#if there's any mistake feel free to tell me!

[emeraldeyes23]

Another art drawn by Banana Fish (supervising) anime director Ayumi Yamada from January 2025✨ This time she drew Arthur.

Translation:

This morning, I parboiled beef tendons for 2 hours, then spent even more time making dote-ni, but it was more troublesome than I thought it would be...

(Side note: Dote-ni is pork or beef entrails boiled in soybean miso)

It's a dish that's very difficult to make, but only takes a moment to eat...

Beef tendons have been added to my "list of rather buying them as professionally made dishes whenever possible, rather than making them myself" for the rest of my life.

By the way, so far, the most troublesome thing I've tried to make is harumaki. (Harumaki are crispy Japanese Spring Rolls).

Author

Diary of 2025/01/23

No talent for cooking!!!

Please note that Japanese is not my mother tongue. If you spot any mistakes, feel free to tell me.

[cfdbuckley]

Buck no way intended the pause to be for long, just enough to fill up his lungs so he didn't require Eddie to go from kissing him to CPR. Since the only thing on his mind was returning to Eddie's lips, he was rather surprised when Eddie continued speaking after his agreement. It took a lot of willpower to stop himself from interrupting him, kissing him stupid, until neither of them recall Eddie had used a phrase like "before this goes any further," since even with the hope attached, to made his stomach do a nervous flop. Imagine having a too brief kiss with your dream man just for it to crash and burn before anything else could happen?

Luckily for Buck, it sounded like crashing and burning would only happen if he was the worst kind of fuckup, and he was pretty sure even his worst mistake would pale in comparison what Eddie's words suggested might kill this before it could go ant further. Buck huffed out a laugh, pushing his hand further up his back, dragging his palm up over the slope of his spine. "You really think there's a chance I could go back to Tommy after finding out there's any possibility of a future with you?" He swallowed thickly as his eyes dropped back down to Eddie's lips, feeling a jolt go straight through him and down to his cock at even just the recent memory of them being against his own.

He drew his hand back out of his shirt and at the same time let the other slide down from Eddie's neck to his shoulder. He dipped his head down to look as the former hand pushed into his (now too tight) jeans pocket to fish out his phone. "You want me to tell him right now? Because I'll fuckin' do it-" He glanced at the screen and briefly squinted at the messages. "If it's even necessary, that is..." He rolled his eyes and turned the screen to let Eddie see that his notifications, missed calls, new voice mails, were flooded with Tommy's name, and the last text from not too long ago now was "I turned on your location sharing, Evan! I can tell you're at Eddies, you goddamn whore! CALL ME BACK NOW"

He set the phone on his lap and reached up to curl his fingers into Eddie's shirt, playing with the topmost button, twisting the fabric one handed until the button slipped free from its hole. "Whatever you need from me- regarding Tommy or anything else- I will do it." His eyes focused in on Eddie's again, unaware how love drunk and hungry he really looked, only able to think of how badly he needed his mouth back on the man in front of him.

Over the course of their friendship, there was no way to keep track of how many times Buck and Eddie had touched each other. They were both naturally tactile people who were naturally drawn to each other, so it wasn't uncommon for there to be a lot of physical contact between the two of them. However, feeling Buck's hand wrap around his neck was a whole different experience. If just Buck's fingers dragging against his neck caused this much of an extreme reaction in Eddie's body, he couldn't even begin to imagine what Buck's lips would feel like. Luckily for him, he didn't have to wait too long to find out just what the other man's lips did to him as Buck finally gave in to Eddie's pleading.

While Eddie had kissed several people in his life, he never understood what the big deal was about kissing. He thought it was nice, but he was never one that could spend 'hours' kissing someone. Kissing the stranger at the club was a bit better, so Eddie at least knew that part of the issue was the fact that he'd only kissed women. Kissing Buck though... it was like the switch was suddenly flipped on. Things got even better when he felt Buck deepened the kiss, so Eddie made match Buck's intensity.

His whole body was buzzing with excitement and arousal which only amped up when Buck pushed his hand under his shirt, which made Eddie lament that fact that they were both wearing entirely too many clothes. He was so tempted to throw his leg over Buck's lap and straddle him right then and there, but there was something nagging him that he felt like he needed Buck to understand before things potentially progressed. His body just refused to pull away and stop something that he'd wanted for so long, but Buck made the decision for him. "So much better..."

Every instinct of Eddie want to dive back in and get his hands and lips back on Buck, but he needed to be honest with the other man first before things got too out of hand. "Before this goes any further, and fuck I really hope it does... I need you to know that I can't do casual, not with you. I'm not asking you to make a life-long commitment right here and now but this means something to me, Buck, so I gotta at least know that it's over with Tommy if we continue. I could barely handle the thought of you two together before all of this, but now..."

[sylvia-forest]

[CN] Shaw's 5th Anniversary ASMR - Sweet times

⚡Warning: This post contains detailed spoiler's for an ASMR which hasn't been released in EN yet!⚡

“In each other laughter, the sweet and sour taste was lost in the heart”

[stepping on grass sounds]

Walk carefully.

You were about to hit your head against a tree.

You were working overtime.

How can you bump into a tree while walking during the day?

Let me see…

You've got dark circles under your eyes.

You look like you’ve stayed up for three nights without sleep.

We're here, there are many oranges.

Wait, I will pick more.

To give you some Vitamin C.

[continues to walk] 

Why did I bring you to pick fruits on the weekend?

Didn't I say that on the way?

This is the orchard of a friend's grandfather's house.

The fruit produced this year was good.

Plus the suburban scenery here was also pretty good.

Those guys from the band suggested camping.

A few days ago, didn't you say that you worked overtime for half a month?

You've been staying in the office building, but you didn't have time to relax.

Now you've got the chance.

I'll take you out to experience a farmhouse.

[Shaw takes a deep breath]

Don't you like this the most?

To have zero distance with nature. Do you feel it yet?

Now that you know my good intentions…

Just leave the work and all that stuff to the back of your mind.

Careful. 

[MC trips over something]

Follow me and you'll be fine.

If you don't want to fall again, just follow me.

Give me your hand.

[Shaw grabs MC hand]

Don't bother about those guys in the band.

They will come later.

[snapping of twigs and leaves rustling sounds]

Let's pick the best oranges first.

Let them eat sour ones.

[Shaw exhales lightly]

That's right, smile more.

We're here to relax ourselves. 

[Shaw stretches himself]

Anyway, it's just us here now.

[Snapping of twigs and wildlife sounds]]

Here you go.

If you want to pick it, just pick it.

I was kind enough to pick out the best ones for you.

You don't know how to appreciate goodwill.

How can you tell it's delicious?

Well, of course.

These oranges grew on the top of the tree.

At first glance, they look bigger than other oranges.

The colors are the best.

I'll pick some more.

We'll eat these oranges when we go back to the tent.

Why are you fighting with the oranges by peeling them off with all the juice? 

It splashed onto my face.

There was no orange peeler.

Isn't it here?

It's right next to the table.

What are you doing

Suddenly getting closer to me?

Okay, you wipe it.

[sound of shaw's breathing]

Tsk, have you wiped enough?

It's time to eat the oranges.

[peeling of oranges sounds]

[Shaw started speaking while eating the oranges]

Is that all the skill you've got?

Don't peel it. 

Here, I'll give you mine.

Sweet or not sweet? 

Yes, I just tasted it, it's very sweet.

This seems to be some jelly orange.

Just relax and eat it.

[MC takes the orange from shaw's hand and put it in her mouth but start spitting it out]

HAHAHA! 

You trust me so much.

You really ate half an orange in one go. 

HAHA! 

What I gave you earlier was

Randomly plucked from the tree.

I took a bite  

I almost lost my teeth. 

I just wanted to tease you. 

Who knew you would trust me so much?

[MC beats the crap out of Shaw]

All right. 

That way, even if we all eat limes

Everything will balance out, how's that?

Why are you still angry?

[Shaw laughs]

How about this?

You go and get another lime.

I'll also eat it.

So, let's call it even.

Still not satisfied?

So, how about this?

This winter, the oranges you eat

I'll buy them all.

As an apology for cheating you into eating limes. 

OK, it looks like you agree. 

Wait, don't move. 

You seem to have gotten orange juice on your face, too.

You just didn't pay attention to it. 

[Kiss]

Now it's all "cleaned up". 

—

⚡ASMR texts

[the-broken-pen]

Hey can you do one about a villain with teleporting powers

The hero woke up gasping, scrambling upright in bed as the back of their neck tingled in warning. Their eyes darted around the room, blurry, before settling on the far wall.

The villain watched them, idle and unimpressed.

The hero’s lungs, traitorously, forgot how to breathe. They wheezed slightly, one hand clenching onto the blanket, the other sliding underneath the pillow for their knife, where–

The villain hummed, and the hero’s attention snapped back to them at the same time they managed to draw in a painful, terror-addled breath. The villain’s gaze was unnerving as they flipped a knife over their knuckles.

The hero’s knife.

“You,” the hero managed, but they couldn’t think of anything to say, and they were so tired and their pulse was jackrabbiting in their ears.

The villain seemed to know this.

“I warned you,” they said. They didn’t even sound mean about it. Just a gentle reminder–hey, don’t forget to check the mail, hey, it’s your mom’s birthday, hey, can you feed the dog?

‘If you keep interfering, I will hunt you to the ends of the Earth and make you stop. There is nowhere I will not find you. Do you hear me? You cannot run from me, so don’t make me chase you.’

The hero swallowed.

“I didn’t think you would actually do it.”

The villain nodded like they had expected this. “You’ve learned from your mistakes, though, yeah?”

The hero knew the right answer. They knew that the proper response would be to slide off the bed onto their knees, to swear in every language they knew that they wouldn’t do it again. That the villain would be the only one allowed to splash blood onto the streets of their city, and the hero would choke on the pain of doing nothing and stay silent in it.

“You knew I wasn’t going to listen to you,” the hero said, and it was accusatory. The villain shifted slightly. “You had to have known I wouldn’t stop just because you threatened me.”

The villain shrugged one shoulder. 

“Of course I did. If you were the type of person who would have stopped, I would have killed you instead of giving you a warning.”

The hero’s grip tightened on the blanket. “That doesn’t make sense. If I was going to stop then why kill me–”

“I don’t believe in weakness,” the villain interrupted. Their gaze was searching and heavy on the hero’s face, knife still spinning over their knuckles. “Which is why you’re alive, because you have never been weak.”

The hero’s jaw tensed.

“You wanted this.”

The hint of a smile pulled at the villain’s mouth.

“Of course I did. You think I didn’t know you would try and run? You think I didn’t know exactly how you would react the moment I threatened anyone in that cursed city?”

“So you weren’t actually going to kill anyone?”

“Oh, no,” the villain corrected. “Of course I was going to. They don’t matter to me.”

The hero’s stomach turned. 

“Those are people–”

“They’re a drop in an ocean of humanity. You know better than to think I would care about something so trivial,” the villain said.

“They’re not trivial–”

The villain sighed, harsh in the darkness of the room.

“I bore of this. Get dressed. We’re leaving.”

The hero jolted back.

“I’m not going anywhere with you.”

The villain sighed again, as if they were dealing with an unruly child and getting a headache for their efforts. It sent the hero bristling like an angry cat.

“There’s nowhere you can go that I can’t find you. You know that, right? There is no end of the line for this. You can drive until you run out of gasoline, until your feet bleed, and you drain your accounts of money. And I will follow, and I will leave every person who helped you nothing more than a stain on the ground, until you decide the trail of bodies isn’t worth avoiding me. Is that really something you want?”

The hero set their jaw, rising to their feet. 

“You won’t find me,” they swore. And the villain–

The villain laughed.

“I know your face. Of course I can find you.”

The hero was missing something, and the lack of knowledge felt like a sword over their head. 

“I don’t–”

“There’s no way you would have known,” the villain said gently, like they knew how much it bothered the hero that they were missing something that was apparently vital. 

They probably did know.

The hero glared.

The villain looked on the verge of another laugh.

“Once I’ve seen a face, I can find a person anywhere in the world. No matter how far. That’s all I need. You could go to the other side of the planet, and I could teleport to you without a second thought.”

The hero gaped.

“Any face?”

The villain paused. “Yes.”

The hero’s throat went abruptly dry.

Any face–

“You could do so much good,” the hero said, and their voice broke slightly. “Do you know how many people you could save? Natural disasters and missing persons cases and–”

“You misunderstand me.”

“You could–”

“I don’t want to do good.”

The hero stopped.

“You don’t want to do good,” they said flatly.

“I am not a good person,” the villain said. “I don’t want to do good. I want power, and I want to do as I please, and I want you.”

The hero was going to be sick on the wooden flooring. They were barefoot, and weaponless, and that fear still ran up their spine.

“I am a person. You cannot have a person.”

“You are a glorious, powerful being,” the villain countered.

“That doesn’t make me less of a person.”

“No,” the villain agreed. “But it does make you something other than trivial. How could I do anything other than want to have that?”

The hero backed up a step.

“You can’t have me.”

The villain matched them, silent even as they stepped forward.

“You plan to run?”

They sounded amused.

The hero supposed that was better than anger.

“Stay over there,” the hero said shakily. The villain obliged, settling their hands into their pockets. Like this was a means to an end. They had flipped to the back of the book and read the ending, and were watching the hero catch up to the scenes they had already seen played out. The villain’s eyes burned into them.

And abruptly, skin going cold, the hero realized there truly wasn’t a way out of this for them.

The villain would never let them be. They could run, like the villain said, and the villain could kill every person who so much as looked their way. They could hide, and stumble through cities and down alleys and the villain would always be around the corner. 

They had little doubt that every other person in this shitty motel was already dead. 

The villain grinned like they could read every thought as it crossed the hero’s face.

“Where will you go,” the villain said. They stepped forward until they were close enough to touch. 

It wasn’t really the sort of question that wanted an answer.

“Everyone else in this building is dead, aren’t they?”

The villain cocked their head, as if to say, Come now, you know the answer to that.

The hero didn’t think they would ever be able to draw a full breath again.

“Where,” the villain said, soft like a secret. “Will you go, little hero?”

It felt like dying. It felt like reaching out to help someone a second too late. A second too slow to catch the building as it fell. The wrong side of a fire before it blew up.

“With you,” they whispered, and the villain smiled wider.

“What was that?”

“You heard me,” the hero snapped, and thrust their hand out. The villain took it without hesitation.

They tugged the hero into them, leaning to slot their mouth next to the hero’s ear. The hair on the back of the hero’s neck stood up.

“You could do so much bad,” the villain whispered, and the hero ground their teeth hard enough to hurt.

Anger flared bright enough to drain every ounce of fear from their body. Because this was the worst case scenario, wasn’t it? What could be lost.

“Every step you make, every blow you deal and fire you start, I’ll be there. And I'll stop you. Again, and again, and again. You want me?” The hero bared their teeth. “Then have me.”

The villain tugged them closer, and laughed.

“I look forward to it,” the villain replied, and then darkness swallowed the both of them whole.

A week later, a team of agents entered the motel to find it coated in blood and the smell of death.

A month later, everyone knew there was a fight of immovable power and unstoppable force shattering its way across the world. 

A year later, the victor panted through a bloody grin, bruised and crackling with vicious unleashed power, and laughed. Because truly, the ending had been on the horizon since the moment the two of them had first met.

[meowuff]

OKAY! This lil thing here is my contribution for @littlemissartemisia DTIYS!

I had to cut it shorter, I didnt wanted to let it get any longer than it already is and was thinking a lot of "how" and "who" and stuff but I think it looks okay!

Congrats to 800 followers!!!! \( ﾟヮﾟ)/

HEADS UP FOR UNDER THE CUT!

This comic involves some character death and violence.

[gogandmagog]

Oh, I will try! 🫡

So Isabel Anderson takes a lot of explaining but as briefly as is possible, she was this woman who wrote to Maud in the 1930’s, and Maud, believing because of the way she wrote, that Isabel was a young fan, wrote back. Thinking this ‘young girl’ very clever and talented, the two began to exchange regular letters. When Isabel invited her over to her house (she didn’t live far) for dinner, Maud went… and was surprised to discover that Isabel was actually a 34-35 (I can’t remember which) year old school teacher. After that dinner, things got really strange and uncomfortable for Maud. Isabel starting writing more increasingly often, calling Maud’s house phone, and sending her gifts. All in an attempt to see her again. Eventually Isabel’s intentions became clear (she wrote to Maud about loving her and wanting to “sleep with” her [to be fair, this did refer to the common practice then of girls sharing beds during extended visits]), and Maud sort of shifts in her journal entries between feeling enormous pity for Isabel and then conversely abhorring her, also thinking her a “pervert,” and a “lesbian.” (In truth, Isabel was probably bisexual btw. She ‘chased’ men too, married and unmarried alike.)

At this point there were a few ‘stages’ of Isabel’s infatuation to come, with Maud 1) trying her best to ‘help’ Isabel (who wrote to her saying she’d kill herself if she didn’t hear back from her etc.) and therefore visiting her (which Maud learned was a mistake – staying over at Isabel’s parents only earned more intense letters form her, saying things like: “I have derived some comfort from sleeping in the precise spot you occupied half hopeful that some of the dear warmth might still be found to linger. But I crave something tangible. I want to hold in my arms what is dearer than life to me—to lie “spoon fashion” all through a long long night— to cover your wee hands, your beautiful throat and every part of you with kisses. I’m just mad with love for you…”) and allowing her to likewise visit the MacDonald (Montgomery) home (under great pains to always arrange for someone else to be handy), and 2) trying different ways to free herself from Isabel’s affection (ignoring her, pleading with her to see sense, writing strongly worded letters telling her to stay away, as she only wanted to be friends). It was very stressful for Maud (who pictured a scandal if Isabel were to actually commit suicide and leave behind letters addressed to Maud or a note that said she was killing herself because Maud wouldn’t love her), and the whole ordeal was just… like yikes, it was really quite something. 😅

Regarding Katherine Brooke – who Anne alternates between feeling enormous pity for and abhorring, who is cited in Windy Willows as having “a deep throaty voice… almost a man’s voice…,” who doesn’t “want a lover, I hate men,” and who might be pretty if she made some effort (compared to Isabel who Maud also reflected wasn’t pretty, but still wasn’t any less attractive than women she knew to have caught husbands) – there is that line where Anne says, “Katherine Brooke, whether you know it or not, what you want is a good spanking” and thissss is what’s so oddly close in wording to one of Maud’s journaled sentiments on Isabel, where she said that she would like to give “Miss Isabel a good spanking.” At the end of Windy Willows, there’s this other wish-fulfillment kind of niggle, where Anne “helps” Katherine by inviting her to Green Gables, and Katherine undergoes a ‘corrective’ and miraculous spiritual transformation through the magic of homey Green Gables and family-oriented Avonlea. In this, Anne achieves what Maud wanted (Maud openly states the reason she entertained and invited Isabel around her home, in the company of her sons and husband and friends, was in hopes of being such a ‘help’), but ultimately could not with Isabel.

🏳️‍🌈Tournament to decide the most queer coded Montgomery Character; round 1️⃣🏳️‍🌈

*no offense meant to AWAE fans, but we are taking no account of the the AWAE series Aunt Josephine, who was depicted as queer in the series. This poll is addressing canon characters only.

[bugcatcherkit]

What are your thoughts on Reigen I'm so curious now

Ohhh where do i start with Contradictions Georg himself.... Masking Andy... (clenches teeth) I have to make a list so I don't rant about one particular thing only.

the thing that hits hardest for me about his character is his Existentialism man. it's terribly relatable. Indeed, he is a Very Small Guy in a Very Big World and it's difficult to be Seen because of that. But also he's littered with Fear of Being Perceived and Understood. So he deals with his Existentialism by reaching for something (he doesn't know what) that'll make him somebody (he doesn't know who, just that it can't be his genuine self). MAN!!!!!!

Second thing that hits hard about his character is his unfiltered insecurities and self-loathing. Every time someone goes "We have to talk" he goes over every mistake or possible mistake he's ever made. He's the type of guy to search up the meaning of a word before he uses it, even if he's used it a 100 times before. Because what if he's wrong this one specific time?? Also his insecurities frequently make him act worse (sometimes on purpose, sometimes not) rather than better (as opposed to Mob most of the time) and i appreciate that so much.

I appreciate his Just Some Guyness over his babygirlness (not that they can't coexist i guess). Sorry guys. This is also why i think i prefer manga Reigen over anime Reigen. Like i can appreciate anime Reigen's maxed-out eccentricities and stuff, but overall I like the more Reservedness (?) that manga Reigen has. Personally it makes his groundedness, bad actions, and self-improvement hit a little harder. It goes well with his struggle to display his emotions in a loose and genuine way.

but despite this he's still silly. and frequently outlandishly embarrassing. and these are super important to his character also. Alongside his very genuine concern and care for the lives of others at any given moment.

He's always talking about his interpersonal relationships in terms of the Respect the other party holds for him. and then Separation Arc comes in with a steel chair that says "you have to give respect back to make a relationship Good and Fair and Genuine, idiot."

the only relationship this doesn't hold true to is with Dimple. Neither of them have any respect for each other really. And it's awesome.

i love how he is always just some Mediocre guy. He slowly self-improves certain aspects of his life but at the end of the day he's still paying Grown Man Serizawa 300 yen an hour (last time I checked). So.

Him being Mob's foil also means he has a lot in common with other Mob antagonists. But he has so many Mogamisms that it drives me up the wall. Sometimes he'll say a Mogamism and in my mind Mob looks at him with such a sudden intensity that he gets Scared

I frequently think of the scene where he is at the bar during Separation Arc and he realizes the bar people aren't his friends. And he says "I'm not good at this" and leaves. I don't have much to expand here but just know that when I think of how he experiences interpersonal relationships I think about this line. Because he's so good at a lot of things but Not This (Relationships overall. But also probably solving their problems in the moment).

not a fan of Dad or Uncle Reigen. To anyone really. Sorryyy. No hate to those who are though.

uhhhhhhh umm this has gotten so long. Sorry this is so unorganized i think i do better with more direct questions because i suck at staying on topic/being concise when i have free reign. There's so many aspects of his character that I didn't get to here that I also love. But its so hard to think of them all. I hope this gives you an idea though?

[stopmyhearts]

Listen I am only putting this on here so that I can see how far I've come in the future with more practice

But I've finally started with some gallifreyan

[ashaxter]

muscle studies with the soap💪🧼

btw I re-opened my twt account if it interests you <3

[backfromtwitterforw]

transcription:

(lisant le chat) "il y a une alliance Badboy Dapper Aypierre"

Non, c'est pas une aliance Badboy Dapper Aypierre. C'est Aypierre quio veut b***** Badboy

(lisant le chat) "Si"

C'est vrai que tu connais mieux Aymeric Pierre que moi. C'est vrai que tu connais mieux Aymeric Pierre que moi parce que t'as vu un clip de 15 secondes qui dit ça.

(lisant le chat) "Si, si, alliance commerciale"

Non mais... Je parle avec Aypierre! J'ai son téléphone! J'ai son téléphone! Je parle avec lui! Arrêtez de dire si, réfléchissez! J'ai son snap, j'ai son instagram!

translation:

(reading the chat) "Tere's an alliance Badboy Dapper Aypierre"

No, it's not an alliance Badboy Dapper Aypierre, it's Apierre who wants to f*** Badboy.

(reading chat): "There is."

Yes that's true that you know Aymeric Pierre better than me. That's true that you know Aymeric Pierre better than me because you watched a 15 second clip saying this.

(reading chat): "Yes, commercial alliance."

No but I talk with Aypierre! I've got his phone [number]! I've got his phone [number]! I talk with him! Stop saying yes! Think! I've got his snap, his instagram!

[most-datable-datable-bracket]

Hello there, I was wondering, do you happen to have a kist of all the nonbinary (and I doubt it but also all the a-spec) love interests in the competition? Please and thank you either way!!

Hi! :)

I don't have any list like that but here's all the nonbinary people I could find on my spreadsheet:

Milo Belladonna from Monster Prom

Rhapsody from Arcade Spirits: The New Challengers

Rowan from Boyfriend Dungeon

Jules Van Helsing from Romancelvania

Nomi-Nomi from I Was a Teenage Exocolonist (+ Demisexual)

Nakedtoaster from Blooming Panic (He/They)

Asra Alnazar from The Arcana (He/Him)

Theo from Titan Arum (Not specified but uses They/Him)

Aster from Titan Arum (Not specified but uses They/Him/Any)

Damion from Witches x Warlocks

Mhin from TOUCHSTARVED

Sawyer from Boyfriend Dungeon

(+ Ashley from Arcade Spirits (female-leaning) and Qiu Lin from Our Life: Now and Forever who are genderfluid)

[laatmaar]

I wrote a little something!

[oleskellybones]

I wrote a short letter of protest to the White House. You can sign it with the information above, and you can READ IT FIRST as well, which I recommend doing ALWAYS before putting your name on something. If you don't like it, you're free to write your own, but please do something if you can.

We won't get anywhere if we continue to reward war crimes with positions of authority.

[reflectionsofthesea]

The latest studies have been about second type verbs, inessiivi and adessiivi. It feels good to learn how to say where and when/how things happen! The exercise book made me write a small paragraph about my daily routine, and so I also wrote some more simple phrases using the new things I learned. There's a lot of things to remember and I often need to check back on notes to be sure i'm not forgetting anything, but it's been so satisfying to feel my comprehension grow and put into practice :)

[levymcgarden55]

[id: the front of a business card, which is a blurry picture of Bigfoot saying “I believe in Kim!” The back of the card reads “trustworthy. Local. Kim [censored] [censored phone number]” end ID]

hey did I ever post the best business card I’ve ever been given by a customer?

a woman wanted me to let her know if I had a particular item in storage, and she went to get a card out of her purse and went ‘oh no. I’m out of my work cards, I’m so sorry about this’ and handed me this:

apparently her husband made them for her as a joke but then she just had like 300 of them so they’re her backups when she runs out of her real business cards.

[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.