Middle fingure in facebook wall
STREET ART UTOPIA
2012.09.10 02:43 Tosscraft STREET ART UTOPIA
We declare the world as our canvas! Amazing street art, urban art and graffiti all over the world!
2011.12.28 23:45 What's the plan, Phil?
A place for fans of ABC's hit show Modern Family.
2010.07.27 15:53 iamdeirdre St. Petersburg, FL
Welcome to the St. Petersburg, Florida Sub-reddit! This sub also covers the surrounding Pinellas county area. Please check our rules before posting. Our first rule is "Remember the Human"! We try and maintain a helpful and pleasant sub! We hope you enjoy our community!
2024.05.14 03:36 bohdubyah What in the actual F@#K did I just read?
To be honest I'm still reeling, it's been a long time since a book took me on such an emotional rollercoaster. The Chain of Dogs will stay with me for me the rest of my days.
The reprieve that was given when the one tribe from the Seven Cities attacked the others and recognised the Wickans as the true badasses they were, Coltaine giving Duiker command of the refugees and the deal they made to be guided to Aren. The soldiers giving up all their pay along with the Wickans. That gesture being recognised for what it was by that tribe and them not taking advantage. The refugees making it! Dare I hope!?
Good thing I didn't, as that hope would have been stomped into the goddamn ground a few pages later.
Damn it Erikson. The entire time reading Nil lead Duiker up to the walls I could feel the dread building. So when Nether cried out about how he could help as there were too many, I thought I had it figured out. I was both right and wrong.
The final stand of the Wickans and 7th was truly some heartbreaking shit. Infuriating, depressing, shocking, sad, and extremely disappointing with dashes of hope thrown in. As hard as it was to read. I couldn't help but to get pumped at the middle finger they gave as that last stand. Lull and the standard, only dropping it to assist Bult. Coltaine and the last of the cattle dogs defending him, taking the throat out of a dude that speared it before going down. The pain and turmoil of that archer tasked with making the shot to end it, all seen through Duiker's eyes has he sat helpless.
But goddamn that description of the crows was chilling!
And you finish with that only to have your broken heart set on fire with what happens to the army when they finally decide to attack đĽ´
I'm new to the series, I've only read GotM and DG. Just started MI and just got slapped in the face with the prologue in that and the information it hits you with. It doesn't stop does it?
Rel and Dom, I would say I'd see you in hell, but how this series is going they both end up as Ascendents for all I know. Speaking of which, by the time Laseen's true motives were explained, all I could do was shake my head in a half hearted acknowledgement.
I'm sure this has been discussed into the ground, I just had to voice my feelings to others besides my wife who just started back at me a blank, albeit interested look as she has no idea what the hell I'm talking about.
submitted by bohdubyah to Malazan [link] [comments]
The reprieve that was given when the one tribe from the Seven Cities attacked the others and recognised the Wickans as the true badasses they were, Coltaine giving Duiker command of the refugees and the deal they made to be guided to Aren. The soldiers giving up all their pay along with the Wickans. That gesture being recognised for what it was by that tribe and them not taking advantage. The refugees making it! Dare I hope!?
Good thing I didn't, as that hope would have been stomped into the goddamn ground a few pages later.
Damn it Erikson. The entire time reading Nil lead Duiker up to the walls I could feel the dread building. So when Nether cried out about how he could help as there were too many, I thought I had it figured out. I was both right and wrong.
The final stand of the Wickans and 7th was truly some heartbreaking shit. Infuriating, depressing, shocking, sad, and extremely disappointing with dashes of hope thrown in. As hard as it was to read. I couldn't help but to get pumped at the middle finger they gave as that last stand. Lull and the standard, only dropping it to assist Bult. Coltaine and the last of the cattle dogs defending him, taking the throat out of a dude that speared it before going down. The pain and turmoil of that archer tasked with making the shot to end it, all seen through Duiker's eyes has he sat helpless.
But goddamn that description of the crows was chilling!
And you finish with that only to have your broken heart set on fire with what happens to the army when they finally decide to attack đĽ´
I'm new to the series, I've only read GotM and DG. Just started MI and just got slapped in the face with the prologue in that and the information it hits you with. It doesn't stop does it?
Rel and Dom, I would say I'd see you in hell, but how this series is going they both end up as Ascendents for all I know. Speaking of which, by the time Laseen's true motives were explained, all I could do was shake my head in a half hearted acknowledgement.
I'm sure this has been discussed into the ground, I just had to voice my feelings to others besides my wife who just started back at me a blank, albeit interested look as she has no idea what the hell I'm talking about.
2024.05.14 03:35 Sad_Ad_8625 Have I been oblivious to red flags in trainers?
Iâve recently moved across the country and have had to find a few new barns. I wouldnât say my past experience with trainers has been negative at all; my trainers were always kind and educational, they helped me grow to become confident in my riding and put me on appropriate horses to further excel my skills. However, for the past two years I feel like Iâve been stuck in a loop where the only profit I get is 40 minutes in the saddle and $80 down the fucking drain.
The first barn I joined just so happened to be the first of the few Iâd initially looked at. No outward health concerns beside the fact that the place was a little run down. I always rule this out as something normal, because maybe Iâm not in the price bracket to be affording nice barns. My very first session I noticed she had a few horses tied in the cross ties for hours on end. And I say hours on end because she loses track of time very easily. Sometimes she would have me in the saddle for over an hour. The horses were always tacked up before I got there. I guess this wasnât unusual; traffic makes it hard for me to get there early but I was always on time. I prefer to tack up on my own, but I realized it was because after the lessons I had she usually had another student hop on right afterâŚ
She would smoke during lessons, which canât be good for the horses or the kids. She was very confusing and often barked orders at me in the middle of doing a line. She favored certain students and constantly ignored me. (Either because they were frequenting or paid more.) She stuck me on the same PA/QH cross every single lesson I had. It was certainly annoying because I do have long legs. For context, I went to that barn for a consecutive 3-5 months. Iâve been riding on and off since I was 7 and am a junior in high school. She also put inexperienced students on horses who were too green. In my case, I got a horse that was too desensitized. And I know what everyone says, itâs not the horses fault itâs the rider, but lots of lesson horses are desensitized to leg cues, no matter how hard you try to work with them.
I am not someone who wants to spend my paid lesson kicking a horse and being told to stop being shy. Shyness is not my problem. I can be a demure person but Iâm not an ignorant one. It is very frustrating constantly being told to take control, when what I need is a willing partner. The one time I ever rode a different horse at that barn just happened to be an OTTB gelding. By no means a bad horse, I adored him absolutely even though he was finicky. I later learned that she has been leasing him out to someone who was mistreating him. Quite blatant dental issues because of the leaserâs harsh hands on the bit. It was disheartening to me because it was obvious she valued money more than the welfare of her horses.
I switched barns after that, in hopes to find a better place to eventually start showing. I do not show because it is not really something I want, nor can I afford it; I take lessons because I do not have a horse of my own and this is really my only passion. But in order to prove I was serious about riding I felt I had to start showing. This new trainer was going well in the beginning. The only catch was her lessons were way more expensive for way less time. I thought this would be better as long as she was more professional. Well, it turns out my old trainer was also in kahoots with these ones. Thankfully, I never saw her; it wouldâve been awkward.
I got a bit more freedom to tack up but was still kept on an otherwise tight leash. I rode the same horse majority of the time, again very old, very slow. I would not have a problem with either of these things if I was a beginner, but Iâm not. This trainer was a college student, who I felt was simply trying to finagle me for money too. She would discreetly vape during lessons, which I thought was hilarious. She took phone calls and had conversations. She would charge for âanatomyâ lessons after calling a rain check and having me come out? (Arena was either too wet or cold) Coincidentally on one of these anatomy lessons, she brandished a wall of twisted bits, saying these are only for the naughtiest of horses. She would act as if I was excelling, yet in the next lesson weâd do something totally rudimentary on the same horse. I have to clarify because I donât want to seem ungrateful, Iâm appreciative of my lessons but when Iâve been doing the same thing for so long it starts to feel like Iâm going nowhere/being taken advantage of. My legs were routinely aching after lessons because I spent the majority trying to get the horse to be active.
It makes me feel like Itâs my fault and makes me unmotivated to even continue the sport. I donât have many things that actually make me happy and at this point I feel like selling all of my equipment and quitting. Although I love it, itâs just starting to get too expensive and not worth it. I donât know how to find a good trainer without spending hundreds of dollars. And even if I did, how do I know theyâre not corrupt? (Sorry this is so long, I hope someone reads it.)
submitted by Sad_Ad_8625 to Equestrian [link] [comments]
The first barn I joined just so happened to be the first of the few Iâd initially looked at. No outward health concerns beside the fact that the place was a little run down. I always rule this out as something normal, because maybe Iâm not in the price bracket to be affording nice barns. My very first session I noticed she had a few horses tied in the cross ties for hours on end. And I say hours on end because she loses track of time very easily. Sometimes she would have me in the saddle for over an hour. The horses were always tacked up before I got there. I guess this wasnât unusual; traffic makes it hard for me to get there early but I was always on time. I prefer to tack up on my own, but I realized it was because after the lessons I had she usually had another student hop on right afterâŚ
She would smoke during lessons, which canât be good for the horses or the kids. She was very confusing and often barked orders at me in the middle of doing a line. She favored certain students and constantly ignored me. (Either because they were frequenting or paid more.) She stuck me on the same PA/QH cross every single lesson I had. It was certainly annoying because I do have long legs. For context, I went to that barn for a consecutive 3-5 months. Iâve been riding on and off since I was 7 and am a junior in high school. She also put inexperienced students on horses who were too green. In my case, I got a horse that was too desensitized. And I know what everyone says, itâs not the horses fault itâs the rider, but lots of lesson horses are desensitized to leg cues, no matter how hard you try to work with them.
I am not someone who wants to spend my paid lesson kicking a horse and being told to stop being shy. Shyness is not my problem. I can be a demure person but Iâm not an ignorant one. It is very frustrating constantly being told to take control, when what I need is a willing partner. The one time I ever rode a different horse at that barn just happened to be an OTTB gelding. By no means a bad horse, I adored him absolutely even though he was finicky. I later learned that she has been leasing him out to someone who was mistreating him. Quite blatant dental issues because of the leaserâs harsh hands on the bit. It was disheartening to me because it was obvious she valued money more than the welfare of her horses.
I switched barns after that, in hopes to find a better place to eventually start showing. I do not show because it is not really something I want, nor can I afford it; I take lessons because I do not have a horse of my own and this is really my only passion. But in order to prove I was serious about riding I felt I had to start showing. This new trainer was going well in the beginning. The only catch was her lessons were way more expensive for way less time. I thought this would be better as long as she was more professional. Well, it turns out my old trainer was also in kahoots with these ones. Thankfully, I never saw her; it wouldâve been awkward.
I got a bit more freedom to tack up but was still kept on an otherwise tight leash. I rode the same horse majority of the time, again very old, very slow. I would not have a problem with either of these things if I was a beginner, but Iâm not. This trainer was a college student, who I felt was simply trying to finagle me for money too. She would discreetly vape during lessons, which I thought was hilarious. She took phone calls and had conversations. She would charge for âanatomyâ lessons after calling a rain check and having me come out? (Arena was either too wet or cold) Coincidentally on one of these anatomy lessons, she brandished a wall of twisted bits, saying these are only for the naughtiest of horses. She would act as if I was excelling, yet in the next lesson weâd do something totally rudimentary on the same horse. I have to clarify because I donât want to seem ungrateful, Iâm appreciative of my lessons but when Iâve been doing the same thing for so long it starts to feel like Iâm going nowhere/being taken advantage of. My legs were routinely aching after lessons because I spent the majority trying to get the horse to be active.
It makes me feel like Itâs my fault and makes me unmotivated to even continue the sport. I donât have many things that actually make me happy and at this point I feel like selling all of my equipment and quitting. Although I love it, itâs just starting to get too expensive and not worth it. I donât know how to find a good trainer without spending hundreds of dollars. And even if I did, how do I know theyâre not corrupt? (Sorry this is so long, I hope someone reads it.)
2024.05.14 03:11 OttoVonBlastoid Nature Of A Homeless Musician: Special Thanks/Announcements
 | Hello all! Otto here. And, as you all now know. NoaHM has finally come to an end. It's been a hell of a ride that I'll never forget. But before I move on to thanking specific people and telling you all what's in store, I wanted to be a bit mushy for a minute if you'll indulge me... submitted by OttoVonBlastoid to NatureofPredators [link] [comments] When I first heard of NoP, I was in the middle of the night shift that I'm still working to this day. I had a single ear bud in, which was TECHNICALLY against the rules, and still is but fuck 'em. And to pass the time, I listened to stories. Either Mr. Creeps' Creepypasta compilations or, in this case, Agro Squirrel's Tales From Outer SPACE series. And eventually, I heard the name, The Nature Of Predators...and it all went downhill from there as you all can well imagine. Jokes aside, I fell in love with the story and universe and decided to check out the community. And soon, I found the very first fic I ever read on here, "My Floridian Arxur Daughter". From that point on, I was hooked. I read "Arxur Nursery", "The New Terran Refugee", "Feathers Of Deceit", "Lost In Found", "Recipe For Disaster", "Playing By Ear", and so, SO many more. The sheer amount of creativity on display was amazing. And so...I decided to try my hand at it. I'd already written a short creepypasta, as well as a small five-part miniseries based off of one of my friends DnD campaigns, so I had a LITTLE experience, but I still hadn't taken a single writing course or knew...anything about what I was doing, so I decided to try something small. (That worked out well...) I was in the middle of rereading "Floridian Arxur Daughter" for...maybe the sixth time when a particular scene stuck out to me. Something about it...made something click in my head. After evacuating young Chalta from the house, her big bother Carlos and his girlfriend Salisek decide to take her out on a drive, and while their driving, Carlos mentions his ability to sing, and after both Chalta and Salisek both ask for a demonstration, he sings a beautiful rendition of "Send Me A Peach" from Over The Garden Wall. It was a touching scene, and hearing the song from Chalta's point of view clicked with me. It was by this point that I'd also discovered "Playing By Ear" by u/VeryUnluckyDice, which was essentially this "listening to music through the perspective of someone else's mind" idea made manifest. And that's where it all began. I made a post, proposing the premise of my story, and while I didn't get a LOT of feedback, most of the feedback I got was positive. And a few days later, "Nature Of A Homeless Musician: Prologue" was born, in all of its overly edgy glory. And well...you know the rest from there... I never could have imagined just how big this story would get. It was NEVER supposed to grow this much, touch so many people, inspire so many others to make stuff themselves. Sure, I hoped that it might, but I never thought it would! But now...here we are... I...can't put into words, how thankful I am to each and every single one of you, who gave my little idea a chance. It means more to me then I could ever describe. Ever since I was a kid, I knew I wanted to make my living by making things! At first, I thought that just meant being a Youtuber, like every cringy middle schooler does, but now...I think I get it... I've always wanted to be able to make things, and for those things to make OTHER people happy. Make them laugh, make them cry, make them smile, and make their days just a little bit brighter. I've...long since given up that old dream... I just didn't think it was possible, not for me anyways. But you all proved me wrong. Every comment, every meme, every bit of art you guys make...proves me wrong. When I got my first bit of fanart, I cried at my monitor. Because for the first time in so long that I can't even remember, I was happy. I was so, so happy, because it genuinely felt like this dream that I've had since I was a kid was finally possible. Someone discovered something I made, and enjoyed it enough, loved it enough, got invested enough, to make something themselves just to show me and everyone else just how much they loved it.... And it made me happy, so, so damn happy. So thank you. Thank you all so much for everything you do. Thank you for reading, commenting, replying, suggesting, joking, laughing, creating, and expressing with me. It means more than you'll ever know. And even if I don't end up pursuing writing after this, my life will never be the same, thanks to all of you. If you're reading this, right here, right now, YOU, yes YOU... Thank you...for everything you do. And even if you don't think so, I think you're one of the most amazing people in this ass-backwards galaxy of ours. Thank you. Now then, on to specific thanks: u/Bow-tied_Engineer: You were literally the first person to tell me that this fic was a good idea. If you hadn't been there in the comments, I might not have gone through with it. And even since then, you've still been an absolute chad. We might not have the same taste in romance sub-plots, but I'll always respect you and your takes. Thank you, for giving me the confidence to give this a try. u/CaptainChristopher02: The man himself. Your fic, "My Floridian Arxur Daughter" as well as "My Brazilian Arxur Nursery" were, as stated before, the very first fic I read on the sub. And your work was the first tiny spark that slowly became NoaHM. I've said it multiple times, and I'll say it again, if there was no "Arxur Daughter", there would be no "Homeless Musician". When I first started writing, I didn't even think I'd ever even meet you, but the fact that I have, and that you've joined my own little community of music and Tohba memes means the world to me. u/VeryUnluckyDice: Reading through "Playing By Ear" for the first time was an experience I'll never forget. It was so interesting and different to almost everything else on the sub at the time except "Venlil Metal". You've done so much to inspire me and my work and even now, you're still an absolute chad and someone this community just wouldn't be the same without. I'm really looking forward to the day when our two stories really do cross. It'll be a grand sonata of sound the likes of which this sub has never seen, I just know it! u/JulianSkies: Ever since you first started commenting on my chapters, you have been an absolutely ENDLESS source of positivity, helpful advice, information on the setting, proofreading, and all around good vibes. I always look forward to seeing what you have to say on the most recent post, and I hope you decide to stick around for whatever comes next. Thank you. u/xskipy10: Good lord, where to even begin with you? Before, when I mentioned that first bit of fanart that made me cry, that was YOUR artwork. And that one picture, of Michael and the rest of the main cast has had such an enormous impact on not just me, but the rest of the sub as a whole. It was that one picture that gave me hope that the dream I've had since I was a kid was possible. It was your artwork of Tohba that, TO THIS DAY, Dovah is still using to award people who beat him to the precious title of "SPEED". I mean it when I say you are an absolute treasure, not just to me and my story, but to the entire NoP community. u/OmegaOmnimon02: Before there was GuyWhoExists, there was Omega, the fastest memer in The West. You were the architect of the origianl "Rejoice! Tohba Be Upon Ye" meme, and it has since been used to this day as a form of mutual celebration for all. You've been one of my avid supporters for a long time now, and seeing another of your shitposts in the Discord never fails to brighten my day. Thank you for all that you do. u/DOVAHCREED12: I swear, if you aren't SPEED when this post drops, I'm gonna be so disappointed. Jokes aside, I have loved and appreciated every single Venbig hug I have ever received from you. Back when I first started writing this, the "Official Venbig Seal Of Approval" was this vaunted, holy, symbol that a lowly peasant such as myself would never be able to earn. And then one appeared in my comments and it felt like freaking Christmas. Thank you so much for giving my story a chance. u/Ben_Elohim_2020: I'll never get over just how hilarious our first meeting was. What was meant to be a quick one-to-two chapter long side trip with some shady dude in an alley completely spiraled into a giant, five-part, spat with the actual Space Mafia known as The Family. While the Twilight Valley Arc was divisive for a lot of people reading, I hope you know I had a MASSIVE amount of fun writing it with you, and I can't wait to see where you're future projects lead. Papyroo: (Sorry, I can't remember your new Reddit name) Along with Omega, I've always looked forward to seeing what you have to say when it comes to my fic. And the impact you've had on my story can't be overstated. The Ficnapping you did is the reason that Tohba now has his blue "Tiwfish" plushie. And the events of your addition to my canon will continue to be referenced and fondly looked back on by my characters for a long time to come. u/Spacer_Catgirl4969: I remember a time when you were still SpacerNEKO. You were always one of my most avid commenters way back when, and I always appreciated your kind words. And I still can't express how cool it was that you actually made a pixel art music video for Dohkar. It still holds up, even now. You and Guywhoexists should TOTALLY work on a project together. With your combined pixel art skills, who knows what's possible?! u/Mini-Tonk: Well, if it isn't the Rat boi, himself. You have never once faltered in your efforts to not only support my work, but also protect Tohba from the shadows. Your efforts have not gone unnoticed, and you canonically making ME a character in your fic is still hilarious and heartwarming. Thank you for everything you do. u/Guywhoexists2812: While you are one of the newest members of our little NoaHM family, that hasn't stopped you from being one of the most active and creative folks we have to offer. The sheer amount of memes and pixel art you've created is downright INSPIRATIONAL. Along with Skipy, whenever someone comes up with a cute idea for art, I know you'll find some way to pull through. Keep creating, King. You are no mere "Guy". You are a KING who exists! And of course, u/SpacePaladin15 for creating this awesome universe to begin with, without whom, none of use would be here right now. There are two other names missing on this list, but that's mostly because I'm currently working on a project with them and I don't want to spoil anything...yet. And speaking of future projects! ANNOUNCEMENT TIME!!!! It's been one hell of a wild ride, hasn't it? But I tell you this: THE RIDE AIN'T OVER YET!!!!! But...it will be slowing down for a while... After working on this story for so long, (especially that triple upload. GOD, what was I thinking?!) I am in dire need of rest. So, for now, I will be going on about a month-long hiatus from posting, except for a small occasion here and there. I'll still be active in the community, especially on Discord, but you won't get any big story updates for a while. Does this mean that I'm done and the story's over? No. This was but the first arc in the tale of Michael Ruiz Andrews and his family. There will INDEED be MOAR!!! More music! More hijinks! More action! More romance! More drama! More touching family moments! And, of COURSE, MORE TOHBA!!!! There will be MOAR!!! Just not yet. My Hiatus will officially start tomorrow after a belated NoaHM Mother's Day Special. I also have a Father's Day Special planned for next month as well. But other than the occasional announcement post, you won't be getting anything story-related out of me until my break is over and I'm ready to unveil the next project I and three other creators have been working on. I won't say anything more on the project, but I will say to keep an eye out... "But Otto!", I hear you ask. "If there won't be any more big story updates, how will I get my fix of Baby-roo induced dopamine?! My brain requires more Tohba and Ven-floof memes to give me the goody good chemicals!!!" Well my friend, I have just the solution for you!!! A SHAMELESS SELF-PLUG!!! Most of you may already know, but Nature Of A Homeless Musician has its OWN DISCORD SERVER!!!!!! We've got MEMES, STORY IDEAS, FOOD SO FULL OF LOVE THAT MAMA-ROO HERSELF COULD'VE MADE IT! We got fanart, gaming chats, and we even plan the occasional movie night! As well, as soon as this post goes live, I'll be adding a new channel specifically for Q&A and Trivia! For Example: Did you know that NoaHM was originally meant to only be ten chapters long? Did you know Trilly and Dailo were created entirely on accident? Did you know that the events of the FINALE have been remade, reorganized, and rewritten at LEAST four times? Did you know...THAT TOHBA WAS BASED OFF A REAL PERSON?! All of these things are true! And if you want to learn more about the making of this series, direct from my brain, the come on in and ask away! All I ask in return is that you follow the rules I've laid out a generally not be a jerk. We're here to have fun and be wholesome, so let's keep it that way. I hope to see you there! https://discord.gg/YSysvHHx And now, lastly, here's nearly EVERY single meme bit of fanart I've received: And once again, from the bottom of my heart, with all the love I can muster, thank you. https://preview.redd.it/2nxhg18mia0d1.jpg?width=2388&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=5887802bce7c20b6fe2f190ce0992be17a3f6a58 https://preview.redd.it/u9i0zbgtia0d1.jpg?width=2048&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=d0ff76b390ec3f7daed9d66a4d556db0a063fc97 https://preview.redd.it/pg860rcvia0d1.jpg?width=1024&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=2d6fa595bb160514ce214c1594e70ffdf9c8c4e3 https://preview.redd.it/u94h5np0ja0d1.jpg?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=373918e5c84b606979efd9f793418068e6cbc468 https://preview.redd.it/609h59x3ja0d1.jpg?width=1334&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=9b09601d8f19c0b7aaf262bdd887b24317e95a6d https://preview.redd.it/01pbmbs6ja0d1.jpg?width=524&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=c5cdbf19cfa75be452cdfb4c54e19924d0b5b1aa https://preview.redd.it/6iz7wh8bja0d1.jpg?width=512&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=2257a778a87bb3013b08bac4ce9021d1de8e56d1 https://preview.redd.it/zxry3gddja0d1.jpg?width=500&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=2f0a0b18130d8e3283970f3e8f97002362c957e0 https://preview.redd.it/qfx79v5gja0d1.jpg?width=1164&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=0d5db5c8624a18513160ebb6f9648f2486a238cb https://preview.redd.it/metjjzphja0d1.jpg?width=888&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=6adabe3c438808bbeb623f5690e9f34766d7e04f https://preview.redd.it/8yrync9lja0d1.png?width=1024&format=png&auto=webp&s=d75e3c651c99936f2eccd6135ba769aeab119208 https://preview.redd.it/0uawe15aka0d1.jpg?width=500&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=5999790ce154f9022ca51812b857aeefd348b66f https://preview.redd.it/uug3dq1bka0d1.jpg?width=1668&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=ca76e5a6939143aad5dc148607934b896eeb9305 https://preview.redd.it/lr2gzj6cka0d1.jpg?width=1521&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=d4b2ec5e86862c8268aa0efdfde022b1a3ce37c1 https://preview.redd.it/sk0rz05eka0d1.jpg?width=500&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=0eedf45cb5627708f6c5449a4d4ce96f5820cca7 https://preview.redd.it/hwztvo5vka0d1.jpg?width=577&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=d2492936771668389e1e33eb37adfdde5ff898e9 https://preview.redd.it/ns5mvayvka0d1.jpg?width=960&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=78658096eda7cd47a2faf0add5806d78a2b9ea20 https://preview.redd.it/cn5ruxxwka0d1.jpg?width=640&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=e36414e11ee37f23418a5d7b9d3fce6f13b7d57c https://preview.redd.it/3w08uzb2la0d1.png?width=2048&format=png&auto=webp&s=84608636603a71dba3863d02cf3e0d655062fbe7 Thank you... Thank you all... |
2024.05.14 03:05 willdanceforsnacks Book Promotion Ideas?
I finally published for the first time. Not the first time I've finished a novel, but certainly the first time I have actively published one .. one that I've been a little proud of. I know it's a long process to get noticed, or even start to see some traction in sales & downloads, but how do you go about promoting your novel? I feel like I'm stuck. đ
Beginning of chapter one below - if anyone would like to provide feedback that would be lovely. đ
[2,310] It began like a surreal haze, a fever dream dancing with unknown figures swirling around her like a languid tornado, their movements seemingly slowed by some unseen force as she awoke to a world spinning out of her control. She found herself surrounded by strangers who moved like spectres in a dream, fragmented flashes who assaulted her consciousness - a woman gently pressing a cloth to her throbbing head, another offering sips of water while she coughed and struggled to swallow, a man peering down at her with a furrowed brow, and a mysterious figure lingering in the doorway with an unsettling glint of desire in his eyes.
The room buzzed with a quiet urgency as they hovered around her, their faces etched with concern and something else she couldn't quite place - an undercurrent of tension that seemed to pulse in time with her own racing heart. These disjointed images flitted in and out, creating a mosaic of fragmented reality. Awake, her body throbbed with pain; asleep, she plunged into a black abyss, time slipping away unnoticed. Each awakening brought the desire for oblivion as her mind plunged back into the depths of darkness.
Beth jolted upright, startled by the sharp bang of a car backfiring. A cry of pain escaped her lips as she attempted to sit up, her back and legs resisting her will. A woman, the same from her fleeting visions, hurried into the room with a damp cloth and a glass of water.
"Easy now," the woman spoke gently, her mild Spanish accent adding warmth to her sharp words as she pressed the cloth to Beth's forehead and helped her sit up, "you're weak, rushing won't do you any favours. The sooner you regain strength, the sooner you can move."
A man, the one with the odd expression in her visions, appeared in the doorway once again; "and the sooner we can leave this place, I'm sick of it." He grumbled, striding away with urgency and frustration. His steps were heavy and fraught with agitation, each one seeming to leave a deep imprint on the ground beneath him. His grumbling was like distant thunder, punctuated by the clenching of his jaw and the tightening of his fists.
"Don't mind my brother," the woman interjected sharply, "it's not you - he hates everyone." Hate, Beth pondered, wondering what she might have done to earn his disdain.
"Are you hungry?" The woman stood, walking to the other side of the room to adjust another pillow behind Beth's back. Beth nodded; "I'll get you some soup."
Left alone, Beth surveyed the room - beige walls, a shattered TV, torn brown curtains. She squinted at the notepad on the side table, revealing the branding - Mill Village Motel Eatonville. The coffee pod machine at the room's far end, covered in dust, hinted at a neglected past.
"You're awake," startled, Beth turned to find the man with the furrowed brow at the door - tall and dark, with piercing brown eyes, he appeared softer now, "how are you feeling?" Beth managed a brief smile before adjusting herself, wincing in pain. He rushed to offer a hand, and she took his arm to shift as he adjusted the pillow.
"Want to give walking a try?" The man's warm, brown eyes crinkled at the edges as he smiled down at her, his features etched with concern, his furrowed brow now smooth and his brown eyes sparkled with an unfamiliar kindness.
She shook her head, and the woman returned with soup and water; "she needs to eat before attempting to walk, Austin," she said, setting the tray before Beth.
"Then we'll try again tomorrow," Austin expressed, heading towards the door, "the sooner we leave, the better - we've been here for too long." His footsteps echoed with determination and authority, less frustrated than the other man's but equally resolute.
"I apologise if it's cold. Heating options are limited here. Need a hand?" The woman offered. Beth shook her head, the pounding of her headache resonating through her body.
"Well I'll leave you to it then. Shout out if you need anything, if you can talk at all." Beth glanced down at her bowl of soup, parting her lips as if to speak, but no words escaped. A deep sigh escaped from the woman's mouth as she turned and left the room, leaving Beth alone with her cold, untouched meal. The silence in the room was deafening, broken only by the sound of muffed chatter outside.
The days stretched longer as Beth's need for rest diminished. Boredom and confusion settled in, intensifying as the people from her visions became tangible presences, moving in and out of her room. They attended to her needs but seldom engaged in conversation. At night, their muffled voices in the adjoining room became a distant comfort, and the faint echoes of their arguments a source of intrigue.
"We need to leave," a frustrated male voice pierced through the thin walls, "we have to head further south before winter traps us with little supplies and an extra mouth to feed - considering you're all so intent on keeping this girl alive."
"This woman," a familiar female voice retorted, likely the one who had been caring for her, "needed help - I distinctly remember a time when I wasn't doing well and needed it too."
"You're my sister, of course, I wasn't going to leave you behind."
"I'm not talking about you, Luis," she yelled, "I'm talking about before you came back from Minnesota and found me."
"Why can't we just leave her here with some supplies and a gun. Why do we need to bring her with us?"
"Jesus Christ Luis we're not leaving her here alone and you two can have it out later," intervened another man, "but Luis is right - we need to leave before the snow settles in."
The argument faded into muffled voices again, and Beth strained to catch the words exchanged between the trio. A knock at the door startled her.
"May I come in?" A young girl, the same from her visions, had opened the door quietly without her even noticing. "I thought the yelling might have woken you." Beth nodded, maintaining her silence.
"I'm Chantelle." Her soft Southern accent flowed like a gentle breeze through a cornfield. She pulled up a chair beside the bed. "Luis can get into it with everybody, but he means well. Well, no, that's a lie. I don't know why I said that. He's a dick."
"I gathered," Beth whispered and laughed a little, suddenly overtaken by a violent cough.
Chantelle rushed to hand her water; "so, you do speak. From the way Austin and Val were sayin' it, it sounded like you were mute. I thought, you couldn't be deaf because you've been nodding and smiling like a dang puppet."
Beth laughed and took another sip; "I didn't really have anything worth saying until now. No one has bothered to make conversation."
"Your accent, where are you from?" Chantelle sat down on the wooden chair, her long dark hair cascading down her back in gentle curls. Her bright brown eyes sparkled with kindness as she looked towards Beth.
"Australia," Beth paused, realising she hadn't thought about home for a while, "I'm from Australia," she repeated.
Chantelle pulled out a deck of cards; "well, I figured you might be bored and needed a little human interaction that didn't make you feel like you were in a hospital."
Beth's eyes lit up, and Chantelle smiled; "what do you want to play?"
â â â
"What do you think you are doing?" Austin stormed into the motel room.
"We're leaving. Today," Luis' words cut through the air.
"The van's still in bad shape, and we won't survive this winter on foot." Austin's arms were folded tightly across his chest, the muscles in his biceps and forearms bulging with tension. His jaw was clenched, and his brows furrowed in frustration.
"Then fix the damn van!" Luis yelled, the sound piercing through the walls and resonating outside the motel room for others to hear the heated exchange.
"Oh, sorry, I'll just take it down the road to the mechanic, shall I?" Austin raised a quizzical eyebrow, smirking at his friend. The men paused their argument, exchanging laughter.
"Luis, what's going on with you?" Austin softened his tone, taking a seat on the other bed. "We've been friends since high school, grew up together, served in the army together. This isn't you."
"I don't know, man." Luis sat on the other bed, facing his friend, his face buried in his hands. He rubbed his face hard, threw his head back, and sighed heavily. "This just isn'tâ" he paused.
"Isn't what?"
"Isn't life." Luis gestured around the room.
"We'll get to the coast, find a boat, just like we planned." There was a slight taste of bitterness in the air, as if Austin's mild frustration was tangible.
"And then what?"
"Do the best we can," Austin stood up, placing a hand on his friend's shoulder, "we all have our dark moments, brother. You helped me get through mine, I'll help you get through yours."
Austin walked out of the motel room into the crisp morning air. The atmosphere was fresh, with a subtle scent of dew and grass. The sweet aroma of winter's imminent arrival filled the air, mingling with the faint scent of burning oil from their broken down van across the parking lot.
"Ben thinks he can fix the van by tomorrow. He found the parts we need on the other side of town." Val caught Austin as he had walked outside.
"He went scouting alone?" Austin looked across the lot at Ben, deep into the hood of the black church van they had found a while back.
Chantelle bounded up before she could answer; "Beth seems much better today. She's eatin' and drinkin' more. I think she could try walkin' today."
"Beth?" Val and Austin remarked in unison.
"Mmm, she speaks - she might have a lot more to say if either of you bothered to converse with her instead of just talkin' to her." She walked off towards Ben, a light air in her hopeful stride.
â â â
Austin found Beth sitting on the edge of her bed, her feet bare and dangling idly over the side. Her toes were curled, squeezing them tightly as she wiggled them back and forth. Her face was tense with concentration as she tried to alleviate the tingling sensation in her feet.
"Beth." His voice was soothing and calming, his words spoken with a gentle tone as he tried to ease Beth's discomfort.
"Chantelle?" She looked up at him, as he nodded, smiling gently. "She's a good kid." She smiled and looked back at her toes.
"Do you want to try walking today?" He walked towards the chair on the other side of the room and sat down as it creaked underneath the weight of him.
"The sooner I can walk, the sooner you can get out of here." She said with a sarcastic air, mocking Luis.
"The sooner we can get out of here." He repeated sarcastically with a smile, a light spread of jest washing over him as he joined her in mocking his friend.
"Your friend Luis seems to be very against bringing me along with you." She looked back at him.
"I'm not in the business of leaving people behind. Especially in Washington in the middle of October," he sat forward, leaning his elbows on his knees, "you wouldn't survive the winter."
"Then maybe you should have just left me to die." She turned her body to face him abruptly. He opened his mouth to speak, but she interjected before he could respond.
"Why did you help me? You don't know me, why did you even bother?"
"Like I said, Beth," he stood up, his wistful tone switching back to cold and dry, "I'm not in the business of leaving people behind." He walked over to her slowly.
"I've lost too many people. I've watched people kill others over a can of soup. I've seen friends leave friends behind to save themselves," he sat down on the end of her bed, "I don't leave people behind."
His brown eyes cut through his words like a thunderstorm. She looked at his face, tired and weathered from sleepless nights with one eye open to ensure his group's safety. She pegged him as their leader - strong and determined with clear military training.
"What happened to you?" She asked softly.
"What happened to you?" He countered; "I refuse to believe you survived a pandemic alone for six months in a foreign country."
She said nothing and looked back at her feet. They sat in silence for a while before he stood up and headed for the door.
"We're leaving the day after tomorrow. We need to head south before it's too cold, and we don't know how long the van or the car will last, so part of that might be on foot."
"I'll try walking today." Beth nodded obediently.
"I'll send Val and Chantelle in to help you." He replied, his voice maintaining the cold cadency.
"Thank you." She smiled, wriggling her toes as the numbness started to dissipate. Before he could leave, she looked up at him again.
"Austin?" He stopped at the door and turned to her. "I know you've all done a lot for me, including putting your friendship with Luis on the line, so thank you. But I have a favour to ask," her voice grew quiet, "before we leave."
"What is it?" He asked sternly at her audacity to ask for another favour.
She looked up at him with tears in her eyes. He noticed her green eyes glisten with the added layer of acridity and the change in her demeanour; "before we leave, I need you to help me bury my husband."
submitted by willdanceforsnacks to WritingHub [link] [comments]
Beginning of chapter one below - if anyone would like to provide feedback that would be lovely. đ
The room buzzed with a quiet urgency as they hovered around her, their faces etched with concern and something else she couldn't quite place - an undercurrent of tension that seemed to pulse in time with her own racing heart. These disjointed images flitted in and out, creating a mosaic of fragmented reality. Awake, her body throbbed with pain; asleep, she plunged into a black abyss, time slipping away unnoticed. Each awakening brought the desire for oblivion as her mind plunged back into the depths of darkness.
Beth jolted upright, startled by the sharp bang of a car backfiring. A cry of pain escaped her lips as she attempted to sit up, her back and legs resisting her will. A woman, the same from her fleeting visions, hurried into the room with a damp cloth and a glass of water.
"Easy now," the woman spoke gently, her mild Spanish accent adding warmth to her sharp words as she pressed the cloth to Beth's forehead and helped her sit up, "you're weak, rushing won't do you any favours. The sooner you regain strength, the sooner you can move."
A man, the one with the odd expression in her visions, appeared in the doorway once again; "and the sooner we can leave this place, I'm sick of it." He grumbled, striding away with urgency and frustration. His steps were heavy and fraught with agitation, each one seeming to leave a deep imprint on the ground beneath him. His grumbling was like distant thunder, punctuated by the clenching of his jaw and the tightening of his fists.
"Don't mind my brother," the woman interjected sharply, "it's not you - he hates everyone." Hate, Beth pondered, wondering what she might have done to earn his disdain.
"Are you hungry?" The woman stood, walking to the other side of the room to adjust another pillow behind Beth's back. Beth nodded; "I'll get you some soup."
Left alone, Beth surveyed the room - beige walls, a shattered TV, torn brown curtains. She squinted at the notepad on the side table, revealing the branding - Mill Village Motel Eatonville. The coffee pod machine at the room's far end, covered in dust, hinted at a neglected past.
"You're awake," startled, Beth turned to find the man with the furrowed brow at the door - tall and dark, with piercing brown eyes, he appeared softer now, "how are you feeling?" Beth managed a brief smile before adjusting herself, wincing in pain. He rushed to offer a hand, and she took his arm to shift as he adjusted the pillow.
"Want to give walking a try?" The man's warm, brown eyes crinkled at the edges as he smiled down at her, his features etched with concern, his furrowed brow now smooth and his brown eyes sparkled with an unfamiliar kindness.
She shook her head, and the woman returned with soup and water; "she needs to eat before attempting to walk, Austin," she said, setting the tray before Beth.
"Then we'll try again tomorrow," Austin expressed, heading towards the door, "the sooner we leave, the better - we've been here for too long." His footsteps echoed with determination and authority, less frustrated than the other man's but equally resolute.
"I apologise if it's cold. Heating options are limited here. Need a hand?" The woman offered. Beth shook her head, the pounding of her headache resonating through her body.
"Well I'll leave you to it then. Shout out if you need anything, if you can talk at all." Beth glanced down at her bowl of soup, parting her lips as if to speak, but no words escaped. A deep sigh escaped from the woman's mouth as she turned and left the room, leaving Beth alone with her cold, untouched meal. The silence in the room was deafening, broken only by the sound of muffed chatter outside.
The days stretched longer as Beth's need for rest diminished. Boredom and confusion settled in, intensifying as the people from her visions became tangible presences, moving in and out of her room. They attended to her needs but seldom engaged in conversation. At night, their muffled voices in the adjoining room became a distant comfort, and the faint echoes of their arguments a source of intrigue.
"We need to leave," a frustrated male voice pierced through the thin walls, "we have to head further south before winter traps us with little supplies and an extra mouth to feed - considering you're all so intent on keeping this girl alive."
"This woman," a familiar female voice retorted, likely the one who had been caring for her, "needed help - I distinctly remember a time when I wasn't doing well and needed it too."
"You're my sister, of course, I wasn't going to leave you behind."
"I'm not talking about you, Luis," she yelled, "I'm talking about before you came back from Minnesota and found me."
"Why can't we just leave her here with some supplies and a gun. Why do we need to bring her with us?"
"Jesus Christ Luis we're not leaving her here alone and you two can have it out later," intervened another man, "but Luis is right - we need to leave before the snow settles in."
The argument faded into muffled voices again, and Beth strained to catch the words exchanged between the trio. A knock at the door startled her.
"May I come in?" A young girl, the same from her visions, had opened the door quietly without her even noticing. "I thought the yelling might have woken you." Beth nodded, maintaining her silence.
"I'm Chantelle." Her soft Southern accent flowed like a gentle breeze through a cornfield. She pulled up a chair beside the bed. "Luis can get into it with everybody, but he means well. Well, no, that's a lie. I don't know why I said that. He's a dick."
"I gathered," Beth whispered and laughed a little, suddenly overtaken by a violent cough.
Chantelle rushed to hand her water; "so, you do speak. From the way Austin and Val were sayin' it, it sounded like you were mute. I thought, you couldn't be deaf because you've been nodding and smiling like a dang puppet."
Beth laughed and took another sip; "I didn't really have anything worth saying until now. No one has bothered to make conversation."
"Your accent, where are you from?" Chantelle sat down on the wooden chair, her long dark hair cascading down her back in gentle curls. Her bright brown eyes sparkled with kindness as she looked towards Beth.
"Australia," Beth paused, realising she hadn't thought about home for a while, "I'm from Australia," she repeated.
Chantelle pulled out a deck of cards; "well, I figured you might be bored and needed a little human interaction that didn't make you feel like you were in a hospital."
Beth's eyes lit up, and Chantelle smiled; "what do you want to play?"
â â â
"What do you think you are doing?" Austin stormed into the motel room.
"We're leaving. Today," Luis' words cut through the air.
"The van's still in bad shape, and we won't survive this winter on foot." Austin's arms were folded tightly across his chest, the muscles in his biceps and forearms bulging with tension. His jaw was clenched, and his brows furrowed in frustration.
"Then fix the damn van!" Luis yelled, the sound piercing through the walls and resonating outside the motel room for others to hear the heated exchange.
"Oh, sorry, I'll just take it down the road to the mechanic, shall I?" Austin raised a quizzical eyebrow, smirking at his friend. The men paused their argument, exchanging laughter.
"Luis, what's going on with you?" Austin softened his tone, taking a seat on the other bed. "We've been friends since high school, grew up together, served in the army together. This isn't you."
"I don't know, man." Luis sat on the other bed, facing his friend, his face buried in his hands. He rubbed his face hard, threw his head back, and sighed heavily. "This just isn'tâ" he paused.
"Isn't what?"
"Isn't life." Luis gestured around the room.
"We'll get to the coast, find a boat, just like we planned." There was a slight taste of bitterness in the air, as if Austin's mild frustration was tangible.
"And then what?"
"Do the best we can," Austin stood up, placing a hand on his friend's shoulder, "we all have our dark moments, brother. You helped me get through mine, I'll help you get through yours."
Austin walked out of the motel room into the crisp morning air. The atmosphere was fresh, with a subtle scent of dew and grass. The sweet aroma of winter's imminent arrival filled the air, mingling with the faint scent of burning oil from their broken down van across the parking lot.
"Ben thinks he can fix the van by tomorrow. He found the parts we need on the other side of town." Val caught Austin as he had walked outside.
"He went scouting alone?" Austin looked across the lot at Ben, deep into the hood of the black church van they had found a while back.
Chantelle bounded up before she could answer; "Beth seems much better today. She's eatin' and drinkin' more. I think she could try walkin' today."
"Beth?" Val and Austin remarked in unison.
"Mmm, she speaks - she might have a lot more to say if either of you bothered to converse with her instead of just talkin' to her." She walked off towards Ben, a light air in her hopeful stride.
â â â
Austin found Beth sitting on the edge of her bed, her feet bare and dangling idly over the side. Her toes were curled, squeezing them tightly as she wiggled them back and forth. Her face was tense with concentration as she tried to alleviate the tingling sensation in her feet.
"Beth." His voice was soothing and calming, his words spoken with a gentle tone as he tried to ease Beth's discomfort.
"Chantelle?" She looked up at him, as he nodded, smiling gently. "She's a good kid." She smiled and looked back at her toes.
"Do you want to try walking today?" He walked towards the chair on the other side of the room and sat down as it creaked underneath the weight of him.
"The sooner I can walk, the sooner you can get out of here." She said with a sarcastic air, mocking Luis.
"The sooner we can get out of here." He repeated sarcastically with a smile, a light spread of jest washing over him as he joined her in mocking his friend.
"Your friend Luis seems to be very against bringing me along with you." She looked back at him.
"I'm not in the business of leaving people behind. Especially in Washington in the middle of October," he sat forward, leaning his elbows on his knees, "you wouldn't survive the winter."
"Then maybe you should have just left me to die." She turned her body to face him abruptly. He opened his mouth to speak, but she interjected before he could respond.
"Why did you help me? You don't know me, why did you even bother?"
"Like I said, Beth," he stood up, his wistful tone switching back to cold and dry, "I'm not in the business of leaving people behind." He walked over to her slowly.
"I've lost too many people. I've watched people kill others over a can of soup. I've seen friends leave friends behind to save themselves," he sat down on the end of her bed, "I don't leave people behind."
His brown eyes cut through his words like a thunderstorm. She looked at his face, tired and weathered from sleepless nights with one eye open to ensure his group's safety. She pegged him as their leader - strong and determined with clear military training.
"What happened to you?" She asked softly.
"What happened to you?" He countered; "I refuse to believe you survived a pandemic alone for six months in a foreign country."
She said nothing and looked back at her feet. They sat in silence for a while before he stood up and headed for the door.
"We're leaving the day after tomorrow. We need to head south before it's too cold, and we don't know how long the van or the car will last, so part of that might be on foot."
"I'll try walking today." Beth nodded obediently.
"I'll send Val and Chantelle in to help you." He replied, his voice maintaining the cold cadency.
"Thank you." She smiled, wriggling her toes as the numbness started to dissipate. Before he could leave, she looked up at him again.
"Austin?" He stopped at the door and turned to her. "I know you've all done a lot for me, including putting your friendship with Luis on the line, so thank you. But I have a favour to ask," her voice grew quiet, "before we leave."
"What is it?" He asked sternly at her audacity to ask for another favour.
She looked up at him with tears in her eyes. He noticed her green eyes glisten with the added layer of acridity and the change in her demeanour; "before we leave, I need you to help me bury my husband."
2024.05.14 03:04 willdanceforsnacks Book Promotion Ideas?
I finally published for the first time. Not the first time I've finished a novel, but certainly the first time I have actively published one .. one that I've been a little proud of. I know it's a long process to get noticed, or even start to see some traction in sales & downloads, but how do you go about promoting your novel? I feel like I'm stuck. đ
Beginning of chapter one below - if anyone would like to provide feedback that would be lovely. đ
[2,310] It began like a surreal haze, a fever dream dancing with unknown figures swirling around her like a languid tornado, their movements seemingly slowed by some unseen force as she awoke to a world spinning out of her control. She found herself surrounded by strangers who moved like spectres in a dream, fragmented flashes who assaulted her consciousness - a woman gently pressing a cloth to her throbbing head, another offering sips of water while she coughed and struggled to swallow, a man peering down at her with a furrowed brow, and a mysterious figure lingering in the doorway with an unsettling glint of desire in his eyes.
The room buzzed with a quiet urgency as they hovered around her, their faces etched with concern and something else she couldn't quite place - an undercurrent of tension that seemed to pulse in time with her own racing heart. These disjointed images flitted in and out, creating a mosaic of fragmented reality. Awake, her body throbbed with pain; asleep, she plunged into a black abyss, time slipping away unnoticed. Each awakening brought the desire for oblivion as her mind plunged back into the depths of darkness.
Beth jolted upright, startled by the sharp bang of a car backfiring. A cry of pain escaped her lips as she attempted to sit up, her back and legs resisting her will. A woman, the same from her fleeting visions, hurried into the room with a damp cloth and a glass of water.
"Easy now," the woman spoke gently, her mild Spanish accent adding warmth to her sharp words as she pressed the cloth to Beth's forehead and helped her sit up, "you're weak, rushing won't do you any favours. The sooner you regain strength, the sooner you can move."
A man, the one with the odd expression in her visions, appeared in the doorway once again; "and the sooner we can leave this place, I'm sick of it." He grumbled, striding away with urgency and frustration. His steps were heavy and fraught with agitation, each one seeming to leave a deep imprint on the ground beneath him. His grumbling was like distant thunder, punctuated by the clenching of his jaw and the tightening of his fists.
"Don't mind my brother," the woman interjected sharply, "it's not you - he hates everyone." Hate, Beth pondered, wondering what she might have done to earn his disdain.
"Are you hungry?" The woman stood, walking to the other side of the room to adjust another pillow behind Beth's back. Beth nodded; "I'll get you some soup."
Left alone, Beth surveyed the room - beige walls, a shattered TV, torn brown curtains. She squinted at the notepad on the side table, revealing the branding - Mill Village Motel Eatonville. The coffee pod machine at the room's far end, covered in dust, hinted at a neglected past.
"You're awake," startled, Beth turned to find the man with the furrowed brow at the door - tall and dark, with piercing brown eyes, he appeared softer now, "how are you feeling?" Beth managed a brief smile before adjusting herself, wincing in pain. He rushed to offer a hand, and she took his arm to shift as he adjusted the pillow.
"Want to give walking a try?" The man's warm, brown eyes crinkled at the edges as he smiled down at her, his features etched with concern, his furrowed brow now smooth and his brown eyes sparkled with an unfamiliar kindness.
She shook her head, and the woman returned with soup and water; "she needs to eat before attempting to walk, Austin," she said, setting the tray before Beth.
"Then we'll try again tomorrow," Austin expressed, heading towards the door, "the sooner we leave, the better - we've been here for too long." His footsteps echoed with determination and authority, less frustrated than the other man's but equally resolute.
"I apologise if it's cold. Heating options are limited here. Need a hand?" The woman offered. Beth shook her head, the pounding of her headache resonating through her body.
"Well I'll leave you to it then. Shout out if you need anything, if you can talk at all." Beth glanced down at her bowl of soup, parting her lips as if to speak, but no words escaped. A deep sigh escaped from the woman's mouth as she turned and left the room, leaving Beth alone with her cold, untouched meal. The silence in the room was deafening, broken only by the sound of muffed chatter outside.
The days stretched longer as Beth's need for rest diminished. Boredom and confusion settled in, intensifying as the people from her visions became tangible presences, moving in and out of her room. They attended to her needs but seldom engaged in conversation. At night, their muffled voices in the adjoining room became a distant comfort, and the faint echoes of their arguments a source of intrigue.
"We need to leave," a frustrated male voice pierced through the thin walls, "we have to head further south before winter traps us with little supplies and an extra mouth to feed - considering you're all so intent on keeping this girl alive."
"This woman," a familiar female voice retorted, likely the one who had been caring for her, "needed help - I distinctly remember a time when I wasn't doing well and needed it too."
"You're my sister, of course, I wasn't going to leave you behind."
"I'm not talking about you, Luis," she yelled, "I'm talking about before you came back from Minnesota and found me."
"Why can't we just leave her here with some supplies and a gun. Why do we need to bring her with us?"
"Jesus Christ Luis we're not leaving her here alone and you two can have it out later," intervened another man, "but Luis is right - we need to leave before the snow settles in."
The argument faded into muffled voices again, and Beth strained to catch the words exchanged between the trio. A knock at the door startled her.
"May I come in?" A young girl, the same from her visions, had opened the door quietly without her even noticing. "I thought the yelling might have woken you." Beth nodded, maintaining her silence.
"I'm Chantelle." Her soft Southern accent flowed like a gentle breeze through a cornfield. She pulled up a chair beside the bed. "Luis can get into it with everybody, but he means well. Well, no, that's a lie. I don't know why I said that. He's a dick."
"I gathered," Beth whispered and laughed a little, suddenly overtaken by a violent cough.
Chantelle rushed to hand her water; "so, you do speak. From the way Austin and Val were sayin' it, it sounded like you were mute. I thought, you couldn't be deaf because you've been nodding and smiling like a dang puppet."
Beth laughed and took another sip; "I didn't really have anything worth saying until now. No one has bothered to make conversation."
"Your accent, where are you from?" Chantelle sat down on the wooden chair, her long dark hair cascading down her back in gentle curls. Her bright brown eyes sparkled with kindness as she looked towards Beth.
"Australia," Beth paused, realising she hadn't thought about home for a while, "I'm from Australia," she repeated.
Chantelle pulled out a deck of cards; "well, I figured you might be bored and needed a little human interaction that didn't make you feel like you were in a hospital."
Beth's eyes lit up, and Chantelle smiled; "what do you want to play?"
â â â
"What do you think you are doing?" Austin stormed into the motel room.
"We're leaving. Today," Luis' words cut through the air.
"The van's still in bad shape, and we won't survive this winter on foot." Austin's arms were folded tightly across his chest, the muscles in his biceps and forearms bulging with tension. His jaw was clenched, and his brows furrowed in frustration.
"Then fix the damn van!" Luis yelled, the sound piercing through the walls and resonating outside the motel room for others to hear the heated exchange.
"Oh, sorry, I'll just take it down the road to the mechanic, shall I?" Austin raised a quizzical eyebrow, smirking at his friend. The men paused their argument, exchanging laughter.
"Luis, what's going on with you?" Austin softened his tone, taking a seat on the other bed. "We've been friends since high school, grew up together, served in the army together. This isn't you."
"I don't know, man." Luis sat on the other bed, facing his friend, his face buried in his hands. He rubbed his face hard, threw his head back, and sighed heavily. "This just isn'tâ" he paused.
"Isn't what?"
"Isn't life." Luis gestured around the room.
"We'll get to the coast, find a boat, just like we planned." There was a slight taste of bitterness in the air, as if Austin's mild frustration was tangible.
"And then what?"
"Do the best we can," Austin stood up, placing a hand on his friend's shoulder, "we all have our dark moments, brother. You helped me get through mine, I'll help you get through yours."
Austin walked out of the motel room into the crisp morning air. The atmosphere was fresh, with a subtle scent of dew and grass. The sweet aroma of winter's imminent arrival filled the air, mingling with the faint scent of burning oil from their broken down van across the parking lot.
"Ben thinks he can fix the van by tomorrow. He found the parts we need on the other side of town." Val caught Austin as he had walked outside.
"He went scouting alone?" Austin looked across the lot at Ben, deep into the hood of the black church van they had found a while back.
Chantelle bounded up before she could answer; "Beth seems much better today. She's eatin' and drinkin' more. I think she could try walkin' today."
"Beth?" Val and Austin remarked in unison.
"Mmm, she speaks - she might have a lot more to say if either of you bothered to converse with her instead of just talkin' to her." She walked off towards Ben, a light air in her hopeful stride.
â â â
Austin found Beth sitting on the edge of her bed, her feet bare and dangling idly over the side. Her toes were curled, squeezing them tightly as she wiggled them back and forth. Her face was tense with concentration as she tried to alleviate the tingling sensation in her feet.
"Beth." His voice was soothing and calming, his words spoken with a gentle tone as he tried to ease Beth's discomfort.
"Chantelle?" She looked up at him, as he nodded, smiling gently. "She's a good kid." She smiled and looked back at her toes.
"Do you want to try walking today?" He walked towards the chair on the other side of the room and sat down as it creaked underneath the weight of him.
"The sooner I can walk, the sooner you can get out of here." She said with a sarcastic air, mocking Luis.
"The sooner we can get out of here." He repeated sarcastically with a smile, a light spread of jest washing over him as he joined her in mocking his friend.
"Your friend Luis seems to be very against bringing me along with you." She looked back at him.
"I'm not in the business of leaving people behind. Especially in Washington in the middle of October," he sat forward, leaning his elbows on his knees, "you wouldn't survive the winter."
"Then maybe you should have just left me to die." She turned her body to face him abruptly. He opened his mouth to speak, but she interjected before he could respond.
"Why did you help me? You don't know me, why did you even bother?"
"Like I said, Beth," he stood up, his wistful tone switching back to cold and dry, "I'm not in the business of leaving people behind." He walked over to her slowly.
"I've lost too many people. I've watched people kill others over a can of soup. I've seen friends leave friends behind to save themselves," he sat down on the end of her bed, "I don't leave people behind."
His brown eyes cut through his words like a thunderstorm. She looked at his face, tired and weathered from sleepless nights with one eye open to ensure his group's safety. She pegged him as their leader - strong and determined with clear military training.
"What happened to you?" She asked softly.
"What happened to you?" He countered; "I refuse to believe you survived a pandemic alone for six months in a foreign country."
She said nothing and looked back at her feet. They sat in silence for a while before he stood up and headed for the door.
"We're leaving the day after tomorrow. We need to head south before it's too cold, and we don't know how long the van or the car will last, so part of that might be on foot."
"I'll try walking today." Beth nodded obediently.
"I'll send Val and Chantelle in to help you." He replied, his voice maintaining the cold cadency.
"Thank you." She smiled, wriggling her toes as the numbness started to dissipate. Before he could leave, she looked up at him again.
"Austin?" He stopped at the door and turned to her. "I know you've all done a lot for me, including putting your friendship with Luis on the line, so thank you. But I have a favour to ask," her voice grew quiet, "before we leave."
"What is it?" He asked sternly at her audacity to ask for another favour.
She looked up at him with tears in her eyes. He noticed her green eyes glisten with the added layer of acridity and the change in her demeanour; "before we leave, I need you to help me bury my husband."
submitted by willdanceforsnacks to writerchat [link] [comments]
Beginning of chapter one below - if anyone would like to provide feedback that would be lovely. đ
The room buzzed with a quiet urgency as they hovered around her, their faces etched with concern and something else she couldn't quite place - an undercurrent of tension that seemed to pulse in time with her own racing heart. These disjointed images flitted in and out, creating a mosaic of fragmented reality. Awake, her body throbbed with pain; asleep, she plunged into a black abyss, time slipping away unnoticed. Each awakening brought the desire for oblivion as her mind plunged back into the depths of darkness.
Beth jolted upright, startled by the sharp bang of a car backfiring. A cry of pain escaped her lips as she attempted to sit up, her back and legs resisting her will. A woman, the same from her fleeting visions, hurried into the room with a damp cloth and a glass of water.
"Easy now," the woman spoke gently, her mild Spanish accent adding warmth to her sharp words as she pressed the cloth to Beth's forehead and helped her sit up, "you're weak, rushing won't do you any favours. The sooner you regain strength, the sooner you can move."
A man, the one with the odd expression in her visions, appeared in the doorway once again; "and the sooner we can leave this place, I'm sick of it." He grumbled, striding away with urgency and frustration. His steps were heavy and fraught with agitation, each one seeming to leave a deep imprint on the ground beneath him. His grumbling was like distant thunder, punctuated by the clenching of his jaw and the tightening of his fists.
"Don't mind my brother," the woman interjected sharply, "it's not you - he hates everyone." Hate, Beth pondered, wondering what she might have done to earn his disdain.
"Are you hungry?" The woman stood, walking to the other side of the room to adjust another pillow behind Beth's back. Beth nodded; "I'll get you some soup."
Left alone, Beth surveyed the room - beige walls, a shattered TV, torn brown curtains. She squinted at the notepad on the side table, revealing the branding - Mill Village Motel Eatonville. The coffee pod machine at the room's far end, covered in dust, hinted at a neglected past.
"You're awake," startled, Beth turned to find the man with the furrowed brow at the door - tall and dark, with piercing brown eyes, he appeared softer now, "how are you feeling?" Beth managed a brief smile before adjusting herself, wincing in pain. He rushed to offer a hand, and she took his arm to shift as he adjusted the pillow.
"Want to give walking a try?" The man's warm, brown eyes crinkled at the edges as he smiled down at her, his features etched with concern, his furrowed brow now smooth and his brown eyes sparkled with an unfamiliar kindness.
She shook her head, and the woman returned with soup and water; "she needs to eat before attempting to walk, Austin," she said, setting the tray before Beth.
"Then we'll try again tomorrow," Austin expressed, heading towards the door, "the sooner we leave, the better - we've been here for too long." His footsteps echoed with determination and authority, less frustrated than the other man's but equally resolute.
"I apologise if it's cold. Heating options are limited here. Need a hand?" The woman offered. Beth shook her head, the pounding of her headache resonating through her body.
"Well I'll leave you to it then. Shout out if you need anything, if you can talk at all." Beth glanced down at her bowl of soup, parting her lips as if to speak, but no words escaped. A deep sigh escaped from the woman's mouth as she turned and left the room, leaving Beth alone with her cold, untouched meal. The silence in the room was deafening, broken only by the sound of muffed chatter outside.
The days stretched longer as Beth's need for rest diminished. Boredom and confusion settled in, intensifying as the people from her visions became tangible presences, moving in and out of her room. They attended to her needs but seldom engaged in conversation. At night, their muffled voices in the adjoining room became a distant comfort, and the faint echoes of their arguments a source of intrigue.
"We need to leave," a frustrated male voice pierced through the thin walls, "we have to head further south before winter traps us with little supplies and an extra mouth to feed - considering you're all so intent on keeping this girl alive."
"This woman," a familiar female voice retorted, likely the one who had been caring for her, "needed help - I distinctly remember a time when I wasn't doing well and needed it too."
"You're my sister, of course, I wasn't going to leave you behind."
"I'm not talking about you, Luis," she yelled, "I'm talking about before you came back from Minnesota and found me."
"Why can't we just leave her here with some supplies and a gun. Why do we need to bring her with us?"
"Jesus Christ Luis we're not leaving her here alone and you two can have it out later," intervened another man, "but Luis is right - we need to leave before the snow settles in."
The argument faded into muffled voices again, and Beth strained to catch the words exchanged between the trio. A knock at the door startled her.
"May I come in?" A young girl, the same from her visions, had opened the door quietly without her even noticing. "I thought the yelling might have woken you." Beth nodded, maintaining her silence.
"I'm Chantelle." Her soft Southern accent flowed like a gentle breeze through a cornfield. She pulled up a chair beside the bed. "Luis can get into it with everybody, but he means well. Well, no, that's a lie. I don't know why I said that. He's a dick."
"I gathered," Beth whispered and laughed a little, suddenly overtaken by a violent cough.
Chantelle rushed to hand her water; "so, you do speak. From the way Austin and Val were sayin' it, it sounded like you were mute. I thought, you couldn't be deaf because you've been nodding and smiling like a dang puppet."
Beth laughed and took another sip; "I didn't really have anything worth saying until now. No one has bothered to make conversation."
"Your accent, where are you from?" Chantelle sat down on the wooden chair, her long dark hair cascading down her back in gentle curls. Her bright brown eyes sparkled with kindness as she looked towards Beth.
"Australia," Beth paused, realising she hadn't thought about home for a while, "I'm from Australia," she repeated.
Chantelle pulled out a deck of cards; "well, I figured you might be bored and needed a little human interaction that didn't make you feel like you were in a hospital."
Beth's eyes lit up, and Chantelle smiled; "what do you want to play?"
â â â
"What do you think you are doing?" Austin stormed into the motel room.
"We're leaving. Today," Luis' words cut through the air.
"The van's still in bad shape, and we won't survive this winter on foot." Austin's arms were folded tightly across his chest, the muscles in his biceps and forearms bulging with tension. His jaw was clenched, and his brows furrowed in frustration.
"Then fix the damn van!" Luis yelled, the sound piercing through the walls and resonating outside the motel room for others to hear the heated exchange.
"Oh, sorry, I'll just take it down the road to the mechanic, shall I?" Austin raised a quizzical eyebrow, smirking at his friend. The men paused their argument, exchanging laughter.
"Luis, what's going on with you?" Austin softened his tone, taking a seat on the other bed. "We've been friends since high school, grew up together, served in the army together. This isn't you."
"I don't know, man." Luis sat on the other bed, facing his friend, his face buried in his hands. He rubbed his face hard, threw his head back, and sighed heavily. "This just isn'tâ" he paused.
"Isn't what?"
"Isn't life." Luis gestured around the room.
"We'll get to the coast, find a boat, just like we planned." There was a slight taste of bitterness in the air, as if Austin's mild frustration was tangible.
"And then what?"
"Do the best we can," Austin stood up, placing a hand on his friend's shoulder, "we all have our dark moments, brother. You helped me get through mine, I'll help you get through yours."
Austin walked out of the motel room into the crisp morning air. The atmosphere was fresh, with a subtle scent of dew and grass. The sweet aroma of winter's imminent arrival filled the air, mingling with the faint scent of burning oil from their broken down van across the parking lot.
"Ben thinks he can fix the van by tomorrow. He found the parts we need on the other side of town." Val caught Austin as he had walked outside.
"He went scouting alone?" Austin looked across the lot at Ben, deep into the hood of the black church van they had found a while back.
Chantelle bounded up before she could answer; "Beth seems much better today. She's eatin' and drinkin' more. I think she could try walkin' today."
"Beth?" Val and Austin remarked in unison.
"Mmm, she speaks - she might have a lot more to say if either of you bothered to converse with her instead of just talkin' to her." She walked off towards Ben, a light air in her hopeful stride.
â â â
Austin found Beth sitting on the edge of her bed, her feet bare and dangling idly over the side. Her toes were curled, squeezing them tightly as she wiggled them back and forth. Her face was tense with concentration as she tried to alleviate the tingling sensation in her feet.
"Beth." His voice was soothing and calming, his words spoken with a gentle tone as he tried to ease Beth's discomfort.
"Chantelle?" She looked up at him, as he nodded, smiling gently. "She's a good kid." She smiled and looked back at her toes.
"Do you want to try walking today?" He walked towards the chair on the other side of the room and sat down as it creaked underneath the weight of him.
"The sooner I can walk, the sooner you can get out of here." She said with a sarcastic air, mocking Luis.
"The sooner we can get out of here." He repeated sarcastically with a smile, a light spread of jest washing over him as he joined her in mocking his friend.
"Your friend Luis seems to be very against bringing me along with you." She looked back at him.
"I'm not in the business of leaving people behind. Especially in Washington in the middle of October," he sat forward, leaning his elbows on his knees, "you wouldn't survive the winter."
"Then maybe you should have just left me to die." She turned her body to face him abruptly. He opened his mouth to speak, but she interjected before he could respond.
"Why did you help me? You don't know me, why did you even bother?"
"Like I said, Beth," he stood up, his wistful tone switching back to cold and dry, "I'm not in the business of leaving people behind." He walked over to her slowly.
"I've lost too many people. I've watched people kill others over a can of soup. I've seen friends leave friends behind to save themselves," he sat down on the end of her bed, "I don't leave people behind."
His brown eyes cut through his words like a thunderstorm. She looked at his face, tired and weathered from sleepless nights with one eye open to ensure his group's safety. She pegged him as their leader - strong and determined with clear military training.
"What happened to you?" She asked softly.
"What happened to you?" He countered; "I refuse to believe you survived a pandemic alone for six months in a foreign country."
She said nothing and looked back at her feet. They sat in silence for a while before he stood up and headed for the door.
"We're leaving the day after tomorrow. We need to head south before it's too cold, and we don't know how long the van or the car will last, so part of that might be on foot."
"I'll try walking today." Beth nodded obediently.
"I'll send Val and Chantelle in to help you." He replied, his voice maintaining the cold cadency.
"Thank you." She smiled, wriggling her toes as the numbness started to dissipate. Before he could leave, she looked up at him again.
"Austin?" He stopped at the door and turned to her. "I know you've all done a lot for me, including putting your friendship with Luis on the line, so thank you. But I have a favour to ask," her voice grew quiet, "before we leave."
"What is it?" He asked sternly at her audacity to ask for another favour.
She looked up at him with tears in her eyes. He noticed her green eyes glisten with the added layer of acridity and the change in her demeanour; "before we leave, I need you to help me bury my husband."
2024.05.14 03:00 shortstory1 The school had banned the students from ever using the toilets
In school, all toilets have been banned and it was obviously criminal what the school had done. They just banned the toilets for a week and they didn't tell us why but they did give us permission to go outside of school to find an available toilet to use even if a student left in the middle of the class. How news got around about the school not allowing toilets to be used was like wildfire and there was an uproar from the parents. It was so random how the school just banned toilet use. Even though there were signs signalling 'work being carried out' we weren't seeing any workers working on the supposed broken toilets.
Anyhow one day as I was in a boring maths class, suddenly the whole of reality had changed. The school became one big bouncy castle and we were all bouncing around. The teachers shouted "Who used the toilet to do a number 2!" And it was then that we found out that whenever somebody took a crap in the toilets, it literally blessed the whole school and it would change the reality of the school. That was when we all found out why the toilets were banned.
Then each student one by one had to do a number 2 in the toilets, in the hopes one student taking a dump in the toilets would bless the whole school to go back to normal. Each student taking a dump in the toilet and blessing the whole school kept changing the reality of the school to something whackier than the last. It was a failed attempt and it looked like the school was all lost. Then one student who is usually the silent one tends to be by himself. He took a crap in the toilets and his blessing of the whole school turned it back to normal.
The teachers were so grateful and everyone had to go back to their seats and never use the school toilets in any circumstances. They reminded us how we could go outside of school at any time to use toilets in other establishments like restaurants, gyms and anything else similar.
Then the school walls started to eat people when they walked close to the walls. It was then clear that silent students' toilet dump wasn't a blessing but had turned the school into an entity. Everyone tried going outside and nobody tried taking a dump in the toilets to bless the school and change its reality, the school is done for.
submitted by shortstory1 to Horror_stories [link] [comments]
Anyhow one day as I was in a boring maths class, suddenly the whole of reality had changed. The school became one big bouncy castle and we were all bouncing around. The teachers shouted "Who used the toilet to do a number 2!" And it was then that we found out that whenever somebody took a crap in the toilets, it literally blessed the whole school and it would change the reality of the school. That was when we all found out why the toilets were banned.
Then each student one by one had to do a number 2 in the toilets, in the hopes one student taking a dump in the toilets would bless the whole school to go back to normal. Each student taking a dump in the toilet and blessing the whole school kept changing the reality of the school to something whackier than the last. It was a failed attempt and it looked like the school was all lost. Then one student who is usually the silent one tends to be by himself. He took a crap in the toilets and his blessing of the whole school turned it back to normal.
The teachers were so grateful and everyone had to go back to their seats and never use the school toilets in any circumstances. They reminded us how we could go outside of school at any time to use toilets in other establishments like restaurants, gyms and anything else similar.
Then the school walls started to eat people when they walked close to the walls. It was then clear that silent students' toilet dump wasn't a blessing but had turned the school into an entity. Everyone tried going outside and nobody tried taking a dump in the toilets to bless the school and change its reality, the school is done for.
2024.05.14 02:59 shortstory1 The school had banned the students from ever using the toilets
In school, all toilets have been banned and it was obviously criminal what the school had done. They just banned the toilets for a week and they didn't tell us why but they did give us permission to go outside of school to find an available toilet to use even if a student left in the middle of the class. How news got around about the school not allowing toilets to be used was like wildfire and there was an uproar from the parents. It was so random how the school just banned toilet use. Even though there were signs signalling 'work being carried out' we weren't seeing any workers working on the supposed broken toilets.
Anyhow one day as I was in a boring maths class, suddenly the whole of reality had changed. The school became one big bouncy castle and we were all bouncing around. The teachers shouted "Who used the toilet to do a number 2!" And it was then that we found out that whenever somebody took a crap in the toilets, it literally blessed the whole school and it would change the reality of the school. That was when we all found out why the toilets were banned.
Then each student one by one had to do a number 2 in the toilets, in the hopes one student taking a dump in the toilets would bless the whole school to go back to normal. Each student taking a dump in the toilet and blessing the whole school kept changing the reality of the school to something whackier than the last. It was a failed attempt and it looked like the school was all lost. Then one student who is usually the silent one tends to be by himself. He took a crap in the toilets and his blessing of the whole school turned it back to normal.
The teachers were so grateful and everyone had to go back to their seats and never use the school toilets in any circumstances. They reminded us how we could go outside of school at any time to use toilets in other establishments like restaurants, gyms and anything else similar.
Then the school walls started to eat people when they walked close to the walls. It was then clear that silent students' toilet dump wasn't a blessing but had turned the school into an entity. Everyone tried going outside and nobody tried taking a dump in the toilets to bless the school and change its reality, the school is done for.
submitted by shortstory1 to scarystories [link] [comments]
Anyhow one day as I was in a boring maths class, suddenly the whole of reality had changed. The school became one big bouncy castle and we were all bouncing around. The teachers shouted "Who used the toilet to do a number 2!" And it was then that we found out that whenever somebody took a crap in the toilets, it literally blessed the whole school and it would change the reality of the school. That was when we all found out why the toilets were banned.
Then each student one by one had to do a number 2 in the toilets, in the hopes one student taking a dump in the toilets would bless the whole school to go back to normal. Each student taking a dump in the toilet and blessing the whole school kept changing the reality of the school to something whackier than the last. It was a failed attempt and it looked like the school was all lost. Then one student who is usually the silent one tends to be by himself. He took a crap in the toilets and his blessing of the whole school turned it back to normal.
The teachers were so grateful and everyone had to go back to their seats and never use the school toilets in any circumstances. They reminded us how we could go outside of school at any time to use toilets in other establishments like restaurants, gyms and anything else similar.
Then the school walls started to eat people when they walked close to the walls. It was then clear that silent students' toilet dump wasn't a blessing but had turned the school into an entity. Everyone tried going outside and nobody tried taking a dump in the toilets to bless the school and change its reality, the school is done for.
2024.05.14 02:55 Quick_Emotion3196 Is my (23f) marriage with my husband (33m) coming to an end?
To start things off, I was always aware of our age gap and problems it may cause in our relationship.
My husband and I didn't meet until I was well into being eighteen, and he was twenty-eight. It didn't bother me much, as he doesn't act much older than me and I'd always felt older than I was due to having a ton of younger siblings, step siblings, and foster kids in and out of my mother's house growing up.
We got engaged when I was nineteen at a yungblood concert, and we originally planned to wait to marry until I was at least twenty. Plans changed when I decided to go into the air force, and we had to push up the wedding in order for him to eventually stay with me on base after basic training.
Fast forward a few months after we were married and I had left for Texas for training, I was injured during PT training and sent home. It was during the craziest parts of covid, so everything was on lockdown and they had strict rules about not keeping anyone on base for a long period of time if injured. I was medically discharged and sent home to heal and have potential surgery.
At the time, my husband was staying with his friend in the city we planned to move to. We already put down a deposit on an apartment when we found out I was going home, but due to Covid restrictions and eviction restrictions, it was returned to us and we were told we could no longer move in.
The first issue I was seeing when I got home was his disattention to me. I was gone for over a month and missed celebrating my twentieth birthday with anyone but the girls in medhold with me, so I was looking forward to spending quality time with my husband.
We went out to eat with his friend, his friend's girlfriend, and one of her friends. I felt like a fifth wheel during the meal, as I was sat at the end of the table instead of being at my husband's side where her friend was sitting. Most of the conversations didn't include me, and I ended up going back to his friend's place feeling let down.
The rest of the time we were staying with his friend, they wanted all of us to go mountain climbing, cliff jumping, and trekking through the woods as they lived in a nature-centered part of the area. (Keep in mind, I was just sent home for being injured, and I had both a knee and ankle brace on my right leg that prevented much movement other than some hobbled walking that was slower than a normal pace).
When I expressed that I wasn't comfortable doing those things and that I wouldn't be jumping thirty feet into a freezing lake when I could barely walk as it is, my husband got upset with me and eventually just left me there alone while they all went to hang out together.
Flash forward four years, it is now 2024 and we have a two-year-old toddler. I didn't end up getting surgery, and I spent nine months being sicker than I'd ever been in my life.
It was a really rough pregnancy for me, and I'd ended up in the hospital multiple times because I couldn't even smell food or step foot into our kitchen without throwing up.
That all went on until the beginning of my third trimester. We decided to travel back to his friend's place, and I was somehow roped into climbing cliffs, wading through treacherous water to climb another cliff on an island out in the middle of a lake, and sleep at the top of sand dunes in a tent on the ground a couple weeks before my due date.
I was then on antibiotics during birth, because my water broke and the hospital sent me home instead of keeping me. My son was born sick, and transferred to a children's hospital to be treated and receive a spinal tap. I ended up sleeping a week in a hard hospital chair in a leaking basement of the hospital because they didn't have enough space for us.
After we were home and everything was settled, my husband would brag about how difficult the whole situation was for him. He had to sleep on a futon during my labour, and he had to have food doordashed to the hospital because, due to covid restrictions, noone else was allowed in with us and he wasn't allowed to leave to get anything.
He ended up having steak, potatoes, and these other elaborate meals delivered to eat in front of me while I wasn't allowed to eat anything until the baby came out. He even thought about bringing his playstation into the hospital room, but I shut that down quickly.
The first year of my son's life, I went back and forth between staying home with him and working in the factory my husband currently works at while my grandma watched our son.
I won't get into too much detail, but at one point when my grandma moved back out of state (she lives in her camper and was only there for the summer), I had to switch to the afternoon shift.
There is a factory supervisor on that shift that is a male and close to my husband's age. Other than the other person in my same position and two maintenance workers, they only had migrant workers that didn't speak english. This limited the people I could talk to while working my twelve hour shifts (husband worked 3:30 am to 3:30 pm and I would work 3:30 pm to 3:30 am).
My husband got very jealous and territorial at this time. He would expect me to return nearly thirty minutes late from all my breaks, threaten to go up there if anyone told me I couldn't do that, and even punched a hole in the wall when I told him I had to get back to work.
Up until that point, my husband had shown no signs of aggression toward me.
Somehow, a rumour started to spread around the factory that I was sleeping with the production lead. This definitely wasn't true as a) how and where would I have done that? and b) I loved my husband and would have never done something like that.
My husband heard about it, and came home to confront me. He got in my face, screaming and calling me a cheater. He threatened to take our son and move back in with his mom without even letting me offer an explanation or defend myself.
To this day, it still bothers me that he is still so convinced that I cheated on him and that he has no trust in me whatsoever to not do something like that.
I ended up leaving that job and working at mcdonalds for a little while. I had worked there in high school, so it wasn't a big adjustment.
I only ended up staying there a few months to help us catch up on bills before we agreed it would be better for me to stay home with our son for a while.
Our son is two now, and it seems like our relationship has only become more strained. We used to be able to communicate most of our smaller issues and come up with ways to maneuver whatever issues we had. However, in June of last year, my husband's friend that we were staying with in the beginning moved across the state to be near us.
It was all fine and good in the beginning. He had proposed to his girlfriend, and they even asked the both of us to be in their wedding that has yet to happen.
However, once they got engaged, he'd began acting very sexist. Even though both he and his fiance work full time (he works down the road at the factory with my fiance, and she works forty minutes away at a hardware store and has to drive a long way at three in the morning to get there), he expects her to come home and clean up after him, also cook his meals before she goes to bed early to get up really early in the morning for work the next day.
My husband, now hanging out with him more often, started having some of these things wearing off on him.
At first, it wasn't a big deal and I brushed it off. However, I'd gotten a job as a property manager for an apartment complex and also work now. Instead of things changing to adapt our new lifestyle, my husband expects me to continue keeping up with all the chores and cooking.
He'd made a comment that, because he feeds our dogs, he expects me just to do everything that involves our toddler from feeding him, to changing his butt, to putting him to bed at night. It's like pulling teeth sometimes to get him to change his butt or even get pants on him.
We'd gotten into an argument over this, and I told him that it wasn't fair that he expected me to do everything. His response was that he made more money and worked more hours, so it was only fair that I covered everything else.
Sure, I don't work as much or make as much money, and my paychecks mainly cover our son's daycare and our car payments, but I feel like working doesn't excuse him from helping with the son we both decided to have.
It's gotten to the point where I told my husband that if any sexist remark is made, like I should be in the kitchen helping get dinner ready whenever we're at his friend's house, I will be leaving and going back home, and I won't be going back until it is resolved.
The friend's fiance and I have had private conversations about this, and we both agree that it has gotten out of hand, and we both believe they are feeding off each other as they'd never been that bad before.
Everything has only seemed to get worse from there.
We decided to go as a group, along with my brother and his girlfriend, to the draft in Detroit this year.
The whole point was to see players get drafted in person, and we'd managed to get into the crowd in front of the stage before the area was shut down and they weren't allowing anyone else in.
My brother is an avid football fan. He played in high school, and was even offered multiple scholarships to play in college. This was a once in a lifetime experience for the both of us.
At one point, my husband and his friend decided that they would rather stand at one of the screens out of the crowd and watch it instead of trying to get into the sea of people to see it live.
I was frustrated, and expressed that if we wanted to watch it on television that we should have just stayed home. After a heated argument, I thought we'd come to the agreement that we'd go back to the stage and watch it there.
My brother lead us through the crowd, and at the beginning my husband and his friend were following us. Somehow, we'd gotten separated and when I looked back once we found a spot to stand, they were gone.
My phone rang in my pocket, and when I picked it up it was my husband calling. As soon as I picked it up, he proceeded to scream at me for disappearing and called me a "stupid bitch" when I tried to explain that I thought they were following us.
He hung up, and I told my brother I was going to go look for them alone. I spent a good twenty minutes wandering the area that was barricaded, but they were nowhere to be found. I no longer had signal to get ahold of him, so I ended up just going back and watching the beginning of the draft with my brother.
By the eighth pick, texts started to come in from my husband. He had informed me that they all left, leaving the three of us alone. Luckily, I'd driven separate as I left work early to get there.
By that point, I was done with him. I felt disrespected and that hanging out with his friend was more important than making sure his wife was okay or even with him. After all, I was wandering downtown Detroit alone when it was starting to get dark out.
When the three of us inevitably got back to the car, I got ahold of my husband just to let him know we were on our way home. He tried to apologise and ask how everything was, but I was too exhausted and mad at him to try and hold a conversation. He was asleep by the time I got home, and I ended up sleeping in our spare bedroom on a futon.
The next day, my husband tried to act like nothing happened. When I expressed that I felt ignored and pretty much useless to him, he tried to play it off like his anger was warranted and completely ignored the fact that he was calling me names.
I told him that I was no longer going to any big events with him and his friend, and he just rolled his eyes like he didn't believe me.
A day later, I saw a message pop up on his phone from his friend. I guess he had told him what I said about not going anywhere anymore, and his friend said "women" with an eyeroll emoji and "she'll get over it eventually". I screenshotted these messages and sent them to myself, filing them away in a folder in my phone to keep for later.
I slept in our spare bedroom for a week after that.
After the draft, I've also kept notes in my phone with time and date stamps of all the times he went off on me since then. Whenever we get into arguments, my mind goes blank and I forget exact things like this so he likes to say it never happened if I can't remember it.
April 27th, we were sitting watching videos together on tiktok. When someone popular came on that he had been watching a lot recently, I exclaimed that I didn't understand how he got popular all of a sudden. He proceeded to get really agitated and yell at me for not understanding how the internet works. When I stood up to walk away because I was upset, this angered him more. He then expressed that my emotions were overrated and that he was sick of them.
May 2nd, I had gotten home from work and tried to show my husband an outdoor jungle gym on amazon that I thought would be cool to get our son. He claimed it was a waste of money and that we should just take him to the park. When I tried to explain that it was a better idea to get something like this, as realistically we wouldn't take him to the park every day, he freaked out and asked what was wrong with me. He then said "oh my god" when I tried to explain that it would be easier to watch him outside while getting stuff done around the house and decided to just go to bed without dinner and end the conversation completely.
May 5th, we went with his friend and fiance to a cinco de may party in the city. He was drinking most of the day, and on the way home he wanted us to stop some place and get ice cream. When he got out of the car, he hit it against the car next to us. When I told him he'd hit the car, he proceeded to yell at me in the crowd that I was crazy and acting like my mother. He then kept trying to go to the woman in the car and ask if he had, in fact, hit her car. After, he said he was done with me and I was on my own, that I would have to start paying my own bills from now on.
There's been many other entries in my notes similar to this, and I feel like I'm at the end of what I can handle. Divorce has crossed my mind, but I had divorced parents growing up and know how hard it would be on my son. I also don't think I'm in a well off financial position to go out on my own with our son and still provide the things he needs.
I also worry that, if we were to separate, he would push to take our son from me as he'd threatened in the past to do so.
Any advice would be helpful, as I don't know what else to do. Even getting this all off my chest online makes me feel a little better, but there's still the lingering thought in the back of my mind that I'm unhappy and don't know how much longer I can put up with this.
Thank you.
submitted by Quick_Emotion3196 to relationship_advice [link] [comments]
My husband and I didn't meet until I was well into being eighteen, and he was twenty-eight. It didn't bother me much, as he doesn't act much older than me and I'd always felt older than I was due to having a ton of younger siblings, step siblings, and foster kids in and out of my mother's house growing up.
We got engaged when I was nineteen at a yungblood concert, and we originally planned to wait to marry until I was at least twenty. Plans changed when I decided to go into the air force, and we had to push up the wedding in order for him to eventually stay with me on base after basic training.
Fast forward a few months after we were married and I had left for Texas for training, I was injured during PT training and sent home. It was during the craziest parts of covid, so everything was on lockdown and they had strict rules about not keeping anyone on base for a long period of time if injured. I was medically discharged and sent home to heal and have potential surgery.
At the time, my husband was staying with his friend in the city we planned to move to. We already put down a deposit on an apartment when we found out I was going home, but due to Covid restrictions and eviction restrictions, it was returned to us and we were told we could no longer move in.
The first issue I was seeing when I got home was his disattention to me. I was gone for over a month and missed celebrating my twentieth birthday with anyone but the girls in medhold with me, so I was looking forward to spending quality time with my husband.
We went out to eat with his friend, his friend's girlfriend, and one of her friends. I felt like a fifth wheel during the meal, as I was sat at the end of the table instead of being at my husband's side where her friend was sitting. Most of the conversations didn't include me, and I ended up going back to his friend's place feeling let down.
The rest of the time we were staying with his friend, they wanted all of us to go mountain climbing, cliff jumping, and trekking through the woods as they lived in a nature-centered part of the area. (Keep in mind, I was just sent home for being injured, and I had both a knee and ankle brace on my right leg that prevented much movement other than some hobbled walking that was slower than a normal pace).
When I expressed that I wasn't comfortable doing those things and that I wouldn't be jumping thirty feet into a freezing lake when I could barely walk as it is, my husband got upset with me and eventually just left me there alone while they all went to hang out together.
Flash forward four years, it is now 2024 and we have a two-year-old toddler. I didn't end up getting surgery, and I spent nine months being sicker than I'd ever been in my life.
It was a really rough pregnancy for me, and I'd ended up in the hospital multiple times because I couldn't even smell food or step foot into our kitchen without throwing up.
That all went on until the beginning of my third trimester. We decided to travel back to his friend's place, and I was somehow roped into climbing cliffs, wading through treacherous water to climb another cliff on an island out in the middle of a lake, and sleep at the top of sand dunes in a tent on the ground a couple weeks before my due date.
I was then on antibiotics during birth, because my water broke and the hospital sent me home instead of keeping me. My son was born sick, and transferred to a children's hospital to be treated and receive a spinal tap. I ended up sleeping a week in a hard hospital chair in a leaking basement of the hospital because they didn't have enough space for us.
After we were home and everything was settled, my husband would brag about how difficult the whole situation was for him. He had to sleep on a futon during my labour, and he had to have food doordashed to the hospital because, due to covid restrictions, noone else was allowed in with us and he wasn't allowed to leave to get anything.
He ended up having steak, potatoes, and these other elaborate meals delivered to eat in front of me while I wasn't allowed to eat anything until the baby came out. He even thought about bringing his playstation into the hospital room, but I shut that down quickly.
The first year of my son's life, I went back and forth between staying home with him and working in the factory my husband currently works at while my grandma watched our son.
I won't get into too much detail, but at one point when my grandma moved back out of state (she lives in her camper and was only there for the summer), I had to switch to the afternoon shift.
There is a factory supervisor on that shift that is a male and close to my husband's age. Other than the other person in my same position and two maintenance workers, they only had migrant workers that didn't speak english. This limited the people I could talk to while working my twelve hour shifts (husband worked 3:30 am to 3:30 pm and I would work 3:30 pm to 3:30 am).
My husband got very jealous and territorial at this time. He would expect me to return nearly thirty minutes late from all my breaks, threaten to go up there if anyone told me I couldn't do that, and even punched a hole in the wall when I told him I had to get back to work.
Up until that point, my husband had shown no signs of aggression toward me.
Somehow, a rumour started to spread around the factory that I was sleeping with the production lead. This definitely wasn't true as a) how and where would I have done that? and b) I loved my husband and would have never done something like that.
My husband heard about it, and came home to confront me. He got in my face, screaming and calling me a cheater. He threatened to take our son and move back in with his mom without even letting me offer an explanation or defend myself.
To this day, it still bothers me that he is still so convinced that I cheated on him and that he has no trust in me whatsoever to not do something like that.
I ended up leaving that job and working at mcdonalds for a little while. I had worked there in high school, so it wasn't a big adjustment.
I only ended up staying there a few months to help us catch up on bills before we agreed it would be better for me to stay home with our son for a while.
Our son is two now, and it seems like our relationship has only become more strained. We used to be able to communicate most of our smaller issues and come up with ways to maneuver whatever issues we had. However, in June of last year, my husband's friend that we were staying with in the beginning moved across the state to be near us.
It was all fine and good in the beginning. He had proposed to his girlfriend, and they even asked the both of us to be in their wedding that has yet to happen.
However, once they got engaged, he'd began acting very sexist. Even though both he and his fiance work full time (he works down the road at the factory with my fiance, and she works forty minutes away at a hardware store and has to drive a long way at three in the morning to get there), he expects her to come home and clean up after him, also cook his meals before she goes to bed early to get up really early in the morning for work the next day.
My husband, now hanging out with him more often, started having some of these things wearing off on him.
At first, it wasn't a big deal and I brushed it off. However, I'd gotten a job as a property manager for an apartment complex and also work now. Instead of things changing to adapt our new lifestyle, my husband expects me to continue keeping up with all the chores and cooking.
He'd made a comment that, because he feeds our dogs, he expects me just to do everything that involves our toddler from feeding him, to changing his butt, to putting him to bed at night. It's like pulling teeth sometimes to get him to change his butt or even get pants on him.
We'd gotten into an argument over this, and I told him that it wasn't fair that he expected me to do everything. His response was that he made more money and worked more hours, so it was only fair that I covered everything else.
Sure, I don't work as much or make as much money, and my paychecks mainly cover our son's daycare and our car payments, but I feel like working doesn't excuse him from helping with the son we both decided to have.
It's gotten to the point where I told my husband that if any sexist remark is made, like I should be in the kitchen helping get dinner ready whenever we're at his friend's house, I will be leaving and going back home, and I won't be going back until it is resolved.
The friend's fiance and I have had private conversations about this, and we both agree that it has gotten out of hand, and we both believe they are feeding off each other as they'd never been that bad before.
Everything has only seemed to get worse from there.
We decided to go as a group, along with my brother and his girlfriend, to the draft in Detroit this year.
The whole point was to see players get drafted in person, and we'd managed to get into the crowd in front of the stage before the area was shut down and they weren't allowing anyone else in.
My brother is an avid football fan. He played in high school, and was even offered multiple scholarships to play in college. This was a once in a lifetime experience for the both of us.
At one point, my husband and his friend decided that they would rather stand at one of the screens out of the crowd and watch it instead of trying to get into the sea of people to see it live.
I was frustrated, and expressed that if we wanted to watch it on television that we should have just stayed home. After a heated argument, I thought we'd come to the agreement that we'd go back to the stage and watch it there.
My brother lead us through the crowd, and at the beginning my husband and his friend were following us. Somehow, we'd gotten separated and when I looked back once we found a spot to stand, they were gone.
My phone rang in my pocket, and when I picked it up it was my husband calling. As soon as I picked it up, he proceeded to scream at me for disappearing and called me a "stupid bitch" when I tried to explain that I thought they were following us.
He hung up, and I told my brother I was going to go look for them alone. I spent a good twenty minutes wandering the area that was barricaded, but they were nowhere to be found. I no longer had signal to get ahold of him, so I ended up just going back and watching the beginning of the draft with my brother.
By the eighth pick, texts started to come in from my husband. He had informed me that they all left, leaving the three of us alone. Luckily, I'd driven separate as I left work early to get there.
By that point, I was done with him. I felt disrespected and that hanging out with his friend was more important than making sure his wife was okay or even with him. After all, I was wandering downtown Detroit alone when it was starting to get dark out.
When the three of us inevitably got back to the car, I got ahold of my husband just to let him know we were on our way home. He tried to apologise and ask how everything was, but I was too exhausted and mad at him to try and hold a conversation. He was asleep by the time I got home, and I ended up sleeping in our spare bedroom on a futon.
The next day, my husband tried to act like nothing happened. When I expressed that I felt ignored and pretty much useless to him, he tried to play it off like his anger was warranted and completely ignored the fact that he was calling me names.
I told him that I was no longer going to any big events with him and his friend, and he just rolled his eyes like he didn't believe me.
A day later, I saw a message pop up on his phone from his friend. I guess he had told him what I said about not going anywhere anymore, and his friend said "women" with an eyeroll emoji and "she'll get over it eventually". I screenshotted these messages and sent them to myself, filing them away in a folder in my phone to keep for later.
I slept in our spare bedroom for a week after that.
After the draft, I've also kept notes in my phone with time and date stamps of all the times he went off on me since then. Whenever we get into arguments, my mind goes blank and I forget exact things like this so he likes to say it never happened if I can't remember it.
April 27th, we were sitting watching videos together on tiktok. When someone popular came on that he had been watching a lot recently, I exclaimed that I didn't understand how he got popular all of a sudden. He proceeded to get really agitated and yell at me for not understanding how the internet works. When I stood up to walk away because I was upset, this angered him more. He then expressed that my emotions were overrated and that he was sick of them.
May 2nd, I had gotten home from work and tried to show my husband an outdoor jungle gym on amazon that I thought would be cool to get our son. He claimed it was a waste of money and that we should just take him to the park. When I tried to explain that it was a better idea to get something like this, as realistically we wouldn't take him to the park every day, he freaked out and asked what was wrong with me. He then said "oh my god" when I tried to explain that it would be easier to watch him outside while getting stuff done around the house and decided to just go to bed without dinner and end the conversation completely.
May 5th, we went with his friend and fiance to a cinco de may party in the city. He was drinking most of the day, and on the way home he wanted us to stop some place and get ice cream. When he got out of the car, he hit it against the car next to us. When I told him he'd hit the car, he proceeded to yell at me in the crowd that I was crazy and acting like my mother. He then kept trying to go to the woman in the car and ask if he had, in fact, hit her car. After, he said he was done with me and I was on my own, that I would have to start paying my own bills from now on.
There's been many other entries in my notes similar to this, and I feel like I'm at the end of what I can handle. Divorce has crossed my mind, but I had divorced parents growing up and know how hard it would be on my son. I also don't think I'm in a well off financial position to go out on my own with our son and still provide the things he needs.
I also worry that, if we were to separate, he would push to take our son from me as he'd threatened in the past to do so.
Any advice would be helpful, as I don't know what else to do. Even getting this all off my chest online makes me feel a little better, but there's still the lingering thought in the back of my mind that I'm unhappy and don't know how much longer I can put up with this.
Thank you.
2024.05.14 02:54 intrepid_skeptic Can someone explain to me why so many girls put their first and middle name in their insta bios, emails, Facebook names, etc�
Even when the girl never uses their middle name⌠so many instagram and Facebook accounts really say Lily Sarah or Lucy Nicole or things like this. And they never actually even use their middle name. With no last name at the end too
submitted by intrepid_skeptic to NoStupidQuestions [link] [comments]
2024.05.14 02:42 Snoo26929 My father visited me in my sleep.
I was 12 years old in 2002 when my father was killed in a car accident. It was his fault, he was out playing around on his go-cart. Doing more than 100 mph on an alcohol fuel go-cart late at night on a highway with his buddy. Iâll spare you the rest of the details of that night though. Iâm 34 years old now, and when I was 17 I had a visit from him in my sleep one night that changed me and changed my life. This visit was a gift that I still think about it all the time. Thatâs why Iâm writing it today, to get it off my chest and tell someone. This was not a dream, my body was in bed and asleep but that is the only thing this event has in common with a dream. It was as if I woke up in another place. There I am standing in complete whiteness. There is nothing but white all around me. No shadows, no lines or angles to anything, just white space. I canât see a floor beneath my feet but I understand that thereâs something solid beneath my feet, I am not falling. I canât see a wall In front of me but somehow Iâm aware that Iâm standing next to a giant wall with a door. I do not know who I am waiting for but I do know that Iâm waiting for someone to open the door. I am not at all concerned with the things that I donât know, I am completely and utterly content. Vividly remember how I felt as though I was lacking nothing, I didnât need anything. I wasnât without. As I stood there waiting, the door that I cannot see but know is there opens and my father is on the other side and I can see him. I run as fast as I could to him and I crash into him embracing him. The very instant that I came into contact with him I was filled with the most love that Iâve ever felt in my entire life even to this day. The most profound and powerful feeling of being completely loved beyond anything I could imagine just poured into me. And simultaneously the was an instant exchange of information. Everything that was inside of me that I wanted to tell him was given to him and everything that he wanted me to know he told me without words. I instantly knew from him. Like telepathically and without any delay. He told me how sorry he was for dying and I felt how guilty he felt for that. He let me know that he is watching over me always and he wants me to know that he knows about how alone Iâve felt without him and he wishes that he could comfort me and let me know that he is there. I felt his love, completely and his sorrow for being gone and he said he would have never left the house that night if he had any idea or thought that he would have gotten killed or taken from us. I squeezed him so tightly. And then I released my grip on him without letting him go and I looked up at him and he looked over to the left. I followed his gaze and seen a big white crest shaped couch there in the middle of the whiteness that surrounded us. We held hands and walked over to sit on the couch. I thought to myself âbut what will we talk about? He knows everything inside of meâ we sat down and I looked at his face. He looked so healthy, he smiled at me so lovingly and so proudly. Then as if he was saying âlook what I can doâ his eyes turned into two birds flying and his face and head turned into an ocean above his shoulders. But what amazed me was that I could still recognize him. I held his hand still. And then I woke up in my bed. And it was at that moment realized what I didnât even know, that I needed to forgive my father for dying. I wasnât even aware that I was holding onto that hurt and anger towards him before that. And it changed my life forever. I love you Dad, we will be together again. I know you are there and are watching over me and my babies now. I know that you love us and love my kids so much. Till we meet again I love you
submitted by Snoo26929 to offmychest [link] [comments]
2024.05.14 02:41 willdanceforsnacks Book Promotion Ideas?
I finally published for the first time. Not the first time I've finished a novel, but certainly the first time I have actively published one .. one that I've been a little proud of. I know it's a long process to get noticed, or even start to see some traction in sales & downloads, but how do you go about promoting your novel? I feel like I'm stuck. đ
Beginning of chapter one below - if anyone would like to provide feedback that would be lovely. đ
[2,310] It began like a surreal haze, a fever dream dancing with unknown figures swirling around her like a languid tornado, their movements seemingly slowed by some unseen force as she awoke to a world spinning out of her control. She found herself surrounded by strangers who moved like spectres in a dream, fragmented flashes who assaulted her consciousness - a woman gently pressing a cloth to her throbbing head, another offering sips of water while she coughed and struggled to swallow, a man peering down at her with a furrowed brow, and a mysterious figure lingering in the doorway with an unsettling glint of desire in his eyes.
The room buzzed with a quiet urgency as they hovered around her, their faces etched with concern and something else she couldn't quite place - an undercurrent of tension that seemed to pulse in time with her own racing heart. These disjointed images flitted in and out, creating a mosaic of fragmented reality. Awake, her body throbbed with pain; asleep, she plunged into a black abyss, time slipping away unnoticed. Each awakening brought the desire for oblivion as her mind plunged back into the depths of darkness.
Beth jolted upright, startled by the sharp bang of a car backfiring. A cry of pain escaped her lips as she attempted to sit up, her back and legs resisting her will. A woman, the same from her fleeting visions, hurried into the room with a damp cloth and a glass of water.
"Easy now," the woman spoke gently, her mild Spanish accent adding warmth to her sharp words as she pressed the cloth to Beth's forehead and helped her sit up, "you're weak, rushing won't do you any favours. The sooner you regain strength, the sooner you can move."
A man, the one with the odd expression in her visions, appeared in the doorway once again; "and the sooner we can leave this place, I'm sick of it." He grumbled, striding away with urgency and frustration. His steps were heavy and fraught with agitation, each one seeming to leave a deep imprint on the ground beneath him. His grumbling was like distant thunder, punctuated by the clenching of his jaw and the tightening of his fists.
"Don't mind my brother," the woman interjected sharply, "it's not you - he hates everyone." Hate, Beth pondered, wondering what she might have done to earn his disdain.
"Are you hungry?" The woman stood, walking to the other side of the room to adjust another pillow behind Beth's back. Beth nodded; "I'll get you some soup."
Left alone, Beth surveyed the room - beige walls, a shattered TV, torn brown curtains. She squinted at the notepad on the side table, revealing the branding - Mill Village Motel Eatonville. The coffee pod machine at the room's far end, covered in dust, hinted at a neglected past.
"You're awake," startled, Beth turned to find the man with the furrowed brow at the door - tall and dark, with piercing brown eyes, he appeared softer now, "how are you feeling?" Beth managed a brief smile before adjusting herself, wincing in pain. He rushed to offer a hand, and she took his arm to shift as he adjusted the pillow.
"Want to give walking a try?" The man's warm, brown eyes crinkled at the edges as he smiled down at her, his features etched with concern, his furrowed brow now smooth and his brown eyes sparkled with an unfamiliar kindness.
She shook her head, and the woman returned with soup and water; "she needs to eat before attempting to walk, Austin," she said, setting the tray before Beth.
"Then we'll try again tomorrow," Austin expressed, heading towards the door, "the sooner we leave, the better - we've been here for too long." His footsteps echoed with determination and authority, less frustrated than the other man's but equally resolute.
"I apologise if it's cold. Heating options are limited here. Need a hand?" The woman offered. Beth shook her head, the pounding of her headache resonating through her body.
"Well I'll leave you to it then. Shout out if you need anything, if you can talk at all." Beth glanced down at her bowl of soup, parting her lips as if to speak, but no words escaped. A deep sigh escaped from the woman's mouth as she turned and left the room, leaving Beth alone with her cold, untouched meal. The silence in the room was deafening, broken only by the sound of muffed chatter outside.
The days stretched longer as Beth's need for rest diminished. Boredom and confusion settled in, intensifying as the people from her visions became tangible presences, moving in and out of her room. They attended to her needs but seldom engaged in conversation. At night, their muffled voices in the adjoining room became a distant comfort, and the faint echoes of their arguments a source of intrigue.
"We need to leave," a frustrated male voice pierced through the thin walls, "we have to head further south before winter traps us with little supplies and an extra mouth to feed - considering you're all so intent on keeping this girl alive."
"This woman," a familiar female voice retorted, likely the one who had been caring for her, "needed help - I distinctly remember a time when I wasn't doing well and needed it too."
"You're my sister, of course, I wasn't going to leave you behind."
"I'm not talking about you, Luis," she yelled, "I'm talking about before you came back from Minnesota and found me."
"Why can't we just leave her here with some supplies and a gun. Why do we need to bring her with us?"
"Jesus Christ Luis we're not leaving her here alone and you two can have it out later," intervened another man, "but Luis is right - we need to leave before the snow settles in."
The argument faded into muffled voices again, and Beth strained to catch the words exchanged between the trio. A knock at the door startled her.
"May I come in?" A young girl, the same from her visions, had opened the door quietly without her even noticing. "I thought the yelling might have woken you." Beth nodded, maintaining her silence.
"I'm Chantelle." Her soft Southern accent flowed like a gentle breeze through a cornfield. She pulled up a chair beside the bed. "Luis can get into it with everybody, but he means well. Well, no, that's a lie. I don't know why I said that. He's a dick."
"I gathered," Beth whispered and laughed a little, suddenly overtaken by a violent cough.
Chantelle rushed to hand her water; "so, you do speak. From the way Austin and Val were sayin' it, it sounded like you were mute. I thought, you couldn't be deaf because you've been nodding and smiling like a dang puppet."
Beth laughed and took another sip; "I didn't really have anything worth saying until now. No one has bothered to make conversation."
"Your accent, where are you from?" Chantelle sat down on the wooden chair, her long dark hair cascading down her back in gentle curls. Her bright brown eyes sparkled with kindness as she looked towards Beth.
"Australia," Beth paused, realising she hadn't thought about home for a while, "I'm from Australia," she repeated.
Chantelle pulled out a deck of cards; "well, I figured you might be bored and needed a little human interaction that didn't make you feel like you were in a hospital."
Beth's eyes lit up, and Chantelle smiled; "what do you want to play?"
â â â
"What do you think you are doing?" Austin stormed into the motel room.
"We're leaving. Today," Luis' words cut through the air.
"The van's still in bad shape, and we won't survive this winter on foot." Austin's arms were folded tightly across his chest, the muscles in his biceps and forearms bulging with tension. His jaw was clenched, and his brows furrowed in frustration.
"Then fix the damn van!" Luis yelled, the sound piercing through the walls and resonating outside the motel room for others to hear the heated exchange.
"Oh, sorry, I'll just take it down the road to the mechanic, shall I?" Austin raised a quizzical eyebrow, smirking at his friend. The men paused their argument, exchanging laughter.
"Luis, what's going on with you?" Austin softened his tone, taking a seat on the other bed. "We've been friends since high school, grew up together, served in the army together. This isn't you."
"I don't know, man." Luis sat on the other bed, facing his friend, his face buried in his hands. He rubbed his face hard, threw his head back, and sighed heavily. "This just isn'tâ" he paused.
"Isn't what?"
"Isn't life." Luis gestured around the room.
"We'll get to the coast, find a boat, just like we planned." There was a slight taste of bitterness in the air, as if Austin's mild frustration was tangible.
"And then what?"
"Do the best we can," Austin stood up, placing a hand on his friend's shoulder, "we all have our dark moments, brother. You helped me get through mine, I'll help you get through yours."
Austin walked out of the motel room into the crisp morning air. The atmosphere was fresh, with a subtle scent of dew and grass. The sweet aroma of winter's imminent arrival filled the air, mingling with the faint scent of burning oil from their broken down van across the parking lot.
"Ben thinks he can fix the van by tomorrow. He found the parts we need on the other side of town." Val caught Austin as he had walked outside.
"He went scouting alone?" Austin looked across the lot at Ben, deep into the hood of the black church van they had found a while back.
Chantelle bounded up before she could answer; "Beth seems much better today. She's eatin' and drinkin' more. I think she could try walkin' today."
"Beth?" Val and Austin remarked in unison.
"Mmm, she speaks - she might have a lot more to say if either of you bothered to converse with her instead of just talkin' to her." She walked off towards Ben, a light air in her hopeful stride.
â â â
Austin found Beth sitting on the edge of her bed, her feet bare and dangling idly over the side. Her toes were curled, squeezing them tightly as she wiggled them back and forth. Her face was tense with concentration as she tried to alleviate the tingling sensation in her feet.
"Beth." His voice was soothing and calming, his words spoken with a gentle tone as he tried to ease Beth's discomfort.
"Chantelle?" She looked up at him, as he nodded, smiling gently. "She's a good kid." She smiled and looked back at her toes.
"Do you want to try walking today?" He walked towards the chair on the other side of the room and sat down as it creaked underneath the weight of him.
"The sooner I can walk, the sooner you can get out of here." She said with a sarcastic air, mocking Luis.
"The sooner we can get out of here." He repeated sarcastically with a smile, a light spread of jest washing over him as he joined her in mocking his friend.
"Your friend Luis seems to be very against bringing me along with you." She looked back at him.
"I'm not in the business of leaving people behind. Especially in Washington in the middle of October," he sat forward, leaning his elbows on his knees, "you wouldn't survive the winter."
"Then maybe you should have just left me to die." She turned her body to face him abruptly. He opened his mouth to speak, but she interjected before he could respond.
"Why did you help me? You don't know me, why did you even bother?"
"Like I said, Beth," he stood up, his wistful tone switching back to cold and dry, "I'm not in the business of leaving people behind." He walked over to her slowly.
"I've lost too many people. I've watched people kill others over a can of soup. I've seen friends leave friends behind to save themselves," he sat down on the end of her bed, "I don't leave people behind."
His brown eyes cut through his words like a thunderstorm. She looked at his face, tired and weathered from sleepless nights with one eye open to ensure his group's safety. She pegged him as their leader - strong and determined with clear military training.
"What happened to you?" She asked softly.
"What happened to you?" He countered; "I refuse to believe you survived a pandemic alone for six months in a foreign country."
She said nothing and looked back at her feet. They sat in silence for a while before he stood up and headed for the door.
"We're leaving the day after tomorrow. We need to head south before it's too cold, and we don't know how long the van or the car will last, so part of that might be on foot."
"I'll try walking today." Beth nodded obediently.
"I'll send Val and Chantelle in to help you." He replied, his voice maintaining the cold cadency.
"Thank you." She smiled, wriggling her toes as the numbness started to dissipate. Before he could leave, she looked up at him again.
"Austin?" He stopped at the door and turned to her. "I know you've all done a lot for me, including putting your friendship with Luis on the line, so thank you. But I have a favour to ask," her voice grew quiet, "before we leave."
"What is it?" He asked sternly at her audacity to ask for another favour.
She looked up at him with tears in her eyes. He noticed her green eyes glisten with the added layer of acridity and the change in her demeanour; "before we leave, I need you to help me bury my husband."
submitted by willdanceforsnacks to writers [link] [comments]
Beginning of chapter one below - if anyone would like to provide feedback that would be lovely. đ
The room buzzed with a quiet urgency as they hovered around her, their faces etched with concern and something else she couldn't quite place - an undercurrent of tension that seemed to pulse in time with her own racing heart. These disjointed images flitted in and out, creating a mosaic of fragmented reality. Awake, her body throbbed with pain; asleep, she plunged into a black abyss, time slipping away unnoticed. Each awakening brought the desire for oblivion as her mind plunged back into the depths of darkness.
Beth jolted upright, startled by the sharp bang of a car backfiring. A cry of pain escaped her lips as she attempted to sit up, her back and legs resisting her will. A woman, the same from her fleeting visions, hurried into the room with a damp cloth and a glass of water.
"Easy now," the woman spoke gently, her mild Spanish accent adding warmth to her sharp words as she pressed the cloth to Beth's forehead and helped her sit up, "you're weak, rushing won't do you any favours. The sooner you regain strength, the sooner you can move."
A man, the one with the odd expression in her visions, appeared in the doorway once again; "and the sooner we can leave this place, I'm sick of it." He grumbled, striding away with urgency and frustration. His steps were heavy and fraught with agitation, each one seeming to leave a deep imprint on the ground beneath him. His grumbling was like distant thunder, punctuated by the clenching of his jaw and the tightening of his fists.
"Don't mind my brother," the woman interjected sharply, "it's not you - he hates everyone." Hate, Beth pondered, wondering what she might have done to earn his disdain.
"Are you hungry?" The woman stood, walking to the other side of the room to adjust another pillow behind Beth's back. Beth nodded; "I'll get you some soup."
Left alone, Beth surveyed the room - beige walls, a shattered TV, torn brown curtains. She squinted at the notepad on the side table, revealing the branding - Mill Village Motel Eatonville. The coffee pod machine at the room's far end, covered in dust, hinted at a neglected past.
"You're awake," startled, Beth turned to find the man with the furrowed brow at the door - tall and dark, with piercing brown eyes, he appeared softer now, "how are you feeling?" Beth managed a brief smile before adjusting herself, wincing in pain. He rushed to offer a hand, and she took his arm to shift as he adjusted the pillow.
"Want to give walking a try?" The man's warm, brown eyes crinkled at the edges as he smiled down at her, his features etched with concern, his furrowed brow now smooth and his brown eyes sparkled with an unfamiliar kindness.
She shook her head, and the woman returned with soup and water; "she needs to eat before attempting to walk, Austin," she said, setting the tray before Beth.
"Then we'll try again tomorrow," Austin expressed, heading towards the door, "the sooner we leave, the better - we've been here for too long." His footsteps echoed with determination and authority, less frustrated than the other man's but equally resolute.
"I apologise if it's cold. Heating options are limited here. Need a hand?" The woman offered. Beth shook her head, the pounding of her headache resonating through her body.
"Well I'll leave you to it then. Shout out if you need anything, if you can talk at all." Beth glanced down at her bowl of soup, parting her lips as if to speak, but no words escaped. A deep sigh escaped from the woman's mouth as she turned and left the room, leaving Beth alone with her cold, untouched meal. The silence in the room was deafening, broken only by the sound of muffed chatter outside.
The days stretched longer as Beth's need for rest diminished. Boredom and confusion settled in, intensifying as the people from her visions became tangible presences, moving in and out of her room. They attended to her needs but seldom engaged in conversation. At night, their muffled voices in the adjoining room became a distant comfort, and the faint echoes of their arguments a source of intrigue.
"We need to leave," a frustrated male voice pierced through the thin walls, "we have to head further south before winter traps us with little supplies and an extra mouth to feed - considering you're all so intent on keeping this girl alive."
"This woman," a familiar female voice retorted, likely the one who had been caring for her, "needed help - I distinctly remember a time when I wasn't doing well and needed it too."
"You're my sister, of course, I wasn't going to leave you behind."
"I'm not talking about you, Luis," she yelled, "I'm talking about before you came back from Minnesota and found me."
"Why can't we just leave her here with some supplies and a gun. Why do we need to bring her with us?"
"Jesus Christ Luis we're not leaving her here alone and you two can have it out later," intervened another man, "but Luis is right - we need to leave before the snow settles in."
The argument faded into muffled voices again, and Beth strained to catch the words exchanged between the trio. A knock at the door startled her.
"May I come in?" A young girl, the same from her visions, had opened the door quietly without her even noticing. "I thought the yelling might have woken you." Beth nodded, maintaining her silence.
"I'm Chantelle." Her soft Southern accent flowed like a gentle breeze through a cornfield. She pulled up a chair beside the bed. "Luis can get into it with everybody, but he means well. Well, no, that's a lie. I don't know why I said that. He's a dick."
"I gathered," Beth whispered and laughed a little, suddenly overtaken by a violent cough.
Chantelle rushed to hand her water; "so, you do speak. From the way Austin and Val were sayin' it, it sounded like you were mute. I thought, you couldn't be deaf because you've been nodding and smiling like a dang puppet."
Beth laughed and took another sip; "I didn't really have anything worth saying until now. No one has bothered to make conversation."
"Your accent, where are you from?" Chantelle sat down on the wooden chair, her long dark hair cascading down her back in gentle curls. Her bright brown eyes sparkled with kindness as she looked towards Beth.
"Australia," Beth paused, realising she hadn't thought about home for a while, "I'm from Australia," she repeated.
Chantelle pulled out a deck of cards; "well, I figured you might be bored and needed a little human interaction that didn't make you feel like you were in a hospital."
Beth's eyes lit up, and Chantelle smiled; "what do you want to play?"
â â â
"What do you think you are doing?" Austin stormed into the motel room.
"We're leaving. Today," Luis' words cut through the air.
"The van's still in bad shape, and we won't survive this winter on foot." Austin's arms were folded tightly across his chest, the muscles in his biceps and forearms bulging with tension. His jaw was clenched, and his brows furrowed in frustration.
"Then fix the damn van!" Luis yelled, the sound piercing through the walls and resonating outside the motel room for others to hear the heated exchange.
"Oh, sorry, I'll just take it down the road to the mechanic, shall I?" Austin raised a quizzical eyebrow, smirking at his friend. The men paused their argument, exchanging laughter.
"Luis, what's going on with you?" Austin softened his tone, taking a seat on the other bed. "We've been friends since high school, grew up together, served in the army together. This isn't you."
"I don't know, man." Luis sat on the other bed, facing his friend, his face buried in his hands. He rubbed his face hard, threw his head back, and sighed heavily. "This just isn'tâ" he paused.
"Isn't what?"
"Isn't life." Luis gestured around the room.
"We'll get to the coast, find a boat, just like we planned." There was a slight taste of bitterness in the air, as if Austin's mild frustration was tangible.
"And then what?"
"Do the best we can," Austin stood up, placing a hand on his friend's shoulder, "we all have our dark moments, brother. You helped me get through mine, I'll help you get through yours."
Austin walked out of the motel room into the crisp morning air. The atmosphere was fresh, with a subtle scent of dew and grass. The sweet aroma of winter's imminent arrival filled the air, mingling with the faint scent of burning oil from their broken down van across the parking lot.
"Ben thinks he can fix the van by tomorrow. He found the parts we need on the other side of town." Val caught Austin as he had walked outside.
"He went scouting alone?" Austin looked across the lot at Ben, deep into the hood of the black church van they had found a while back.
Chantelle bounded up before she could answer; "Beth seems much better today. She's eatin' and drinkin' more. I think she could try walkin' today."
"Beth?" Val and Austin remarked in unison.
"Mmm, she speaks - she might have a lot more to say if either of you bothered to converse with her instead of just talkin' to her." She walked off towards Ben, a light air in her hopeful stride.
â â â
Austin found Beth sitting on the edge of her bed, her feet bare and dangling idly over the side. Her toes were curled, squeezing them tightly as she wiggled them back and forth. Her face was tense with concentration as she tried to alleviate the tingling sensation in her feet.
"Beth." His voice was soothing and calming, his words spoken with a gentle tone as he tried to ease Beth's discomfort.
"Chantelle?" She looked up at him, as he nodded, smiling gently. "She's a good kid." She smiled and looked back at her toes.
"Do you want to try walking today?" He walked towards the chair on the other side of the room and sat down as it creaked underneath the weight of him.
"The sooner I can walk, the sooner you can get out of here." She said with a sarcastic air, mocking Luis.
"The sooner we can get out of here." He repeated sarcastically with a smile, a light spread of jest washing over him as he joined her in mocking his friend.
"Your friend Luis seems to be very against bringing me along with you." She looked back at him.
"I'm not in the business of leaving people behind. Especially in Washington in the middle of October," he sat forward, leaning his elbows on his knees, "you wouldn't survive the winter."
"Then maybe you should have just left me to die." She turned her body to face him abruptly. He opened his mouth to speak, but she interjected before he could respond.
"Why did you help me? You don't know me, why did you even bother?"
"Like I said, Beth," he stood up, his wistful tone switching back to cold and dry, "I'm not in the business of leaving people behind." He walked over to her slowly.
"I've lost too many people. I've watched people kill others over a can of soup. I've seen friends leave friends behind to save themselves," he sat down on the end of her bed, "I don't leave people behind."
His brown eyes cut through his words like a thunderstorm. She looked at his face, tired and weathered from sleepless nights with one eye open to ensure his group's safety. She pegged him as their leader - strong and determined with clear military training.
"What happened to you?" She asked softly.
"What happened to you?" He countered; "I refuse to believe you survived a pandemic alone for six months in a foreign country."
She said nothing and looked back at her feet. They sat in silence for a while before he stood up and headed for the door.
"We're leaving the day after tomorrow. We need to head south before it's too cold, and we don't know how long the van or the car will last, so part of that might be on foot."
"I'll try walking today." Beth nodded obediently.
"I'll send Val and Chantelle in to help you." He replied, his voice maintaining the cold cadency.
"Thank you." She smiled, wriggling her toes as the numbness started to dissipate. Before he could leave, she looked up at him again.
"Austin?" He stopped at the door and turned to her. "I know you've all done a lot for me, including putting your friendship with Luis on the line, so thank you. But I have a favour to ask," her voice grew quiet, "before we leave."
"What is it?" He asked sternly at her audacity to ask for another favour.
She looked up at him with tears in her eyes. He noticed her green eyes glisten with the added layer of acridity and the change in her demeanour; "before we leave, I need you to help me bury my husband."
2024.05.14 02:21 JPHero16 Help my ADHD brain by deciding what my PC is gonna look like!
** This is a brand new build. **
submitted by JPHero16 to buildapcforme [link] [comments]
What will you be doing with this PC? Be as specific as possible, and include specific games or programs you will be using.
- Gaming. I don't play very intensive games as my current PC can't really handle them. LoL, Hearthstone, Rocket League, Phasmophobia and Chess? However, with a stronger pc I want to be able to run games such as the infamous Cyberpunk 2077 on a good (QHD+)quality with 120+fps. Aside from gaming, I need the build to have a strong CPU (Probably a Ryzen 7 7800X3D) for handling CPU-based Chess engines like Stockfish. I also need the build to have a strong GPU for handling GPU-based Chess engines like Leela. The build should also be able to handle AI image creation tools such as Stable Diffusion, although this is not a priority over the gaming and chess needs. I will be handling p2p torrents for things like seeding public Linux ISO's on a Bittorrent client, so ample storage size and speed are a pro. Finally, the build's monitor and hardware should be able to support an external blu-ray player (and perhaps games) at 4K quality.
What is your maximum budget before rebates/shipping/taxes?
- âŹ3500 - âŹ4000 VAT included. If my needs are met without reaching this amount, then obviously I'm already happy. Preferred range âŹ2000-âŹ3000.
When do you plan on building/buying the PC? Note: beyond a week or two from today means any build you receive will be out of date when you want to buy.
- A.S.A.P.
What, exactly, do you need included in the budget? (ToweOS/monitokeyboard/mouse/etc)
- Almost everything that a desktop gaming PC needs, as I currently have an old laptop with a shitty mouse. Included in the budget are; Tower, Monitor, Motherboard, CPU/GPU/Case cooling, Storage cards, Memory cards and PSU.
Which country (and state/province) will you be purchasing the parts in? If you're in US, do you have access to a Microcenter location?
- The Netherlands, right in the middle of the country. (It's a small country so I don't think it really affects that much. If it does, let me know) * ABSOLUTELY NO AMAZON PURCHASES * Reliable local vendors include Megekko, Alternate and Azerty.
If reusing any parts (including monitor(s)/keyboard/mouse/etc), what parts will you be reusing? Brands and models are appreciated.
- An older Razer Kraken headset which I'm not quite satisfied with. Using the headphone jack results in bad mic quality and worse audio than when using the headset as intended. (putting in an USB and turning on the headset, resulting in a few hours of use before it's empty) If you guys have recommendations, let me know. I'm a big fan of anything that I don't need to charge A.K.A. wired goodies. I will also be bringing a Razer Ornata mechanical keyboard. Although I'm satisfied with the keyboard, I can't bring myself to fully use it's functions (custom RGB stuff), since I've come to dislike Razer's software and it's impact on performance. Maybe if the new pc can actually handle processes running in the background my view on this will change. I won't be bringing anything else.
Will you be overclocking? If yes, are you interested in overclocking right away, or down the line? CPU and/or GPU?
- Eventually yes. my current laptop doesn't even allow overclocking (thanks HP) but I do want the option to overclock the CPU and GPU to unlock their full potential when in a few years time I want a performance boost. Or just do it now, I haven't decided yet. But I do want the option to do it!
Are there any specific features or items you want/need in the build? (ex: SSD, large amount of storage or a RAID setup, CUDA or OpenCL support, etc)
- For Stockfish, I want at least AVX-512 support on the CPU. I'm pretty tech illiterate though, so if it means that's out of budget, please tell me. For leela, I want CUDA support. I think that means a Nvidia GPU, preferably 4070 or highebetter. I want at least 2 TB storage but preferably more like 4 TB. Prioritize storage amount over speed. I'm used to ancient HDD speeds so I don't necessarily need gen5 SSDs to already feel a huge improvement. Please no HDDs. I want the build to be quiet, although I'm used to a lot of noise. (laptop fans work overtime, all the time) The tower can be any size to fit the build, although I'd prefer the build not to include RTX 4090, since I think those would automatically increase case size.
What type of network connectivity do you need? (Wired and/or WiFi) If WiFi is needed and you would like to find the fastest match for your wireless router, please list any specifics.
- I want support for high speed WiFi. I am really illiterate when it comes to wifi/ethernet speeds, but I trust you guys can help me out. I do want to set up fibre + ethernet in the future(I think 10GB LAN Ethernet), but for now I'm stuck with Wifi 6 due to no ethernet cables in walls.
Do you have any specific case preferences (Size like ITX/microATX/mid-towefull-tower, styles, colors, window or not, LED lighting, etc), or a particular color theme preference for the components?
- Go wild! But do try to keep away from excessive RGB. Actually, I do prefer on having as little RGB as possible, unless as aforementioned it limits options.
Do you need a copy of Windows included in the budget? If you do need one included, do you have a preference?
- It is not included in the budget. But I will be getting Windows 11 Pro.
Extra info or particulars:
- Please no RTX 4090 unless it still fits the budget and the tower. if it means having a bigger tower I would rather have a smaller tower and no RTX 4090.
- Thank you for reading! I'm open for any questions. Personally I have been compiling and discarding part lists for the past few weeks as I keep stumbling upon more information and getting distracted. I hope you guys can help me make a decision after procrastinating for weeks and weeks. Cya
2024.05.14 02:15 imatmydesknow [MW3] My Activision account was hacked and I am not permanently banned from MW3/Warzone/MW2 - my acct was 14 yrs old and I am a casual middle aged player. Am I Screwed?
Gonna try and make this short. I was an avid COD player starting around 2010-2011. I played every release leading up to about 2017 when my PS4 bit the dust and i just thought of using my time doing other things. fast forward to xmas this past year my lady and i decide to buy a ps5, shortly after the new mw3 remaster came out and i purchased that. i do not play the campaign ever i only play multiplayer, more specifically i basically only play TDM or hardcore TDM. My kdr MAY be at 1.00 but honestly its probably is lower. i can get in a match and go 3-24 easily depnding on the map lol, im a middle aged man. im out here trying to have guy time not go pro.
In april i noticed i had random friends on my friends list that were in chinese/japanese characters, at first i was like how did those get there, but then i thought maybe someone switched the name on their account from my old friends from my playing days. to be safe i deleted the old friends outside of who i play with currently, including the strange accounts.
Well last week i try to log on and i do not get online. so I assume the serve it down, but after 3 days still not connecting. this lead me to investigate. to which i find i have been banned from MW3, Warzone, and MW2. I appealed it, trying to explain the situation withint the 1000 character account but that did not work and now i have no more appeals. I aslo noticed my activision account was connected to a random steam account. i have no idea what steam is, as i am a middle aged man as i have said. activision has not seemed to care.
Oddly enough i went to vent on twitter and to my surprise hundred of bots came trying to get me to pay this account or that account to regain my account back. which im definitely not doing that. I assume that is a hustle for hackers.
My question is, is there anything i can do or anyone i can actually contact outside of the appeal form? LIke an email or someone to actually explain the situation and not rely on AI to make a decision on the status of my long running account? I literally just purchased the 420 cheech and chong bundle too.
I have screen shots and more via my facebook post i made last week about the situation that shows the freidn requests and my appeal band. The other interesting this is i stopped getting activision emails, so i was unaware of the punishment until i researched it.
https://www.facebook.com/iamlurk/posts/10161545608546473
twitter links with the bots trying to scam me:
https://twitter.com/lurkcity/status/1788056855865876968
https://twitter.com/lurkcity/status/1788071385069228455/
twitter.com/lurkcity/status/1788209225916637622
submitted by imatmydesknow to CallOfDuty [link] [comments]
In april i noticed i had random friends on my friends list that were in chinese/japanese characters, at first i was like how did those get there, but then i thought maybe someone switched the name on their account from my old friends from my playing days. to be safe i deleted the old friends outside of who i play with currently, including the strange accounts.
Well last week i try to log on and i do not get online. so I assume the serve it down, but after 3 days still not connecting. this lead me to investigate. to which i find i have been banned from MW3, Warzone, and MW2. I appealed it, trying to explain the situation withint the 1000 character account but that did not work and now i have no more appeals. I aslo noticed my activision account was connected to a random steam account. i have no idea what steam is, as i am a middle aged man as i have said. activision has not seemed to care.
Oddly enough i went to vent on twitter and to my surprise hundred of bots came trying to get me to pay this account or that account to regain my account back. which im definitely not doing that. I assume that is a hustle for hackers.
My question is, is there anything i can do or anyone i can actually contact outside of the appeal form? LIke an email or someone to actually explain the situation and not rely on AI to make a decision on the status of my long running account? I literally just purchased the 420 cheech and chong bundle too.
I have screen shots and more via my facebook post i made last week about the situation that shows the freidn requests and my appeal band. The other interesting this is i stopped getting activision emails, so i was unaware of the punishment until i researched it.
https://www.facebook.com/iamlurk/posts/10161545608546473
twitter links with the bots trying to scam me:
https://twitter.com/lurkcity/status/1788056855865876968
https://twitter.com/lurkcity/status/1788071385069228455/
twitter.com/lurkcity/status/1788209225916637622
2024.05.14 01:48 reddonatura IFAT MUNICH 2024 - Day 1 Hightlights
#IFAT #munich #2024 Day 1: Unleashing Innovation, Inspiring Action! Missed our earlier update? Don't worry, we've got you covered! Day 1 at IFAT MUNICH 2024 was a whirlwind of excitement and inspiration, and we're here to catch you up on all the highlights is stealing the show, with attendees pouring their hearts into pledges for a #sustainablefuture. It's not too late to join inâcome add your #voicetothemovement! And #behindthescenes? Oh, the magic is real! From dynamic discussions to hands-on demos, every corner of IFAT MUNICH 2024 is buzzing with energy and innovation. We're not just dreaming of a #betterworldâwe're actively building it together!Stay tuned for more updates as we continue to unleash innovation and inspire action at IFAT MUNICH 2024! Together, we're unstoppable! #IFATMunich #2024 #InspiringAction #UnleashInnovation #Day1Highlights #PledgeForChange #SustainableFuture #GreenFuture #EmpoweringChange #reddonatura #GoGreen #biomethanation #biogas #organicwastedigester #digester #saveearth #IFATMunichexpo #G2G #GarbagetoGreen #digestermachine #wastetoenergy #Giulio
submitted by reddonatura to u/reddonatura [link] [comments]
2024.05.14 01:34 Front_Ad_8752 My Nmom hit me once, does that count as abuse?
I keep saying over and over and over to myself all the shit my nmom did to me and put me though but I feel like iâm being over dramatic but idk why iâm thinking that. I keep complaining about my situation and what my Nmom did and I feel like some selfish spoiled youth. Idk. She abused me! I wanna say it but I keep thinking Iâm just being dramatic! . Idk. She didnât slap me tho, she scratched my face,choked me, threw me into the wall, pushed me, spat in my Face. I feel like iâm âextraâ by talking about this so much. My ndad also hit me but he came iâm in the middle of my nmom hitting me. I think saying the word abuse is just too much for me. Was I physically abused? I think my nmoms gaslighting is getting to me. She keeps saying she didnât do it.
submitted by Front_Ad_8752 to raisedbynarcissists [link] [comments]
2024.05.14 01:30 AstronautDue2395 My Experience
 | TW for gross looking eye pictures but this is the reality of the surgery submitted by AstronautDue2395 to Strabismus [link] [comments] Hi, so I have kind of a unique story but maybe it can help anyone like me whoâs been scouring the internet for something relatable. Long read, but wouldâve been comforting for me during my search. Feel free to skip to the ***** area for the surgery/recovery details. Fairly new here (26F), been observing posts and taking in stories for a few months now. I was born blind in my left eye due to optic nerve hypoplasia (my right eye is also nearsighted as a mf). My eyes have never tracked together well, it was visible at a few months old, and thatâs how I got my initial diagnosis. It was somewhat correctable for the sake of school pictures and family pictures for the first portion of my life (closing eyes, changing position, looking away and back right before the snap, etc). Around middle school I had friends and strangers start to mention occasionally that they couldnât tell what I was looking at or theyâd ask me what was wrong with my eye. Since then Iâve been insanely self conscious and uncomfortable in my own skin, refusing to make eye contact, take pictures, FaceTime, zoom call, etc. I learned about strabismus surgery a few years back, and researched into it for a while, ultimately deciding that I wouldnât pursue it because of the high possibility of the surgery failing, either immediately, or somewhat soon after. Some things have happened with my health and body over the last few years, and my esotropia had become more and more noticeable, and my eyelid was dropping heavily with it. When I was tired, it would barely appear open if I didnât force it. I finally got fed up with hating my own face and I wanted to consult with a new doctor and see what my options were, if I had any. He never made me feel uncomfortable, or like there was something wrong with me. He did mention the possibility of failure, specifically because of the blindness and inability to focus that eye, but at this point I was willing to take the risk (how much worse could it get if I was already disappointed in my own appearance and hiding from life). ************ Surgery Details In my case, because my turn was so severe, he had to operate on 4 of the 6 muscles in my eye. Along with that came a decent amount of trauma to my eye (more than the average surgery would cause). He corrected mine on an adjustable suture, had me meet back at his office a few hours later, did an exam, and adjusted my stitches while sitting in a chair in his exam room. I spent from about 6am until about 6pm with him in one way or another before I made it home. The following days I was mostly just sore and swollen and so so tired. I kept my eyes closed for the first day and a half, because moving my right eye also moved my left eye and caused me a decent amount of pain. My operation was a Tuesday, Saturday was my absolute peak day of pain. I was prescribed a narcotic that I used for the first 3 days I believe, I also didnât take my adhd meds those early days, because I wanted to be able to sleep and relax. I took one week off work (I work thurs-sun) and went back the next Thursday. I took things easy at work for that week, and started my normal duties again about two weeks after surgery. My work is pretty physical, so even after two weeks of chilling, that first night of my normal shift had me sore again the next day. Never underestimate how involved your eye muscles are in things that you wouldnât normally think would affect them. Iâm now 3.5 weeks post op, I just recently had my follow up with my surgeon, he snipped one of my sutures that had surfaced and was rubbing my eyelid inside and keeping it irritated and swollen. The next day my eyelid looked a lot better and my eye was a lot less itchy. Iâve been back on tobradex drops (iykyk) and it seems to be helping with my redness as well (itâs also causing a bit of pulsatile tinnitus, which is something I didnât expect). When looking at a point on the wall about 15 feet in front of me, my eyes track perfectly, at this moment in time. When I look at things close to me, my eye still starts to turn, and I find myself getting tired eyes quicker from being on my phone than I had before. My eye is still dropping a bit low when I look towards my right, and it raises a bit when I look to my left. I also feel (and see) some resistance when looking upwards. He mentioned that depending on how things look at my 3 month appointment in July, I could need one more surgery to correct the muscle thatâs causing those issues, or I could decide to let it ride. Normally peopleâs redness and swelling are pretty gone by 3.5 weeks out, but the amount of work that my eye needed has left me still pretty red now, and still somewhat swollen in my eyelid. My actual pupils seem to track straight almost all of the time, and Iâm already finding myself wanting to make eye contact with people more, which alone gives me so much more confidence than Iâve ever experienced. Iâve had some friends and family just look at my eyes and say things like âwow your eye looks really good.â My only regret is not doing it sooner. I thought I had done the research and made the best call for myself, but I shouldâve sought out a professional so much sooner. Even if it fails at some point down the line, Iâm grateful for the relief Iâve gotten for this time period and I would probably seek it out again. My eyelid still droops a bit, even outside of the hit of swelling I have; ptosis am I right? đ I may seek out a plastic surgeon to have that corrected after a potential second surgery or deciding against one. Iâve also been looking into Botox injections to potentially correct it as well. For anyone interested in more of the surfacey surgery details; mine was performed at a hospital under general anesthesia and took about 2.5 hours to complete. My surgeon/ophthalmologist is located in SW Ohio, and I fully trust him with my vision and my appearance at this point. The surgery totaled just over $26,000 and insurance covered just under $24,000, leaving me to pay around $2,600 out of pocket. Anyone interested/located in that area, please feel free to ask for his info and Iâll send it right over. In my opinion, the surgery is worth the risk, because (to me) the worst thing that can happen (barring actual medical emergencies) is that you end up unhappy with your eyes positioning (which is probably why youâre getting the surgery anyway) Iâm going to attach pics that will show: my eye turn beforehand (pretty severe esotropia and browns syndrome); the way I left the hospital with my adjustable sutures in; right after I left the adjustment; the healing process for a few days; what I believe is my current final eye positioning; and what itâs looking like today, a couple days after having one suture removed, a few days on steroid drops, with at least 4 barely visible sutures still waiting to dissolve. |
2024.05.14 01:20 JamFranz My boyfriend hasn't been the same since we went on vacation
If I hadnât drunk an entire gallon of tea back at the hotel, maybe none of this wouldâve happened.
Well, maybe if we hadnât gotten kicked out of the hotel, none of this wouldâve happened.
It had been just the two of us in the small car, but with the animosity heavy on the air, it felt overcrowded. I donât know what had been worse, the hour of arguing, the two hours of silence afterwards, or the burgeoning realization that maybe I didnât know him as well as I thought I did.
I studied him out of the corner of my eye. We'd been together for several months, but the recent experience left me wondering if I had ever even met the real Brian â who he truly was on the inside.
It had been our very first trip together.
We'd saved up for one of those super fancy hotels and had been having a great time â until, of course, Brian decided to attempt a five-finger discount in the jewelry store in the lobby.
He'd told me when we first started dating that he'd had some run-ins with the law in the past â when he was young and that was the only way to put food on the table, and I'd understood.
But this wasn't the same. It wasn't for survival, it was just greed.
Weâd both spent the rest of our vacation money and then some, paying for that $1,800 watch so no charges would be pressed.
They still kicked us out. I donât blame them.
Asking him to stop at the next place we came across was the first thing I'd said to him in hours, and he nodded, solemnly.
My discomfort was escalating to the point where I was considering asking him to pull over on the side of the road â rain be damned â when we saw the dim sign flickering in the distance.
The small store was out of place on the quiet, tree lined mountain road. Weâd been deep in a tunnel of trees and hadnât seen so much of a hint of the lights in the distance â it seemed to just appear into view as we went around the bend. I didn't recall seeing it on the way to the hotel, so it was a pleasant surprise.
I felt a flood of relief wash over me.
It stuck out in the otherwise beautiful mountain landscape â windows so dirty that the light inside barely reached us through them â several letters on the sign lit up in such a way that the only word we could even see was a blood red '- MART' flickering.
Any relief I'd managed to feel was short-lived.
When we walked in, we both froze as we took in the interior.
I instantly wished weâd just stopped by the side of the road after all. I looked at Brian and could tell he felt it too â he was fiddling with his new watch and took off his glasses, cleaned them on his shirt, and put them back on, as if that would make what he was seeing make more sense.
There were no other customers, no employees visible, it was just the two of us.
Ceiling tiles hung askew, and the floor was filthy â we had to step over a drain in the floor with grimy stains circling it, to walk in.
If it werenât for the lights, gentle hum of the AC, and grinding sounds floating from down the long hallway at the back, Iâd have thought the place was abandoned.
It was humid inside, and the smell coming from the old coolers that lined the back walls hit me as soon as we walked in. It reminded me of the summer my dad had decided to dabble in taxidermy in our basement.
The slight hint of rot that lingered on the damp air indicated poorly done taxidermy, at that.
As I darted towards the back towards the restroom sign, a placard dangling off it caught my eye, informed me the restroom was for paying customers only.
I quickly perused the shelves for something to buy. The aisles were tall, nearly to the ceiling, and despite the store being somewhat small, I felt the panicked sense of being cornered and trapped in an endless maze â at risk of becoming lost in there forever. The food on the shelves resembled nothing like the usual chips and candy these types of stores carried â there were rows upon rows of soft looking mystery items in plastic wrap, some of them leaked a red-brown residue down the shelves â none of it looked remotely appealing.
I passed by a section with a stained placard that said âhandcrafted from local artistsâ that was filled with eclectic items, none of which seemed to go together.
There were torn shirts with random logos â nothing related to the town or area we were in, stained with mud, grass, and god knows what else. Dried ropy things formed small and delicate sculptures of animals unlike any Iâd seen before. I reached for a bracelet with intricately carved white beads but nearly dropped it when I realized the band was made up of woven human hair. It left a residue on my hand, and I noticed then that the same sour-rot smell was coming from the collection of items, too.
I opted for a flat and lukewarm Dr. Pepper instead, and placed two $2 dollar coins on the glass counter in front of the hand scrawled âshoplifters will be processedâ sign near the register.
I figured I misread it, after all it, looked like it had been written by a hand unused to holding a pen.
Brian had grabbed an armful of those unnerving plastic-wrapped packages but hovered at the counter a bit too long. I could hear the scrape of him retrieving the coins on the glass, the sound of him dropping them into his pocket.
He gave me a pointed stare as he did so.
I sighed, so tired of arguing that I just walked away from him and down the hallway. I figured Iâd pay (again) after he got back in the car.
No sooner had I closed the door to the womenâs room behind me, than I could hear him talking to someone.
His voice rose until he was nearly yelling. Mortified and trying to delay being involved in another incident that day, I splashed water on my face while trying to drown out what appeared to be a one-sided argument.
I kept trying to wash the grimy feeling that had lingered on my hands after picking up the bracelet, but no matter how I scrubbed, I couldnât get it off â it kept getting worse.
I felt nauseous when I realized the greasy residue was coming from the pale-yellow bar of soap. I decided Iâd scrub my hands raw at our next stop, and stepped out into the hall and back to the store.
Brian wasnât there.
I called out for him, but all I heard in answer was that same vague whirring and drilling sound coming from further down the long hallway.
I double-backed to the car, but found it empty.
I circled the store, my frustration turning to panic as I shouted his name and still got no response.
I called his phone, it just rang, and rang before going to voicemail.
The car was locked and he had the keys, I couldnât help but feel nervous, standing out there in the rain. We were still in the middle of the deep woods and with clouds obscuring the light of the moon and stars, the area was blanketed in darkness. I reluctantly headed back inside.
Somehow, the smell had managed to become even worse â I gagged when the wet, disgusting air hit my nose again. It was so strong I could nearly taste it, putrid on my tongue.
I couldnât shake the feeling that there was always someone just behind me as I walked quickly through the tall aisles, but whenever I looked over my shoulder, there was never anything there.
I called his phone, wondering how Iâd managed to lose him in such a small store when I finally heard it ringing â it was echoing from down that long hallway.
As I headed towards it, I heard someone moving on the other side of the floor-to-ceiling aisle, placing something onto the shelf with a sickening wet thud, before weaving lithely through the aisles behind me.
âBrian?â I called out softly, trying to convince myself that everything was fine â trying to disguise my fear.
I knew it wasnât him â I donât know how, but I knew it. Have you ever had the feeling that if you look closely enough at something, if you truly see it, youâll never be able to close your eyes again without it haunting you? That feeling of being in close proximity to something that your fragile mind was never meant to know existed?
I forced myself to turn around anyways.
Once again, whoever or whatever had been there was gone by the time I rounded the aisle, but I heard a gentle clinking sound, and saw a trail of red-pink droplets.
I followed it back to that section â handcrafted from local artists, there was something new hanging from a hook near the shelves â wet, glistening strips dangled from along what looked to be a curved bone with bits of gristle still attached. From one of them hung an expensive menâs wristwatch, another was tied around a shattered, thick glasses lens. Yet another sagged under the weight of car keys. They gently swayed with the motion of having been recently placed. Fluid continued to drip from the still wet viscera and mingled with the mud on my shoes.
Shoplifters will be processed
I didnât need to see the items down the other aisles to figure out what I was looking at, what must have happened.
I could already tell that weâd never have another argument, ever again.
I heard a door open and close in the back, soft footsteps approaching from down that hallway.
I realized that in my distraction, I'd forgotten to put money back on the counter.
I choked up, but knew there was nothing I could do for him. So, I tossed the first bills I found in my purse onto the floor, frantically untangled the car keys, and in shock, I drove myself the remaining four-hour drive home.
Every so often, along the quiet country roads â those I could've sworn were empty on the drive up â Iâd see that grimy building, the sign, '-MART' flashing in the distance.
I didnât stop once.
I've been home for a week now.
A few nights ago, something triggered a motion alert on my video doorbell, but there was no one there when I checked the footage.
The next morning, I found a cardboard box on my porch â with no stamp or return address.
In it was a torn t-shirt, and several of those now-familiar wrapped packages, putrid fluid leaking out of them through the bottom of the soggy cardboard.
I've received a similar box every night, since.
I don't know if it's meant as a threat, or if due to some sort of twisted interpretation â Iâm now a 'paying customerâ â he's slowly being returned to me.
Either way, it turns out that I've gotten to see who Brian was on the inside, after all.
JFR
submitted by JamFranz to Odd_directions [link] [comments]
Well, maybe if we hadnât gotten kicked out of the hotel, none of this wouldâve happened.
It had been just the two of us in the small car, but with the animosity heavy on the air, it felt overcrowded. I donât know what had been worse, the hour of arguing, the two hours of silence afterwards, or the burgeoning realization that maybe I didnât know him as well as I thought I did.
I studied him out of the corner of my eye. We'd been together for several months, but the recent experience left me wondering if I had ever even met the real Brian â who he truly was on the inside.
It had been our very first trip together.
We'd saved up for one of those super fancy hotels and had been having a great time â until, of course, Brian decided to attempt a five-finger discount in the jewelry store in the lobby.
He'd told me when we first started dating that he'd had some run-ins with the law in the past â when he was young and that was the only way to put food on the table, and I'd understood.
But this wasn't the same. It wasn't for survival, it was just greed.
Weâd both spent the rest of our vacation money and then some, paying for that $1,800 watch so no charges would be pressed.
They still kicked us out. I donât blame them.
Asking him to stop at the next place we came across was the first thing I'd said to him in hours, and he nodded, solemnly.
My discomfort was escalating to the point where I was considering asking him to pull over on the side of the road â rain be damned â when we saw the dim sign flickering in the distance.
The small store was out of place on the quiet, tree lined mountain road. Weâd been deep in a tunnel of trees and hadnât seen so much of a hint of the lights in the distance â it seemed to just appear into view as we went around the bend. I didn't recall seeing it on the way to the hotel, so it was a pleasant surprise.
I felt a flood of relief wash over me.
It stuck out in the otherwise beautiful mountain landscape â windows so dirty that the light inside barely reached us through them â several letters on the sign lit up in such a way that the only word we could even see was a blood red '- MART' flickering.
Any relief I'd managed to feel was short-lived.
When we walked in, we both froze as we took in the interior.
I instantly wished weâd just stopped by the side of the road after all. I looked at Brian and could tell he felt it too â he was fiddling with his new watch and took off his glasses, cleaned them on his shirt, and put them back on, as if that would make what he was seeing make more sense.
There were no other customers, no employees visible, it was just the two of us.
Ceiling tiles hung askew, and the floor was filthy â we had to step over a drain in the floor with grimy stains circling it, to walk in.
If it werenât for the lights, gentle hum of the AC, and grinding sounds floating from down the long hallway at the back, Iâd have thought the place was abandoned.
It was humid inside, and the smell coming from the old coolers that lined the back walls hit me as soon as we walked in. It reminded me of the summer my dad had decided to dabble in taxidermy in our basement.
The slight hint of rot that lingered on the damp air indicated poorly done taxidermy, at that.
As I darted towards the back towards the restroom sign, a placard dangling off it caught my eye, informed me the restroom was for paying customers only.
I quickly perused the shelves for something to buy. The aisles were tall, nearly to the ceiling, and despite the store being somewhat small, I felt the panicked sense of being cornered and trapped in an endless maze â at risk of becoming lost in there forever. The food on the shelves resembled nothing like the usual chips and candy these types of stores carried â there were rows upon rows of soft looking mystery items in plastic wrap, some of them leaked a red-brown residue down the shelves â none of it looked remotely appealing.
I passed by a section with a stained placard that said âhandcrafted from local artistsâ that was filled with eclectic items, none of which seemed to go together.
There were torn shirts with random logos â nothing related to the town or area we were in, stained with mud, grass, and god knows what else. Dried ropy things formed small and delicate sculptures of animals unlike any Iâd seen before. I reached for a bracelet with intricately carved white beads but nearly dropped it when I realized the band was made up of woven human hair. It left a residue on my hand, and I noticed then that the same sour-rot smell was coming from the collection of items, too.
I opted for a flat and lukewarm Dr. Pepper instead, and placed two $2 dollar coins on the glass counter in front of the hand scrawled âshoplifters will be processedâ sign near the register.
I figured I misread it, after all it, looked like it had been written by a hand unused to holding a pen.
Brian had grabbed an armful of those unnerving plastic-wrapped packages but hovered at the counter a bit too long. I could hear the scrape of him retrieving the coins on the glass, the sound of him dropping them into his pocket.
He gave me a pointed stare as he did so.
I sighed, so tired of arguing that I just walked away from him and down the hallway. I figured Iâd pay (again) after he got back in the car.
No sooner had I closed the door to the womenâs room behind me, than I could hear him talking to someone.
His voice rose until he was nearly yelling. Mortified and trying to delay being involved in another incident that day, I splashed water on my face while trying to drown out what appeared to be a one-sided argument.
I kept trying to wash the grimy feeling that had lingered on my hands after picking up the bracelet, but no matter how I scrubbed, I couldnât get it off â it kept getting worse.
I felt nauseous when I realized the greasy residue was coming from the pale-yellow bar of soap. I decided Iâd scrub my hands raw at our next stop, and stepped out into the hall and back to the store.
Brian wasnât there.
I called out for him, but all I heard in answer was that same vague whirring and drilling sound coming from further down the long hallway.
I double-backed to the car, but found it empty.
I circled the store, my frustration turning to panic as I shouted his name and still got no response.
I called his phone, it just rang, and rang before going to voicemail.
The car was locked and he had the keys, I couldnât help but feel nervous, standing out there in the rain. We were still in the middle of the deep woods and with clouds obscuring the light of the moon and stars, the area was blanketed in darkness. I reluctantly headed back inside.
Somehow, the smell had managed to become even worse â I gagged when the wet, disgusting air hit my nose again. It was so strong I could nearly taste it, putrid on my tongue.
I couldnât shake the feeling that there was always someone just behind me as I walked quickly through the tall aisles, but whenever I looked over my shoulder, there was never anything there.
I called his phone, wondering how Iâd managed to lose him in such a small store when I finally heard it ringing â it was echoing from down that long hallway.
As I headed towards it, I heard someone moving on the other side of the floor-to-ceiling aisle, placing something onto the shelf with a sickening wet thud, before weaving lithely through the aisles behind me.
âBrian?â I called out softly, trying to convince myself that everything was fine â trying to disguise my fear.
I knew it wasnât him â I donât know how, but I knew it. Have you ever had the feeling that if you look closely enough at something, if you truly see it, youâll never be able to close your eyes again without it haunting you? That feeling of being in close proximity to something that your fragile mind was never meant to know existed?
I forced myself to turn around anyways.
Once again, whoever or whatever had been there was gone by the time I rounded the aisle, but I heard a gentle clinking sound, and saw a trail of red-pink droplets.
I followed it back to that section â handcrafted from local artists, there was something new hanging from a hook near the shelves â wet, glistening strips dangled from along what looked to be a curved bone with bits of gristle still attached. From one of them hung an expensive menâs wristwatch, another was tied around a shattered, thick glasses lens. Yet another sagged under the weight of car keys. They gently swayed with the motion of having been recently placed. Fluid continued to drip from the still wet viscera and mingled with the mud on my shoes.
Shoplifters will be processed
I didnât need to see the items down the other aisles to figure out what I was looking at, what must have happened.
I could already tell that weâd never have another argument, ever again.
I heard a door open and close in the back, soft footsteps approaching from down that hallway.
I realized that in my distraction, I'd forgotten to put money back on the counter.
I choked up, but knew there was nothing I could do for him. So, I tossed the first bills I found in my purse onto the floor, frantically untangled the car keys, and in shock, I drove myself the remaining four-hour drive home.
Every so often, along the quiet country roads â those I could've sworn were empty on the drive up â Iâd see that grimy building, the sign, '-MART' flashing in the distance.
I didnât stop once.
I've been home for a week now.
A few nights ago, something triggered a motion alert on my video doorbell, but there was no one there when I checked the footage.
The next morning, I found a cardboard box on my porch â with no stamp or return address.
In it was a torn t-shirt, and several of those now-familiar wrapped packages, putrid fluid leaking out of them through the bottom of the soggy cardboard.
I've received a similar box every night, since.
I don't know if it's meant as a threat, or if due to some sort of twisted interpretation â Iâm now a 'paying customerâ â he's slowly being returned to me.
Either way, it turns out that I've gotten to see who Brian was on the inside, after all.
JFR
2024.05.14 01:07 ResoluteMuse Living Room Redesign
 | This am currently in the middle and day whole house purge and tackling rooms as I reorganize. I havenât done anything with the living room since we moved in a few years ago. submitted by ResoluteMuse to HomeDecorating [link] [comments] How would you arrange this space? My dogs love being able to see outside, I would like some sort of shelving on the walls beside the fireplace, and will put in many plants. The desk/table is going, and plan to refinish the MCM tables. This area is open concept with a dining area to the right of the fireplace and stairs to an entry behind the couch. Ideas? |
2024.05.14 01:00 ClipperSmith Want to improve your running technique? Get a jump rope.
Here is an article I recently published on my Substack. If you'd rather read (or listen to an audio version) it outside of Reddit, you can do so here.
Why jump rope isnât already touted as a leading running drill tool is completely beyond me. But then againâŚ
I'm by no means an "experienced runner"âhaving started running in 2021 at the age of 34. So, at the time of this writing, about 3 years.
Despite this, I managed to silver-medal my age group in my first race ever.
And it was a 10k. And I was wearing barefoot-shoes.
And I had only been running before that race for about 3 months.
How the heck did I manage to pull this off?
The answer eluded me for a while. Then I rememberedâah, Iâve been jumping rope nearly every day for 2 years.
But how do those connect?
But first, why the heck would some guy start jumping rope at age 32?
About 2 years before I started running, I took up jump rope really just as a fun outdoor hobby.
Even though I was pretty inactive and a bit overweight, thatâs not the reason I started skippinâ.
One day, I came across some footage of boxer Lulu Hawton doing some jump rope training.
In addition to her seemingly effortless rope handling skills and rhythmic footwork, what caught my eye was a giant grin that spread across her face about 45 seconds into the video. While she was probably skipping to warm up for a match or a training session, something was abundantly clear.
She was having a blast.
And this was from a prize fighter! None of the usual boxer mean-muggingâshe looked more like a kid on a carousel.
So, after buying a $10 jump rope on Amazon, I took to the driveway in my swim trunks (yes, I was so inactive, I didnât own gym shorts).
AndâŚwhoo, did I suck.
After a few months of making puddles of sweat in my driveway as well as wheezing sounds so loud that Iâm surprised the neighbors didnât whistle EMS, I eventually got pretty decent at it.
And I lost about 45 pounds in 6 monthsâprobably also from making some lifestyle changes merely to make jump rope less of a slog. Not the original plan, but hey, not too shabby.
After about a year, I found myself constructively critiquing other peopleâs beginner jump rope videos.
Though jumping rope is inherently enjoyable, 30-minute skipping sessions of staring at the wall without something in your headphones can be a bit drab.
One fateful day, about 2 years into being student of the jump rope, I began listening to the book Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen by Christopher McDougall.
Even before I got to the end of the book, runningâjust like jump ropeâ sounded fun**.**
Yeah, I know that sounds counterintuitiveâunless youâve read the book.
âI knew aerobic exercise was a powerful antidepressant, but I hadnât realized it could be so profoundly mood stabilizing and â I hate to use the word â meditative. If you donât have answers to your problems after a four-hour run, you ainât getting them.â
Ok, okâIâll bite.
I proceeded to dive into all of the normal âCouch to 5kâ running programs I could find and took my jump rope to a nearby park with a 1k walking pathâsprinkling in running between jump rope sessions.
But something wasnât adding up.
There was a lot of advice about walk-running to build endurance until one could run a block, two blocks, a mile.
Not to brag, but I wasnât experiencing most beginner snags.
**âAh, I know whyâ**I did most of my newbie wind-sucking two years ago!â
This isnât to say I wasnât still periodically sucking wind but after two years of consistent boxer skips and double-unders, getting gassed felt like part of the fun and not a medical emergency.
I also felt much springier than the average beginning runnerâable to run for miles all over the city in the most minimal of footwear.
And so, I tried my hand at my first raceâa donut-themed 10k. And silvered in my age group.
(Ok, there was only two of usâŚbut my time was still respectable. đ)
Running became an amazingly freeing activity, like getting my driverâs license for my legs.
But I still didnât understand why running was coming easier to me than the average newcomer.
Digging still deeper, I unearthed another exciting revelationâthis time from multi-decade sub-3-hour Boston Marathon runner and one of the foremost running experts on the planet, Dr. Mark Cucuzzella.
âRunning with a jump rope is also an amazingly simple drill for posture, balance, and rhythm.â
In other wordsâform. Overall technique.
Digging a little keeper and experimenting on myself, I discovered just how similar proper running technique and proper jump rope technique were.
Both require:
And like running, without proper technique, jumping rope just doesnât workâthough the consequences are different.
For a jump roper, due to the lower impact, the risk of injury is quite minimal.
Most newbie rope slingers will report sore calves, slightly tender Achilles tendons, and the odd shin splint if they go full Rocky at it. No need to worry, thoughâmost of these injuries see themselves out as the skipper becomes more experienced.
However, for runners, the injury story is more severe.
The next time youâre at a park with a good path, take a seat on a bench and watch the runners. See if you can spot folks reaching far out in front of them with straightened legsâsmashing heels into the pavement.
This style of running results in everything from screaming knees, plantar fasciitis, lower back pain, to hips issues.
But why do all of these occur to new runners, but rarely to new jump ropers?
Most new runners commit a major physiological no-no when they begin their running journey: they treat running like fast, aggressive, airborne walking.
âWell, what is it supposed to be?â
Synchronized jumping.
Simply put, proper running is nothing more than a series of coordinated single leg jumps through space with each landing compressing the springs for the next stride.
To compare this synchronized jumping to the aggressive airborne walking of heel-led running, you can test these in just a few seconds.
Step 1: Stand up.
Step 2: Kick off your shoes.
Step 3: Jump up and down three times.
How did you land?
Probably on your mid-foot, knee bent slightly, with your weight stacked above your pelvis.
And did you use your compressed âleg springsâ to launch you into the following two jumps?
Oddly enough, if you were to add a jump rope to this, you would on your way to spinning side swings like Lulu Hawton.
If you were to take this same technique one foot at a time moving forward, you would be running in a way that increases speed, preserves stamina (springs!), and drastically decreases your likelihood of injury.
Letâs try the same test with a few tweaks.
This time, jump, but land on your heels.
Your knees probably remained fairly straight and you felt the impact in your ankles, knees, hips, and possibly even your lower back.
Now, imagine attempting to jump rope this way.
It simply doesnât work.
Not only would there be no second jump due to the lack of spring but the pain would stop you in your tracksâeven in cushioned shoes.
But if jump rope technique and proper running technique are nearly identical, what are aggressive heel landings doing in running?
While a jump roper landing on their heels would resemble Frankensteinâs monster in an express lane to an orthopedist, this is how many people perform the aggressive airborne walkâaka, a heel-striking, over-striding run.
But why do we run this way? Well, our shoes let us get away with it.
Thick heel cushioning and a bit of forward momentum do a great job of masking the pain of repeated blows against every joint up the chainâfor a while, anyway. Eventually, the chickens come home to roost in the form of stress fractures, meniscus tears, plantar fasciitis, ârunnerâs knee,â IT-band syndrome, and more.
Not to brag (and maybe to knock on some wood), I have never experienced any of these injuries in my three years of running.
Is this because Iâm some kind of running genius with all of the cheat codes? Haha, I wish! Itâs simply sheer luck that I started out with jumping rope before runningâan activity that shares the same injury-preventing techniques.
So, are the shoes totally to blame? No.
It is possible to run with proper form in shoes with raised, cushioned heels. But itâs not as easy.
When your heel is totally cushioned, you will be able to run with a heel strike in the same way you can hit your head against a brick wall while wearing a football helmet. And in both instances, it will eventually become less about the forces outside of the foam and more about the forces inside the cushion against each other that do the most damage.
âSo, how can getting a jump rope help me become a better runner?â
Jump rope is a tremendous training tool for runners for the same reason why running barefoot can also be helpfulâthe feedback is immediate.
Though running with inefficient and injurious form is possible, the feedback from doing so isnât so immediate. When it comes to jumping rope, however, you wonât get through too many skips if you donât learn to utilize the springs in your legs. The rope doesnât pull punches.
So, get a rope and get started.
If youâre new to jump rope, I would recommend acquiring two pieces of equipment.
Firstly, find a jump rope with a little bit, but not too much, weight to it. The weight will help you feel the position of the rope during itâs entire rotation and remain in better sync with your wrist spins
My favorite rope for this purpose is a 7mm PVC model called the Hererope, which costs a whopping $15. If you find this to be too thick or heavy, a cheap 5mm PVC model will work as well.
Secondly, to protect your rope and provide a nice jumping surface, I would recommend a large foam-rubber exercise mat. My favorite is a massive 78â mat for $32âwhich is probably the cheapest jump rope mat you will find.
When it comes to footwear, barefoot is ideal. This will help strengthen and mobilize your feetâincluding your likely overly-supported neglected arches.
And just how does one begin to jump rope?
From jumping with both feet, move onto learning an alternating leg bounceâessentially a jog skip. Right, left, right, leftâall while keeping an imaginary belt level with the horizon.
By now, youâre essentially running in place with an extremely efficient technique.
Now, apply your jump rope skills to your running!
This is going to seem quite bizarre, but it is possible (and even beneficial) to take your jump rope for a run.
You may find it quite helpful to return to this drill once or twice a week. Also if you find your form slipping a bit or becoming slugging mid-run, feel free to skip imaginary rope to try to correct your technique mid-stride. It will restore lightness and springiness to your running.
I still find myself bringing my wrists to my pockets and spinning imaginary jump rope handles if I feel my technique is collapsing a bit or if my running is becoming less springy.
And remember, most importantlyâhave fun. đ
Enjoy this piece? Subscribe to my Substack blog!
You can also:
submitted by ClipperSmith to beginnerrunning [link] [comments]
Why jump rope isnât already touted as a leading running drill tool is completely beyond me. But then againâŚ
I'm by no means an "experienced runner"âhaving started running in 2021 at the age of 34. So, at the time of this writing, about 3 years.
Despite this, I managed to silver-medal my age group in my first race ever.
And it was a 10k. And I was wearing barefoot-shoes.
And I had only been running before that race for about 3 months.
How the heck did I manage to pull this off?
The answer eluded me for a while. Then I rememberedâah, Iâve been jumping rope nearly every day for 2 years.
But how do those connect?
But first, why the heck would some guy start jumping rope at age 32?
About 2 years before I started running, I took up jump rope really just as a fun outdoor hobby.
Even though I was pretty inactive and a bit overweight, thatâs not the reason I started skippinâ.
One day, I came across some footage of boxer Lulu Hawton doing some jump rope training.
In addition to her seemingly effortless rope handling skills and rhythmic footwork, what caught my eye was a giant grin that spread across her face about 45 seconds into the video. While she was probably skipping to warm up for a match or a training session, something was abundantly clear.
She was having a blast.
And this was from a prize fighter! None of the usual boxer mean-muggingâshe looked more like a kid on a carousel.
So, after buying a $10 jump rope on Amazon, I took to the driveway in my swim trunks (yes, I was so inactive, I didnât own gym shorts).
AndâŚwhoo, did I suck.
After a few months of making puddles of sweat in my driveway as well as wheezing sounds so loud that Iâm surprised the neighbors didnât whistle EMS, I eventually got pretty decent at it.
And I lost about 45 pounds in 6 monthsâprobably also from making some lifestyle changes merely to make jump rope less of a slog. Not the original plan, but hey, not too shabby.
After about a year, I found myself constructively critiquing other peopleâs beginner jump rope videos.
- âUnlock your boxer skip. Then youâll be able to skip forever without getting tired.â
- âHereâs how to do Double-Unders, though theyâre overrated.â
- âYouâre skipping like it hurts. Relax and skip easy. Smile every once in a while and youâll feel it all over.â
Though jumping rope is inherently enjoyable, 30-minute skipping sessions of staring at the wall without something in your headphones can be a bit drab.
One fateful day, about 2 years into being student of the jump rope, I began listening to the book Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen by Christopher McDougall.
Even before I got to the end of the book, runningâjust like jump ropeâ sounded fun**.**
Yeah, I know that sounds counterintuitiveâunless youâve read the book.
âI knew aerobic exercise was a powerful antidepressant, but I hadnât realized it could be so profoundly mood stabilizing and â I hate to use the word â meditative. If you donât have answers to your problems after a four-hour run, you ainât getting them.â
Ok, okâIâll bite.
I proceeded to dive into all of the normal âCouch to 5kâ running programs I could find and took my jump rope to a nearby park with a 1k walking pathâsprinkling in running between jump rope sessions.
But something wasnât adding up.
There was a lot of advice about walk-running to build endurance until one could run a block, two blocks, a mile.
Not to brag, but I wasnât experiencing most beginner snags.
**âAh, I know whyâ**I did most of my newbie wind-sucking two years ago!â
This isnât to say I wasnât still periodically sucking wind but after two years of consistent boxer skips and double-unders, getting gassed felt like part of the fun and not a medical emergency.
I also felt much springier than the average beginning runnerâable to run for miles all over the city in the most minimal of footwear.
And so, I tried my hand at my first raceâa donut-themed 10k. And silvered in my age group.
(Ok, there was only two of usâŚbut my time was still respectable. đ)
Running became an amazingly freeing activity, like getting my driverâs license for my legs.
But I still didnât understand why running was coming easier to me than the average newcomer.
Digging still deeper, I unearthed another exciting revelationâthis time from multi-decade sub-3-hour Boston Marathon runner and one of the foremost running experts on the planet, Dr. Mark Cucuzzella.
âRunning with a jump rope is also an amazingly simple drill for posture, balance, and rhythm.â
In other wordsâform. Overall technique.
Digging a little keeper and experimenting on myself, I discovered just how similar proper running technique and proper jump rope technique were.
Both require:
- An upright, chest-leading, elbows-back, joint-stacked posture
- A soft mid-foot landing directly under your pelvis
- A quick loading and unloading of âleg springsâ from your tendons and ligaments to reduce âstickinessâ and wasted energy
- A proper supination (roll out) followed by a quick pronation (roll in) of the feet to help launch oneâs body
- A steady core without dropping hips from side to side to reduce energy âleakageâ
And like running, without proper technique, jumping rope just doesnât workâthough the consequences are different.
For a jump roper, due to the lower impact, the risk of injury is quite minimal.
Most newbie rope slingers will report sore calves, slightly tender Achilles tendons, and the odd shin splint if they go full Rocky at it. No need to worry, thoughâmost of these injuries see themselves out as the skipper becomes more experienced.
However, for runners, the injury story is more severe.
The next time youâre at a park with a good path, take a seat on a bench and watch the runners. See if you can spot folks reaching far out in front of them with straightened legsâsmashing heels into the pavement.
This style of running results in everything from screaming knees, plantar fasciitis, lower back pain, to hips issues.
But why do all of these occur to new runners, but rarely to new jump ropers?
Most new runners commit a major physiological no-no when they begin their running journey: they treat running like fast, aggressive, airborne walking.
âWell, what is it supposed to be?â
Synchronized jumping.
Simply put, proper running is nothing more than a series of coordinated single leg jumps through space with each landing compressing the springs for the next stride.
To compare this synchronized jumping to the aggressive airborne walking of heel-led running, you can test these in just a few seconds.
Step 1: Stand up.
Step 2: Kick off your shoes.
Step 3: Jump up and down three times.
How did you land?
Probably on your mid-foot, knee bent slightly, with your weight stacked above your pelvis.
And did you use your compressed âleg springsâ to launch you into the following two jumps?
Oddly enough, if you were to add a jump rope to this, you would on your way to spinning side swings like Lulu Hawton.
If you were to take this same technique one foot at a time moving forward, you would be running in a way that increases speed, preserves stamina (springs!), and drastically decreases your likelihood of injury.
Letâs try the same test with a few tweaks.
This time, jump, but land on your heels.
Your knees probably remained fairly straight and you felt the impact in your ankles, knees, hips, and possibly even your lower back.
Now, imagine attempting to jump rope this way.
It simply doesnât work.
Not only would there be no second jump due to the lack of spring but the pain would stop you in your tracksâeven in cushioned shoes.
But if jump rope technique and proper running technique are nearly identical, what are aggressive heel landings doing in running?
While a jump roper landing on their heels would resemble Frankensteinâs monster in an express lane to an orthopedist, this is how many people perform the aggressive airborne walkâaka, a heel-striking, over-striding run.
But why do we run this way? Well, our shoes let us get away with it.
Thick heel cushioning and a bit of forward momentum do a great job of masking the pain of repeated blows against every joint up the chainâfor a while, anyway. Eventually, the chickens come home to roost in the form of stress fractures, meniscus tears, plantar fasciitis, ârunnerâs knee,â IT-band syndrome, and more.
Not to brag (and maybe to knock on some wood), I have never experienced any of these injuries in my three years of running.
Is this because Iâm some kind of running genius with all of the cheat codes? Haha, I wish! Itâs simply sheer luck that I started out with jumping rope before runningâan activity that shares the same injury-preventing techniques.
So, are the shoes totally to blame? No.
It is possible to run with proper form in shoes with raised, cushioned heels. But itâs not as easy.
When your heel is totally cushioned, you will be able to run with a heel strike in the same way you can hit your head against a brick wall while wearing a football helmet. And in both instances, it will eventually become less about the forces outside of the foam and more about the forces inside the cushion against each other that do the most damage.
âSo, how can getting a jump rope help me become a better runner?â
Jump rope is a tremendous training tool for runners for the same reason why running barefoot can also be helpfulâthe feedback is immediate.
Though running with inefficient and injurious form is possible, the feedback from doing so isnât so immediate. When it comes to jumping rope, however, you wonât get through too many skips if you donât learn to utilize the springs in your legs. The rope doesnât pull punches.
So, get a rope and get started.
If youâre new to jump rope, I would recommend acquiring two pieces of equipment.
Firstly, find a jump rope with a little bit, but not too much, weight to it. The weight will help you feel the position of the rope during itâs entire rotation and remain in better sync with your wrist spins
My favorite rope for this purpose is a 7mm PVC model called the Hererope, which costs a whopping $15. If you find this to be too thick or heavy, a cheap 5mm PVC model will work as well.
Secondly, to protect your rope and provide a nice jumping surface, I would recommend a large foam-rubber exercise mat. My favorite is a massive 78â mat for $32âwhich is probably the cheapest jump rope mat you will find.
When it comes to footwear, barefoot is ideal. This will help strengthen and mobilize your feetâincluding your likely overly-supported neglected arches.
And just how does one begin to jump rope?
- Keep a tall postureâimagining a string pulling you up from the crown of your head.
- Your chest should open, elbows back, hands about a fistâs width from your pockets.
- Jump from the balls of your feet, only high enough to clear the rope. When landing, let the skin of your heels âkissâ the floorâtouching without taking on weight.
- Keep your knees slightly bent, using every landing to load your springs for the next take-off.
- Keep the cadence quick to maximize spring recoil. To help, listen to a song thatâs at about 160 beats per minute, such as the song âHey Yaâ by Outkast (or a song of similar tempo) to get a feel for the speed for skipping rope. (For running, many recommend using âRock Lobsterâ by the B-52s for cadence tempo reference.)
From jumping with both feet, move onto learning an alternating leg bounceâessentially a jog skip. Right, left, right, leftâall while keeping an imaginary belt level with the horizon.
By now, youâre essentially running in place with an extremely efficient technique.
Now, apply your jump rope skills to your running!
This is going to seem quite bizarre, but it is possible (and even beneficial) to take your jump rope for a run.
- Start skipping rope on a road or path with the alternating leg bounce. Remember to keep your elbows back, shoulders relaxed, head pulled up as if tugged skyward by a string from your crown and your imaginary belt level with the horizon.
- Then, as though leaning forward just enough to give someone a kiss or have an imaginary umbilical cord lightly tugged, begin to jump rope forward.
- Remember to continue to land and load on your mid-footâaiming to keep your weight under your pelvis just like skipping rope. Landing on your heels will likely snag the rope and keep your foot on the ground too long.
- As you proceed with this, remember how it feelsâthe quick foot turnover, the posture, the recoil in your leg springs, the core stability, and the lightness of it.
- In the middle of doing this, simply toss the handles behind you and keep running as though it was still thereâstill pretending to spin the handles.
- At a comfortable stopping point, run back to your ropeânow using your hands in a wood-chop motion to counter balance your leg bounces while keeping your pelvis (imaginary belt) level and stable.
You may find it quite helpful to return to this drill once or twice a week. Also if you find your form slipping a bit or becoming slugging mid-run, feel free to skip imaginary rope to try to correct your technique mid-stride. It will restore lightness and springiness to your running.
I still find myself bringing my wrists to my pockets and spinning imaginary jump rope handles if I feel my technique is collapsing a bit or if my running is becoming less springy.
And remember, most importantlyâhave fun. đ
Enjoy this piece? Subscribe to my Substack blog!
You can also:
2024.05.14 00:58 IamThe2ndBR Hanna in the HCP
The following is an original work of fan fiction. It will only make sense if youâve read Corpies and SP4
âFucking bullshit cock-garglers!â, Hannah, formerly known as Hexcellent, uttered louder than she intended.
Luckily, she was sitting by herself in a third floor private room in the brand new wing of the Sizemore undergraduate library. On the main floor, any sound louder than a fart wouldâve earned a collective, âshhhhh,â and annoyed stares from half the people studying. And frankly, as difficult as these Gen Chem practice exams were, the former PEERS would be spitting out a few more expletives before she was done.
Hannah glanced at her watch and sighed heavily. It was 4:43 PM. She still had two and a half hours before sheâd need to head to the lift to meet Devon and Kacey, two other first year HCP students, for some evening training. Okay, you got this girl. You just fucked up some amped criminal supers, you can handle goddamn mass to mole composition formula and stoichiom-whatever-the-fuck, she thought to herself. With resigned determination, the HCP student began swiping through class presentation slides on her tablet, reviewing problems she had trouble with. For a solid 2 hours her eyes never left the material and she honestly started to feel more comfortable with what she needed to know. Hannah was in the zone. That was until she was interrupted by a knock on the door.
âWhat. The actual. Fuck?â, Hannah said slowly as she looked up towards the door and the adjacent window.
The summoner saw two boys standing outside , one of whom was a short muscular guy with dark brown hair that she recognized. She was fairly certain his name Lucas, and that he was another HCP first year. He was in the alternative class though, while Hannah was in combat, so they hadnât been around each other a whole hell of a lot. The other seemed familiar, but she couldnât put her finger or on where sheâd seen him before. They were each moving their mouths, and pointing a finger at themselves and into the room clearly asking if they could come in. Hannah got up and opened the door.
âHey, Helen, right? You think that we can study in here with you? All the good tables downstairs are full. I just met Tristan here and heâs in the same predicament as me,â said Lucas before he lowered his voice to a whisper, leaned his head in, and pointed to the boy he referred to as Tristan. âHeâs in the same ummmâŚspecial program as us. In his 2nd year.â
With that information, Hannah realized where sheâd seen that guy. He was at the freshman party hosted by the second years. She remembered thinking that he came off as kind of a douchebag by the way he was standing around, nursing the same drink with a smug look on his face the whole time.
âYeah, sure, whatever. As long as you guys dont act like complete assholes and make a bunch of noise. I gotta focus for about another 30 minutes then the room is yours. Cool?â
âCool,â the boys said in unison.
âAnd itâs Hannah by the way. Not Helen. Youâre Lucas, right?â She held out her hand towards him.
Lucas politely shook her hand. âSorry about that Hannah. Iâm terrible at remembering names,â he said with a slight shrug. âJust gonna grab a seat on this side so I can stay outta your way.â He held out his arm towards the opposite side of the table from where Hannah had been sitting and started walking over there.
Tristan walked in and closed the door behind himself. He gave Hannah a simple head nod and smirk but never formerly introduced himself. Very similar to his demeanor at the party; as though he couldnât be bothered.
Yep, arrogant douche, she thought. Then she pictured the look of surprise on the 2nd yearâs face if she were to manifest her big furry friend to accidentally-on-purpose kick him in the balls.
Hannah had often wondered if anyone in the HCP realized her summon was the same giant bunny that helped save Brewster almost a year ago. Titan had told her the DVA would hide any association between the tower-sized rabbit and her PEERS persona but she figured that once classmates saw her summon for the first time theyâd make the connection. That didnât seem to be the case though, at least as far as she knew. It helped that when she summoned Hopcules these days, he was about the same height and stature as Titan. None of her combat training took place outside yet, so no one in HCP got to see her manifestation at his full potential size. Heâd also taken on more humanistic facial expressions lately and had been appearing in a variety of different clothes and accessories. Hell, the last time she trained with Kacey, the hulking rabbit materialized in a denim vest, a blue bandanna on his head, metal spiked leather bracelets around his wrists, brass knuckles, and with gold chains around his neck. Kacey couldnât stop laughing during their sparring session until Hopcules had her bound and hog tied. Even with her enhanced strength, she couldnât break free of what evidently werenât just plain gold necklaces. It hadnât dawned on Hannah until later that, the night before, sheâd fallen asleep to an old 80s action flick about a renegade cop taking on a vicious street gang. She wondered if tonight her childhood protector would show up in a lab coat, holding a periodic table. The Sizemore freshman briefly shook her head to snap herself out of her thoughts and sat down to resume her work. Sheâd gotten fully back into her study mode untilâŚ
âYo, does sound carry out of this room?â Tristan asked.
âSeriously?! You do remember that whole bit about NOT being obnoxious assholes, right?âHannah asked incredulously.
âDamn girl chill. I just wanted to ask my guy here a question and didnât want to risk being overheard. You should smile more girl. You know what I mean?â
Relax. Breathe. You donât want to be seen as a troublemaker. It would not be a good idea to kick this fuckerâs ass while inside of the school library. Or would it be? No. No. Definitely not a good idea, she thought to herself.
âWell unless you two were standing outside of here practicing at being mimes as a back up in case you donât make it to graduation, Iâm pretty sure this room is well insulated to sound.â
Tristan grunted in indignation and sarcastically replied, âyouâre hilarious.â
âIâm definitely going all the way through. No way I wonât graduate,â Lucas chimed in, seemingly oblivious to the tension thatâd just arisen between the other two people in the room. Iâve known I wanted to be a hero ever since I was little. My parents have spent a fortune sending me to an elite training camp for the last seven summers to make sure Iâd be prepared as possible for the HCP. Plus Iâve had personal coaches work with me for years on new ways to use my power.â
âBro! Thatâs what I was wanting to ask you about. I saw the logo on on your bag. Holy shit, did you do the SETA training camps?â asked Tristan.
âYeah, I take it youâve heard of it.â
âHell yeah I have. The Super Elite Training Academy. Who hasnât? I hear those workouts are so intense. No wonder youâre so jacked. You mustâve been in great shape for your first day here. Mad props bro. Is it true you get to fight against human looking robotâŚâ
âHey! Tweedledum and tweedle-dickless, I honestly didnât know there was such a thing as a two-man circle jerk, so I really appreciate the show but is there any chance I can get back to work without any more distractions?â
Lucas had mixture surprise and guilt run across his face. He opened his mouth as though he was about to say something, but glanced over to Tristan and stayed silent.
âWhat? You mad because youâre realizing you canât stack up against the competition. Guess what. My guy here isnât the only one whoâs been preparing for this program long before he was admitted. Iâve been getting ready for years too. Trained in jiu-jitsu and boxing on top of honing my super abilities. Have you even done anything? Or did you just apply and cross your fingers?â
Hannah could see where this was going in. She decided in that moment to just let it play out. Fuck it, she thought. She was basically done studying. Even if she failed the final, which she was confident that she wouldnât, sheâd still pass the class. She stood up, pressed an icon on her tablet touchscreen and began putting other things away in her bag while she spoke. âActually, I never had any special training as a kid. To tell you the truth, I shouldnât even be here. I got into some trouble years ago. The kind of trouble that normally prevents one from getting admitted into an HCP. But, I was on a PEERS team for years and I got to do a lot ofâŚ
âHa! Youâre telling us youâre fucking a Corpie. Can you believe this, dude?â Tristan nudged Lucas, looking for his agreement. To his credit, Lucas appeared visibly uncomfortable and leaned away from the other boy.
âDonât know what it says about your class if theyâre letting Corpies in,â continued Tristan with a sneer. âI guess you really do need to study. Obviously youâre the one that needs a back up plan. And hereâs another thing little girl. Itâs not just about how much youâve trained beforehand, itâs also about who you know. And I know people. My momâs best friend is related to the Hero, Unseelie. So Iâve actually met a few Heroes who Iâm sure will vouch for me when the time comes. Pity you canât say the same. We all know Heroes donât give two shits about Corpies.â
For a moment Hannahâs face expressed a flat affect. Then suddenly she burst into laughter. And not just some derisive laugh as though she was trying to convey to Tristan that she didnât take his comments seriously. But an eye watering, oxygen depriving, honest to the Gods belly laugh. The kind of laugh that wouldâve been contagious had she been around friends. She carried on for a minute until her amusement died down to a just a mild chortle. Hannah wiped her eyes. âYou know people?â She started laughing again, even louder than the first time. âOh my Gods. Stop. Stop. I canât breathe. Is this your fucking power?â Hannah was bent over at the waist still laughing hysterically, holding out one finger as to communicate, âgive me a second.â After another minute, she wiped her eyes again, took a big gulp of air, and collected herself. âWoooh. Now that was some funny fucking shit.â
âWho in the hell do you thinkâŚâ Tristan started to say through gritted teeth.
âNo no no. Please donât get me started again. I donât think my ribs can take it,â said Hannah still chuckling some. âLetâs see what have I done and who do I know? You know I always knew that eventually Iâd tell people about this, I just didnât think it would go down like this.â The summoner raised her hand, then slowly curled it into a fist. Standing 3ft tall and leaning into the corner so as not to be visible to anyone who happened to be looking into the room at that moment, was Hopcules, adorned in the same armor heâd worn on the day he helped to save Brewster. âLook familiar to anyone?â
âThat looks like the giant rabbit that fought robots with Titan. Hare-a-clees or something like that. My little sister has like 5 of its t-shirts,â Lucas responded.
âWow kid, you really are shit with remembering names. Hop-cu-les is the name I gave him when I was just a child. Surprised the shit outta me that he came out the size of a skyscraper when those robots nearly killed me and my team, â Hannah stated nonchalantly as she waved her hand and made Hopcules fade away.
With a grudging realization, Tristan began to ask, âwait, youâre not actually sayingâŚâ
âOh look, captain mc-douche-nozzle is catching on. Somebody give the kid a prize. Yes, dumbass, Iâm actually saying I fought with Titan, yes, thee fucking Titan, with every other Hero team in Brewster to stop those mechs from destroying the entire city. Iâm saying the strongest hero alive is my personal mentor and it was his recommendation that got me into this program.â
Lucas looked back and forth between Hannah and Tristan having already realized that the sophomore might be one of those guys whoâd lash out over his perceived inferiority. Lucas was so curious though he had to ask, âbut⌠But, that rabbit is everywhere these days. Not just T-shirts. Toys, a cartoon, and I just read thereâs going to be a next-gen console video game based on his character. If you own the rights to that image, youâd be loaded.â
âEh,â Hannah said with shrug. âYoure leaving out the movie deal Lenny just got for me, but not something I talk about too much . It leaves me enough to be comfortable and to be able to donate a library wing to the university thats giving me a shot at being a hero.â Hannah responded. She gave Tristan a quick wink and glanced over her shoulder towards the door.
Tristan looked in the same direction and noticed something he hadnât bothered paying attention to before, a small engraving on the center of the door of a bipedal rabbit. This wouldâve been the most surprising thing that heâd seen since he set foot in the room if it wasnât for the photo that appeared on Hannahâs tablet now facing him. It was an image of five people: Graham De Soto, the new head of the DVA, Titan in his iconic Hero costume, Dean Jackson, a large muscular young man with a shit eating grin who Tristan didnât recognize, and another person in a generic gray mask, presumably female, and wearing a smile of malicious enjoyment, the same as the woman standing before him.
Hannah saw what caught his attention and picked up her tablet. âOh, did you notice this? I love this picture. Titan called me in for back up as a Temporary Emergency Hero Asset. We beat the shit out of a literal army of enhanced criminal supers and took this picture after everything calmed down. All the other HCP deans were there too. Mr. Desoto actually told me if I ever needed a favor, he owed me one.â Hannah wore a wistful expression as she thought back on that day with fondness.
âAnyway, I gotta get outta here. Sâposed to meet up with my training partners. Cause no matter what your background is or who you know, no one is a shoe-in for the final 10. Lucas, feel free to meet us in the combat cells tonight if you want to get a work out in and get tired of hanging out with this fuckwad. Later losers!â Hannah said this last part as she turned around and headed towards door while holding up her middle finger for all to see.
Tristan was obviously livid. His hands had been visibly shaking as he stood and listened to all the ways this 1st year had accomplished more than heâd even thought possible for student. Who does this little bitch think she is? Sheâs full of shit. She has to be. Iâll show her. From his elbows down, Tristanâs arms began to darken. In seconds the two appendages looked like small tree trunks, with his fingers elongating into barbed tendril-liked branches rapidly moving towards Hannah.
Although Lucas had worked for years to improve his ability to cast his energy based illusionary environments-referred to by one quirky coach in the past as a âholodeckâ- speed was an element that he continued to struggle with. He began to cast a simple illusion of darkness, so as to blind Tristan, but he knew almost immediately that it wouldnât reach him in time. Then, out of the corner of his eye, he saw furry white movement. The miniature Hopcules had reappeared and was running towards the back of the chair Tristan had been sitting in. With a parkour maneuver that would make Jackie Chan jealous, Hopcules leapt from the floor to the chair, then from the chair to the rear wall. He torpedoed off of the wall with the force of both hind paws and made contact Tristanâs head, knocking the arrogant second year to the floor. He laid there dazed and confused about what had just struck him as his branches retracted and his arms returned to normal. The summon vanished before he even touched the ground.
Hannah smiled as she exited the room. Thanks be to the Gods. I was hoping that piece of shit would try something so I could have self-defense as an excuse. Kacey and Devon better be ready. Iâm already warmed up.
submitted by IamThe2ndBR to superpowereds [link] [comments]
âFucking bullshit cock-garglers!â, Hannah, formerly known as Hexcellent, uttered louder than she intended.
Luckily, she was sitting by herself in a third floor private room in the brand new wing of the Sizemore undergraduate library. On the main floor, any sound louder than a fart wouldâve earned a collective, âshhhhh,â and annoyed stares from half the people studying. And frankly, as difficult as these Gen Chem practice exams were, the former PEERS would be spitting out a few more expletives before she was done.
Hannah glanced at her watch and sighed heavily. It was 4:43 PM. She still had two and a half hours before sheâd need to head to the lift to meet Devon and Kacey, two other first year HCP students, for some evening training. Okay, you got this girl. You just fucked up some amped criminal supers, you can handle goddamn mass to mole composition formula and stoichiom-whatever-the-fuck, she thought to herself. With resigned determination, the HCP student began swiping through class presentation slides on her tablet, reviewing problems she had trouble with. For a solid 2 hours her eyes never left the material and she honestly started to feel more comfortable with what she needed to know. Hannah was in the zone. That was until she was interrupted by a knock on the door.
âWhat. The actual. Fuck?â, Hannah said slowly as she looked up towards the door and the adjacent window.
The summoner saw two boys standing outside , one of whom was a short muscular guy with dark brown hair that she recognized. She was fairly certain his name Lucas, and that he was another HCP first year. He was in the alternative class though, while Hannah was in combat, so they hadnât been around each other a whole hell of a lot. The other seemed familiar, but she couldnât put her finger or on where sheâd seen him before. They were each moving their mouths, and pointing a finger at themselves and into the room clearly asking if they could come in. Hannah got up and opened the door.
âHey, Helen, right? You think that we can study in here with you? All the good tables downstairs are full. I just met Tristan here and heâs in the same predicament as me,â said Lucas before he lowered his voice to a whisper, leaned his head in, and pointed to the boy he referred to as Tristan. âHeâs in the same ummmâŚspecial program as us. In his 2nd year.â
With that information, Hannah realized where sheâd seen that guy. He was at the freshman party hosted by the second years. She remembered thinking that he came off as kind of a douchebag by the way he was standing around, nursing the same drink with a smug look on his face the whole time.
âYeah, sure, whatever. As long as you guys dont act like complete assholes and make a bunch of noise. I gotta focus for about another 30 minutes then the room is yours. Cool?â
âCool,â the boys said in unison.
âAnd itâs Hannah by the way. Not Helen. Youâre Lucas, right?â She held out her hand towards him.
Lucas politely shook her hand. âSorry about that Hannah. Iâm terrible at remembering names,â he said with a slight shrug. âJust gonna grab a seat on this side so I can stay outta your way.â He held out his arm towards the opposite side of the table from where Hannah had been sitting and started walking over there.
Tristan walked in and closed the door behind himself. He gave Hannah a simple head nod and smirk but never formerly introduced himself. Very similar to his demeanor at the party; as though he couldnât be bothered.
Yep, arrogant douche, she thought. Then she pictured the look of surprise on the 2nd yearâs face if she were to manifest her big furry friend to accidentally-on-purpose kick him in the balls.
Hannah had often wondered if anyone in the HCP realized her summon was the same giant bunny that helped save Brewster almost a year ago. Titan had told her the DVA would hide any association between the tower-sized rabbit and her PEERS persona but she figured that once classmates saw her summon for the first time theyâd make the connection. That didnât seem to be the case though, at least as far as she knew. It helped that when she summoned Hopcules these days, he was about the same height and stature as Titan. None of her combat training took place outside yet, so no one in HCP got to see her manifestation at his full potential size. Heâd also taken on more humanistic facial expressions lately and had been appearing in a variety of different clothes and accessories. Hell, the last time she trained with Kacey, the hulking rabbit materialized in a denim vest, a blue bandanna on his head, metal spiked leather bracelets around his wrists, brass knuckles, and with gold chains around his neck. Kacey couldnât stop laughing during their sparring session until Hopcules had her bound and hog tied. Even with her enhanced strength, she couldnât break free of what evidently werenât just plain gold necklaces. It hadnât dawned on Hannah until later that, the night before, sheâd fallen asleep to an old 80s action flick about a renegade cop taking on a vicious street gang. She wondered if tonight her childhood protector would show up in a lab coat, holding a periodic table. The Sizemore freshman briefly shook her head to snap herself out of her thoughts and sat down to resume her work. Sheâd gotten fully back into her study mode untilâŚ
âYo, does sound carry out of this room?â Tristan asked.
âSeriously?! You do remember that whole bit about NOT being obnoxious assholes, right?âHannah asked incredulously.
âDamn girl chill. I just wanted to ask my guy here a question and didnât want to risk being overheard. You should smile more girl. You know what I mean?â
Relax. Breathe. You donât want to be seen as a troublemaker. It would not be a good idea to kick this fuckerâs ass while inside of the school library. Or would it be? No. No. Definitely not a good idea, she thought to herself.
âWell unless you two were standing outside of here practicing at being mimes as a back up in case you donât make it to graduation, Iâm pretty sure this room is well insulated to sound.â
Tristan grunted in indignation and sarcastically replied, âyouâre hilarious.â
âIâm definitely going all the way through. No way I wonât graduate,â Lucas chimed in, seemingly oblivious to the tension thatâd just arisen between the other two people in the room. Iâve known I wanted to be a hero ever since I was little. My parents have spent a fortune sending me to an elite training camp for the last seven summers to make sure Iâd be prepared as possible for the HCP. Plus Iâve had personal coaches work with me for years on new ways to use my power.â
âBro! Thatâs what I was wanting to ask you about. I saw the logo on on your bag. Holy shit, did you do the SETA training camps?â asked Tristan.
âYeah, I take it youâve heard of it.â
âHell yeah I have. The Super Elite Training Academy. Who hasnât? I hear those workouts are so intense. No wonder youâre so jacked. You mustâve been in great shape for your first day here. Mad props bro. Is it true you get to fight against human looking robotâŚâ
âHey! Tweedledum and tweedle-dickless, I honestly didnât know there was such a thing as a two-man circle jerk, so I really appreciate the show but is there any chance I can get back to work without any more distractions?â
Lucas had mixture surprise and guilt run across his face. He opened his mouth as though he was about to say something, but glanced over to Tristan and stayed silent.
âWhat? You mad because youâre realizing you canât stack up against the competition. Guess what. My guy here isnât the only one whoâs been preparing for this program long before he was admitted. Iâve been getting ready for years too. Trained in jiu-jitsu and boxing on top of honing my super abilities. Have you even done anything? Or did you just apply and cross your fingers?â
Hannah could see where this was going in. She decided in that moment to just let it play out. Fuck it, she thought. She was basically done studying. Even if she failed the final, which she was confident that she wouldnât, sheâd still pass the class. She stood up, pressed an icon on her tablet touchscreen and began putting other things away in her bag while she spoke. âActually, I never had any special training as a kid. To tell you the truth, I shouldnât even be here. I got into some trouble years ago. The kind of trouble that normally prevents one from getting admitted into an HCP. But, I was on a PEERS team for years and I got to do a lot ofâŚ
âHa! Youâre telling us youâre fucking a Corpie. Can you believe this, dude?â Tristan nudged Lucas, looking for his agreement. To his credit, Lucas appeared visibly uncomfortable and leaned away from the other boy.
âDonât know what it says about your class if theyâre letting Corpies in,â continued Tristan with a sneer. âI guess you really do need to study. Obviously youâre the one that needs a back up plan. And hereâs another thing little girl. Itâs not just about how much youâve trained beforehand, itâs also about who you know. And I know people. My momâs best friend is related to the Hero, Unseelie. So Iâve actually met a few Heroes who Iâm sure will vouch for me when the time comes. Pity you canât say the same. We all know Heroes donât give two shits about Corpies.â
For a moment Hannahâs face expressed a flat affect. Then suddenly she burst into laughter. And not just some derisive laugh as though she was trying to convey to Tristan that she didnât take his comments seriously. But an eye watering, oxygen depriving, honest to the Gods belly laugh. The kind of laugh that wouldâve been contagious had she been around friends. She carried on for a minute until her amusement died down to a just a mild chortle. Hannah wiped her eyes. âYou know people?â She started laughing again, even louder than the first time. âOh my Gods. Stop. Stop. I canât breathe. Is this your fucking power?â Hannah was bent over at the waist still laughing hysterically, holding out one finger as to communicate, âgive me a second.â After another minute, she wiped her eyes again, took a big gulp of air, and collected herself. âWoooh. Now that was some funny fucking shit.â
âWho in the hell do you thinkâŚâ Tristan started to say through gritted teeth.
âNo no no. Please donât get me started again. I donât think my ribs can take it,â said Hannah still chuckling some. âLetâs see what have I done and who do I know? You know I always knew that eventually Iâd tell people about this, I just didnât think it would go down like this.â The summoner raised her hand, then slowly curled it into a fist. Standing 3ft tall and leaning into the corner so as not to be visible to anyone who happened to be looking into the room at that moment, was Hopcules, adorned in the same armor heâd worn on the day he helped to save Brewster. âLook familiar to anyone?â
âThat looks like the giant rabbit that fought robots with Titan. Hare-a-clees or something like that. My little sister has like 5 of its t-shirts,â Lucas responded.
âWow kid, you really are shit with remembering names. Hop-cu-les is the name I gave him when I was just a child. Surprised the shit outta me that he came out the size of a skyscraper when those robots nearly killed me and my team, â Hannah stated nonchalantly as she waved her hand and made Hopcules fade away.
With a grudging realization, Tristan began to ask, âwait, youâre not actually sayingâŚâ
âOh look, captain mc-douche-nozzle is catching on. Somebody give the kid a prize. Yes, dumbass, Iâm actually saying I fought with Titan, yes, thee fucking Titan, with every other Hero team in Brewster to stop those mechs from destroying the entire city. Iâm saying the strongest hero alive is my personal mentor and it was his recommendation that got me into this program.â
Lucas looked back and forth between Hannah and Tristan having already realized that the sophomore might be one of those guys whoâd lash out over his perceived inferiority. Lucas was so curious though he had to ask, âbut⌠But, that rabbit is everywhere these days. Not just T-shirts. Toys, a cartoon, and I just read thereâs going to be a next-gen console video game based on his character. If you own the rights to that image, youâd be loaded.â
âEh,â Hannah said with shrug. âYoure leaving out the movie deal Lenny just got for me, but not something I talk about too much . It leaves me enough to be comfortable and to be able to donate a library wing to the university thats giving me a shot at being a hero.â Hannah responded. She gave Tristan a quick wink and glanced over her shoulder towards the door.
Tristan looked in the same direction and noticed something he hadnât bothered paying attention to before, a small engraving on the center of the door of a bipedal rabbit. This wouldâve been the most surprising thing that heâd seen since he set foot in the room if it wasnât for the photo that appeared on Hannahâs tablet now facing him. It was an image of five people: Graham De Soto, the new head of the DVA, Titan in his iconic Hero costume, Dean Jackson, a large muscular young man with a shit eating grin who Tristan didnât recognize, and another person in a generic gray mask, presumably female, and wearing a smile of malicious enjoyment, the same as the woman standing before him.
Hannah saw what caught his attention and picked up her tablet. âOh, did you notice this? I love this picture. Titan called me in for back up as a Temporary Emergency Hero Asset. We beat the shit out of a literal army of enhanced criminal supers and took this picture after everything calmed down. All the other HCP deans were there too. Mr. Desoto actually told me if I ever needed a favor, he owed me one.â Hannah wore a wistful expression as she thought back on that day with fondness.
âAnyway, I gotta get outta here. Sâposed to meet up with my training partners. Cause no matter what your background is or who you know, no one is a shoe-in for the final 10. Lucas, feel free to meet us in the combat cells tonight if you want to get a work out in and get tired of hanging out with this fuckwad. Later losers!â Hannah said this last part as she turned around and headed towards door while holding up her middle finger for all to see.
Tristan was obviously livid. His hands had been visibly shaking as he stood and listened to all the ways this 1st year had accomplished more than heâd even thought possible for student. Who does this little bitch think she is? Sheâs full of shit. She has to be. Iâll show her. From his elbows down, Tristanâs arms began to darken. In seconds the two appendages looked like small tree trunks, with his fingers elongating into barbed tendril-liked branches rapidly moving towards Hannah.
Although Lucas had worked for years to improve his ability to cast his energy based illusionary environments-referred to by one quirky coach in the past as a âholodeckâ- speed was an element that he continued to struggle with. He began to cast a simple illusion of darkness, so as to blind Tristan, but he knew almost immediately that it wouldnât reach him in time. Then, out of the corner of his eye, he saw furry white movement. The miniature Hopcules had reappeared and was running towards the back of the chair Tristan had been sitting in. With a parkour maneuver that would make Jackie Chan jealous, Hopcules leapt from the floor to the chair, then from the chair to the rear wall. He torpedoed off of the wall with the force of both hind paws and made contact Tristanâs head, knocking the arrogant second year to the floor. He laid there dazed and confused about what had just struck him as his branches retracted and his arms returned to normal. The summon vanished before he even touched the ground.
Hannah smiled as she exited the room. Thanks be to the Gods. I was hoping that piece of shit would try something so I could have self-defense as an excuse. Kacey and Devon better be ready. Iâm already warmed up.
2024.05.14 00:57 Artikay Quest 3 insists I play outside my window.
I just bought an app called Astra. I set up the boundry by scanning my floor and walls. Everything inside the headset matches what I see. The walls line up where they should be, the floor hight is right. It keeps detecting a giant box in the middle of my living room where there is nothing but everything else looks good.
But when I start the game it keeps dropping a cardboard box I need to interact with about 5 feet through my living room window, outside my play space.
I scanned my room twice over and it keeps putting the box past my window. The preview clearly shows that it thinks my curtain is a wall.
Is there something I can do to fix it?
submitted by Artikay to OculusQuest [link] [comments]
But when I start the game it keeps dropping a cardboard box I need to interact with about 5 feet through my living room window, outside my play space.
I scanned my room twice over and it keeps putting the box past my window. The preview clearly shows that it thinks my curtain is a wall.
Is there something I can do to fix it?
2024.05.14 00:56 BeefEater81 Toggle Bolts for Mounting 28-inch Monitor
We are adding a digital calendar to our kitchen. The place we've picked is a strip of wall about 25 inches wide and I purchased a 28-inch monitor (14.5 inches wide vertical) for this purpose.
The problem is, so far as I can tell, there are no studs in the middle of the space. One stud is about 6 inches to the right of the center point and another is about 10 inches to the left.
The monitor and other equipment weighs about 10 lbs, so it's not very heavy at all. My plan was to secure the vesa mount using two toggle bolts or even two SnapToggles.
I think I'm well below the weight rating for the toggle bolts but just curious if there are any other concerns I should consider before hanging the monitor this way.
submitted by BeefEater81 to DIY [link] [comments]
The problem is, so far as I can tell, there are no studs in the middle of the space. One stud is about 6 inches to the right of the center point and another is about 10 inches to the left.
The monitor and other equipment weighs about 10 lbs, so it's not very heavy at all. My plan was to secure the vesa mount using two toggle bolts or even two SnapToggles.
I think I'm well below the weight rating for the toggle bolts but just curious if there are any other concerns I should consider before hanging the monitor this way.