#but now I have a small team to work with

[nonbinaryfroggy]

Girl help I accidentally became important at my job

[swinging-stars-from-satellites]

pray for me please

[aefensteorrra]

trying not to throw up from anxiety at work all day today and tomorrow because suddenly I have to present a tonne of work I did 6 weeks ago to like 60 people

[myauditionfordrphil]

SOMEBODY SENT ME THIS AND I'M NOT OK I'LL START SOBBING NOW SHUT UP

[icewindandboringhorror]

recent lounging babey images

[pumaskulls]

@kuixotic revenge on my buddy time >:3c

[tineymang]

i cant believe i havent posted these yet..... ive been collecting some plushies over a while to represent the guys in my eos team (and lumi) and i thought it would be a fun way to officially christen them by sewing them some lil accessories to match the ones i draw them with!

a few wip pictures below the cut!

[bf-rally]

ive done it...

the page is listing stuff weee! now if only i could figure out how to make the names change size based on the screen size

[the0ther-side0f-dawn]

just a little personal anecdote/ thought dump in the tags..

[liquidstar]

If I can't sleep that's ok because you know what.... I will post one more small excerpt from my oc writing practice wips. Just once more for now

probably the only context you need for this one is that everyone's at a party that a place is throwing them for completing a big mission. so here it is

-----

As the party raged on within the stone walls, Polaris slipped away to the porch. She took slow steps, carefully carrying an arranged plate of finger food she’d collected. She sat down on the floor, and leaned her head up against the wall. Taking in the muted sounds of the festivity indoors, she found comfort in this space that hovered between the roaring celebration and the stillness of the night.

Polaris wasn’t alone in seeking refuge outside, another person had found their way to her hiding spot- It’s Mira! Though Polaris had ventured out to eat alone, Mira was certainly not unwelcome company.

However, Mira did not seem to notice Polaris sitting on the ground. She walked right past her, lost in her own thoughts as she made her way to the railing, relaxing her arms on it.

“Hey,” Polaris spoke in a cautious voice, so as not to startle her teammate. Still, she saw Mira tense at the sound of her voice.

“Oh! Polly! I didn't see you, sorry!”

Polaris laughs, “All good!”

“What are you doing… sitting on the ground alone?”

“Eating,” Polaris shrugged, and took another bite of her food.

“Ohh…”

“What about you? I didn't think you'd be the type to leave parties. Aren’t you a social butterfly?”

“I'd like to be a butterfly!” Mira laughs, turning her face towards the sky above, her eyes sparkling with wonder, “But actually I just wanted to look at the stars a little. They're clearer here in the mountains y'know…”

“Hm,” Polaris followed Mira's gaze upwards. She rose to her feet, joining Mira at the railing, “Yeah, you're right.”

“It's so pretty,” Mira marveled, tracing the constellations above. She adds, “It's so big.”

“Yeah, well, that's space.”

They fell into a comfortable stilless, taking in the enchanting view of the starry sky. The distant sounds of the party still echoed in the background, the golden light from inside illuminating only their backs.

“Do you ever feel like this is the wrong place?”

Polaris tilted her head and raised an eyebrow at Mira's sudden question. “What do you mean?”

Mira raised a single outstretched hand to the heavens, as if waiting for the universe to take it. Staring at the gaps of sky between her fingers, she continues, "Don't you feel like… We're supposed to be up there?"

Polaris looks into Mira's eyes, which were still fixated above. She could only see a vague wistfulness within them- A nostalgia. The stars themselves shined within those eyes. Polaris couldn’t explain why, but this made her uneasy.

As if in a daze, Mira stood on her tiptoes and reached for the stars with all her might. In a panic, Polaris drops her plate and grabs onto her friend.

“Polaris? What are you doing?” Mira’s trance was broken by the sudden embrace, “I thought you weren't a hugger?” She joked.

“I thought… I thought the stars were going to take you away,” Polaris mumbled, embarrassed by the ridiculousness of her own words, “So I held on…”

Mira couldn’t help but laugh at this absurd statement, “What? That's silly! How would that even work?” poking fun at her friend's nonsense concerns, she tried to lighten the mood.

“I don't-” Polaris relaxed her grip, but didn't fully let go of Mira, “It really felt like it…”

Mira let out a sigh and patted her head, “I wouldn't let that happen, okay?”

Having these irrational concerns humored somehow made Polaris feel even more embarrassed. She released Mira from her embrace, and stepped back to lean on the railing. "Sorry,” she replied.

“Well, I'm just glad you care so much!” Mira laughed again, not letting up on her teasing. However, her snarky smile softens and she leaves Polaris with a, “Thank you.”

With that, Mira heads back inside, leaving Polaris alone with her thoughts. She took one last glance at the stars.

“The right place…” She whispers to the night.

[apocalypticdemon]

for the wip title ask game:

'the droning engine'

oh boy, this is my super self-indulgent fic, lmao. I've been super into IndyCar my whole life, as is the rest of my family, so it's my IndyCar AU for the Terror (with a focus on fitzier as the narrative drive behind it).

It's kind of unwieldy and a bigger project than I thought it would be, so it's still very much in the works/in the planning stages while i draft prose as it comes to me, but I've been poking at it in my free time. The basic premise is Crozier is an older driver, signed to team Terror, a smaller team, but one that generally is in good standing. He's got a really odd rivalry with Fitzjames, and this comes to a head at the start of the work, when the Terror management signs James on as a driver. Basically, the plot is going to stretch over the entirety of an IndyCar season, and I'm going to try to hit major plot beats from the show in this story as the characters all vie for the championship for the season. Some stuff gets changed around, just to make things work, but that's the general premise.

I have it planned for the final driver lineup for team Terror to be Crozier, Fitzjames, Silna, and I think Little, but that's still in flux. Hickey was on the team, but gets let go after publicly starting a fight with Silna and suffering the consequences, lol. He continues to scheme in the background as the season continues to unfold, because a different team snaps him up pretty quickly. Is it conventional for how drivers are passed around and contracts are signed? no, probably not, but I do what I want, lol.

I have plans for general plot beats, how I want to draw narrative similarities for things like the no good, very bad wardroom dinner from the first episode, carnivale, and character deaths in the show without...... actually killing anybody, because I can't really have that.

I want the vibes for the fitzier part of the story to be the kind of "they would absolutely fuck several times before actually talking about their feelings" kind of dynamic, so I think that's the route I'm going to take and have their relationship really blossom towards the end of the season, but i'm also still planning out the specifics of that one. I really like the added tension of a secret relationship, given that they're on the same team and that motorsports doesn't necessarily have the most.... open-minded audience (it's very fun being an unpatriotic queer person at these events. i am....... very much in the minority there), so I want to play with that a bit, too. I thought I had a neat and tidy plan, but it rather started crumbling in my hands when i sat down to actually try to write it, so I think I'm going to be wrangling this one for a bit.

but i'm very excited to actually get to it someday! i know this write-up is very rambly and a bit unhinged, but i truly have so many thoughts about it that it's hard to organize into a coherent, short summary, lol. I have a lot of personal history tied up in this, too, so it's hard not to just go on cool tangents about the sport. this project has taken a back seat as my master's work ramps up, since it's just.... so much bigger than i thought it would be. but i really want to work on it over this winter break, creative juices willing.

and as thanks for reading........... all of this rambling, lol, here's a snippet from my draft of the "birdshit island"-cum-team-dinner scene:

Francis is at the end of his patience with the man, at this point in the day, and snaps. “Why don’t you tell us all about that crash in Monterey, James? That one was rather spectacular, if I remember right.” Fitzjames sours immediately, frowning and gritting his teeth. Francis has exactly a half a second of deep satisfaction at the expression before Blanky viciously kicks him in the shins under the table. Francis winces and glares at him, leaning down to rub at the spot. It had hurt, damn it. That prosthetic leg wasn’t soft by any stretch of the imagination.

[arcade-confetti]

Honestly fascinated learning more of the fanon vs canon going on here. Truly tempted to read Tim's comics just to see the extent of what's been done to him

[robinsnest2111]

I need to watch kung fury again...

[united-under-skyfall]

.

[juleteinthrum]

Its been a few month since I've been out of headspace why is everything like That. /half joking

Like i knew things would be different but damn, like my arms? My hair? Even my smell is. Off. Everything is off. Its okay, i know whats going on im not disoriented or anything mostly its all surprise but im just. So this is what its actually like to not be out for a while and see things change

System stuff hits a little different sometimes

[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.