I'm preface this by saying that I love Rifftrax and MST3k before that. I've watched embarrassingly large amounts of both, probably more than what's his ass watched Family Ties reruns. I didn't read the book but the excerpts they shared made my brain ache. I will absolutely continue to listen. The podcast has also made me realize that Conor is a huge part of Rifftrax as I now feel like I can hear his sense of humor in the Rifftrax writing.
Ok, that all said, I couldn't help but notice that 372 was ragging hard on the book for making references simply for the sake of making references.... when that is a significant amount of Rifftrax writing as well. They went off about some "42" reference that got dropped in the book and I couldn't help but think about the "My friend Ford Prefect said I should carry this towel" riff. I couldn't tell you the amount of Macbeth riffs that come up whenever someone has a knife or washes their hands, and that one goes back to MST3k. Now certainly those references are often crafted into some kind of additional joke, but there are also occasions where it is simply a reference and nothing more. I feel that Rifftrax relies quite heavily on nostalgia, including nostalgia for itself (don't eye my lemon drink.)
372 also spent a fair amount of time criticizing the uses of idioms that they didn't feel would exist 40 years in the future. One example was "dead as a doornail", a phrase that has been around for more than six hundred years. Adding another 40 years doesn't seem that absurd.
Sorry for channeling my inner "well akshually" but I had to get this off my mind. Now I can drop it, move on and keep enjoying 372 and Rifftrax!

Previous part: 8.99.
​
One thing that I'm not getting here is why Vanessa is even a part of Vanny or Glitchtrap's situation since Double-V is true. I originally thought up Double-V, I was originally thinking that Vanessa and Vanny were sharing the role of "Vanny".
It's just one of them was more willing than the other to be a part of Glitcthtrap's machinations than the other. I didn't put too much thought into it, but it was something I wanted to look for until that Security Team revelation came about.
But now I'm left with this puzzle piece called Vanessa that I'm not quite sure what to do with now that I know that Vanny is an entirely separate person from her.
She has to be involved with Vanny and Gltichtrap somehow. Maybe the therapy tapes will help.

• CD 1-Therapist: — but a routine check of your online history has revealed that you spend quite a bit of time with someone in an encrypted conversation. We have transcripts, and I’ve read them, but it’s not clear what you’re talking about in these conversations. I can’t make sense of it. You must be getting something from these that I’m not getting. Right? Who are you talking to in these?

These are all things that would've pointed toward Glitchtrap if I didn't know better. So it's someone else doing this? Why and why her?

• CD 5-Therapist: — Apparently, the IT department has put together a pretty lengthy report chronicling non-job-related communications that have been coming to your computer. — what bothers me about what I read is that the messages you're getting seem very manipulative in nature. —You know who I'm talking about. What you might not know is that this person who's been sending you messages has been hacking into your personal files too.
• CD 5-Vanessa: Lots of people know more than I do. Sometimes I need to listen.

So Vanessa knows who's doing this to her. But she's been refusing to listen to them before and is now being worn down by the spamming messages sent to her. But the fact that she doesn't react to the news that they are digging into her personal life is very concerning!
Also, after going through Vanny's secret dialogue in Help Wanted, Vanessa's overall demeanor in both Security Breach and the Retro Cds clashes hard with Vanny's in both games. Where Vanny sounds and reads eager and nervous, Vanessa is defiant and reluctant with depressed undertones.
Is Vanessa really infected with Glitchtrap?
Yet now that I'm thinking about it, Glitchtrap has no need to do this as him sitting through Vanessa's therapy session with her would give him this info if she was infected. Who's ever doing this doesn't much about her, but would very much like to. Is it Vanny or Gregory...
Wait, hold on. Vanessa's first therapist mentioned that messages were encrypted and couldn't make out what the conversation was about. But the second therapist can understand these messages to know that they're manipulative in nature. Are these two different messengers?!
" I’ve read them, but it’s not clear what you’re talking about in these conversations**.** I can’t make sense of it. You must be getting something from these that I’m not getting." - The first Therapist
"but what bothers me about what I read is that the messages you're getting seem very manipulative in nature." - The second Therapist
What changed? Hmm... What exactly is an encrypted conversation? Maybe explaining that will help.
Encrypted text messaging is a method of secure communication that converts your messages into code. This means that only the recipient with the correct decryption key can read it. - Google
That sounds like what the first Therapist is referring to, but she mentions that they got the transcripts for it. Does that mean that got the code or the decryption key to read it? No, she says transcripts, which means the code itself.
But whatever the first Therapist saw in that transcript was legible enough to read and comprehend. This means the conversation wasn't in computer coding that would require someone in the tech field to decipher it, but just ordinary talk that's hard to understand what it's about.
Okay, that clears things up, they're still the same messenger.

• CD 11-Therapist: So, on your breaks, it looks like you were shopping for a costume. you purchased some fake fur material.
• CD 11- Vanessa: I can't talk about this. He said he would always be watching. He could be here or there or anywhere in between.
• CD 11-Therapist: No, that's not what I mean. You can't just ignore an issue. You have to face your memory of the experiences and process them so you can let it go. So you don't get triggered anymore. you can use this sort of self-dialogue to release these things
• CD 11-Vanessa: I don't like doing that.

This one conversation right here throws everything about Double-V out of whack. Why is Vanessa buying fake fur material? And for the very first time, we know the gender of who's messaging her along that he said that he would always be watching her.
Again the "he" here, and the "he will always be watching" part allude to Glitchtrap at first glance. And again, it can't be him because he should be within Vanessa since they merged in Help Wanted! Even if you dismissed the ending I proposed for Vanny and went with the ending where she gets locked up by Glitchtrap, it still wouldn't be him messaging her about watching here because he would be in her body!
And like I already said before, Vanessa has shown no memory problems or bodily control problems, which would've suggested Glitchtrap's control. No, this means that Gregory is doing all of this.
But why is he going after Vanessa? Geez, It's been a while since I even thought about his past before Security Breach. I forgot how much of a black hole of questions he is, regarding the lore. I'll give my updated thoughts about him after the Double-V revelation later.
For now, after going through all of Gregory's dialogue in Security Breach. It looks like he's not quite aware of the ongoings within the Pizzaplex and is shocked by the level of security can employ later in the night. There may actually be a hint of his hacker background in his dialogue if you squint. And Gregory has absolutely no idea what the rabbit laddy's name is until he gets to Fazerblast.
As for Gregory's involvement with Vanessa... Huh, that's weird. Gregory doesn't say Vanessa's name even once in Security Breach. Matter of fact, after the beginning sequence where Vanessa confronts Freddy about him, Gregory just stops talking about or even mentioning her for the rest of the game. This includes the confrontation that leads to her locking him up in Lost and Found and after it...
No matter how you slice it, Gregory's silence about her is super loud with alarm bells. Sure, he dismisses her as working with Vanny in the beginning, but it shouldn't mean that she should be an afterthought to him! Like, Gregory only talks about or mentions "the rabbit lady" after the beginning of the game.
In fact, if we were to rank every important character that Gregory talks about or mentions in his dialogue for Security Breach from most to least, it would look like this.

1. Freddy - 33 times
2. Vanny - 6 times
3. Chica - 6 times
4. Roxy - 4 times
5. Monty - 3 times
6. Moon - 3 times
7. Vanessa - 3 times
8. Burntrap - 1 time

That's absurd! Especially since she's the only other human worker in the Pizzaplex, besides Vanny, who encounters and confronts him. Like, he doesn't even try to communicate with her at all during the entire game!
Even when discovering Vanny's hideout in Fazerblast and Freddy suggests that Vanny is Vanessa due to deduceing Vanny's name being a combination of Vanessa + Bunny, Gregory remains silent about it! No, "Oh maybe you're right." or "That sounds too simple to be right", but instead there's no response to what might be the identity of your pursuer!
It's like he doesn't want to talk about her...
He knows her, he has to know Vanessa! Yet, he said, "I don't know who she is, but she's trying to get me!" to Freddy. Is he lying? No, he just knows about her.

• CD 14-Therapist: —They report that they've caught you on camera, or at least it appears to be you. — Well the techs are convinced that you've hacked into their system many times. — the electronics you like? I saw in your file that you have developed software programs that talk to you and repeat phrases, right? The program asks you questions and prompts you for responses. It's kind of like your own self therapy, isn't it? Another way of talking to yourself to work things out, right? When I saw some of your recent encrypted conversation logs, that's what I thought I was looking at. It felt like I was watching someone go back and forth in their own head, but the text found something that's different than that. When I read what they found, at first I thought I was looking at more examples of you just talking with yourself. Then I realized it was different. When I study this, it sounds like there is someone else responding to you. Who is it?

This is either hinting towards Gregory talking directly to Vanessa or Glitchtrap. But something that confuses me is why the therapist has or even be able to see Gregory's encrypted conversation logs?
I'll admit that I'm ignorant about therapy, but should your therapist have access to stuff you created outside of therapy? Unless Gregory created the program on a computer in therapy. It could explain how he's gotten access to Vanessa's files. But I'll drop that talk for now.
Something that's being made clear to me now is that Vanessa is not as connected to the villains as Gregory is, as she's more surprised by the changing of therapist than he is. In fact, Gregory knows why the therapists are disappearing, knows exactly when the therapists do something that would cause them to disappear, and doesn't seem upset when they show up mangled and dead.
But more than anything, Gregory knew Vanny long before Security Breach started. There's no reason why Gregory would know Vanny has enough control over the Pizzaplex to cut off Freddy from the network, in just one encounter. If anything, he should have assumed she was some weirdo stranger in the Pizzaplex that the security and the police needed to take care of.
But he already knew that Vanny had power in the Pizzaplex, maybe not the full scope, but enough to know that if she and he ever came into conflict with one another that ended with her wanting to hurt him then he needed to get out of the Pizzaplex.
Funnily enough, this actually lines up with the first-ever trailer for Security Breach, where Vanny says: "Gregory, I may have lost my temper earlier. But it was just a glitch!" Which implies they talking neutrally before whatever made Vanny lose her temper." Again, I'm not using this as evidence as it's been cut, instead, I'm suggesting that the idea might have merit.

• CD-Therapist: — I have this still shot the techs pulled from the security footage that recorded you in the pizzaplex. That's you, isn't it? I know this image is distorted but I think it looks like you. And you're not alone here. You're talking to someone, or something. it's hard to tell. What are those things? They almost look like rabbit ears. What? You find that amusing? Well I guess it is.

I had always flipped-flopped between the mysterious person being either Glamrock Bonnie or Vanny. Both are connected to Glitchtrap, so either would fit here as Glitchtrap wouldn't be captured by a camera. But with the new evidence I've discovered, Vanny fits as Gregory's mysterious rabbit correspondent in the Pizzaplex.
But what about Vanessa? Is Gregory hacking into her files or is it Vanny and Glitchtrap? Or perhaps Gregory is hacking into her files on behalf of Glitchtrap and Vanny. Either way, Vanessa is getting dragged into Gregory and the Villian's group chat.
Speaking of the therapy, if we take into account the Retro-CD's numbering system the first two numbers are the patient ID number, and the last two numbers are the number of times both Gregory and Vanessa have been to therapy, then we can uncover some invaluable information.
Gregory has been in therapy longer than Vanessa and he was also in therapy before her too. But combining this CD's numbering system with a theory from the Talesbook story, GGY, that Gregory only goes to therapy on Sunday. Then Gregory has been going to therapy for a year and a half.
And if Vanessa is following the weekly therapy session pattern, then she's only been going to it for a little more than half a year. This means she started her therapy just about after Gregory hit his half-year mark for therapy. In addition to all that, Vanessa stopped going to therapy once she was transferred to a new location and never met the fourth and final therapist of the CDs.
Just something you all should keep in mind.
But Gregory definitely knows about her at the very least. That knowledge, I guess, is the reason why he's so shocked to see her face under Vanny's mask in the "To The Rooftop" ending. He knows that Vanessa and Vanny are two different people, but doesn't know that they look alike because he never encountered Vanny before Security Breach without her mask or costume.
On the subject of costumes, I still got no answer for Vanessa's purchase of fake animal fur or what's even happening with her now.
To be honest, this would be so simple and easy if Vanessa was just Vanny. But like as I have shown many times before in both this series and the previous one, simple and easy answers are not always the correct ones.
So, instead of looking for signs of the villain's goal with Vanessa in the lore. Let's look at the similarities and differences between the double Vs.
Vanessa's characteristics are.

• Depressed
• Has anxiety issues
• Tired (It's something that has been mentioned by the first and third therapists in CD-1 and CD-10. But seems to have more to do with the messages she's getting than how she usually is.)
• Likes the blue sky
• Likes to sit outside and read
• Watchful about her calorie intake
• Likes flowers or at least the sweet smell of them
• Doesn't like dark basements
• Oh, and hates kids

Vanny's characteristics are.

• Loves Pizza, especially pepperoni (Huh, no wonder she likes Chica)
• Absolutely, does not care about her calorie intake or a healthy diet (Seriously, Girl has gone full gamer mode with the amount of Fizzy Faz, straw drinks, and pizza boxes in areas with her presence in them)
• Hobbies in painting or graffiti
• Likes or used to like Glitchtrap or maybe William Afton (I talk about this in the secret ending)
• Loves Fazbear Entertainment (Vanny uses red spray paint in Ruin and has drawn two hearts on the FAZ ENT. Logo in the main Lobby)
• Likes Toy Chica
• Likes the Daycare Attendant (She seems to be fond of Moon more)
• Likes to read, or at least, read about the World History of Fazbear Entertainment
• Likes Flowers, a specific species of them(that I can't determine right now)
• Likes summer
• Is a mechanic or roboticist or both (She making something in Ruin Fazerblast and has turned Ruin Monty into her lapdog among other things)
• Super lazy (This one may or may not be true, but unless there's a good reason why she refuses to clean up her room in Fazer Blast, this is staying right here as far as I'm concerned)

Wow, I did not realize we already knew this much about Vanny just from the environment storytelling of the games until I listed them!
Anyway, as you can see, there are some very similar likes between the two and very stark differences in traits as well. I'm not about to list them to save word space, but instead, I want to answer a question. Could Vanessa still be Vanny despite their differences? This isn't so much for me, but for the people who believe Vanny = Vanessa despite my Double-V evidence.
At first, I thought there might've been a chance for that as they both like flowers, to read, and enjoy the outside, or at least the summer in Vanny's case. But now, after listing everything out they're just too different to say they're the same.
Even if we say that Vanny's love of pizza, general bad diet, and trashy room is the result of Vanessa coping with her depression and her situation with Glitchtrap and that her graffiti is the by-product of therapy, along with her interest in growing flowers. That doesn't negate the fact that in Ruin when given the chance to express her anxiety, Vanny doesn't take it.
If you don't know, on the wall where Vanny drew her face next to a slice of pizza in the main lobby near the Superstar Daycare entrance, there is a painted graph. The artist who made the graph also wrote on the right side of it; "TAG YOURSELF".
On all four sides of the graph, the artist made the furthest sides of them represent something. The top Y-axis is Wizard, the bottom Y-axis is Cedar the left X-axis is Filled with a word that ends in a y, and the right X-axis is Filled with anxiety.
What this graph is showing, or what the artist trying to convey with it, is that each of the four points represents not quite the opposite thing but the furthest thing from each other. Of which, Vanny decided to tag herself on the furthest left X-axis, not the right.
This tells us that Vanny feels the furthest thing from anxiety. Something Vanessa, no matter if she's under Glitchtrap's control or not, would be constantly feeling as she suffers from it.
As for what she's feeling, I don't know, the word on the left graph is unreadable and covered by Vanny's face to make it almost impossible to decipher. But what I do know without a doubt, is that Vanny and Vanessa are indeed, two different people with some common likes and polar opposite traits.
So after everything I've talked about in the last three? four? However many parts I've been going over Double-V, what is the best possible answer for the "To The Rooftop" ending stinger. Why do Vanny and Vanessa look alike?
I tried, I really did. I looked for as much possible evidence for anything that doesn't just make me give up and say "She's a Fazgoo clone!" or "She's a robot!"
If Vanny was a stranger who mimicked Vanessa's face, then that's cool and horrifying, but only where it concerns Vanessa herself. (The horrifying part, not the cool part.) It doesn't give us reasons why she would do it in the first place or a way to connect it to the greater lore and Glitchtrap, besides she's a human Mimic. Basically, it lacks motivation from everyone in the Villian party.
So it leaves me with no other conclusion except for one.
Back when the marketing for Security Breach was building up to its release. Steel Wool released four old Freddy cartoon episodes on their YouTube channel. Each episode hides a teaser image for the lore, including a character from the games with words, along with a character stinger at the end.
The last carton, which is the most distorted one, just so happened to include Vanessa as the hidden teaser, and Vanny as the character stinger at the end. And before you all jump the gun, previous episodes have already established that the hidden character teasers have no correlation to the ending Character stinger.
Now, the words in the Vanessa teaser image are quite interesting. It includes "Test and Rat" in the upper right corner, "Pool" in the bottom left corner, and "Bleak Reactant".
Test and Rat could be Test rat or Laboratory rat (Lab rat) as in the species of rat that are bred and kept for scientific research. Lab rat here can also be referring to Vanessa being a lab rat for the villain's experiment for something.
Using that explanation, "Pool" would then mean group or pool of people, which means number of people available for an organization or group to use. So Pool would mean that Vanessa was chosen out of all the Fazbear employees or people in general to be used for the experiment.
This leaves us with Bleak Reactant, which the definition of reactant is a substance that takes part in and experiences change during a reaction, while the definition of bleak could mean lacking vegetation (an area of land), dreary (a room), miserable(the weather), or unfavorable (outcome.)
All of this together means that Vanessa was chosen by the villains out of a group of people to be used for an experiment. An experiment of a change in Vanessa that predicted an unfavorable outcome for the villains.
Vanessa was going to be the next Vanny or maybe something else.
That gives a reason why the villains were so interested in her, why she would be shopping for a costume, why she would be at the Pizzaplex, and why she would be still connected to the villains when someone else is Vanny.
But the reason she was chosen in the first place, why her out of a group of people that might've included Gregory in it too, is because the one who chose her was her own twin sister.
If anyone remembers my only Ruin theory then you would remember my mentioning of Glitchtrap's and Vanny's conversation from Scott's website from a Security Breach poster.
Glitchtrap: "Stay the course."
Vanny: "I will."
Glitchtrap: "Focus on my voice."
Vanny: "I will."
Glitchtrap: "Don't let anyone lead you astray."
Vanny: “I won't.”
Glitchtrap: "Have you selected one?"
Vanny: "I have."
In my theory, I proposed that Gregory was the one that Vanny mentioned selecting here. But now, with all the revelations and new information gained, I believe Vanessa works better here. Vanny would've chosen someone for an experiment that she personally knew of or gotten to know, and who better than her own sibling that she grew up with.
Remember, Vanny is just starting out in her following of Glitchtrap. So would be new to the whole evil thing. And most of the time, the people close to you are the ones that would most likely commit a crime against you.
As for the twin sister thing, it actually didn't come from the "To The Rooftop" ending, but a discussion from the GTlive stream where Mat hosted a little get-together with some of the FNAF YouTuber theorists after Security Breach. There, John Fuhnaff suggested the idea for it from the VR Sisters boss from the Security Breach game Scott made when Security Breach got delayed again.
It's something that I saw some merit in after I discovered the Vanny ≠ Vanessa and after disproving in my head that Vanny wasn't Tape Girl either. The best part of the twin sister thing is that there's no need to throw out all that we know from Vanessa's therapy sessions as they both share the divorced parent's backstory.
As for which is the order twin between the two, I believe Vanessa is the oldest since it makes sense that her father would use the oldest to testify against their mother as she would better understand his instructions. Plus it provides a potential grudge from Vanny to Vanessa for what happened to their mother and a misguided parental affection for Glitchtrap. Unless Vanny's just a fangirl of William Afton, which could be the case.
Also, this means that the reason Vanessa looks the way she does in "To The Rooftop" end credits is because she looking at her dead sister. Oof, I realized that this also means she would've been the one who finds what's left of her in the "Disassemble Vanny" ending too. No wonder Faz Ent. is temporarily closed if they find that one employee is disassembled and the other one is having a mental breakdown from it in the morning.
But what about the "Redemption" ending? We know that by beating PQ3 both Glitchtrap and Vanny are defeated in it. What happens to her then? Where did she go? Hmm... I'm not sure.
What happens when someone is unmerged after being merged for a long time? Unlike Vanessa, we know that Vanny lives in the Pizzaplex. Even by Ruin and Help Wanted 2, she's still living in the building despite its condition so she probably needs time to think and process what happened to her and what's she done. Oh, and therapy. And a house.
But I think that just about wraps everything up for— Wait, HW2's Candy Cadet story! I forgot all about it! I know some people mentioned that the second story had to do with Vanessa, Gregory, and Gltichtrap. Let me skim through that real quick for clues.
Oh. Oh, that's really interesting... But it along with the Jeremy and the Memory dolls can wait until after next time. Sorry for the little to no pictures, I needed space to fit everything in one post and wanted to get everything about Double-V out of the way before I go on hiatus.
Don't worry it has nothing to do with burnout. It won't be too long either, though knowing my track record when saying that, you probably don't believe me.
Truth is, I've been severely neglecting my YouTube channel, and should really start catching up the YouTube version of my series with the online version. Plus, I've got more "Prove it!" to work on.
But most important of all, my birthday is coming up, and I don't want to work, think, or have anything to do with my FNAF stuff on that day. So! Feel free to read and become full with these last Parts until I come back with more.

Please do not use any of my details anywhere on the internet
TL;DR: how to you set conversational boundaries with well-meaning, yet nosy rosy busybodies after you have undergone a traumatic event in your life and are desperately trying to move on?
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Hello - seeking advice b/c I'm at my wits end regarding a circumstance and am struggling to handle it in the moment. Here goes:
Last year, my husband and I went through something very traumatic and public. Let's just say we were fairly well known in our mid-sized community b/c we were in a public facing business whom everyone loved. We are no longer in this business due to a nasty and terrible family fallout. This news shocked and rocked our community, and the pain we have from this ordeal is palpable even almost a year later. The details surrounding the reason for our departure are nearly unbelievable and horrifying, but most people in our community either have a firm grip on what happened by connecting the dots on their own, or figured we closed due to unrelated reasons - we have kept it classy and not publicly divulged many details regarding this schism - we tell our close friends what happened, but the public at large does not need to be looped into our family drama in our opinion - that would only serve to reflect poorly on us tbh. We are letting karma do the heavy lifting on the family members that did us dirty, and so far it's doing a truly spectacular job :)
Since this abrupt upset in our lives transpired, our capacity for social outings is virtually nil b/c of the overwhelming amount of conversations regarding our ordeal - it's all people feel they can talk to us about, therefore we rarely leave our house. Largely, people want to reminisce and express their gratitude to us, which I completely understand that their hearts are in the right place, but they are not realizing how painful it is for us to talk about this subject b/c each conversation forces us to relive this awful decision we were forced to make. If it's not kind words about the business we had and what a tragedy it was that we closed, it's very pointed questions such as what we are up to, what's next for us etc. We are still recovering from all of this and taking time off, and frankly, we owe no one any explanations on the details of our lives. It feels so objectifying for people to approach us like this b/c we feel like if they were genuinely concerned about our wellbeing, they would simply ask us how we have been, are we happy, and state that it's great to see us out and about.
We tried an "elevator speech" for a while, but boy do people have nerve - they still press on and ask the most invasive questions even after we feel that we have made it obvious we don't wish to discuss this any further. Ffwd to last night when we were in a social situation where we left early due to nonstop conversations surrounding our situation (there was a recent development that threw the situation front and center yet again, and it's now a hot topic after a period of dormancy). After about oh, the 20th person came up to us and launched in about it all, we just had to leave b/c we couldn't take it anymore - it's a broken record/ infinity loop, and the ultimate good time killer for us - it ruins our mood and it's just easier to duck out vs deal with this BS.
So. With all that said: what are some effective and polite phrases we can have in our arsenal to whip out in these circumstances? We don't want to be rude and make anyone feel shameful for asking us questions, b/c most of the curious people are folks we genuinely like on an acquaintance level, but we need some tools to shut the convo down - do we use humor, do we just say we are trying to move on - what? We know we can't keep living this way, which is avoiding social outings altogether, or even considering moving to a different city so we are not faced with this every single time we are out there trying to live our new normal.
I feel like there have to be alternative solutions that I am unable to think up b/c of the intense emotions I'm experiencing about it all, so I can't see things clearly/logically even if I tried.
Thanks so much!

My hands are trembling to the point where I've had to restart this several times. I'm a guy who doesn't scare easily, but this encounter has me shaking like a hit dog. I'm still sitting in my work truck, trying to work up the courage to step outside again. Worse, I'm trying to figure out how I'm going to tell my boss what happened. I was already on thin ice with him, and this shit might cause me to break through to the freezing water below.
But fuck it, because this was weird.
I install cable for a living. I didn't have dreams of stringing cable when I was a little kid, but my previous life choices left me with few options. In high school, I fell in with the wrong crowd. It started with skipping school, sneaking alcohol at weekend parties, and some petty theft, but it didn't stay that way for long. Soon, I dropped out and dedicated my life to committing robberies to pay for my pill addiction. I wasn't living as much as I was running on a treadmill. I did whatever I could to stay on my feet but constantly felt myself slipping.
My bottom came when I was jumped by two guys who sold me pills. I had bought from them before and trusted them, but the feeling was not mutual. Someone had dimed a buddy of theirs out to the police, and he was looking at real jail time. They assumed it was me and beat me senseless.
I was greeted at the door with a punch to the jaw that sent me reeling. My brain, already addled and slowed by Oxi, was in the middle of putting together what was happening when the next punch caught me in the temple. I collapsed to the ground and covered my neck and face as best as I could. The next few minutes were a flurry of punches, kicks, and stomps. When it was all over, I had a broken jaw, a shattered wrist, several wounds that required fifty total stitches, and a concussion.
That's how I kicked my painkiller addiction.
I can joke now, but the next six months were the hardest in my life. The withdrawals I had were the worst thing I've ever experienced. Having them while I was recuperating from my injuries was a circle of hell I didn't think existed. I wanted to die most days and felt lost in the darkness. But sobriety was the beacon on the horizon. Even during my darkest moments, I could still see the fuzzy spark of white light off in the distance. It kept me going. Six months from my beat-down day, I came out the other side healthier but weaker.
I needed a job but had limited skills. Thankfully, I had a former pill buddy who managed to keep steady employment with the cable company. We always got along, and he called in a few favors and hooked me up. I got hired, but it was a struggle. Not the work, which was easy to learn, but dealing with the public without telling them to fuck off. Worse, was trying to avoid the flood of illegal substances that are around you at all times. Customers will offer you weed or pills for all the channels, or bored co-workers will have something to "make the day pass by." It's a lot to dodge, especially if you're in recovery. Whenever I felt the itch again, I'd feel the scar tissue from my wrist surgery, and the itch would pass.
The last week has been one of those "Shit, is it Friday yet?" weeks that seem to be growing in frequency these days. I don't want to bore you with the details, but needless to say, most nights, I needed to reach out to my sponsor and have them talk me off the ledge. We recently had a turnover at the executive level, and my new boss Rory was a tremendous cock. A rager at levels science hasn't ever seen before. Just the worst dude imaginable.
Part of Rory's new crusade was coming in and firing a bunch of guys. The company called it "checking for redundancies in the labor force," but we all knew what it was. He was picking off two classes of people: high earners and guys with spotty pasts. I was in the latter group and imagined it was just a matter of time before my number got pulled. I was on pins and needles all week. I made sure I was the greatest cable installer you'd ever meet. So far, I was getting high marks but the forced joviality was wearing thin.
It's safe to say my joy had left on a one-way ticket. I have no clue when—or if—she'd return.
Back to this shit. I had just finished up my last job of the day when my work phone started buzzing. I cursed and thought about not answering, but the threat of unemployment loomed too large for me to do that. I picked up and knew from the jump my day was far from over. Denise from dispatch asked if I could cover a job left hanging because of "scheduling conflicts" (see: the original installer had been let go). It was near where I was and was a simple install.
I gritted my teeth and agreed. I liked Denise and knew she was worried about the hammer falling on her, too. She thanked me profusely, and promised to bring me cookies tomorrow. Since she's a hellcat in the kitchen and getting close to a dispatcher never hurts, I said no worries. I hung up, balled up my jacket, and screamed into it. I felt better after that.
981 Maple Street was about five minutes away, but it felt like a world away. Maple Street was at the end of the neighborhood where large swaths of grass fields faded into a thicket of woods. The woods rose up into the foothills until they graduated to mountains. To borrow a phrase from Shel Silverstein, the house resided where the sidewalk ends.
The house, an off-white birdhouse ranch type, was a little run-down but no worse than any of the others that populated this neighborhood. This place had been hit hard by economic times, and property values had plummeted. It was slowly recovering. In five years, this would be a place most current residents wouldn’t be able to afford. The front yard had a large oak tree that looked amazing but had killed the grass under its canopy. The rest of the yard looked well cared for.
I knocked and heard a few voices talking on the other side of the door. It opened, and a man in his late 40s stood there with a steaming cup of coffee in one hand. He was tall and thin, save for a middle-aged paunch. His face was starting to crinkle at the edges, but he was southern California middle-aged, which meant he was holding up pretty well. He did look tired, though—the bags under his eyes were full-on steamer trunks.
"You with the cable company?" he asked, knowing I was.
I nodded. "You requested an install, right?"
"Yes, I did. Please, come in."
He opened the door wide, and I walked in. The house was pretty bare with a bachelor pad aesthetic. That didn't make much sense since I heard a female voice talking to him. I assumed it was his wife. I believe in a lot of wild shit, but to think that a wife would be fine with their house decorated like a 23-year-old bachelor lived there was a bridge too far.
"I'm Tom," the guy said, extending his hand. I shook it. "What did you need from my end?"
"Do you know if there was a previous hookup here?"
"Ugh, yeah. There is one in this room and another in the back bedroom."
"Okay. I should put the modem in a spot that'll hit the whole house. The signal can get wonky if it's in a room behind a wall or bricks or anything."
"This room is probably the best spot then," he said.
"Perfect. I have to get under the house, check the old connections, and replace some parts. Where's your hatch to get under the house?"
"Oh, it's around back. You can exit out this side door and walk through the backyard. It's on the eastern side. You might need a screwdriver to remove the grate. Do you need one?"
I pulled a screwdriver from my pocket and showed him. "I should be good. Thank you, though."
"I should've guessed you'd have one."
"I appreciate your concern. Is there anything in the backyard I should be worried about? Dogs? Kids? Wild dogs? Wild kids?"
It was standard banter, and it always got a chuckle out of people. Same thing happened here. "Nothing to worry about," he said. "You should be good."
"Alright. I'll get started so you can get online as soon as possible."
"Great! If you need anything, I'll be doing some work in the back bedroom."
I nodded and headed for the side door. The dining room door led to the pie wedge-shaped backyard, which was larger in the back than the front made it look. The grass was as cooked as its kin in the front, but islands of green weeds seemed to be thriving. In the corner of the lot, an old metal shed stood, rusted to the point where I assumed divine intervention kept it standing. It seemed to have been there since the house had been built – or maybe several decades before.
When I turned the corner of the house, I spotted a woman and child staring into the corner of the yard, their backs facing me. The Woman wore a faded blue dress that fit her well. Tom had, it seemed, out-kicked his coverage with her. I didn't want to startle them, so I offered a friendly "hello" to the pair. The kid started to turn, but the mother placed a hand on their shoulder and kept their heads facing away from me. I squinted along the treeline, trying to see what they were concentrating on, but I didn't see anything unusual.
Just wanting to be done with the job, I let them be and moved on. I turned another corner to the house's short side and spotted the grate leading to the crawlspace. The grate looked as old as the shed, and I wasn't sure I would even need the screwdriver to open it. Hell, I was sure the thing would disintegrate in my hands as soon as I touched it.
I crouched and was about to pull it off when I heard something rustling near me. I glanced back to where I had seen the mom and kid, but they were gone. I assumed I had heard them leaving. I pulled the grate off – I was right, no screwdriver necessary – and as I set it aside, something caught my attention out of the corner of my eye.
It was the kid. A boy around eight or so. But they weren't staring at me exactly. They were looking away from me, staring up at the roof line. I found it odd. Clearly, the kid wanted to talk to me but had turned their back on me. I coughed to let them know that I knew they were there, but they didn't respond.
"Hey man, what's up there?" I said.
"Nothing nice," he said, still keeping their gaze away from me.
"Oh," I said, "Not going to hurt me, is it?"
"Maybe," he said.
Not the answer I was expecting. "What is it?"
"They told me you'd know soon enough."
As he said that, I felt something crawling across my hand. I pulled my hand away from the house and shook it. I saw a spider land in a pile of leaves and scurry away. I let out a nervous laugh. I'm not scared of spiders or anything, but the shock of being told some unseen thing was watching me and didn't look pleased, coupled with the sensation of something on my skin, was enough to justify a quickened heartbeat.
I looked back at where the kid had been standing, but he was gone. I chalked it up to kids being little weirdos and went back to work. The faster I could get this installation done, the quicker I could go home and smoke a bowl. I let Kush be my guide. I put up my hood, turned on my small flashlight, and shimmied through the opening under the house.
I know guys who've worked for the company for years and still dread going into a crawl space. Granted, it's not my favorite thing to do, but I don't mind either. The bugs can be a nuisance but if you don't bother them, they tend to not bother you. Same with rats and mice. Raccoons, though? I crawl out and call animal control. Those little dudes are cute but nasty as all get out. My path today was nothing but cobwebs, so I was okay.
I flashed my light around and saw where the cable line went up into the living room floor. My job here was to ensure the coaxial line's integrity was still good. If it had been chewed on or anything, I'd replace it. Sometimes, I just replaced it anyway—saving myself a potential job later down the line.
I crawled over to where the line came in from the pedestal and started my once-over. I not only looked for any damage but also ran the line through my hands to make sure my eyes didn't miss anything. I was under the dining room area when I heard that side door close.
I stopped. Tom said something, but it was muffled. I wanted to be nosy, so I waited a beat to hear if anyone spoke back to him. Someone did. It was soft and quiet – I assumed it was the Boy – and I didn't make out what they asked, but I did hear Tom's response. In a firm voice, he said, "No, not right now. Run along."
There were footsteps over me that faded into another section of the home. Tom said, "He always wants to jump the gun. How many times do I have to tell him?"
I suppressed a laugh at the last line. It's the official father's lament. I kept moving my hand down the line and didn't feel nicks along the cable. In fact, on closer inspection, the line looked almost new. I was planning to change it, but this looked like it had been installed last week.
I could hear someone walk into the living room as I reached the spot where the line went through the house. Another pair of footsteps followed the first, and I heard a breathy but detached woman's voice ask, "Can we show our faces now?"
"I just told the boy 'no.' What makes you any different?" Tom said, an edge to his voice.
A chill raced through my body. I knew those words, but this conversation made me feel like I spoke another language. Can we show our faces? Why would you not?
"Do you think he'll see us?"
"If I have my way," he said, not finishing that thought. "Leave me be. I must try to get some things done before he leaves, and you two keep bothering me."
What did Tom mean to get some things done before I left? What did he have in mind? While trying to process all this, I heard something shuffle in the darkness just beyond my flashlight beam. I moved it around, trying to see the telltale glowing eyes of varmints, but nothing flashed back at me.
I heard something shuffling again, this time down by my feet. I cocked my head as best as I could and shone the flashlight into that corner of the house but, again, there wasn't anything else down here but me and a thousand spiders. I sighed and finished my inspection of the wire.
As I turned to crawl back out from under the house, I heard somebody sneaking around on the floor above me. The wood groaned as the person moved slowly. I wasn't sure what they were doing, but they wanted to keep it a secret. A shadow fell over the pinprick of light from where the cable went into the house. Someone was standing over it.
"Can you hear them down there? Moving in the dark?" It was the Boy. “They like the dark.”
"What are you saying?"
"The little shadows," he said, "They live down there. Do you hear them?"
This kid was creepy as hell. "I, ugh, I can't hear you, dude," I said, inching my body away from the wire, "We can talk inside."
"They're going to get you, but that's okay," he said, "It only hurts for a little bit, and then you're fine."
Fuck. That. I had no desire to respond to that nightmare of a statement. I hastened my inch-worming, heading back towards the open hatch. As I did, I heard more movement in the darkness around me. I tried to ignore it, but it was a fool's gambit. It was impossible to ignore.
I was getting closer to the opening when I saw a pair of tiny legs walk in front of the hatch. It was the Boy. How did he get there so quickly and without me hearing him run on the floor? I didn't have time to run through the scientific method because the Boy leaned down and placed the metal grate back over the hatch.
"Hey! Hey!" I yelled. "I'm still under here!"
The Boy didn't stop. Instead, he placed a trashcan in front of the grate, enshrouding the entire crawlspace in darkness and trapping me inside.
"Hey! I need you to move that!" I screamed. No response. I raised my fist as high as possible and punched the floor above me to hopefully get Tom’s attention. That was a mistake, as I managed to punch straight into an old nail. I felt it puncture in between my knuckles. The pain was instant, and I let out a howl.
I shook my hand and swore a blue streak. I reached up with my other hand, felt the tip of the nail I had managed to punch, and found a flat spot next to it. I banged hard on the floor and yelled again for some help. Nobody responded. Not at first.
Then I heard someone chuckle under the house.
I couldn't locate where it had come from because it sounded like it was all around me. I swung my light around as best as I could but didn't see anything. No glowing eyes, nothing. I inched forward a bit, and someone laughed again – this time, it was to my right. I turned my light in that direction and saw a sudden flood of light fill the space under the house.
"What the hell?" I said, my desire to leave overtaken by a desire to know what was unfolding next to me.
A pair of kid legs dropped down from the hole in the floor. I realized then that the hole must be an interior crawlspace. The kid had blocked off the metal grate and opened this hatch for some reason. While he dropped his legs down, he didn't move any further.
"Hey, you have to open that metal grate," I yelled. "I don't want to be trapped down here."
"They told me they needed you," he said, followed by a slight chuckle.
"What the fuck are you talking about?" I said, not caring that I was talking to a child. "Open the goddamn grate!"
"The shadows are approaching," he said, pulling himself back into the house. He placed the lid back on the hole, and I was trapped in the dark again. I cursed to myself and started pounding on the floor again.
"Hey! Someone come help me!"
That's when I felt something run across my legs. I nearly jumped out of my skin. It didn't feel like the tiny claws of a passing rat. It was cold to the touch, but as it hit my skin, I felt a burn in my bones. It's hard to explain, but I felt both extremes simultaneously. Whatever it was skittered off into the darkness of the other side of the crawl space.
The kid started laughing again, which brought me back to reality. I army crawled as fast as I could to the grate. I balled up my fist and punched in the middle of the metal. The blow knocked the old nails out of the wall, and the grate broke up. I was about to push away the garbage can when it suddenly wheeled out of the way.
I saw Tom's legs standing there.
"You okay?" he asked, concern in his voice.
I got out from under the house so fast that I left a me-sized dirt cloud in my place. Once out, I shook my body loose as if I had things crawling all over me. Tom watched but didn't say anything at first. We finally locked eyes, and he could see the rage, fear, and confusion on my face. He wisely waited until I spoke first.
"What the hell is wrong with your kid? He blocked me under there and taunted me from the indoor crawlspace."
"What are you talking about?"
"He told me the shadow people or something were watching, and then he blocked me under the house!"
Tom's face twisted up into confusion. "I...I don't understand."
"I can't make it any simpler, Tom!" I screamed, letting unprofessionalism take root.
"I don't have a kid."
It hit me like an Ali right cross. My vision got dizzy, and I struggled to catch my breath. I stared at his face, looking for the sign of a lie or a joke, but he was as stone-faced as an Easter Island statue. After a beat, I found my sense again. "I heard you talking to him in the living room when I was under the house."
"One, I was on a phone call. Two, are you spying on me? What the hell, man?"
"I wasn't spying, and you weren't on the phone," I said. I also heard you talking to your wife. She asked you if she could show her face or something."
"I don't have a wife either."
I shook my head. "I fucking saw them in the backyard! They were staring at the fence!"
Tom paused and cocked his head to the side. When he spoke, it was softly, trying to calm me down. "Are you...did you have a few drinks before the appointment? Or a pill or something? No judging – I know pill heads. I won't report you or anything, but I understand if you need to come back tomorrow with a clearer head."
"I'm sober," I said, gritting my teeth. "But I know what I saw. What I heard."
"As the tree said to the lumberjack, I'm stumped," Tom said. "You look a little flush. You want a bottle of water or something? I can show you I'm here all alone."
My adrenaline had seeped out of my body, and I was starting to feel like myself again. I nodded at Tom, and he smiled. "I'll go grab you one. Do you want to come into the AC?"
"No, I'm okay. I need to double-check the connection to the pedestal."
"Sure. Be bright back," Tom said as he walked off.
But I had no intention of checking the connections. I was going to check on Tom. I didn't believe him at all. Something weird was going on, and I needed to know what. As soon as he turned the corner around the house, I broke out my flashlight and headed back to the crawlspace.
I dropped to the ground and shone my beam into the darkness. Something had crawled on me, and I wanted to see what it was. I moved my light into every section of the crawlspace but saw no eyes glowing back at me.
"If you're under there, call back."
There was nothing. I was starting to feel like a paranoid idiot. I called out once again just to be sure, but again, nothing called back. I shut off my light and sighed. I started pushing myself back to my feet when I heard a faint woman's voice call out, "Can we show our faces now?"
"Not yet," someone hissed from the trees above me. I snapped my head up, expecting to see someone hanging on a branch over my head, but I just saw green leaves.
"Can we show our faces now?" It was the Boy. It sounded like he was on the roof. I shielded my eyes and glanced at the roof but didn't see him.
"No. He's not ready yet," someone whispered in my ear. I snapped around, throwing a punch as I did, only to slam my fist into the fence. I felt one of my knuckles crack as it hit the wood, and the pain shot up my arm like lightning. Within seconds, my hand started to puff up, and blood dripped out the wounds.
The Boy chuckled again. It came from under the house. I looked down at the grate and saw his legs disappear into the darkness.
"Hey!" I called and dropped to the ground. I pulled out my flashlight and shone into the darkness again. I was confident I'd see him, but he wasn't there. Nobody was.
I sat up and felt goosebumps turn my arms into braille. I glanced over to the corner of the house and was surprised to see the disappearing hemline of the faded blue dress. I rushed over to the corner and didn't see the Woman. I saw Tom with a bottle of water.
"You okay?"
"Where did that woman go?" I asked, my voice panicking. "She was just here."
"Sir, do you need me to call your boss for you? You're starting to scare me."
"What's up with this house? Is it haunted?"
Tom started laughing. "I hope not. I just moved in. I'd hate to have roommates again, especially ones who leave ectoplasm all over the place."
As I stared at him, I saw the Woman and the Boy emerge from the other corner of the house. They looked up on the roof, their faces obscured by their hands and the sun. I pointed a finger at them and screamed, "They're right there!"
Tom spun around and looked, but there wasn't anything there. He turned back to me, not sure what to say. Instead, he handed me the bottle of water. "I gotta be honest. I didn't see anything. Drink the water...you might have heat stroke."
I threw the bottle on the ground. "I don't have fucking heat stroke. I have a man that's lying about these things." I got close to him. "What did you have planned for me? Why do they keep asking to show their faces?"
"I don't," he said, but I didn't stay to hear him finish his thought. I walked right past him and turned the corner of the house. As I did, I saw the blue hem disappear through the door that led to the kitchen. I followed right behind her.
I walked into the house, which was as silent as a corpse. The Woman and Boy were nowhere to be seen. "Hello?" I called out. "I just saw you guys walk in here. Where are you?"
The door behind me opened up. Tom walked in, his face reddening with anger. "You can't just walk into my house."
"I saw them walk in. Where are they?"
"I keep telling you, it's just me and you here. Now, if you want to finish your work…."
I walked away from him and headed toward the bedroom where I had seen the Boy standing. I wanted to check that crawl space. The room was empty, not even a moving box in there, so finding the hatch that led under the house was easy. I went into the closet and pried the hatch open.
Tom entered the room behind me, more confused now than angry. "I don't want a line run through here."
"The Boy was standing in this spot. I saw his legs. I spoke to him. He told me the shadows needed me for something." I glared down into the darkness under the house. Despite Tom's feigned declarations that there wasn't another person in the house, I knew he wasn't being honest.
"Okay, I'm pretty sure you're back on pills and in the middle of a delusion," he said.
"How did you know I had a pill addiction?"
"The way you're acting, it wasn't a hard guess."
"I'm sober, but I did have a problem with pills. I never told you. I don't tell anyone."
Tom stood there, confused about how to answer. I stood up and stared him down. He looked away, but I didn't move my gaze. "Who are you? Who put you up to this? Was it Rory? He trying to get me fired?"
Tom's shoulders sagged. "You got me," he said. "Rory hired me to get you in trouble. I'm... I'm sorry. He offered me free cable for a year and assured me you were a bad guy and, well…. I'm weak."
"That's really fuc…," I stopped. "You're lying. Right now. You're lying. Why?"
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw something dash past the open crawlspace hatch. I turned to the hatch opening and then back to Tom.
"Are you trying to stop me from looking in there?"
He didn't respond.
"What's under there?"
"He is," he said. "The Boy. He hides under there all the time. He has...friends down there."
"The shadow people?"
Tom shrugged, "What he calls them. I call them a menace. Impossible to get my work done with them causing a racket."
"What work?"
"Things you'd never understand in a million years," he said, "Things beyond your brain's capacity to imagine. Things that will help usher in a new world. Your kind's time is coming to a close. My work represents the new order."
I stared at him. I wasn't sure if I should run away or punch his lights out. Instead, I just spat out, "Bro, what the fuck?"
"Can we show our faces now?" the Boy called out from under the house.
I looked down at the hatch and then back at Tom. He nodded toward the opening. "Do you want to see your future?"
"Fuck it," I said. I got down, grabbed the sides of the opening, and lowered my head under the house.
I kept my eyes closed for a second, assuming I'd either see something horrifying or something would hit me in the face. When nothing struck me, I opened my eyes. It was dark, and I couldn't make out anything.
"There's nothing under here," I said.
"Can we show our faces now?" said the Boy from somewhere under the house.
"Show him," Tom said.
I sat back up, grabbed my flashlight from my pocket, and flipped it on. I looked at Tom, "If you try anything, so help me, God."
Tom just smiled. I looked back down at the hatch and sighed. I was suddenly hit with a bolt of common sense. What was I doing? My internal alarms were going off and I was ignoring them. Curiosity had gotten me this far, but my fight instincts were starting to lose to my flight. No job was worth this.
"Man, fuck this," I said, reversing course and standing. I turned to confront Tom, but he was gone. I hadn't heard him leave, but there wasn't a trace of him there. "Tom? Where the hell are you?"
He didn't respond, and I decided that I had hit my "weird shit" quota for the day. I closed the closet door and headed back into the living room to grab my gear. I'd call dispatch and tell them someone else had to come out and finish the….
The wood floor cracked, splintered, and gave way when I put my weight on it. I fell through the floor and landed with a thud on the dirt in the crawl space. On the way down, I hit my ribs on a crossbeam and heard them crack and knock the wind out of me. As I lay on the dirt, writhing in pain, my lungs did their damnedest to find a breath. It couldn't, and my vision started to blur at the edges. For a fleeting few seconds, I envisioned my death on a dirty crawlspace floor. It wasn’t comforting.
I rolled onto my back and finally took in a massive gulp of life-saving air. The blurring vision subsided, and all that remained was the aching pain of a busted rib. My muscles around my rib cage spasmed and pulled tight against my lungs. After the initial big breath, I could only take shallow gulps because the pain was searing.
I lay there for a few seconds, collecting my thoughts, when I felt something skitter across my legs again. I kicked out of instinct but didn't hit anything. Instead, I heard the chuckling again. My flashlight had fallen out of my hand. I found it and turned it on.
This time, I did see something. Pairs of eyes—dozens of them—watched me from the darkness that surrounded me. These weren't possums or rats. I never hoped to find a raccoon under the house more than I did at that moment. I knew whatever these things were, they weren't natural and they wanted to harm me.
"Still want to know what they plan to do to you?" the Boy asked from behind me.
I turned around and shone the light where I heard the voice. The Boy was lying on his stomach, his face looking down at the ground. All I could see at the moment was the top of his head.
"Wha-what's going on?" I said, the light bouncing from my trembling hand.
"I can show you my face now," he said. He raised his head and….
The Boy didn't have a face.
He had the space for a face, but there were no features whatsoever—nothing but pale pink skin pulled tight across the front of his head. At that moment, the image of a wooden art figure came to me.
“What the ever-loving fuck?"
"Want to see something really scary?" the Boy said, his lack of a mouth not stopping him from speaking. He raised himself onto the tips of his fingers and toes and started skittering toward me, laughing as he did.
I clambered out of the crawlspace as fast as my battered body could carry me. I got out of the hole and onto my feet and let out an ear-splitting scream.
The Woman in the blue dress was standing next to the hole in the floor. Like the Boy, she didn't have a face either. But I could feel her eyes on me. Looking into my mind. Into my soul. She stepped toward me, and I bolted for the front door.
I whipped it open and was greeted by Tom standing there, blocking me. He grinned. "Leaving so soon?"
"What the hell is going on?" I asked, checking behind me to see if the Woman was still coming toward me. She was, and she was gaining quickly.
"Can we show our faces now?" he asked with a laugh.
I turned back to Tom and nearly had a heart attack. His face was gone. I could feel my heart beating in my ears. My legs were jelly, but I kept myself propped up. The human desire to survive can perform miracles.
Tom reached out and pointed at a spot on the far side of the living room wall. I turned and saw three skinned human faces hanging from old nails: a man, a woman, and a boy.
"You're turn to join us," Tom whispered. But the voice wasn't said out loud. It came from inside my own head. "We can always use another body around here."
My brain clicked into action and sent an all-points bulletin to my limbs. The message was simple and actionable – "Get the fuck going, you dope."
I felt my hand ball into a fist and spun. It landed where Tom's nose would've been. It should've knocked him back, causing him to stumble and giving me time to run. But that didn't happen. Instead, his face pulled apart, letting my fist slide right through. It closed on my arm, trapping me.
I yanked and yanked, but my arm would not dislodge from his face. I glanced back and saw the Woman nearly next to me. The Boy was climbing out of the hole, moving like a cockroach. I looked back at the wall and saw Tom's hanging face silently laughing.
Something about those silent laughs cut me to my core. They were laughing because Tom thought he had outsmarted me. He had beat me. That my face would soon be hanging on the wall next to theirs. I wasn't going to let that happen.
I saw a loose brick on the walkway, and a plan flashed in my mind. I yanked hard, sending Tom stuttering forward enough for me to wrap my finger around the brick. I brought it up and sent it towards his face. As expected, the face parted again, and the brick flew through easily.
But as soon as the face curtains pulled aside, I yanked my arm free. With my limb free, I took off in a mad sprint for my truck. I got inside and fumbled my keys as I tried to start the engine. Tom, the Woman, and the Boy stood together at the front door and watched as I got the van going and rocketed down the street.
I drove like a madman for ten minutes, trying to put as much space between me and the house as possible. I finally stopped at a gas station to collect my thoughts. I was jittery, and my mind was swimming, but I was also relieved. I had gotten out.
I collected myself and called Denise to tell her I couldn't finish the installation at 981 Maple Street. I was going to suggest we cancel the order and not send another installer there. That's when the conversation took a turn I wasn't expecting.
"Where have you been? You were supposed to be off an hour ago," Denise said when I called her.
"I was trying to finish the install at 981 Maple, the one you sent me to."
"I didn't send you anywhere," she said. "With how insane Rory is being about overtime hours, I'm trying to keep everyone below the threshold."
"What are you talking about? You called and asked me. You don't remember," I said, a bad feeling growing in the pit of my stomach.
She gave me a nervous chuckle, "I swear I didn't. Are you feeling okay? You gotta come back. People are waiting for the van."
"I can prove it. I have a record of you calling me on my phone," I said. I opened my call log, and my jaw dropped. There was no call from Denise. She was telling me the truth. But if she didn't call me, who did?
"Rory wants to talk to you when you get in. I wouldn't mess around, he seems pissed" she said before hanging up.
I haven't moved since. I wanted to write this down because I felt like it needed to be recorded. Something supremely fucked up is happening at 981 Maple Street. It nearly got me. It still might. To think, on any other typical day, a surprise conversation with my boss would be the scariest thing that could happen to me. Funny how seeing a faceless ghoul can prioritize your problems. If you're hired to do work there, turn it down. Trust me, it's not worth it.
"Can we show our faces now?" they asked. "Fuck no," should be the only response.

Kind of a long post, sorry. TLDR; dm let's girlfriend be the BBEG and make all decisions about the game. Special cameo from alien Cyborg furry chimera from the future.
I just joined a group a couple weeks ago and have been meaning to make a post about it in RPG Horror stories, but here goes:
DM posts online looking for players. I haven't played or DMed in about a year and am desperate for a game, so I sign up. There's a few questions for me that I answer (standard stuff, how long have you been playing, what kind of character are you thinking about, are you OK with no evil characters, etc.) I answer them, but as someone who has DMed for a decade I have questions of my own.
How long have they been DMing? About a year. This is their second game and it started about 2 months before I joined.
How many players? They're trying to set the foundation for a living world where other people will be able to dm in the setting, so they currently have 20+ players but only about 6 or 7 show up for a given session. They run 3 days a week so if you can't make it, no problem. Everyone just uses their Discord names rather than real names.
Any homebrew or house rule changes to 5e I should know about? Yes, a few of them.
As they start to go into them I realize this is not going to be a great game, but I don't really care that much. Im just here to play, im not super invested. They tell me to start at level 2 with 150 gold. Okay, cool. Use DnD beyond for sheets. Sure. Roll for stats, cool. End up rolling really well, 17, 14, 17, 17, 13, 17. Dm watches me roll and is amazed. Put the 14 in Wis and 13 in int.
If an attack meets a creature's AC exactly, roll to dodge. Whatever, lots of newer DMs do this.
There are apparently glowing scrolls in the world that allow you to INSTANTLY level up, no matter how much xp you have. Red flag.
The campaign is going to Level 100, switching from Xp to milestone after level 20. Huge red flag. Pause. I ask how that's going to work. What features do you get at level 21 of fighter? 22? 47? They say they're going to be pushing for multiclassing at Higher Levels or using not class feature rewards for higher levels, so I'm assuming things like feats and epic boons. Still very weird though.
Everyone can suggest custom Race for their character and the DM will discuss with another person about it to see if they believe it fits the world (this other person helped design the setting). Okay, great! I've been wanting to play a sentient undead character for a while, we'll circle back to it.
Same as above, you can create a custom item for your character to start with. Cool. I ended up asking for a Greataxe with the finesse property and was granted it. Sweet. Barbarian/rogue, here I come.
There is a homebrew banking system in place, and in order to "encourage" players to use it, you cannot carry more than 2,000 gold on your person at once because "it is too heavy". Strength of 8? 2000 gold. Strength of 24 when the barbarian hits level 20? 2000 gold. But that's fine, my character is a vagrant who doesn't use money and scavenges for everything he needs, and carries everything he owns on his person in a torn up duffel bag.
There's some custom items that can be bought so I spend my starting 150 gold (with dm permission) to get one of them, which is a special gemstone. It says "gives advantage on perception, Stealth, medicine, and Insight checks. Allows for 2 points of advantage on listed checks". Fuck yes, barbarian rogue who rolls 3 times and takes the best on Stealth, Perception, and Insight? I'm set.
Now for my custom Race. I want to play a leng ghoul from the Sandy Petersen Cthulhu Mythos book. I know they're a little overpowered, so I even volunteer to lose the ability to gain Skill bonuses and to lose the claw attacks. DM tells me no, I'll need to pick a different race. Okay, that's fine. I knew it was a long shot. I decide to just be a half orc and ask "out of curiosity, was there something specific that was too OP?" "No, we just felt that the race didn't fit the world. Nothing wrong mechanically" fair enough I guess.
First session:
My character is introduced alongside another new player. They are a paladin. We decide we've been traveling together for a while after Paladin helped get my character out of a bad spot a while ago.
Every player gets a bag of holding my first session in. But wait, a bag of holding makes items within weightless. Can't I just put gold inside the bag of holding? No, you can't put money inside these bags of holding. Other ones you can, but not the free ones we're given. Whatever. Vagrant. Don't care.
We exit the tavern we were in after some fun RP. group is very friendly and fun, and they seem to gel really well together. As we are leaving, we notice something strange glowing on a nearby tree. "K <3 M" is written in glowing script. The other players have been playing for a few sessions so I'm thinking this is probably something important with some NPCs they met previously, so Paladin and I don't have any idea what it could mean. Other players talk it over for a while, and the DM just keeps repeating "think deeper about it" and "you're not thinking realistically. Think realistically". Literally says those phrases like 5 or 6 times each. Nearly 20 minutes of players trying to figure it out and the DM giving us nothing and it changes to be full names rather than initials.
One of the players finally puts it together. This is the DM announcing they started dating someone IRL. I get pretty pissed off at this point, saying I think it's pretty irrelevant to do this. The DM says "sometimes a literal irrelevance is needed". I respond "Yeah, I agree. But this is the first session for 2 new players and you decided to spend a third of it so far on a dating announcement. Like. Congrats dude, but I really don't care about your love life. I'm here to play Dnd, not make random guesses about your love life." Other players agree and are also angry, so i feel a little more justified. Again, we all use discord names, so most of us didn't even recognize the DM's name.
After a while DM has to take a break for 10-15 minutes and leaves us for a bit. Here's where things go incredible. Most groups I've been in, if left alone for 15 minutes, will either just go to the bathroom or check social media or whatever. But this group instantly falls into very natural and authentic role play, asking the new players what their characters have done up to this point, offering to help them learn about the new land we've found ourselves in, talking about wanting to teach my character how to make some nice stews out of foraged foods and rabbit or squirrel. Genuinely some of the best role-playing I've ever been part of.
DM comes back while we're talking about rabbit stew. Instantly cuts us off, says there's no rabbits, and jumps into whatever they were saying. I would KILL for a group that role plays that freely as a DM, and this one is actively squashing it.
DM decides we're going to another town. We get there and are asked to help with defending the city while they rebuild after a raid. Cool. Nothing happens though. We spend the day sitting at guard stations waiting for raiders to return and nothing ever shows up to the town. They thank us and send us on our way with some gold (I give mine to paladin).
DM decides we are returning to the first city. We have discovered that there was a lot of corruption there (the other party members in previous sessions). So we're coming up with a plan to take the city back from the organized crime ring that is running the place. We get to the town and apparently one of the other players is a VERY influential person in the world because they were able to call in an airship of dozens of fighters for backup with this operation.
At some point during this, I I asked to make one of the relevant checks for the item I bought and so I roll with advantage. DM asks why I rolled 2d20s. I say "the item I bought gives advantage." The DM responds Yeah, advantage means +1 to the roll". I say no, advantage means you roll twice and take the better result, or it gives +5 if using the optional method. DM responds that "the double advantage means you get +2 to those checks. You don't get to roll more than once". So I tell them okay, but that they should really change the wording to just say it grants +2 because that is not what advantage means in 5e. They say that they know what it means so it doesn't matter.
Another player that is a rogue had a plan to use his extensive connections to trace the crime ring and find exactly how expansive it was so we can be sure to snuff it all out. DM just brushes over it and ignores the idea. Instead, we head directly to a front owned by the ring.
We show up to what is apparently the head of the crime syndicates' place of business and are prepared to fight. The DM "rolls to see how hard the fight will be" and gets a natural 1. The DM then narrates the player that found the place easily defeating the boss and the rest of us cleaning up the henchman. I once again was pretty upset. "So you just roll a single d20 and that means we don't get to do anything?"
"Yeah, they just were so confident that no one would ever stand up to them that they stood no chance. They didn't even have weapons or anything"
"An organized crime syndicate that has been running a city through force for years had 0 plans for if anyone ever tried to stop them, to the point none of them had weapons?"
"Yeah, that's just the way the dice roll sometimes". "You probably shouldn't be letting major plot points and large battles be determined by a single d20 roll that the players have no influence in." "Sorry, it's just the way things go sometimes." "Yeah but it shouldn't. The outcome of a major plot centric fight should be based on how well the party prepares and uses their resources, not by the DM before it even starts."
End of session 1. I message paladin and he agrees this was really bad but that he's gonna give it some time. I say the Same.
I find out between sessions that the DM has not read ANY of the books and learned how to play exclusively from the DnD beyond character sheet and watching live play YouTube videos (critical roll and dimension 20), and in fact they do not know how to read and have been teaching themselves. Yes, the DM never learned how to read as a child.
Session 2 is going to be much less in depth because literally nothing happens that any of the players have a say in.
Dm decides we're all going to the bank so my character can set up a bank account. "DM, my characterlives a nomadic lifestyle scrounging for scraps. Why would I go to a bank?" "To set up a bank account of course!" "Right. And I have 0 gold. So there's no money for me to put in a bank." "Well you might in the future, so you should set one up now!" "My character has already refused payment and charity twice in this game though. I doubt he's ever going to have any amount of money on him. He is a rogue though, so I guess he can find SOMETHING to do in a bank." DM quickly decides that there is zero reason my character would want to be in a bank and has the party leave.
We try to get horses from a stable so we can travel between towns faster (since the DM keeps deciding we're all leaving town multiple times per session) we are seeing if there are any horses that are trained to not flee from combat, like a warhorse. The DM says "No, you'll have to find a war horse out in the wild. Stables aren't going to have them." I'm a little confused as to why combat trained horses would just be out in the wild, so I ask about it. "The war horses are bright red and have manes of fire" "That's not a warhorse, that's the fucking Horse of War from the apocalypse" "Yeah, it's just a fun little reference" "So we can't have Combat trained horses because of Red Dead Redemtion and the Bible?" "Yeah, that's what the War Horse is" "So like, there's no militaries or militias in the country that ride horses then?"
Dm changes the subject. We're leaving town again!
We get to a new town and the place is being ransacked. We are hiding over a hill and watching the raid happen to try to get a good understanding of the situation when the BBEG appears. We know this because the DM says "and then, the BBEG appears. This is the BBEG for the campaign right here. She's very powerful, you do not wanna mess with her."
After the introduction, DM hands the game over to his girlfriend that he announced in the previous session, revealing she is playing the BBEG (she is also a player in the party, mind you) and is the person that helped design the setting, so is sort of co-DMing.
The BBEG starts talking to us. One of the players says "she's in the middle of town and we're outside the town on the other side of the hill, how does she even know we're here?"
"Great question. My love?" "OH, I can just see you guys." "There you go, she can see you"
"I had a 29 for my Stealth check" "I still see you" "Cool."
So the BBEG(big bad evil girlfriend) monologs about how powerful she is and how we are powerless to stop her and the DM asks if we want to stay and try to save the town or run away. I say "look, guys, I think we can take her". I've got 10 years experience DMing and more playing, and the DM obviously is not aware of how the game works. I am fully confident I can outmaneuver this enemy. Other players agreed they wanted to try to defend the townspeople.
"She's the maximum level"
"Yeah, but this is 5e. I'm level 2, I can probably take her. The difference in numbers between level 1 and 20 is like +10 at the max."
Another player interjects here. "You're level 2???? I'm level 8" "What?" Another player "Yeah I think 7 is the lowest level of any party memebers" "Oh, cool. I was told you were level 2 by the DM last week."
DM: no, I'm pretty sure I said to make yourself level 6 or 7. "Check our messages, it's like the first thing you told me. Dm: huh yeah, I did say level 2. Oops. Level yourself up to level 3 then."
We still want to try to save the Townspeople, maybe we can avoid her specifically or someone xan keep her busy long enough to help people.
Girlfriend declares she summons 150,000 troops to the city.
The DM narrates how we all run for our lives because we have no chance of beating her as BBEG calls in an army of thousands of soldiers who wear armor that resembles one of the other party members.
Now is a good time for me to say that I am absolutely not having a good time in this campaign, but that the other players make it more than worth it to deal with the DM.
Remember how my sentient ghoul was deemed "not fitting" for the setting? The other player asks "they look like me? Do they have the autobot or decepticon emblem?"
Record scratch. "Sorry, wait. Are you a transformer? I thought you were a bugbear." "No, I'm a half bear, half bat from the future that can transform into a robot because I'm partly cybernetic." "Okay. So ghoul that is intelligent is too far fetched for this world, but alien Cyborg furry chimera from the future is perfectly fitting. Gotcha."
The DM narrates us running away and going to the next town, where the invasion BBEG called is also happening. They narrate a girl being kidnapped and the party says that she is the love interest of another player who is not at the session, and the group agrees they want to try to free her bc party member would be upset if we let her get taken without even trying to save her. I agree and charge in.
"They're so far away, you wouldn't be able to reach them in time. You'd have to be able to move 45 feet at least."
"I'm a rogue. Move speed 30, cunning action dash 30, action dash 30. That's 90 feet. I can cover the distance there and back."
"Well. There's guards between you and her" "I'll take my chances. I've got a pretty good AC, with your roll to dodge mechanic AND uncanny dodge. I'm willing to risk it to save her"
"There's also 40 guards surrounding her" "They're have 40 guards escorting this 1 random girl? Is she like a princess?" "No, they just really want her kidnapped" "Okay, I guess I'll try to push through them."
The girlfriend interjects. "The BBEG teleports in. She laughs a wicked laugh about how futile your attempts are, and then teleports the girl away".
Oh. Cool. Great. Excellent.
Session ends. Another player messages asking what they missed this session. I respond "nothing that any player had any say in".
2 sessions in. 10 hours of "game play". 0 combats. 0 skill checks that weren't instantly nullified by an NPC immediately anyway (i didnt bother mentioning it, but i have rolled 3 total skill checks, all stealth, and all 3 i was spotted anyway despite getting 23+). 0 decisions made by any player. The DM just tells the party where they are going, asks what they want to do, and then makes an excuse to not let that happen and tells them what they actually do instead.
I would say the DM should write a book, but they can't read.

Question to Oksana: Is there a branch with the horned man, the forest man?
Oksana: I will answer this way. A character who has already appeared will turn to face us, take off his mask, and he will turn out to be the favorite. We have more than one such character.
Question to Vlada: Is it possible to hope that there will be more than one intimate scene with Seth?
Vlada replied that she would try not to write inappropriate intimacies, but she could not say anything about the number.
Question to Oksana: Is it possible to worsen relations with the characters?
Oksana replied that it would not be possible to bring the character directly to the villain, but with different characters there are certain points that can be reached (to worsen to just friends or just acquaintances, for example).
Oksana said that not all skills in Vampyrus Novus will be worth 2 mastery skill stats.
Question to Vlad: Is it possible in other circumstances to remove the mask from the Raven at his will?
Vlada: In the future, without the previous choice, you can remove the mask from the Raven.
Oksana tells us: There are several categories of the undead in history: Ghouls like Peter, who live only by thirst for blood. Their eyes glow blue. They cannot become normal vampires. Classic vampires who are intelligent. They are intelligent and their eyes glow green, like Odette's. If there is someone else, we will be able to see them in history.
Vlada said that Anastasia's roulette outfit was illogical to wear outside, because not all the LIs could see it, and the reaction to it, like the reaction to Esmeralda's outfit, will be in the next update. All LIs will have a reaction to Esther‘s new outfit. Vlada also promised that in the novel itself she would inform when to put it on.
Oksana said that work is still underway on the third book, The Seal of Nostradamus. As soon as it goes to print, Oksana will let you know about it!
Question to Oksana: If you run a double branch with Erich and Nicholas, will there be scenes of jealousy?
Oksana: If we talk about such a triangle, THEN of COURSE, how without it. When you enter the second book, you will see how fiery everything will be there.
Question: Do you read the theories of the players? Have they ever hit the spot? How do you feel about it?
Oksana: I try to read theories. It happens that they are not one hundred percent, but they are very close. This is very pleasant, it means that the players have gone through the story more than once or twice and notice the little things that the author has scattered throughout the story.
Vlada agreed and added that recently in her chat they noticed some little thing about the LoW, that the Triumvirate of the Coven symbolized the Triad worshipped by the knowledgeable.
Oksana came up with the initiative to search for items in VN.
Vlada noted Raven has wrinkles on his face. Raven is drawn exactly as it should be. Scars were not planned.
Oksana noted that there is no canon in visual novels and will no longer buy the questions "what is your ideal ending?".
Question for Oksana: Will there be a rapid development of relations with Nicholas?
Oksana: you will immediately feel the tension of an intimate nature between them, but Nicholas became interested in Catalina for completely different reasons, and we will find out about it soon. In general, their branch will be hot.
Vlada noted that as part of LoW, there will be more excerpts from the LIs' faces.
Oksana once again notes that Caleb and Irving have completely different types. Oksana is categorically against putting equality between these characters.
Question to Vlada: What color is the magic of Belogor?
Vlada: Belogor's magic is milky white, and it glows.
Oksana: At the moment, it is impossible to pair the LIs with other characters.
Vlada: A happy ending in LoW is possible on any branch. (Addition to this answer. If you are undecided in your branch for a long time, then perhaps you will not have a happy ending, because it is already going to the third book.)
Nika: Pricing for scenes depends on how many chapters were written in the update and how many were allocated in total for the entire update.
Oksana said that she likes the current pace of writing one story more than writing two in parallel.
Vlada noted that she already has references for her third novel. Vlada also wouldn’t like to continue writing two stories at the same time.
A new LI will appear in VN in the next update. Maybe someone else will appear in the second book (but that's not for sure).
Question for Vlada: how do you prescribe the thoughts of an evil Ife?
Vlada: Since there are a lot of thoughts and ideas in the novel, I have to prescribe both options. It's morally uncomfortable for me to write it, and if I were a player, I wouldn't play for it.
Question: Is it possible to hope for a happy ending with Atsu if he remains human?
Vlada: God or man, it does not affect the character of the Atsu. This only affects the receipt of an important artifact, which affects the plot. And whether Atsu remains a god or not may depend on you.
Oksana: The choice of the personality of the main character does not affect the plot.
Question: A good ending with Odion. Is it possible?
Vlada: let's start with the fact that there is a finale with him. There will be no good ending for evil Ife, along the branch with Odion. Well, we have connoisseurs in the fandom.
Vlada: There will be no voiceover of the favorites (regarding individual phrases), because this may affect the representation of the players. Laughter and moaning are possible.
Vlada said that for Dario‘s laughter, a whole casting of men was held in the cathedral. He is voiced by a foreign actor.
Nika, a game designer, works only with Vlada and Oksana. There are three game designers in the League in total.
Oksana likes to read negative endings more, but not where everyone died. (In short, the punishment finale of the CAD)
Oksana loves to prescribe everything equally. She doesn’t like writing endings that are very unpopular.
Vlada likes to write semi-glass more. And to read finals with some victims.
Oksana: Erich is not a particularly friendly person. He is secretive, rather irritable, and vampirism has also aggravated this trait.
Vlada says in the LoW update , several LIs can dress up.
Oksana says there will be a slow burn branch with Erich.
Vlada: The familiar may become visible to everyone, perhaps sooner than you think.
Oksana: Odette and Catalina: there is some obstacle (quite weighty) that can interfere with their friendship.
Vlada: There will be intimate scenes with all the LIs in LoW. The naked sprites of the LIs in LoW have not been drawn yet.
Oksana won't spoiler anything about the Forest Man.

You can read Part 1 here.

Interlude: Two Promises

Japanese	Romaji	English
あなたしか見えないの	anata shika mienai no	I can only see you.
あなたしか見えないの	anata shika mienai no	I can only see you.
なんであなたしか見えないの？	nande anata shika mienai no?	...why can I only see you?

Feeling absolutely terrible, Subject A remarks without much thought, “You have everything that everyone else doesn’t have.” (The emphasis is the author’s, and is used in mostly the same way throughout the book when Subject A uses みんな “everyone” to refer to the five versions of her friend.) The moment those words leave her mouth, Subject A immediately realizes that she is blaming Four again as well as the fruitlessness of doing so. She is disappointed in herself for saying it. However, of course, Four doesn’t know the other versions of herself and thinks “everyone” refers to the people around them in this world, so she starts listing her own faults. Regretting what she said, Subject A apologizes and tells Four to disregard those words.
Subject A personally considers talking about other worlds to be taboo, but she ends up doing it again. “I still haven’t been to that beach,” she mutters, referring to a promise she made with Three to go together. It has been Four’s world for so long, Subject A hasn’t had the chance to meet Three. Four comments that she and her classmates had also talked about wanting to go to the beach, but she had to take on some student committee work. Hearing Four’s promise leaves a bad taste in Subject A’s mouth.

あたしもきみと海に行くって、約束したんだけどな。 皆あなたを愛している。 皆あなたばかりを求める。 みんなあなたとおんなじなのに。 なんであなたしか見えないの？
Even though I also promised to go to the beach with you [Three, while also seeing Three and Four as the same person]. Everyone loves you. Everyone wants only you. Even though everyone else [the versions other than Four] is the same person as you. Why can I/everyone only see you? (p. 80, emphasis is the author’s)

Chorus 2: Catchy

Japanese	Romaji	English
あなたしか見えないの	anata shika mienai no	I can only see you.
蠱毒巣食った呪ひ言	kodoku sukutta noroigoto	Words cursed in a venomous pit.[1]
此方は気にせずお幸せに	kochira wa ki ni sezu oshiawase ni	(*) Please be happy and don't worry about me.
嗚呼、堕ちていく	aa, ochite iku	Aah, I'm falling in...

(Note from original translator) [1] The wording used here is really interesting- "蠱毒" is a method of making poison where many venomous animals are trapped in a single vessel and are forced to eat each other until a single survivor emerges.
Subject A calls Four キャッチー (“catchy”). Both of them aren’t really sure what that means. Subject A thinks she was being cynical or sarcastic saying that. Four guesses that it means “popular” or “well-received”. It’s very clear that 呪ひ言 (noroigoto, curse) here refers to the word “catchy” itself. It’s referenced in the song Catchy !? here:

唯、何時かのあの子の呪いが / 焼き付いている It’s just, at some point that girl’s curse / Was etched into my brain… (TL by teary eyes, with edits by khattikeri and Violet)

And in the chapter linked to Catchy !? as well:

何時しかわたしに「呪いの言葉」を贈ったあの子。 That girl who, at some point, gifted me [Four] the “curse”. (p. 14) [TL Note: The first-person pronoun わたし is used exclusively by Four. The speaker in this chapter is the one who chooses between the versions, and whose first-person pronoun is recorded only as ■.]

Adding on to the original song translator Kaz’s note [1], 蠱毒 (kodoku) is an ancient poisonous magic with some recorded use in Japan’s Nara period (710-784 or 794) and appearing in Japanese folklore. r-906 also uses the classical Japanese_rule) writing style 呪ひ言 as opposed to modern 呪い言. These probably emphasize that Subject A’s emotions towards Four, the other versions and the person choosing between them have been brewing for a long time.
I also saw a Japanese comment on the song noting that 蠱毒巣食った is a homophone of 孤独救った (kodoku sukutta, "saved from loneliness"). Subject A does complain during narration about feeling lonely because there’s no way she could tell anyone about the five worlds and five versions of her friend (p. 65), so dropping those cryptic comments to Four about "everyone else" and calling her "catchy" could be a way of alleviating her loneliness, even if done unconsciously, or even if only for a little while.
Staring straight into Four’s eyes, Subject A adds that even though Four always receives lots of attention from everyone, she strives to and manages to respond to all the attention. Subject A begins to say, “Even if I didn’t exist, you…” probably intending to say Four wouldn’t be any less happier. This is linked to the third line of the lyrics, which uses unnaturally formal or polite words as Subject A puts a barrier between the two of them again.

Chorus 3: Consolation

Japanese	Romaji	English
あなたしか見えないの	anata shika mienai no	I can only see you.
有象無象のひとりなら	uzoumuzou no hitori nara	(*) Since I’m just another face in the crowd,
あなたの「特別」に成れたのね！	anata no "tokubetsu" ni nareta no ne!	(*) I’ve become "special" to you!
嗚呼、素敵だわ	aa, suteki da wa	(*) Aah, isn’t that wonderful?
クセになっちゃうわ	kuse ni nacchau wa	Oh, I could get addicted to this.
目も当てられないわ	me mo aterarenai wa	I can't stand watching this.

Four interrupts by joking, “Oh, what’s this? So you’re jealous? How adorable!” and pats Subject A’s head. For the first time today, Subject A bursts out laughing. It reminds Four of how the two of them used to play around. Four consoles Subject A,

「大丈夫だよ。自分がいなくても、なんて言わないで。確かにわたし結構友達多い自覚はあるし、色々と頼られたりするけど、みんな等しく友達なんだから。もちろんきみもね」 “It’s okay. Don’t say things like ‘even if you didn’t exist’. Certainly I know that I have quite a lot of friends, and they depend on me in many ways, but it’s because everyone is equally precious to me as friends. You too, of course.” (p. 81)

Subject A thinks about Four’s words.

数年前の切なる願いは叶わなかった。やはりそうだった。 あなたにとって全ての友達は等しく「特別」なのだ。あたしも含めて。 だからこんなどうしようもないあたしも見離さず会いに来てくれたんでしょう？
My fervent wish from years ago [to be “special” to you] didn’t come true. Just as I thought. After all, all your friends are equally “special” to you. Including me. That’s why, even though I’m so hopeless, you didn’t abandon me and came to meet me, right? (p. 82)

Subject A realizes that although she isn’t more important as a friend than others, she's still extremely precious to Four. The last line in the text above suggests that she's grateful and happy about that. Nonetheless, she feels hopelessly pathetic and lonely due to her wish not coming true and having wrongfully blamed and resented Four.
目も当てられない literally describes “something one cannot look at”, and is usually used to refer to a tragedy or disaster that one cannot endure watching. In this case, like how Subject A can’t stand watching herself. On the other hand, in line with the literal meaning, as Four invites Subject A to come to her classroom whenever she likes, promises to talk more with her and leaves, Subject A also thinks that Four is dazzling (眩しい, p. 83). In other words, so bright that Subject A can’t look at her.

ああ、なんて眩しいのだろう。 この一点のかげりもない清らかな眩しさはまるで―― Ah, how dazzling. This clear, dazzling brightness, without so much as a single shadow, is just like― (p. 83)

It's not stated explicitly, but due to the repeated use of the phrase 一点のかげりもない, it's clear that Subject A compares Four to the full moon with a completely unobstructed view.

一点のかげりもない満月は、眩しすぎて少し苦手だ。 The full moon, not obscured by even a single cloud, is so dazzling it's slightly difficult to bear. (p. 68)

I don't know what disliking the bright full moon is supposed to say about Subject A. It could just be that Subject A hadn't made up with Four at the time of p. 68, and the full moon reminds Subject A of her. The slideshow-like paper in the music video does state that Four's motif is the full moon. The other versions' motifs are other phases of the moon.

Miscellaneous Thoughts

The English title diaLOG is a pun using the Japanese title. 会話 (kaiwa) means "dialogue" in the sense of "conversation" while 記録 (kiroku) means "log" in the sense of "record". By the way, "dialogue" and "dialog" are different spellings of the same word, but "dialogue" is the preferred spelling when used to mean "conversation" in both British and American English, whereas "dialog" is used primarily in computing contexts like in "dialog box".
I mentioned this as a reply to a comment on Part 1, but it seems strange to me that Four specifically is depicted to scribble over the projector showing the other versions of herself while laughing and delighted at herself in the music video. Four is just a version that gets chosen and doesn't know that the other versions exist. Subject A did blame Four in the past though, so maybe the scene is showing what Subject A used to think.
Hatsune Miku is the main vocal playing the role of Subject A, while the five CeVIO AI Musical Isotopes sing the backup vocals and act as the five versions. COKO harmonizes and sings backup almost throughout all choruses/sabi, taking on the biggest role both in terms of duration and importance. In contrast, KAFU, SEKAI, RIME and HARU only get two or three lines to sing, so COKO outshines her fellow Musical Isotopes just like Four outshines her other versions.

Afterword

Thank you for reading my longwinded analysis! I love the song and book. Maybe too much, since I lost sleep one night hyperfixating on this song and how it relates to the book, so this has been my way of getting it out of my system.
Again, feel free to comment your own thoughts, including your own interpretations and parts you want clarified.

Yesterday, my beloved 5 month old puppy ate something toxic and began to have seizures and fainting spells. We rushed her to the animal emergency clinic and they went to work on her diligently, but since we didn't know which substance she'd been exposed to, it took many hours of diagnostic tests to obtain a prognosis. The vet was very cautious with her words, trying to prepare us for a bad outcome if the tests showed damage to her kidneys and liver.
I had to go home and wait in such terrible despair. I survived an intensely abusive childhood, and despite practicing Buddhism for more than 20 years, I still have an anxious, obsessive ruminating mind. I was consumed with grief at the thought of her suffering and the possibility we might have to say goodbye after only 3 months together. She is such a happy little innocent being, she deserves a long and easy life full of all the things that make dogs joyful. It was really a hard example for me that this is the nature of samsara. This is what the Saha world is like for all beings on the wheel, even sweet little puppies.
Part of what I do for my dharma practice is chant. If one has a mind like mine that constantly repeats a phrase or idea compulsively, I've found it's best to give it something nice to repeat. I usually say the six syllable (mani) mantra and Green Tara mantras whenever they cross my mind, and I also have a daily Pure Land practice to chant the Amitabha Buddha mantra.
Very recently, I heard a YouTube video of a lovely lady named Tina Tinnh chanting the Medicine Buddha mantra, and looking it up online, I learned that it is effective against illness as well as cultivation of one's enlightenment. Her recitation is very powerful and yet also soothing.
So I put that track in my headphones and chanted the Medicine Buddha mantra with her. I channeled all my restless feelings and thoughts into resolve to keep chanting. I prayed that any merit would be transferred to her and the other sick animals at the clinic, and beings everywhere in need.
All the mantras I know came through my mind at one time or another, but I also kept coming back to Medicine Buddha.
The vets were talented and caring people, and they were able to detoxify her system. Tests showed it was not an infection, and her liver and kidneys were okay. The most likely culprit for her poisoning is THC. Marijuana is legal here and there are often butt ends of joints along the sidewalk. She may have just picked one up when we walked through the park and I didn't notice. Her symptoms were alike to those of known THC cases. Tl; dr: she's going to be fine. She is home now, and aside from being very tired, she's her usual happy self.
I'm the only Buddhist in my family and I needed to share the story this morning. It's on my mind to express deep gratitude to the Triple Gem for the preservation of this sweet little being's life and the miracle of medicine, both scientific and spiritual. I'm thankful for the truth and wisdom of the Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Path that dissipates negative karma and progresses us on the path to liberation. I am grateful to all Buddhas everywhere, to Amitabha Buddha for the hope he brings me and to Sakyamuni Buddha for the presence of the dharma in this world. I'm thankful for the bodhisattvas, bhikkus, bikkhunis, lay teachers, mediators, merit sharers and mantra chanters everywhere. I am particularly grateful to Tinna Tinnh for sharing her recitations on YouTube where all can benefit from them.
I intend to chant the Medicine Buddha mantra daily from now on, every day that I am able, with the intention of sharing the merit with beings everywhere. All mantras are powerful, but I have seen firsthand how Medicine Buddha is truly an efficacious mantra in the case of disease, both physical and spiritual, and I want to be a voice of it in the world (although my voice is not as beautiful as Tinna Tinh's!)
Tayata Om Bekandze bekandze maha bekandze Radza samudgate soha
Thank you for listening to me talk on and on. Om mani padme hum. 🙏

My best friend (F 28) feels like a sister to me (F 26) but lately I can’t figure out if I want to be friends anymore. On multiple occasions I have liked a boy and we will be hanging out and she will start flirting with him. It always ruins things for me with the boys. When I confronted her she said she wasn’t interested in them but thought it was just fun. I told her that I felt frustrated when she did that because my feelings were genuine. Two years ago she started a rock band and one of the band members (M 28) and I had a little situationship. It was so fun but when I asked him about where he stood he would use phrases like “I don’t want to shut the door on this but..” and “now isn’t a good time”. We spent a lot of time together- he would say no but act like it was a yes. I was deeply emotionally invested and it was really hard for me. During this time my best friend was seriously dating someone else and because of that and not wanting to effect the band dynamic, we didn’t openly discuss our DTR’s with my best friend. Months later I tried to tell to her what happened but I never got the vibe that she was supportive or even believed me. Over the course of the next year my relationship with this boy was a real rollercoaster. Eventually i just realized we aren’t compatible and that wasn’t going to change. We stayed close friends and sometimes it is flirty but we both know we won’t work as anything more but we really care about each other. Sometimes it is still very hard to remind myself that it won’t work and not let the flirting go further or in my head. The whole time my best friend and this boy were very close with the band stuff etc but I trusted her. When she was flirty with him I would remind myself that she does that with every boy because it’s fun for her and I had to believe her when she said she wasn’t interested. About a month ago the three of us and my best friends sister went on a road trip to the beach. I started to notice that the boy and my best friend went off privately a lot- initiated by her. She also was wearing way less clothing than she usually does and wasn’t present with me. I started to suspect something was up when she stayed out on the couch bed all night with him after he fell asleep during a movie we watched all together. Her sister reassured me that nothing was going on but I wanted to talk to her about it post trip. Well she beat my to the punch and said she has developed feelings and is going to pursue a serious relationship with him. I was really sad. I told her I needed space and it’s been over a month. We have gone to lunch a few times and we talked about why this makes me sad but I feel like the relationship is ruined and I can’t trust her. I am such a loyal person and I feel betrayed. I feel like the rest of my life I will be worried about her relationships with my future partners because her flirty behavior is unrestrained. She also is unwilling to believe my experience and disgregarded the deep hurt I felt over the last two years. She might also think their relationship will fix all of his issues. Just this week he told our mutual friend in private about my best friend confessing her love to him and he used the same phrases he used with me all those years ago and when I heard I feel sad for her because I know how it feels. I just feel like watching that relationship bloom or die would be too hard for me to watch. In addition, I don’t ever want to be in a situation again where I feel in competition with my best friend over a boy. I’m not sure I should try to fix it anymore or if I do HOW???

I believe RC and the rest of the board would like the offering to be complete by shareholders meeting. As mentioned by numerous commentators GME’s substantial cash position will allow it to transform itself.
I’m looking for specific guidance on how the company plans on using this newfound war chest.
I am anticipating:
1) An acquisition in the gaming/electronics space;
2) Short term investments in treasuries in order to generate stable cash flow while they continue to tinker with the underlying business model;
3) Capital investments into new business segments that may or may not be related to the core business.
Would love to hear what you think about the offering and the potential future for GME.
EDIT: Edited to reflect the fact that earnings has already been released and that there will be no earnings call. The earnings statement included a phrase “the company will not be hosting an earnings call today.”

Until my (35f) breakup with my partner (39m) of 5 years and some odd months I’d only ever been on Reddit when Google kicked me over here. Since the breakup (March 31st of this year) and since our last contact (a very short phone call that ended with me hanging up on April 8th) I’ve been on here pretty much every day. I wouldn’t call it “lurking” per se, more like desperately searching for a post that could be my ex writing under a different username than the one I know about. I am aware of how fucking insane that sounds and all I have to say about it is that it is what it is and grief manifests itself in all kinds of crazy ways. I try not to judge people based off whatever they felt they needed to do in that moment to survive whatever it was they were going through. Regardless, I’ve seen the phrase “pain shopping” or “shopping for pain” being thrown around here and there in reference to checking an ex’s social media and I liked it. Probably because I do it frequently. I don’t know if I am a masochist or if I just hate myself or what but I am apparently always in desperate need of some kind of fodder to make myself feel even worse. I should mention the breakup was not good, it was pretty fucking terrible. I don’t know if he still loved me in the end but to this day I still love him. But he was right when he said we weren’t good for each other, that this wasn’t going to work. I can’t forgive him for some of the things he did, mostly because they are unforgivable and not because I don’t want to forgive him. And while I do not speak for other people as a rule of thumb, I would guess that it’s the same for him about me. Plus the repercussions of the break up had real world consequences for me in regards to housing, relocation, finances, etc. But back to the point, I went pain shopping and I fucking found the mother load. He has an online dating profile. There is no picture, no location, just his name and his age and a username that was a dead giveaway it’s him (it’s his oldest daughters nickname which is kinda weird for a couple different reasons one of them being that she doesn’t speak to him, hasn’t for years and has no desire to). I found it because he started following the dating sites IG account so he clearly wasn’t trying to hide it. Funny thing is that his Fb still says “in a relationship” with our anniversary date and he still has a TikTok of us that we made last summer up on his page. Both of our families know that we broke up just because of how the breakup went down and the aftermath of it so idk why he hasn’t changed that shit but thinks it’s ok to go make a dating profile. Idk. I’m just pissed and upset and I only had myself to blame and I have no one to really talk to about it so I thought i’d talk to strangers on the internet. I am sure that this will also end well for me (haha). Sorry for the long post, was just trying to provide enough vague context.

I stumbled upon a fantastic resource that I think you’ll love. It’s an article from Elafree that delves deep into the essence of verbs in the English language. Whether you’re a teacher crafting lesson plans or a student grappling with grammar, this guide has something for everyone.
The article covers everything from the basics of action and helping verbs to the nuances of modals and verb phrases. It’s not just about identifying verbs; it’s about understanding their role in conveying action, existence, and states of being. Plus, it’s packed with examples that illustrate how verbs function in various contexts.
Here’s a sneak peek at what you’ll find:

• The distinction between main verbs and helping verbs and how they work together to form verb phrases.
• A breakdown of common helping verbs including forms of be, have, do, and modals.
• Insightful examples that show how modals can express different attitudes like necessity or possibility.
• A look at action verbs that describe physical or mental activities.
• An exploration of linking verbs and how they connect the subject to a subject complement.

The guide is well-structured, making it easy to navigate and understand. It’s a valuable tool for anyone looking to enhance their grasp of English verbs and improve their writing skills.
Check out the full article here and let’s discuss how we can integrate these insights into our teaching methods or study routines!

Hallo! I've been reading the ln series up to volume 6 on novelsonline.net and recently moved to slimereader. It's been pretty nice getting the option to change phrasings and such with super high quality images but there is a pretty drastic difference in wording and translations. I'd rather have the novelsonline version (which I am assuming is the official translations) but it seems as though they do not provide a way to download these volumes
Does anyone know of some sort of drive collection I could grab these on? Preferably with the images
Sooooorry for being so picky 😭 super grateful there are even fan translations at all!!!! Really love the slimereader site though!!

Looking for a song stuck in my head, although I don’t really know the lyrics, just a piece of the melody.
It’s a female artist (or at least a vocalist) - I’m 70% sure. The phrasing is quite unique, very “choppy”.
The lyrics go something like: “I don’t wanna fall in love/ I don’t wanna ******/ I don’t wanna ******/ I want something, you want something”
The rhythm of the 3 lines is the same, very slow and choppy, little pause after each word, with the pitch going up at the end of the line. The fourth line is a different rhythm, kind of more melodic, pitch going down the whole time.
I tried humming dozen times to shazam, soundhound and google, no luck. I have no idea who the artist is, nor where I have heard the song.
Can anyone help?
A recording of my humming/singing: https://voca.ro/1c1nsK8pAjW4

I think most people with kids know this situation. I have a newborn (3 weeks), and in laws/parents are absolutely in love to the point where they are crossing some boundaries.
I can deal with this with my mum ( telling her off) but my relationship with my MIL is different, and I'm finding MIL the most difficult right now. Typical issues, taking baby when I'm trying to change/feed them, making it difficult for me to sooth baby as they want to continue holding baby, etc.
I have gotten advice and some stock phrases to manage MIL when she's preventing me doing basics. But I'm not sure how to manage the constant unsolicited advice/opinions, and then pushing that advice.
E.g., for one topic I would receive "would it not be easier to do x.... You see x would make more sense... I think you'd find it easier to do x.... I never heard of that reason not to do x... It's up to you, but I think you should do x.... You don't think she wants x.... I really think you would find X easier..." This went on even after we caved.
On one occasion I explained why I was doing it my way... And she got a face with me. But there are constant comments every day.
So.... Any advice on productive responses while fostering her loving relationship with my daughter? Note I don't want to burn bridges and I want a positive relationship for all of us. Especially for husband who may feel stuck, frustrated but also hurt by these comments too.

Well, it looks like Jordan Peterson has finally cracked the code on “wokeness.” Based on his research, we now have insight into the type of person who easily succumbs to this twisted and warped way of thinking.
The truth is, leftist tactics are pretty slick—they love to play word games. They throw around phrases like “Across state lines,” “My Body, My Choice,” and “No Human is Illegal” that all sound really good but are just verbal tricks designed to pull the wool over your eyes. These clever catchphrases easily snag folks who don’t dig deeper into what they’re actually hearing. See, the richer and more vast your vocabulary, the better you can sort through smokescreens and propaganda and recognize when words are being twisted to fool you.
For example, slogans like “silence is violence” and “words are violence” try to stretch the meaning of actual “violence” to include just about anything, including what you say or don’t say. But here’s the thing: folks who really get the true meaning of words won’t fall for this trick. They know violence involves physical force, not just speaking up or keeping quiet.
So, these catchphrases, which try to make everyday actions seem dangerous, just don’t stick with people who understand how language is being manipulated. But many do fall for it, and that’s why this obsession with reshaping language to suit their agenda is a common strategy on the left.
Wokeness breaks everything down into simple terms of good or bad—blacks = good, whites = bad; men = bad, women = good; and anything like patriarchy or racism = super duper bad. This simplicity only works for people who lack verbal smarts. These low-IQ, often criminal-minded people can only understand simple slogans and mental models, and the communist left is all too happy to supply them.
This leads to two additional problems. First, there’s confirmation bias, which is living in your own personal echo chamber. It means you ignore any facts or opinions that challenge your beliefs and only pay attention to those that support what you already think. Second, there’s a kind of fear, or cowardice, involved. It’s the fear of facing anything that might truly challenge or threaten your views. So, instead of confronting or considering different perspectives, people shut down and stick to their comfort zones.
Another trick the left uses to control the story is by throwing together confusing word salads. Take the gender confusion debate—it’s just a tangled mess of words that skirts around actual science and refuses to take any real responsibility. A person of modest intelligence simply doesn’t have the brainpower to discern that these word salads have no real meaning; they are easily bamboozled. The left-wing thought leaders are word artists who spin their words in the worst possible way, which ultimately hampers the ability of many of the simpler leftists to think clearly and critically.
This is where Jordan Peterson’s research comes into play. Peterson says his research into “wokeness” found that the biggest indicator is low verbal intelligence. After that, it’s being female or having a feminine personality, and finally, taking at least one woke college course.
So, basically, wokeness is for a combination of dummies and those led by the emotions.
Jordan Peterson Nails It...

^{This is a repost with new info, corrections and better formatting. Thanks for previous contributions! <3}
I've seen quite a few "All lost My Chemical Romance songs" and "My Chemical Romance rarities" posts, but they mostly all either:

A: Conflate "Lost" with "Rare" or "Not studio-produced" B: Aren't Sourced C: Incomplete D: Have disinfo E: Mistakenly include working titles for later released tracks as "lost"

So, here we go! I've gotten most of my info from a few archives and long-time fans in the community but I would love to hear any additions you have to add! The more eyes the better!

For clarity: Bullets = I Brought You My Bullets, You Brought Me Your Love Revenge = Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge LOTMS = Life on the Murder Scene TBP = The Black Parade TBPID = The Black Parade Is Dead! DD = Danger Days CW = Conventional Weapons TPK = The Paper Kingdom MDNSY = May Death Never Stop You

^{Tracks are listed in supposed creation order, then by discovery or release} Nine Volt Heart ^aka Android [..?] - Song title found in now-lost Flash player elements of My Chemical Romance's official site going back to at least 5/25/2002. According to a 2011 text interview by Cassie The Venomous with Gerard and Mikey, the song was played once live at NJ's Loop Lounge to bad reactions from the band and poor fanfare and as a result shelved from future releases. Later possibly reworked into an unreleased song named "'Android...' something?". Though according to a 2004 post by SpaceyRaygun, a long-time friend of the band, Nine Volt Heart was instead reworked onto a Revenge track. ^{Fandom rumors going back to at least 5/3/2006 claim Nine Volt Heart was a cover of the Smashing Pumpkins' song Bodies albeit with slightly different lyrics. Although the poster's source songmeanings.net has since taken down the potentially false lyrics page.}
The Attic Demos ^aka Dreams ^\of/about]) Stabbing and/or Being Stabbed - A CD Distributed at early shows and among the band's circle. Later partially released on 2014's MDNSY, though these demos circulated the fandom pre-2014 from these promotional CDs.

Wish You Away ^aka Drowning Lessons Rough Mix - If community sources are to be believed (1) (2) (3) (4)) (5) a variant of The Attic Demos distributed among friends and family of the band contains recordings of 'Vampires Will Never Hurt You' titled "Stabbing" and 'Drowning Lessons' titled "Wish You Away" (Pre-release titles corroborated by the early instances of My Chemical Romance's website).
Stabbing ^aka Vampires Will Never Hurt You Demo - Found as of July 23rd, 2022. Demo released via Instagram from for Bullet's 20th anniversary. This CD was given to Nada Recording in 2002 prior to their recording of Bullets. Clip is partially cut off and downloaded through Instagram API.
Early Sunsets Over Monroeville Demo - An Attic Demo found by SpaceyRaygun with an Early Sunsets Over Monroeville recording not included on MDNSY. Included in notable bootlegs such as Self-titled MP3 Collection released 2010. ~Fake demo debunked by (Friend of Matt Pelissier) and SpaceyRaygun (The track's original source).

Sister to Sleep - One of the earliest songs written for Revenge, revealed in a 2003 interview as conceptualized for The Freddy vs. Jason Soundtrack before licensing fell through. It was re-conceptualized around The Sandman series of comics, where sleep is anthropomorphized as the titular Sandman, and his sister as Death. In its released form, the lyrics explore sleep as an analogy for death and themes of insomnia and institutionalization. Ultimately, the track was cut from release by producer Howard Benson. Two live recordings (1) (2) of this song have circulated the fandom for a number of years, with one found more recently all from the same show played in NYC's the Knitting Factory on 6/26/2003. On 10/17/2022, it was played once more in Inglewood during the RETURN Tour, albeit slightly different lyrics. Later, Frank spoke on a 2023 interview about using live footage for practice, likely explaining the difference in lyrics. In 2013 the band had stated in an interview potentially none of the members still possessed a copy of Sister to Sleep's demo recording (A claim still supported by Frank in a 2022 interview) except possibly for a soundcheck library recording Mikey was given from the Knitting Factory show. With renewed interest in the song, Matt Pelissier was asked via Twitter about the track. ^{If community sources \}1]) ^\2]) ^{are to be believed, a Twitter user "Martin" asked Gerard the whereabouts and existing number of these demos, Gerard would share that they lost the only existing copy moving from coast to coast a number of years ago. Martin then asked Matt about the demos to corroborate Gerard's story, which prompted Matt to reveal more info.} Matt claimed he was given an additional copy of Sister to Sleep, as were all of the band members, their studio and their label. Fans supposedly questioned his demo's legitimacy. (1) (2) (3) Matt then posted three 15 second clips of the track to his Instagram. These clips were DMCA claimed by Warner and Matt was threatened with potential legal action if he continued copyright violations. However, fans downloaded these clips before they were taken down. (1) (2) Afterwards, Matt was asked via text conversations by his Revenir bandmate u/dansplayslol11 after hearing the track if he still intended on leaking it. Matt explained that he didn't intend on releasing them being content as the apparent sole owner of the demo.

Manhattan Demos ^aka A-Demos - In 2013 the band had stated in an interview Sister to Sleep's studio recording existed on the "Manhattan Demos" or "A-Demos" as Ray called them that also contained demo material later released on LOTMS. Screenshots of other production tracklists around this time have also been leaked and released by several sources including Revenge producer Howard Benson. (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6)

I'm Not Okay (I Promise) Demo - A 1 minute 4 second Clip of an I'm Not Okay demo uploaded by the YouTube channel AJ Serna in 2012 which contains the line "And never mind the drugs you took" instead of Revenge's release version "The photographs your boyfriend took" with notably worse recording quality. ^{This lyric was likely remnants from when the song served as the conclusion to the album with a spoken word outro by Daryl Palumbo \}Of Glassjaw, Head Automatica] and is more in-line with) ^{early production takes of the song.}
Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge Instrumentals - Instrumental versions of all 13 original Revenge tracks can be heard as backing tracks for the duration of LOTMS. Never released as a stand-alone instrumental promotional album unlike TBP.
Someone Out There Loves You - Released as a live performance on the official TBPID DVD as Track 30 with a live video. Unofficially titled 'Stay' by fans before its official title was revealed by Gerard on Twitter. Frank revealed in an interview with The Music that the song had a studio demo but "lyrical reservations" prevented its release.
MCRBlog 09' Demos - Throughout 2009, the band would post an occasional series titled 'Practice Cam' where they'd take photos and videos of whiteboards containing song titles. Fans like Cassie the Venomous were able to decipher some of these titles, and later corroborate them with at-the-time newly released live performances. (What was initially titled 'Siren Song' as a live performance eventually released as 'AMBULANCE', ect.) However, some of these teased titles never received accompanying live material. These include:

"Still Alive" ^\Also detailed in) ^{this interview.\}) "Teenage Girl" "Pretty [..?]" "Monster Jam" ^\This could be in reference to the video game 'Monster Jam: Masters of Mayhem' of which 'I'm Not Ok)' ^{appeared as an in-game track})^.\)

Hell Hath No Fury - This track was apparently credited to My Chemical Romance (1) (2) for 2012's The Man With The Iron Fists but never appeared on the movie's soundtrack. ^{It's theorized this track midway through the film is a snippet of the track.}
The Paper Kingdom - Proceeding DD's touring cycle, the My Chemical Romance began work on their 5th studio record before scrapping the album due to burnout, depression and unhealthy habits. (1) (2) Some of this material was likely posted by a user named Excalibur and sold for $10k+ on the leaked music website Leaked.cx in late September 2022. Snippets of these tracks with added auditory watermarks were provided by the leaker for legitimacy from tracks with the filenames "Dark Cloud", "Witch" and "Wake Up!". However, these clips were taken down by Warner both on leaked.cx and on other sites' reposts, likely validating the leak's legitimacy. One track recognized by Warner's automatic content ID system was entitled "Paper Swords" by My Chemical Romance.

The Foundations of Decay Sessions - According to comments by Excalibur made under leaked.cxs TPK leak, they also possessed demo sessions for the My Chemical Romance's 2022 release The Foundations of Decay. It was unclear whether these sessions were also purchased and vaulted alongside TPK's leak by the same or another buyer.

... These aren't exactly "lost", only ^\notable]) live performances with no evidence of official or studio variants: ^{FYI, any of these songs can be heard with a simple YouTube or Internet Archive search \}if I don't already link a primary or secondary source here.)
Everybody Tie Your Shoe - Stage banter on TBP's 2007 tour. Released on the 'Fans of Compilations' bootleg album in 2008.
The Drugs - A scrapped song played live sometime during 2009 during the Summer Sonic Festival. Later never released alongside the other CW-era singles or later DD material. Released as a live track on 'Still Chemical Dependency' bootleg album in 2009.
Everybody Hates the Eagles ^aka Kill Em' All ^aka DD Jam Session - A DD-era Jam Session repurposed for the My Chemical Romance's 2022-2023 tour and given lyrics with a variety of concluding lines rhyming or spinning on the phrase "Everybody Hates the Eagles". (1) (2) (3) (4)
... These aren't in any sense "lost". Some just aren't on streaming services, just obscure or with no official release: ^{FYI, any of these songs can be heard with a simple YouTube or Internet Archive search \}if I don't already link a primary or secondary source here.)
Jack the Ripper (cover) - Live cover of Morrissey's song released on the EP Like Phantoms, Forever in 2002 including live banter, then later released as a cut-down version on the Thank You for the Venom 7" in 2004. ^{Often mistaken for separate live and studio tracks such as mislabeling on the Self-titled MP3 Collection and other MP3 archives.}
Give Em' Hell, Kid Alt. Version - An alternate version of Give Em' Hell, Kid from iTunes.
Under Pressure (cover) - Cover of Queen and David Bowie's song as a collaboration with The Used made for release as a single and a bonus track for The Used's 2004 release 'In Love and Death'.
Astro Zombies (cover) - Cover of Misfits' song released for Tony Hawk's American Wasteland 2005.
I Never Told You What I Do For a Living Demo - Demo track released on LOTMS lyrically and sonically distinct from its Revenge release.
Bury Me in Black - Demo released first as a Japanese Revenge bonus track, later released internationally on LOTMS.
Desert Song - Complete studio track intended for Revenge, released exclusively on LOTMS.
Song 2 (cover) - Cover of Blur's song released on Radio 1's Live Lounge Album in 2006.
The Black Parade Instrumentals - Promotional CDr distributed to advertisers alongside TBP in 2006.
The Black Parade: The B-Sides - Includes My way Home Is Through You, Kill All Your Friends and Heaven Help Us. Released as a stand-alone b-side album in 2009 including bonus tracks released alongside TBP in 2006.
Desolation Row (cover) - Cover of Bob Dylan's song for release with Watchmen (2009) with an accompanying promotional music video set in the Watchmen universe.
All I Want for Christmas Is You (cover) - Cover of Mariah Carey's song for 2009's Christmas compilation album Gift Wrapped: 20 Songs That Keep On Giving.
We Don't Need Another Song About California - Danger Days: The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys iTunes Deluxe bonus track.
Zero Percent - Danger Days: The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys Japanese bonus track.
Sing Single - Radio edit and instrumental single of Sing released in 2010.
The Mad Gear and Missile Kid EP - Collection of songs written during DD's production (Black Dragon Fighting Society being written before DD), intended to be My Chemical Romance's in-universe proxy. Released with DD's 2010 box set and released digitally for the first time in 2022.
Bulletproof Heart Single - Radio edit and instrumental single of Bulletproof Heart released in 2011.
Planetary (GO!) Remixes - Planetary (GO!) single remixes by Lags Gallows & Vasquez/Gorman released in 2011.
Common People (cover) - Cover of Pulp's song for BBC Radio 1, Released on the 2011 The Only Hope For Me Is You EP.
Every Snowflake is Different (Just Like You) - A track made for the show Yo' Gabba Gabba in 2011. Made alongside a music video featured on the show. Notably similar to S/C/A/E/C/O/W and preformed live by My Chemical Romance on tour the same year.
#SINGItForJapan - Full orchestral Japanese instrumental version of SING following earthquakes and tsunamis that devastated Japan in 2011. Released as a single alongside a YouTube upload and merchandise to raise money for Japanese charities.
The Kids from Yesterday Remixes - Australian-exclusive box set released 2012 including remixes from Dan P. Carter, Lags Gallows and Vazquez/Gorman.
Fake Your Death - The first track on May Death Never Stop You and released as a single. Theorized as originally made for TPK. Aside: I hear his VERY widely talked about as a fact, butthe main article citedis mistakenly referencing Gerard's solo work. As likely as this rumor is, there is no evidence.
Black Parade / Living with Ghosts - Black Parade's 10-year anniversary release including a variety of TBP demos both scrapped and reworked onto the 2006 release.
Welcome to the Black Parade (Steve Aoki 10th Anniversary Remix) - Remix of Welcome to the Black Parade by Steve Aoki for TBP's 10th Anniversary.
... Specific thanks to u/mj2000p, u/Tongara, u/danplayslol11, SpaceyRaygun and Party in the affiliated My Chemical Romance Discord for previous edits. To see the edits check out my original post.

Please do not harass or beg band members or those affiliated with the band for unreleased material. Archival efforts are important but many of these songs fall under copyright and/or hold great personal value. Be respectful in reaching out to potential leads.

If anyone has better sources, anything else to correct or add I'd love to add to what I have and will credit.
Thanks for all the help! <3 Happy 20 years to Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge! :3

Firstly, I used to like Dave and he really helped set me on my path. He has a ton of charisma but unfortunately as I've learned more and as he's regressed into this miserable person that he is I rarely listen anymore. I feel that I've outgrown his program however I still see a lot of value in it for his target audience debt-a-holics.
With all that said, I was listening to The Money Guy show and he used a phrase that is think perfectly sums up Dave's habit of over simplifying his math. We all hear him say stuff like you "you make 100k live off 40k and throw the other 60k at your debt and you'll pay off 120k debt in two years!" We all know it doesn't work that way and he ignores things like taxes, benefits, daycare, etc.
Well, on TMG Brian said when he was a child he really wanted a $500 go-kart. He said he knew his parents make 80k and that they could afford to buy him 16 go-karts per year and that that meant they didn't love him or didn't want him to be happy. But the child is ignorant of how money works.
I immediately thought of Dave when I heard this. A child at least has the excuse of naivety but Dave does not. I think Dave uses go-kart math for disingenuous reasons but none-the-less it stuck out to me and now "go-kart" math is a term I'll incorporate into my vocabulary.

Good marrow, bonelickers!
Early last month I announced the 19th Speedlang Challenge. I broke the mould with it a little bit by confining how the ambitious among you would actually put together your speedlangs rather than defining a number of requisite features. The bulk of this process had speedlangers root all their creative linguistic decisions in a small set of natlangs, and these natlangs specifically had to be native to areas representative of a chosen clade of organisms. To ensure the clade of organisms was well represented, I also asked for a number of lexical items and conceptual metaphors that had to be specifically inspired by the clade in some way, as well as some aspect of the phonology.
Like last time, I'll provide my thoughts about what I think makes each submission special and the features I particularly like. Afterwards, I'll quickly review what was inspired by the chosen clade, in case that has any bearing on what you kind readers might like to check out, and give out brownie points for any easter eggs I spot, whether intended or not.
Overall this has been a deeply creative round of submissions and I learned a lot, both things I set out to achieve when I thought up this particular challenge. I hope it was just as rewarding a challenge for everyone who submitted as it was for me getting to read up on each entry, and I hope it will be the same for anyone who reads up on them, too.
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Seba Bàsa by Miacomet

Gyps (griffon vultures); Chamic, Bengali, Santali & Mundari
With a name including the element Bàsa, I knew this had to have Indic flavours of one sort of another, and indeed it does! This conlang is largely Austronesian in origin with sound changes from Old Cham, but it has a lot of Bengali influence and is well situated in the Indian subcontinent, and I greatly appreciate the nod to Parsi funerary traditions as an inspiring reason for choosing Gyps. Amusingly, this conlang has many features that fit right into the inspiration for the last speedlang challenge, which I find just delightful, with some split-S marking, dative enclitics, and grammaticalised constructions for simultaneous and sequential events, and light pronouns. Therebeside, the historical clipping, CVK syllable structure, postpositional pronouns, and aspectual auxiliaries speak to sensibilities in my own conlanging, and the dissimilation processes in some of the affixes are a nice touch, too. I'm also a big of fan just how the split-S system is implicated in some verbal polysemy, and I really like how the few voices seem kinda muddy but have clear use cases. What really sets this conlang apart, though, is the consideration paid to the effect of prestige languages. Some phonemes are restricted to loanwords from the local prestige language, and one is even only confined to prestige language-educated speakers, which causes some allophony other speakers don't have. Loaning processes are detailed, too, and the number and classifier system also draws nice lines along the prestige axis with a total of 3 parallel number systems, spread out across both divisions of native vs. loaned classifiers, which themselves have specific semantic domains they each classify, and across divisions of prestige language education. The story at the end, too, is a real treat: it's a translation of Hindu vulture myth, perfect for this project.
Seba Bàsa's Gyps-inspired phonology includes the development of creaky voice from the loss of glottals, glottalised consonants, and final /s/ in Old Cham to recall vulture cries. It's inspired lexicon includes some fun polysemy of vulture behaviours like circling = waiting or sheepling = looking for something desirable. I'm also a big fan of kite (the bird) = messy eater. It's inspired conceptual metaphors include dividing the beginning, middle, and end of a process into eating skin, meat, and bones, respectively, and equating head height/position with one's health or comfortableness as inspired by how vultures droop their heads when ill.
We're starting off string with double brownie points for meeting both the space epic easter egg by calquing the Ewokese word for 'outsider' and the empress easter egg by referring to Buddha's Birthday!
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Kogëdek by u/Porpoise_God

Setonix & Macropodidae more generally (quokkas + kangaroos & wallabies); Noongar, Pitjantjatjara, Wajarri, Guugu Yimithirr, Miriwoong, Guniyandi, Dyirbal, Mbabaram
Aside from the one splant you'll soon see, I think this entry gets the prize for the most unique chosen clade by being A) not a bird, and B) not an ungulate. As great as birds are, quokkas are pretty amazing, too. I'm not too familiar with Pama-Nyungan languages but this did a good job of affecting some of the features I've come to know them for, including but not limited to the phonological natural classes of peripheral vs. coronal, coverb constructions, and the word for 'dog' bearing a striking similarity to English. Split-ergativity features across the noun-pronoun axis, and there's a unique set of duals that specifically refer to sibling, parent-child, or spousal pairs of individuals that I might have to steal for myself. The case marking includes a lative case I haven't seen before, and implicates the comitative in a neat way in comparative constructions. I also appreciate the what-looks-to-be resumptive subject pronominal proclitics; very speedlang 18, and a great example of a fossilised mistake, which I always love to see! The verbs also feature multiple conjugations, and the imperative is implicated for its tenselessness in certain subclause constructions, which has a certain type of quirkiness I'd expect out of some past speedlang challenges.
Kogëdek's Setonix-inspired phonology included a /ç/ in the proto-lang, which bears some resemblance to quokka calls, although it was lost to /s/ and /x/ in the modern language. The inspired lexical entries include roots for different kinds of macropods and styles of jumping, and conflates jumping with breathing. Some of the idioms include "pouch-baby" for pejorative "mama's-boy" and using kangaroo badassery as a metaphor for all sorts of less than ideal situations.
Brownie points for a particularly insidious word-form for 'father'.
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Yatakang by Lichen

Bubalus (water buffaloes); Hindi-Urdu, Thai, Vietnamese, Khmer, Burmese, Malay
This one's a little rough around the edges, but it's a good foundation for a nice mix of both SEA features, like the isolating morphosyntax, and unique features, like the class agreement system. It's also got clicks limited to avoidance speech! Diachronics from a proto-lang where considered, and I really like how the typologies of the inspo langs were used as targets for the sound changes. I'll have to keep this workflow in mind! Some of the sound changes include expanding the number of stop contrasts to match the average number of contrasts, or eroding the number of vowels to match that of Malay. Phonotactics were carefully considered with full structures for both mono- and disyllables as well as bare roots vs. compound stems. Grammatically, morphology is mostly limited to a host of different reduplication patterns, which in itself is something I'd really like to see more of! Where this really shines, though, is with its agreement system: nouns are sorted into a 3x2 matrix of 6 classes, portmanteau agreement particles mark for the class of both the subject and the object, the system implicates the social hierarchies common to many SEA languages, and the position of the particle marks modality. Incredibly inspired to pack all that into a set of maybe 36 particles, if you ask me, never mind how it helps to disambiguate fluid word class and how it might be implicated in future plans for Indonesian object-oriented verbs. I'm also a fan of how the temporal question verb patterns like an agreement particle to mark for tense by co-opting the modality marking. We also get some prosody-syntax interfacing with different pitch contours at clause boundaries operating as different sorts of conjunctions.
Yatakang's Bubalus-inspired phonology includes a combination of creaky voice and syllabic nasals to affect a mooing phonaesthetic. The lexical entries exhibit some nice semantic drift from water buffalo activities and behaviours towards more human behaviours, and the planned phrase of hat-hand stroke fur for "suddenly realise a problem, and then pretend there isn't one" just feels exactly like an observation a water buffalo would make observing its human, which I really like. The inspired metaphors are also simple and straightforward, likening roundedness to goodness or knowledge to food, which makes for some brilliantly idiomatic language like "I ate the book" to mean "I read and understood the contents of the book."
Extra brownie points for including both halves of the space epic easter egg to placate both sides of nerddom; the term 'tax-man' is everything it ought to be.
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Kurikiri by Jjommoma

Casuariiformes (cassowaries and emus); Dhuwal, Motu, Tok Pisin
Compared to most other entries, this one's very short and sweet with some Australian sounds and some head-final Papuan grammar (however loose a description that is). That being said, Kurikiri is very inventive in being partially signed with much of its grammatical marking encoded by actions done with the foot, including number, case, definiteness, and some basic TAM.
Aside from the cassowary foot action grammar markers, as well as some lexical entries there-related, Kurikiri also equates flightedness to being ostentatious, disdaining flighted birds out of envy, which I think is a fun thought process for these terrestrially confined birds. There's also some neat phonosemantics in the taboo word for predator being especially difficult to pronounce.
This wasn't the intent, but I'm giving some space epic brownie points for the foot grammar if for nothing else than that it reminds me of Paul Frommer's Thark from John Carter and its telepathic grammatical and verbal lexical expression.
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Whaynisiday by u/Fimii

Spheniscidae (penguins); Māori, Xhosa, Quechua
What do you do when the entire population of penguins achieves human-like levels of intelligence after some gene splicing and they start calling for a language to call their own? Why, you do exactly what the prompt of this challenge asks for and combine the languages native to the homeland of the blue, african, and humboldt penguins! The write up for this conlang does a great job of pointing out what features are from which language exactly, and plays a fun balancing game between some of the phonological and grammatical extremes in its sourcelangs. In so doing it has a few quirks that really tickle the intersection of my linguist and conlanger venn diagram, specifically the presence of what I'd have to interpret as onset morae, as well as semantic noun class marked solely through agreement (which is very Varamm, so I'm not at all biased towards it). There's a handful of fun, rare cases, and the simulative mood fits right into the inspirations for the last challenge to create some vaguely Tupian simultaneous actions. There's a bunch more little grammatical bits that are fun, but impressionistically I appreciate how the more isolating grammar of Māori was incorporated into the synthetic common ground of the other 2 sourcelangs.
Whaynisiday's Spheniscidae-inspired phonology includes a couple syringeal sounds to complement the otherwise human capable inventory. The highlighted lexical entries pay special attention to how penguins locomote with basic stems for different kinds of movement options both on land and in the water, as well as a split in breathing for whether its on land at rest or in the water being active. The conceptual metaphors include a great model of time with the past on land and the future in the inky depths, and the very adorable notion that safety = community, and so naturally a farewell would be a wish of friendship.
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Poro by The Inky Baroness

Rangifer tarandus subsp. (domestic reindeers); Proto-Samic, Komi-Zyrian, Tundra Nenets, Chukchi
Where do I even begin with this one? I was excited to read this one when I first received it, but it was even better than I could have hoped when I got round to reading it! Although, not for any linguistic reasons: the first half of the doc reminds me of Gillian Teft's Anthro-Vision as an anthropological account of reindeers written by a fictitious Finnish researcher rather than any sort of sketched reference grammar, which I love dearly. The latter half, meanwhile, goes into great detail about what went into the first half, including all sorts of motivations or reasons for the decisions made. Some diachrony is detailed, as well as the effects of language contact rooted in actual historical events relevant to the chosen sourcelangs, which is just great to see. I loved the ways in which each of the different sourcelangs were all represented in the final product with it being Samic in origin but including some phonological and grammatical borrowings from Komi and Nenets like the lack of consonant gradation, the verb-final syntax, some vowel changes, and a fantastic predestinative affix that interacts with the conceptualisation of time in some neat ways. All the while, care was taken to do a wealth of research at every step in the process with a fairly extensive bibliography. Hoof clicks all around for this one!
Poro's Rangifer-inspired phonology includes a deer bellow as some sort of epiglottal obstruent that actually patterns with the Nenets glottal stop, as well as some other approximated reindeer vocalisations including what I presume to be grunts or chuffs, both oral and nasal. Care was also taken to think about what a fully reindeerised descendant of Proto-Samic would look like as accords with the included etiological myth for reindeers and reindeer husbandry, but this was well beyond the scope of a speedlang. The lexical entries include all sorts of terms for reindeer physiology, including but not limited to antler velvet, different types of vocalisations, and hoof clicks. These lexical entries feature in some wonderful idioms using antlers to describe social hierarchy, useful- or uselessness, and glibness or malicious intent, as well as an equivalent to "when pigs fly": "to catch a bird between one's hooves."
Extra brownie points both for the nominal hierarchical exaltation of mothers baked into reindeer culture and inclusion of an anti-imperialist message in promoting the research of the under-represented and often stigmatised language and culture of traditionally reindeer herding peoples. Also do keep an eye out for Dr. Dolittle easter eggs: Inky will reward you handsomely if you can spot one!
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Kiwi by NerpNerp

Apteryx & Novaeratitae more broadly (kiwis + cassowaries & emus); English, Māori, Traditional Tiwi, Miriwoong, Bardi
Given the number of bird entries with Indo-Pacific flavours, I'm almost half surprised this was the only kiwi entry: they're such good birbs! As might be expected, this conlang endeared itself to me just as its namesake does. The phonology has all sorts of trills and rhotics, and limits itself to high vowels; it's also got some neat phrase level prosody to mark different sorts of modal information and focus, even including an intrusive glottal stop at the sentence level. Noun incorporation is varied and detailed, and can create some polysynthetic constructions as a consequence of just how exactly the rest of the otherwise fairly analytic morphosyntax works. I'm a particular fan of the deictic categories including 7 different degrees of deixis characterising both distance and motion, and I'm also a fan of of the grammaticalised time of day. Heximal numbers and coverb constructions also feature. There's even a kiwi-capable featural alphabet that each of the examples show off!
Kiwi's Apteryx-inspired phonology includes the trills and high vowels being inspired by kiwi calls and I imagine a little of their anatomy with those long, thin bills. The inspired lexemes include specific types of smells humans can't detect at the expense of any colour terms, reflecting kiwis nocturnal, smell-based lifestyles. The idioms for "a long time ago" or "once upon a time" is absolutely delightful--"when kiwis flew"--and the grammaticalised time of day subdivides the night but not the day, as might be expected from a nocturnal beastie.
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Asamiin by Christian Evans

Asamina (pawpaws); Ottawa, Unami, Tuscarora, Mikasuki, Chitimacha, Timucua
The speech that nourishes! And a splant, too, no less; I was hoping for at least one of these! This one's made all the better by delving into some Eastern North American languages and I really like the flavours this lends itself to. Syncope is abound with all sorts of morphological obfuscation through detailed phonological processes, and animacy plays a key role in the verb complex. Care was also taken to find a phonological common ground between all the sourcelangs, which made for a really interesting set of vowels with a basic 6 vowel inventory, but with 2 nasal vowels that can surface as vocalic allophones to the nasal consonants. The grammar is fairly straightforward but has a few quirks that I really appreciate, including but not limited to the fluid O placement to make for some syntactic focusing strategies I so adore and the optional, enclitic case marking narrowed by various postpositions used as another, separate means of focus. Overall just really well laid out and the formatting is really cute, something I've now come to expect after Yumpịku last time.
Asamiin's Asamina-inspired phonology includes a pharyngeal approximant to recall the really long taproot pawpaws grow, as well as regressive sibilant harmony to recall the mimicry the flowers employ to attract pollinators, both of which are some really inspired departures from the sourcelangs.
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Ekaangäq by Atyx

Haliaeetus pelagicus (Steller's sea eagle); Chukchi, Alyutor, Koryak, Itelmen, Ainu, Nivkh, Evenki, Uilta
A bird that escapes any Indo-Pacific flavours? Well I'll be! Instead of South Pacific this one gives all sorts of North Pacific energy being spoken by a population of eaglefolk native to the Sea of Okhotsk and representative of the languages spoken along its coasts. The Ainu flavours are especially strong with both an Ainu-based consonant inventory and a kana orthography, among others. The vowels also show some interesting lopsidedness with 2 creaky vowels complementing an otherwise fairly straightforward 6 vowel system that feature in a front-back vowel harmony system, though I'm a real fan of the sandhi rules at word boundaries that cause all sorts of fun consonant alternations. Word stress is also detailed and has funky placement rules at odds with my understanding of theoretical prosodic processes! Grammatically there's a few quirks that really stand out to me and tickle my curiosity: a dual distinction on the nouns but not in the pronouns, and polypersonal agreement in a transitive alignment system, the only departure from direct, accusative, and/or ergative alignment in this round of submissions. I also appreciate some of the syncretism in the pronouns!
Ekkangäq's Haliaeetus-inspired phonology includes entirely unrounded vowels and a lack of any labial consonants to reflect the speakers have beaks, as well as the 2 creaky vowels as rooted in their physiology, a common theme for this challenge. The lexicon includes some distinctions between diving and eating as it applies to different kinds of prey. The conceptual metaphor, though, I think is really great equating the passage of time with ice: an iceberg calving off a glacier is birth, melting is ageing, and melting all away is dying. Great stuff!
I think I actually have to give negative brownie points for this one: as much as I appreciate 3 separate orthographies (Kana, Cyrillic, Latin) for some historicity, they are all at odds with the anti-imperialism the brownie criterion requires, and there's no girl power to balance it out.
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Taqồpaq by accruenewblue

Gallus (jungefowl); Hindi-Urdu, Burmese, Thai, Punjabi, Tamil, Indonesian
I'm a little surprised this is, I think, the only truly tonal submission despite all the SEA birds, and it's less synthetic than most in this round of submissions. In either case, this one does a great job of illustrating some tonogenesis and some recent and still very transparent synthetic developments from a formerly isolating language. The tones are simple registers, but they interact with morae in some neat rightwards reassigning sandhi patterns, and they complement a system of 12 vowels in a 3x2x2 matrix of height, frontedness, and roundedness. There's even some vocalic nasal allophones (which is twice now in this round of submissions), and labial consonant-vowel harmony to boot! Grammatically I greatly appreciate all the call-outs for similarities to natural languages, and I wanna shout-out the use of a positive tag question instead of negative. The numbers have this funky sexagesimal base with an octal sub-base and remnants of an old decimal sub-base, which recalls some of the duodecimal remnants in the otherwise decimal system of many European languages.
Taqồpaq's Gallus-inspired phonology includes the tonal system being described as recalling a rooster's crow. The lexicon includes roots for all things chicken, including using the word for 'wattle' as a classifier for hanging things, which is so delightfully what I wanted out of this challenge. The more idiomatic language makes use of chicken behaviours as descriptors: dust baths are metaphors for something useful but not everyone's cup of tea, and continuing to brood after the chicks have hatched is a metaphor for doing a good thing so long it has negative consequences.
Extra brownie points for exalting queen Trưng, first queen of Vietnam, and a nationalist hero who fought against Chinese imperialism. Double whammy right there!
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Ngālin by u/borago_officinalis

Aptenodytes forsteri (emperor penguins); Awabakal, Māori, Norwegian
We already had a penguin splang but this one's a nice twist by focusing on the territorial claims of Antarctica rather than the ranges of more temperate inclined penguins where there are actually native languages. This does a great job of shirking the indigenous implication in the language selection step of the challenge (although I'm very glad to see no English or Spanish), so there's a really neat mix of isolating Māori particles with a fusional Germanic verbal system, and I was able to easily pick up on both reading through the doc. The verb system actually pleases me greatly with a strong/weak contrast and a V2 word order wherein the strong verbs mark tense through stem change and the weak verbs with a tense auxiliary, all whilst maintaining a very Polynesian aesthetic despite the very Germanic number of vowels. The Māori possessive system is also really fun, I think. I can't speak to the Awabakal influences, but I was able to pick up on the one, tiny Mapudungan influence of tone tag particles before it was even explicitly mentioned! Not sure where the negation system came from, but it implicates the weak verbs in a way I so adore. Really sweet, despite the fun grim facts about emperor penguin hatchlings, and I found this one just darling. The myth at the end about how penguins lost their ability to fly is also real treat and is a perfect fit for the project.
Ngālin doesn't have any A. forsteri-inspired phonology, but it makes up for it with the inspired lexicon and idiomatic language. The emperor penguin breeding cycle is detailed with translations for all the important terms along the way, including but not limited to the ritual of transferring egg from mother to father and "motherless" to refer to a newborn, whose mother hasn't yet returned from the sea. There's some great, everyday idioms elided down from full phrases for greeting and consoling another penguin being "which way?" and "next year", and conceptualising a long distance as specifically the distance from colony to see is a nice touch. I also appreciate how the relationship between creche-mates is more important than that between (half-)siblings.
I have to give queen exaltation brownie points purely for the one illustrative example of āmā o pipa "hatchling's mum" grammatically indicating the senior authority of an empress penguin.
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Honourable Mention

I've been kept somewhat apprised of a Urile (North Pacific cormorants) splang by u/PastTheStarryVoids. It's still very much in the works, but it sounds funky with both some polysynthetic flavours, no doubt inspired by some PNW languages, I imagine, and some formorant (cormorant formant) analysis! Keep an eye out for it, I'm sure it'll grace the sub in due time!
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And that's everything I've seen in the time I put together this showcase. I know there were a few among you all who felt inspired but couldn't put anything together during the course of this challenge. I remember mention of a banana and a tree kangaroo splang on the announcement post. If anyone ever uses the challenge to inspire a future project of theirs, please keep me apprised! I'd be interested in seeing them if for nothing else than to see some more projects outside of South Asian and Oceanian birds, as great as those birbs are. I can't believe I didn't see a single monotreme or non-ungulate eutherian, and that there weren't any non-avian reptiles or anything fully aquatic! And no fossil clades, too, for that matter! I'm positive there are the makings of some really funky splangs if the relevant modern continental and climactic boundaries didn't yet exist.
In any case, I hope all parties involved had a great deal of fun through the course of this challenge! I know I did! Until next marrow, bonelickers!