I used to be left handed)

salty or sweet? (Sweet)

summer or winter? (Winter)

I’m tagging 11 people but it’s whatever

@wra1th-k1ng

@bladevoyager

@tragedyanddust

@kindred-spirit-93

@urfavgreekmythnerd

@sickneurotic

@ry-diggity

@we-are-but-dead-stars

@thestarryfalls

@tamaruaart

@hermesmoly

[ketamollykaine]

Creepypasta AU Headcanons

Midnight City: Jeff the Killer

★ He is 27, and he's a Capricorn sun, Scorpio Moon, and Taurus Rising (Gemini mercury, Sagittarius Venus, Sagittarius Mars, Leo Jupiter, Aries Saturn, Aquarius Neptune, Sagittarius Pluto)

★ Jeff stands at 5'9", has a slim physique but has defined, strong muscles. His body fat % is probably around 6-7%. He's pale nut not ghost white.

★ Is from a mid-middle class family from Montana.

★ His chelsea smile has long since healed into keloid scars, never burned or cut his eyelids, only has a few burn scars along his temples and forehead that he covers with his hair.

★ His hair is very slightly wavy, parted in the middle, and of course it's black. His natural colour was very dark brown. He'll dye it maybe once a year if he feels like it. It goes down right past his pecs/to hs mid back.

★ Has really nice defined eyebrows and lighter blue hunter eyes. His nose is thin, has a ridge from being broken a couple times, and is upturned slightly.

★ Wears guyliner and it's the hottest thing you've ever seen.

★ Thin, but strong jawline. Doesn't care for growing out his facial hair past a week or two, mostly likes to be clean shaven which can be hard at times because of his scars.

★ Has always been conventionally attractive and had a huge complex about it that shattered when he saw his face permanently altered, making him have the mental break that made the chelsea smile.

★ A metalhead, 100%. Goes to underground shows a lot and doesn't bother hiding his face. He has grown to love what he made of himself.

★ Genuinely enjoys impulsively planning his next kill, he gets a rush from playing God with someone's life.

★ Very confident and sure of himself, but surprisingly not full of himself. Jeff has gotten good at what he does and knows it.

★ Charming to a fault, but also cold and sometimes rude. Doesn't care to come off any type of way. He's very apathetic when it comes to people and their emotions. Enjoys his own company most, but is friends with Dove, Toby, Jackson (the Puppeteer), and Laughing Jack.

★ Doesn't work for Slenderman, is 100% a lone wolf. He doesn't fuck with the fact that Slender exists, so he stays clear of him as much as he can.

★ Has his own cabin in the woods, mostly everyone does if they share it or not.

★ Sings! He loves music. I think he'd sound like Landon Tewers. When he hangs out with Dove, they jam together.

★ He is "Need To Change" by Landon Tewers personified. He can be a great lover, but he will chose himself at the end of the day. Very self aware.

★ He's covered in stick and poke tattoos and has self inflicted scars only for counting each kill, not no barcodes. They're 1cm lines neatly cut on his left pec.

★ Is a sucker for real goth women. Don't hand him an e-girl or TikTok alt girl. He wants a trad goth baddie, hopefully with some amount of bloodlust.

★ Wants a lip piercing but hasn't gotten it because "What if it gets caught on something and rips his lip apart?"

★ He tends to not sleep for a couple days at a time then sleeps for 18-20 hours and act like nothing happened.

★ Uses recreational drugs sometimes. Is no stranger to blow, xanax, 2CB, or molly. Drinks frequently and smoked weed daily. He's even learning how to grow!

★ Isn't a sociopath. He still very much has feelings, lots of big feelings. Jeff is a sadist in non-sexual terms. He enjoys seeing people in pain and being the one to cause the pain.

★ Wears dickies or black cargo pants, grommet belts, steel toe, black latter laced boots, black crew socks, a black band t or black muscle t in the summer, and various hoodies. Some are white, some are black. Sometimes he'll wear a bullet necklace that he stole from Dove and spiked leather bracelets.

★ Some of his favourite songs are "All Around Me" - Flyleaf, "Fentanyl" - McCafferty, "Pet" - A Perfect Circle, and "Chelsea Smile (KC BLITZ remix)" - Bring Me The Horizon

★ Knows his brother is alive, but is still reeling with guilt and will never forgive himself. He stays far away from Liu, trying to make Liu forget about him. Wants to have a brother again so badly. He drinks about this all the time and will cry alone.

★ Satanist, has a copy of The Satanic Bible by Anton LaVey. "the group views Satan neither as a supernatural being, nor a symbol of evil, but instead relies on the literary Satan as a symbol representing "the eternal rebel" against arbitrary authority and social norms,"

★ Will help you take revenge or he'll get it for you. Any excuse to kill and help someone realise their power. He likes having equals and moulding killers. This is an extremely rare occurrence though.

I made a c.ai character for y’all to enjoy, here.

[animeomegas]

I can just imagine Belphie with a baby that will not sleep by any means and it drives him absolutely crazy. I think he would become so agitated all the time, along with battling his post-partum brain :( he’d def blame it on his alpha (whom would of course step in and try their very best to take care of their very sleepy mate and insomniac baby) .

Maybe Belphie would harbor some guilt as a parent ? He would be happy to get his sleep but I think he might feel a little inadequate as a parent if he sees his alpha working so hard to take care of both of them and he can’t get it together. Especially if he didn’t want a child in the first place, I think he’d struggle even more .

He... would go insane. It would be a nightmare of epic proportions.

Especially because the baby is not human, so the newborn phase is like... idk at least a few years long.

I think the stress, the sleep deprivation, the regret, the hormones, and the guilt stir into a horrible cocktail that leaves Belphie struggling a lot. He probably breaks down into tears, dissociates completely, or becomes angry multiple times a day.

The saving grace in this situation is that there are six uncles on hand at all times.

Lucifer is extremely taken with the baby and will take the baby in the evenings several times a week. He has a little rocking crib put by his bed which he rocks with his foot while he does paperwork.

Mammon gets on a bit better with toddlers and older, but he still adores his nibling deeply! He's not exactly a reliable babysitter to a newborn sometimes, but he has a surprising amount of patience with the little one. He walks around the house for hours at night sometimes, just rocking the baby until they fall asleep. He likes to talk out loud with them, and if you ever overhear him, you'll hear him promising to teach and protect them.

Levi is extremely out of his depth with a newborn, but in a midnight emergency, he's always awake. He will fetch whatever you need, heat up milk, or wash bedding. Sometimes that kind of help is a lifeline.

Satan feels strange at the way the family dynamics have changed, but he is a surprising baby whisperer. If the baby won't stop crying, you can hand them to Satan, and they'll fall asleep for a least two precious hours.

Asmo is definitely the kind of uncle that promises to babysit all the time but is actually easily overwhelmed by a baby. He won't take his nibling over night, no way, but his photoshoots for Devilgram take quite a bit of time, so you can sneak some sleep in while he's busy. Also, you and Belphie never have to buy any clothes, because Asmo has bought more than enough.

And Beel, of course, sweet Beel. He is entirely mystified by his new nibling, his twin's baby. He's in love in every way. He takes the baby all. the. time. He learns how to do everything he can to take care of his nibling, but he never forgets to look after his twin either. He makes sure Belphie is bathing, sleeping as much as he can, and eating enough.

With the uncles around, Belphie and his alpha get some moments to curl up together. They can barely stay awake but they both manage it just long enough to apologise for the snapping and irritable moods, to reassure each other that they haven't made a horrible mistake, and that they love each other.

And then they can fall asleep together and recuperate, while the pup is getting passed around each uncle and showered with love.

[jitterbugbear]

an uneventful evening

[cozylittleartblog]

Columbo and the Knight (1984)

put me in the universe where Columbo ran through the 1980s and had a crossover episode with Knight Rider. I think they deserved it, and I am not just saying that because they're my two favorite Old Shows. @telebeast wrote a little fanfic blurb about it and I HAD to visualize it into a comic (which is also the longest comic I have finished thus far at five pages...), so writing credit goes to them.

Autism W!

[solardrake]

Delivering mail to the furthest corners of the server ✉✈

[romanceddawn]

Puzzleshipping: "You gave me your heart, you know..." [Insp.]

❕ Please do not repost to any other sites ❕

[be-an-echo]

Merry Christmas guyyyss🎄

[bookshelf-in-progress]

Gosh, do I love discovery writing. The freedom. The sense of play. The way you have to hold the material lightly and follow where it leads, never being afraid to scrap things that don't work or to rewrite to emphasize things that do. You have the fun of discovering the story you're writing rather than the frustration of being unable to capture the ideas in your head. This way might wind up taking ages, but it makes the writing process such a joy.

[heartshattering]

5 AM

Just me and my overactive mind facing the nighttime again 🙃

[winterrose42]

Finding out youre agorophobic is wack bc its like, if you dont know then for me at least you just go out anyway and dissociate the whole time feel like absolute garbage and take days to recover from a small trip to groceries and finding every excuse possible to drop plans with people until they eventually stopped asking and stopped talking altogether. And now its like, oh. Is this why going outside feels like dying. Huh. And i wanna go out and do things but the thought makes me vomit for a week leading up to it and i was told oh its just being dramatic so yeah cool whatever.

Now im like, okay i actually have to get to used to going out and being around people adn put things in place for the paranoia and anxiety and plan things in advance and i gotta tell myself about it and walk myself through it everyday leading up. And im an adult so fuck everyone i will in fact be taking my headphones and a fidget and wearing my rat jacket as a security blanket in 90 degree weather thank you. I am in fact, allowed to accommodate myself and set boundaries fuck you actually.

[airenyah]

i completely understand the ohm obsession and i cannot thank you enough for all your insights on acting (his and also in general) too! i LOVE reading what you have to say and learning from you at the same time! watching series (i also just watched the latest 10yt ep) feels like an even more involved experience now because i can actively analyse the acting (i keep coming back to your post to see how ohm does such and such) too! thank you x1000000 and please know that i am consensually kissing your ginormous brain <3

anon, ahhhhhhhhhhhhhh thank you so much for your lovely message, it delights me greatly!!!!!!!!!! I read your ask earlier and I was sitting in my bed at the time and once I’d finished reading I kind of just fell forward, burying my head into my blanket and squealing like a little child for like a minute, that’s how happy your words made me 💕

I’m so glad to hear that I managed to explain things clearly enough that others (in this case you specifically) can get something out of it!! honestly, I’ve been so shy when it comes to talking about acting here on tumblr because I feel like I can’t express what I mean very well. And the problem is what I’ve mentioned so far really is just a quick overview, there are many concepts I definitely forgot about (obviously I don’t have a list in my head, I just notice things as I’m watching) and those that I did talk about, well, I really didn’t go into a lot of detail there, it was more of a quick summary (there is SO. MUCH. You really can’t sum up 3 years of drama school into one single tumblr post hahaha)

and also, unfortunately I can’t just go and analyze a clip second by second while you listen. I mean okay yeah, in some cases and for some specific concepts gifs will do the trick (like in my bbs ep 3 sniffing scene analysis) but with a lot of things it’s just easier when you have the entire clip with sound and all, where you can also jump back and forth and then maybe go find another example for comparison to make things a little clearer

because often a performing concept or performing technique will be easier to understand when you’ve seen someone do it “wrong”. I’m saying “wrong” here in quotation marks because I’m only putting it that way for the sake of simplicity. There isn’t really a right or wrong here, it’s usually much more about “if you perform it this way then you’ll likely have this effect on the audience, if you perform it that way then you’ll likely have that effect on the audience. Which one do you wanna achieve as an actor?” Though, one can definitely say that performing a certain way will touch the audience more or they will have an easier time following the story and the emotions compared to performing it a different way. Again, it’s a lot like food: put sugar in one recipe and it’ll taste amazing and people can’t stop eating, put sugar in another and people will refuse to eat it because it tastes so bad to them, put sugar in yet another recipe and it might be perfectly edible but would probably be a whole lot more enjoyable without the sugar

what I mean by that is: it might come to situations where I’ll be like “this actor has this aggressive undertone 90% of the time and we’re half-way through the drama and it’s starting to annoy me and make me dislike the character and the relationship” or “this actor has no thoughts behind their actions and so watching them just bores me” (yes these are real-life opinions that I’ve recently had. No I will not be revealing said dramas publicly, but if anyone reading this is curious then feel free to come into my dms and I might spill the tea)

comparing various scenes of an actors using a technique well with actors using that technique not so well really helps with learning how to analyze acting because you’ll see the different effects it’ll have on you as a viewer when someone uses a technique well vs someone who’s bad at it

I do have some “bad” examples that I could tell you about and fun fact: that even includes แค่เพื่อนครับเพื่อน BAD BUDDY SERIES (my most beloved <3). but as I’ve said before, I just don’t feel comfortable sharing the negativity publicly, because I don’t wanna hurt anyone’s feelings. And I don’t like getting into arguments, especially public ones, so I don’t want to get any stupid comments on my posts or in my ask box. However, if you’re curious my dearest anon, you’re very welcome to come right into my dms for some deeper discussion on that. And you don’t have to be nervous about revealing your identity, because sharing my observations with you in even more detail would definitely bring me great joy💕 (this goes for anyone reading this, btw, feel free to slide into my dms fsjksd)

in fact, I wish I could do this one acting analysis project with you that I did with my friend!! quick backstory: back in november 2021 I watched this old korean drama and I ended up getting super obsessed with it because I realized there were remakes from other countries which I then also ended up watching and comparing all these version was a suuuuper eye opening experience for me when it comes to “well used technique” vs “badly used technique” (I learned A LOT from this when in regard to acting) And then half-way through the semester something came up in the uni course my friend and I attend together and I ended up mentioning some acting concept and realized that said kdrama & remakes were a perfect example of that and I wanted to show her

And this turned into this month long project throughout november 2022, in which I selected a sequence that had the exact same plot and context in both versions and I showed them to her in several rounds and let her do the analyzing first without me telling her a thing. So the first time around she got absolutely zero info from me, she knew absolutely nothing about the plot, or the characters or anything. I turned off the subtitles as well as the sound and let take a look at ONLY the visuals. For the 2nd round the only thing she got in addition was the sound but I still didn’t tell her anything about the plot or the characters. In the 3rd round I finally told her about the plot and had her watch everything with the context in mind. And only in the final round did I turn on the subtitles. After every round we spent at least an hour discussing everything that she saw or noticed or how she felt watching it but I didn’t tell her any of my own thoughts. I wanted her to make up her own mind first and discover things for herself. It was a quite interesting project, both for me and for her! And yeah, I wish I could do this with you because I’m sure it would be eye-opening for you! (you don’t happen to live in austria, do you? 😂 well, maybe we could figure out a remote solution with screensharing or something...)

also thank you for calling my brain ginormous 🥰 i'll accept the compliment, but let me tell you, it really isn't that big yet!! i wish you could hear what my fave monologue teacher and my camera acting teacher always had to say in class!!! and also, you should really hear what my mom has to say on performing, i feel like such a baby next to her. seriously, the THINGS she SEES?????

story time (sorry i know this is super long already): we were watching the eclipse together, right, and at some point after weeks, towards the end of the series when akkayan start dating, we were just watching this episode, right? and suddenly my mom goes: *pointing at khaotung* "he seems tense, his inner balance seems off"

and i'm just sitting there like "???????? what are you talking about???? they're literally just lying down in bed, HOW can you tell???????"

she tried to explain it to me but i was just left super confused. i think it was an episode later (or maybe the same episode but some scenes later?? i don't remember) there was another scene where they were standing upright and my mom hit pause and went "here, do you see how [insert explanation]" and i was like "oh. okay yeah. yeah that makes sense. i think i know what you mean". and then during the finale (i think?) there was another moment where i even noticed something before my mom said it and then she pointed it out and i was like "yeah i caught that too!!!!"

i also showed her the only friends trailer and there's this one shot where khaotung is sitting on the bed with book, right? and my mom paused the video and went "huh? that's funny. half of his body looks tense while the other half looks completely relaxed" (half meaning left/right, not upper half and lower half). again i was just sitting there like "HOW?????? HOW DO YOU EVEN SEE THIS?????"

(admittedly, my mother works in the medical field and she's close to finishing a 2(?) year training program as a massage therapist, so i guess she'd know about tense bodies from having first hand experience hahaha)

well, i'll stop it here bc i'm sure this is already over 1000 words long again oops. if you've made it all the way down here, then i really appreciated that and give you forehead kiss (if you like that, of course. if not then i'll give you a hug or a highfive or a wave or whatever else you're comfortable with). then again, you've also read my 3.7k analysis on ohm's acting so…

[rustinsscohles]

and with that i do believe that my run with interstellar in imax has come to an end.

[doodlemancy]

Hey, so, Patreon is lying to you about Apple forcing their hand.

Patreon is getting rid of 1st-of-the-month/per-creation billing, claiming a new decision by Apple has forced their hand. This will hurt a lot of creatives, and their excuse is bullshit. Allow me to explain.

In 2018, Patreon tried to impose a new ill-considered fee structure on everyone that would have cost creators a lot of smaller pledges. They ended up apologizing for this profusely; they have now deleted this apology from their website and unfortunately I was unable to find it on the Internet Archive. This was shameful, but to their credit they backed off quickly when things got ugly.

Back in 2021, Patreon discussed plans to force all creators into a rolling bill structure and get rid of first-of-the-month/pay-up-front billing. The community once again very decisively shouted them down, and they had to walk it back again. This whole fiasco damaged the already shaky trust between Patreon creators and staff.

This week, Patreon announced that, along with extra fees, Apple's policies were supposedly forcing them to move everyone over to the rolling fee structure that they first tried to get us to agree to in 2021. Patreon will tell you they are not happy about this. As a person who spent a long time watching Patreon make terrible decisions, I can tell you-- they are probably very happy about this, because it's exactly the smokescreen they needed to do what they've been trying to do for years, which is pull ALL Patreon creators away from 1st-of-the-month and per-creation billing.

The spin in the news I've seen so far is "Apple bullies Patreon, boo hoo hoo poor Patreon". This is very obviously not what's happening. Mind you: Apple does suck, and they are doing something bad here. Fuck apple. But Patreon and Apple are BOTH the asshole in this situation; Everyone Sucks Here. Patreon has options: they can make the iOS app a reader app and do billing through the browser to avoid the restrictions and the extra fees (Netflix and Amazon, notably, both do this), or they can allow creators to opt-out of iOS billing if they want to use billing models that don't work with it.

It seems most likely to me that the Apple situation is a real fire that Patreon has chosen to use as a convenient smokescreen to do what they've been wanting to do since at least 2021, and maybe since 2018.

What do we do?:

They have a feedback form specifically about this.

They also have a creator discord.

And they have lots of social media pages where they probably really, really hope that this doesn't blow up again, because they never learn. The incidents I've described here aren't the only two other times Patreon has pissed off their creators. They know if they don't contain the noise it'll be harder to get away with it, so make some noise. They've done a lot of work to spin this cleverly so you'll have sympathy for them and they won't get the kind of backlash they know they deserve.

Please don't misuse these links and make threats or spam or something. All you have to do is give well-reasoned feedback. Patreon hates feedback. Make sure they get a nice heaping helping of their least favorite vegetable.

[inbabylontheywept]

The Motherfucking Lizard King

No one at work trusts my boss. 

He's smart. He works hard. He's not trustworthy. He hasn't actually fucked anyone at work over, but he's ruined his last two marriages with affairs, and got dumped by his third fiance when he wouldn't sign a prenup. The fact that we all know this is just a hazard of working in a small town. 

Anyway: The thought process of the people in the lab is that if he screwed over his first wife, and his second wife, and was probably planning on screwing over his third wife, it would be insane for him not to screw us over. After all, what kind of idiot treats their employees better than their spouse? 

I dunno. His kind, I guess? He's had a few chances to fuck us over, and he hasn't taken them. Opposite really. When our parent company was doing furloughs, he stayed in the office almost a hundred hours, talking and talking and talking his way up the corporate ladder. And in the end, no one at our site got furloughed. 

He's pulled strings like that before. And it baffles me, right? Because it really does make zero sense. He'll move the heavens and the earth for us, but his wife and kids are afterthoughts. It feels like any moment, he's going to look into the mirror and realize how stupid that is. It feels like I'm betting on him making the same stupid mistake again, and again, and again - like it would be less cynical to believe he was, eventually, going to stab me in the back. But he hasn't yet, and as far as I can tell he's been making that mistake for close to fifteen years, and it's already cost him everything it can. If he was going to learn, he would have by now. 

So my position on him is that if he wanted to date someone I cared about, I'd warn them off. I don't trust him there. But I tentatively trust him to be my boss. Maybe one day he'll stick the knife in and twist, and everyone will say Ah, Babs, we warned you, but for now, I accept that he's doing a very predictable, very irrational thing, and I've made my peace with it. 

---

My job has glue traps. 

No one likes the glue traps, but we don't have a lot of options. Poison's banned by state law, spring traps are banned by company safety, and several non-lethal options tried in the past failed to work. The mouse problem can get pretty bad if it's ignored, and there's some real health hazards in that. Our site has never had a positive hantavirus test, thank God, but the big base about a half hour away has. That guy's gonna be on oxygen the rest of his life. 

If a mouse gets caught, we just euthanize it. But more than mice get stuck. Lizards can wander into those traps too, and the people working there have different feelings about the lizards. They don't pose nearly the same kind of risk mice do. They're chill little guys, and they keep the moths away, and they're just��

You know. They're friendly. There's something to be said about walking into a room, and hitting the light switch, and seeing two little guys on the wall start to do pushups as soon as they see you. 

People used to just euthanize the lizards too, but I had pet leopard geckos as a kid and I couldn't take that so I wound up googling how to free animals from glue traps. Now, when a lizard gets stuck in a trap - which happens once or twice a week - I get some vegetable oil from the breakroom, and a little plastic fork, and I'll spend fifteen to twenty minutes just kind of gently prying the little guys out. 

I have a team of technicians that help me operate one of the larger machines. They're real blue collar guys, ex-airforce, and they make me look like a little kid. Being an engineer means they'll look to me as a leader sometimes, which is a wild experience. And I started helping the lizards for my own conscience, but one of the crazier consequences of it has been that it seriously boosted my leadership cred. Because those guys see me, and they go: Hey. If he's willing to fight for a lizard, he's gotta be willing to fight for me. 

I cannot overstate how nice that is. Most engineers that want to make a change to a maintenance practice, or try an upgrade, they have to work their asses off to get the techs to buy in. But I can just ask. They already trust me to do good. They know I'm new, and they know I'm not the smartest engineer in the building, but they also know I'm the one who gets lizards out of the glue traps. 

And just because of that, they're willing to follow me. 

---

My boss has a meeting every month or two. It's typically basic house cleaning stuff - reminders about routines we've gotten lazy on, and updates on future projects. Maybe some warnings about problems coming from higher up in the company.

People are, in my opinion, a bit too cynical about the meetings. It stems from people not trusting our boss, which again, I understand, because it would make so much more sense if he wasn't trustworthy. It's a testament to the man's incredibly unhealthy priorities that he is. But as we made it to the end of the meeting, one of bullet points was: 

Do NOT mess with animals in the building. 

So I looked at my techs, and they looked at me, and when he got to the point, he was so scathing I actually just wanted to crawl under a rock and die. He said basically that he'd heard some reports about someone in the building handling animals that found their way in and got stuck, and that he just wanted to emphasize how insanely inappropriate that was, not to mention dangerous, and that if he needed to speak to anyone about it again, there would be severe consequences. 

I was willing to just take the shame and move on. I was. But one of my techs is old. Old enough he could've retired two years ago. And his actual literal goal is to one day get angry, yell at someone, and storm out. That's how he wants to retire. So instead of biting his tongue like everyone else, he stood up and said: I hate the glue traps. You hate the glue traps. We all hate glue traps. But we've all sat here for years, ignoring the little things that get stuck in them, watching them die, and then Bab's comes in, and he is the first person in decades to give enough of a shit to start pulling the lizards out. And I don't want him to stop. 

Get humane traps or shut up but we are not going back to the old way of just letting things starve. 

And my boss actually froze up. He got all wide eyed and stared at Marc, and then the other techs jumped in, and there was a very small but intense rebellion in the meeting and my boss kept trying to interrupt while getting absolutely bowled over by this gang of angry middle aged air force vets, and eventually he just went 

I will speak with Babylon about this afterwards! After! And then he will speak with everyone else, but I have more points to cover. 

So they went silent, and my boss rushed through the last five minutes, and we all adjounred. The techs really didn't like that I was going in alone - they thought our boss was going to try and shout me into compliance. Marc in particular was like, Look, if he tries bullying you, stand your ground, and if he threatens anything, just come get us, and we'll give him hell. 

So armed with that, I went to my boss's office. I sat in the chair across from him, and he kept his composure for maybe five seconds before just flopping back into his chair. 

I had no idea you were saving lizards, he said, but I'm glad you are. I always hated seeing them die in the glue.  

I wasn't expecting that. I was about to ask him what the comment from the meeting was about then, but he answered that before I even got the chance.

A snake got into the building last week, and - someone picked it up and chased a coworker around. Turns out that coworker was severely afraid of snakes, and now it's a shitshow. We're a small site, and now I can't ask those two to work together anymore, to say nothing about how the snake fared after all that. Being upset about that is a reasonable thing, right? 

And he gave me a look like he actually wanted an answer, so I said Yeah, totally, chasing a coworker around with a snake is a dick move. Especially if that coworker is already afraid of snakes. 

And he said Exactly! and then we sat there a few moments longer. He looked so incredibly tired that I did, actually, feel kind of bad for him. And then he somehow managed to sink even further into his chair, and said

Look, I know I'm not a good guy. But I'm not evil. I'm not some sort of crazy asshole that's going to demand that everyone watch lizards starve to death. When you go back downstairs, could you try to pass that on? That I'm not evil? 

I said Sure because it wasn't a hard request, and he looked relieved. I actually made it halfway out before I realized I had a question. 

Who grabbed the snake? I asked. 

Not supposed to talk about it, he said. But whoever comes to mind first is probably right. 

ThatGuy? I asked. And he looked me in the face, nodded his head yes, and said No. 

---

The techs seemed a little disappointed that they didn't get to storm the boss's office, but were otherwise in good spirits. They were actually a little bit embarrassed to hear about the snake story - apparently, it wasn't much of a secret. It'd just slipped their minds because it happened three weeks ago. 

We did maintenance after that, the same basic repairs we did every week. The meeting had been stressful and it was a relief to work with my hands. When the parts were reinstalled, everything cleaned and smooth and ready to go, Marc found me again. 

You know what the lesson of today is? he asked. And there were quite a few answers to that that I could have taken - from don't assume the worst of people to be careful with how you spend your trust - we all need it more than we think. 

But instead I said what? because I wanted to hear what his answer was going to be. 

That I got your back, he said. Then he clapped one very, very large hand on my shoulder, gave it a good squeeze, and walked back to dosimetry lab.

---

The next day, Marc gave me a package and told me to open it in my office. I was suspicious, but I followed the request.

Cardboard gave way to a small baggie, obviously full of fabric, which opened to reveal a t-shirt that read

"I Am the Motherfucking Lizard King."

I looked at it, I loved it, and then I got an idea. I went to my boss's office and knocked on the door. When he opened it, I asked him if he would be willing to allow something very unprofessional to happen for morale building purposes.

How unprofessional? he asked. I held the shirt up in answer. He gave the shirt a short look over and snorted.

You can wear it on weeks without customers, he said. Which just so happened to include that week.

I'll pass on that it came with your blessing, I replied, and he looked oddly relieved.

Thanks, he said. And then I went downstairs.

---

The techs were very, very happy to see the shirt. And while my boss's reputation remains in tatters, and probably will be until he moves (or dies), the next time there was a meeting, there was quite a bit less complaining about how mere presence. Which is, I guess, a start.

We'll see if he squanders it.

[icewindandboringhorror]

Well! I started remodeling the house sooo long ago (original post of it back in 2018), then got distracted and forgot it in the closet for a long time, ignored it on and off, etc... Then, finally finished the house in 2022. THEN, I forgot about the pictures I took of it in 2022, and am now posting them in 2024.. A good example of how the timeline of my side craft projects usually go lol

But, at least I do have the photos now, so... finally sharing them ! 

I just used a blue sheet as a 'sky' and a green sweater with some fake flowers on it to try to look like it was on grass lol...

(more images under the readmore)

The bedroom-

The library/potion room -

The living room area-

Then the little kitchen

The pictures are not very good, but these are the best I could find? I filmed a video of me working on the whole thing (who knows when that will be out..if it took me TWO years just to post the photos lol), so I think while I was taking the pictures, I was thinking “eh, they don’t have to be great, since I’ll show it in more detail in the video :3″, but now I kind of regret not having more actual detail shots or anything.

(sidenote: I'm pretty sure I've posted better pictures of some of the individual rooms before though too? sometime before I had added the finishing touches but when they were basically done and looked almost the same as these. so maybe it's okay that these are kind of bad lol)

I think progress on it also stalled a bit due to the pandemic starting, since like 90% of the stuff in here is random things I found at the bins (giant goodwill donation center where you dig through tubs of various items all thrown together), so once I couldn’t go out to the bins anymore, I lost my method of hunting for new items, and just had to work with whatever scraps I already had or could make myself with very few materials/tools.  The bins is a really large and always crowded place, so it's still not safe for me to go with current community transmission levels lol... who knows when I shall be able to use it to get dirt cheap crafting supplies ever again.. T o T

ANYWAY! It was a fun little project, even though of course it's a little rough around the edges and not exactly as I'd envisioned lol. As usual, I always enjoy the MAKING of things the most, yet then have no idea what to do with the finished project, since the process is what's enjoyable to me.

I think I'm going to take all the glued down furniture out of it and then repaint it, then maybe donate the base house back to the same thrift store I found it at. Like completing some sort of crafting circle of life or something lol

slowly making some progress on the doll house I’m trying to remodel!