Importance of interest inventories
MakeOthersAware
2021.02.10 19:34 MakingYouAwareDotCom MakeOthersAware
Share topics of importance and interest that you feel people should be made aware of. See more at MakingYouAware.com
2008.08.27 04:59 Top investing links, ideas and articles from the Reddit investors
Links of interest to investors with a long term fundamental outlook (Warren Buffett, Benjamin Graham etc.). Macro-economic links that have a baring are also allowed.
2017.05.08 09:10 kwko United Kingdom Cryptocurrency Guidance
Cryptocurrency is digital currency which uses cryptography to secure transactions. Bitcoin became the first decentralized cryptocurrency in 2009, since then the number of cryptocurrencies has increased rapidly with many hundred currently available Learn more at ukcryptocurrency.com
2024.06.09 23:58 Longjumping_Tour_429 Did we already forget ? D4 expansion - my take
I will probably come off as a hater now, and hey I am bitter that's for sure, but maybe not a full on hater since I'd still claim to love the franchise if you asked me.
So why am I here ? Well I couldn't find a single recent post or comment online talking about how absolutely unfair an ridiculous it is to release an expansion and expect us to pay. To put it in math, most people can agree d4 has been unplayable for about 60-75% of its life span and with 1 successful season out of 4 !!! (Bloody 4), blizzard expects us to be back on the hype train and cough up another 50$ without asking any questions... well I'm tired of being abused.. we have suffered under the chaos that was the first 3 seasons of d4 and we have barely gotten anything.. the only original content we've gotten is the vampire boss, and the rest is reskins and tweaks of existing stuff.. not a single new dungeon in all this time. Nothing interesting to speak of except the bare minimum of bosses which should have been there day 1, but it seems we've all just collectively forgotten because they happened to make one good season.
That doesent change the fact that we've been lied too.. they promised it wouldn't be a cartoon blitz game, but here we are, pets around the corner and running around with wings and big jungle cats zooming through hordes of monsters ignoring every single status effect in the game and heck something as simple as a resistance system doesent even work enough to have a proper impact in the game. Heck even the class that most people wanted "paladin" is being held back cuz let me guess, that's probably going to be the main selling point of the next expansion right ?
To be honest the features in the new expansion sounds cool but also lame.. 1 raid ? For 50 $ ? In a game where ground content is just giants who die in 3 seconds ? In what capacity have blizzard showed that they can't create fun group content in d4 ? They have shown us nothing, but we are content because it was so bad to begin with that the current state seems like paradise, but the fact is the game is still lacking. The gear is beginning to get there, but still takes no brain to get through. The bosses are multiplying and becoming more hard to take on and varied, but wtf is that grind for helltide ? Is it fun ? Yes.. but only because we don't have to do it very long and then we're lvl 100.. the way they fixed that the game sucks is to just shorten it .. wtf is that .. give us meaningful ways to progress and some interesting encounters.. redo those fucking dungeons so maybe finally it could feel satisfying to traverse them. Maybe show us some uniqueness as promised in the original trailer "100+ unique dungeons" - yea right maybe unique in name...
Can we all just please try to remember what happened.. and maybe do like with gamwstop stock.. have Diamond hands.. don't preorder don't buy.. wait it out. Show our discontent and wait it out for a bit. Play poe or le or anything else (helldivers 2 is fun).
I think it is important that we stand up a bit here because if blizzard (microsoft) can't see in their sales that people are not content, they they'll just continue to pull the whool over our eyes time and time again.
And I wanna call out rhykker and raxx and dmdarth specifically because they are peddling blizzard crap with no regard for us who consume it. I haven't seen any of them as much as even try and make people speculate or think before buying. They all just show off the new shiny stuff we can get if we press buy, so yea clearly they are blizzard lapdogs, so try not to get caught by their hype. Think for yourself if you need the expansion. What was the plan ? Wasn't diablo4 supposed to be updated again and again with new content season after ? Wasn't that the while reason that 70$ was even okay to begin with ? Do they deserve more of my money before they have paid any of their dues ?
I really think they should give the expansion away for free. That would be the only way to redeem themselves. It won't happen and that is fine, so I hope we can all unite against them till then. Hit them straight in the wallet, and be strong brothers and sisters.
submitted by Longjumping_Tour_429 to Diablo [link] [comments]
So why am I here ? Well I couldn't find a single recent post or comment online talking about how absolutely unfair an ridiculous it is to release an expansion and expect us to pay. To put it in math, most people can agree d4 has been unplayable for about 60-75% of its life span and with 1 successful season out of 4 !!! (Bloody 4), blizzard expects us to be back on the hype train and cough up another 50$ without asking any questions... well I'm tired of being abused.. we have suffered under the chaos that was the first 3 seasons of d4 and we have barely gotten anything.. the only original content we've gotten is the vampire boss, and the rest is reskins and tweaks of existing stuff.. not a single new dungeon in all this time. Nothing interesting to speak of except the bare minimum of bosses which should have been there day 1, but it seems we've all just collectively forgotten because they happened to make one good season.
That doesent change the fact that we've been lied too.. they promised it wouldn't be a cartoon blitz game, but here we are, pets around the corner and running around with wings and big jungle cats zooming through hordes of monsters ignoring every single status effect in the game and heck something as simple as a resistance system doesent even work enough to have a proper impact in the game. Heck even the class that most people wanted "paladin" is being held back cuz let me guess, that's probably going to be the main selling point of the next expansion right ?
To be honest the features in the new expansion sounds cool but also lame.. 1 raid ? For 50 $ ? In a game where ground content is just giants who die in 3 seconds ? In what capacity have blizzard showed that they can't create fun group content in d4 ? They have shown us nothing, but we are content because it was so bad to begin with that the current state seems like paradise, but the fact is the game is still lacking. The gear is beginning to get there, but still takes no brain to get through. The bosses are multiplying and becoming more hard to take on and varied, but wtf is that grind for helltide ? Is it fun ? Yes.. but only because we don't have to do it very long and then we're lvl 100.. the way they fixed that the game sucks is to just shorten it .. wtf is that .. give us meaningful ways to progress and some interesting encounters.. redo those fucking dungeons so maybe finally it could feel satisfying to traverse them. Maybe show us some uniqueness as promised in the original trailer "100+ unique dungeons" - yea right maybe unique in name...
Can we all just please try to remember what happened.. and maybe do like with gamwstop stock.. have Diamond hands.. don't preorder don't buy.. wait it out. Show our discontent and wait it out for a bit. Play poe or le or anything else (helldivers 2 is fun).
I think it is important that we stand up a bit here because if blizzard (microsoft) can't see in their sales that people are not content, they they'll just continue to pull the whool over our eyes time and time again.
And I wanna call out rhykker and raxx and dmdarth specifically because they are peddling blizzard crap with no regard for us who consume it. I haven't seen any of them as much as even try and make people speculate or think before buying. They all just show off the new shiny stuff we can get if we press buy, so yea clearly they are blizzard lapdogs, so try not to get caught by their hype. Think for yourself if you need the expansion. What was the plan ? Wasn't diablo4 supposed to be updated again and again with new content season after ? Wasn't that the while reason that 70$ was even okay to begin with ? Do they deserve more of my money before they have paid any of their dues ?
I really think they should give the expansion away for free. That would be the only way to redeem themselves. It won't happen and that is fine, so I hope we can all unite against them till then. Hit them straight in the wallet, and be strong brothers and sisters.
2024.06.09 23:55 KLTHS 27[M4F] Netherlands / Online - Big guy looking for a genuine connection
Hi there! I have posted this before and added a small little bit extra
About me
I'm a 27 year old Dutch guy, born and raised in Amsterdam and now living in Arnhem. I'm 2,05m tall and weigh about 135kg. I'm trying to lose some. The weight is definitely not too much as I have a healthy dadbod and the height/weight suits it. I am currently doing my bachelors in Automotive Engineering and plan to finish it in the next 2 years. I like to watch series, movies and like to game. I have a motorcycle and like to do an occasional tour with it, when it is not used for regular house work travel.
I have been a late bloomer and am late with most stuff in life. I'm also really oblivious if and when a girl is flirting with me. In my life I have been on 2 dates and on both I got stood up. After that I have never dated again. I am on dating apps but they just don't work for me.
I am now 27 years old and want to start dating again. I realized that I do want more of a connection with someone and that it becomes more than a one time thing. Would love to find someone that doesn't mind me having no experience and want to get to know each other. I do want a LTR, since I more want to settle down. I'm also open to start with a Long distance relationship since I know we don't all live close to each other. The most important thing is to find out if we connect and see what happens from there.
Let me know if you are interested and we can discuss more in the DM's. I prefer the reddit chat function. I would also add, please tell me early on if you would like to meet up or not and something about yourself.
submitted by KLTHS to ForeverAloneDating [link] [comments]
About me
I'm a 27 year old Dutch guy, born and raised in Amsterdam and now living in Arnhem. I'm 2,05m tall and weigh about 135kg. I'm trying to lose some. The weight is definitely not too much as I have a healthy dadbod and the height/weight suits it. I am currently doing my bachelors in Automotive Engineering and plan to finish it in the next 2 years. I like to watch series, movies and like to game. I have a motorcycle and like to do an occasional tour with it, when it is not used for regular house work travel.
I have been a late bloomer and am late with most stuff in life. I'm also really oblivious if and when a girl is flirting with me. In my life I have been on 2 dates and on both I got stood up. After that I have never dated again. I am on dating apps but they just don't work for me.
I am now 27 years old and want to start dating again. I realized that I do want more of a connection with someone and that it becomes more than a one time thing. Would love to find someone that doesn't mind me having no experience and want to get to know each other. I do want a LTR, since I more want to settle down. I'm also open to start with a Long distance relationship since I know we don't all live close to each other. The most important thing is to find out if we connect and see what happens from there.
Let me know if you are interested and we can discuss more in the DM's. I prefer the reddit chat function. I would also add, please tell me early on if you would like to meet up or not and something about yourself.
2024.06.09 23:55 Fit_Ad_7437 Conclusions of a Social Security Study on Optimal Claiming Ages Relative to Varying Discount Rates
As per my previous post, this is a fascinating study that took me a bit to find, which looks at varying discount rates and their effect on optimal claiming ages for Social Security. I'll put the link below, but here is the (for me) rather surprising conclusion (I've bolded what interested me the most. I think while being conservative is important, and I used a lower DR in my calculations, a 3.8% discount rate is by no means unreasonable):
Conclusion
Alleva (2015) analyzes the Social Security claiming decision using a fixed real rate of 2.9 percent to discount benefits at the long-term average inflation-adjusted government bond rate. Extending that analysis over a broad range of rates, the present study finds that optimizing the decision with lower rates prescribes later claiming ages but with higher associated risk, whereas optimization with higher rates prescribes earlier claiming ages and lower associated risk.
Several other results of this study are noteworthy. First, for both men and women born in 1952 with a real discount rate of 7.5 percent or higher, claiming at age 62 will always maximize lifetime benefits even if death occurs as late as age 120. For these cohorts, this finding effectively caps the range of rates to consider at 7.5 percent.
Secondly, at discount rates above 5.8 percent, claiming at age 70 will not maximize lifetime benefits for either sex at any death age. More importantly, a delay to age 70 is never the optimal choice for men at any discount rate and is optimal for women only at 0.7 percent or lower.
Finally, claiming at age 62 is optimal at discount rates of 3.8 percent or higher for men and 4.6 percent or higher for women. In other words, based on their respective survival functions, claiming at age 62 generates the highest expected lifetime benefits over the full retirement horizon at those rates or higher. Furthermore, those two rates reflect the expected returns on fairly conservative-to-moderate portfolio allocations of no more than one-half stocks. In addition, claiming at age 62 at those rates carries less risk than that associated with the OCA of 66:11 at 2.9 percent, as determined in Alleva (2015). These results indicate that rates higher than 3.8 percent (for men) and 4.6 percent (for women) need not be considered, even to justify immediate claiming with lowered risk.
Again, here is the link:
https://www.ssa.gov/policy/docs/ssb/v76n2/v76n2p1.html
Best Regards.
submitted by Fit_Ad_7437 to Bogleheads [link] [comments]
Conclusion
Alleva (2015) analyzes the Social Security claiming decision using a fixed real rate of 2.9 percent to discount benefits at the long-term average inflation-adjusted government bond rate. Extending that analysis over a broad range of rates, the present study finds that optimizing the decision with lower rates prescribes later claiming ages but with higher associated risk, whereas optimization with higher rates prescribes earlier claiming ages and lower associated risk.
Several other results of this study are noteworthy. First, for both men and women born in 1952 with a real discount rate of 7.5 percent or higher, claiming at age 62 will always maximize lifetime benefits even if death occurs as late as age 120. For these cohorts, this finding effectively caps the range of rates to consider at 7.5 percent.
Secondly, at discount rates above 5.8 percent, claiming at age 70 will not maximize lifetime benefits for either sex at any death age. More importantly, a delay to age 70 is never the optimal choice for men at any discount rate and is optimal for women only at 0.7 percent or lower.
Finally, claiming at age 62 is optimal at discount rates of 3.8 percent or higher for men and 4.6 percent or higher for women. In other words, based on their respective survival functions, claiming at age 62 generates the highest expected lifetime benefits over the full retirement horizon at those rates or higher. Furthermore, those two rates reflect the expected returns on fairly conservative-to-moderate portfolio allocations of no more than one-half stocks. In addition, claiming at age 62 at those rates carries less risk than that associated with the OCA of 66:11 at 2.9 percent, as determined in Alleva (2015). These results indicate that rates higher than 3.8 percent (for men) and 4.6 percent (for women) need not be considered, even to justify immediate claiming with lowered risk.
Again, here is the link:
https://www.ssa.gov/policy/docs/ssb/v76n2/v76n2p1.html
Best Regards.
2024.06.09 23:55 Speedster2814 How to get my players to take better notes/ask more questions?
Hi everyone! I'm a first-time DM (with no play experience either but have done an absurd amount of research) and my players are first-time players.
For my first ask: We're very early in our campaign, but as important NPCs and items are being introduced, my players aren't writing detailed enough notes and keep forgetting everything they own/know. A couple of times now I've had to remind them of their own inventory and things they've heard and it's not sustainable long-term. I don't want to say "you should write that down" every time as it'll be giving away what is and isn't quest-relevant, so is there any advice on how I should broach it my players?
For my second ask: As well as not writing much, my PCs aren't asking NPCs many questions, causing them to miss out on crucial information. I've tried upping how much information I give out per question, but again feel like it isn't sustainable and starts to blur the line between answering as part of roleplay and giving an infodump containing things they haven't asked about because I know they won't enquire further. I always prompt "is there anything else you'd like to ask?" but usually get met with "I can't think of anything else" in response and it's making it difficult to justify them progressing with any plots. How should I broach this with my players?
Thanks in advance for any advice, as mentioned my group are all super new so it might just be a learning period issue, but I'd rather not wait for advice in case it starts gumming up the game before we can get a good rhythm going. Cheers!
submitted by Speedster2814 to DMAcademy [link] [comments]
For my first ask: We're very early in our campaign, but as important NPCs and items are being introduced, my players aren't writing detailed enough notes and keep forgetting everything they own/know. A couple of times now I've had to remind them of their own inventory and things they've heard and it's not sustainable long-term. I don't want to say "you should write that down" every time as it'll be giving away what is and isn't quest-relevant, so is there any advice on how I should broach it my players?
For my second ask: As well as not writing much, my PCs aren't asking NPCs many questions, causing them to miss out on crucial information. I've tried upping how much information I give out per question, but again feel like it isn't sustainable and starts to blur the line between answering as part of roleplay and giving an infodump containing things they haven't asked about because I know they won't enquire further. I always prompt "is there anything else you'd like to ask?" but usually get met with "I can't think of anything else" in response and it's making it difficult to justify them progressing with any plots. How should I broach this with my players?
Thanks in advance for any advice, as mentioned my group are all super new so it might just be a learning period issue, but I'd rather not wait for advice in case it starts gumming up the game before we can get a good rhythm going. Cheers!
2024.06.09 23:51 No_Recognition2026 YNAB leading me to other positive financial decisions
I've been lurking here for awhile, but I think if I rave about YNAB/finances/our budget to my wife one more time she may leave me, so it's time for my first (I think ever?) reddit post!
My YNAB story: I first downloaded YNAB when I was in my early twenties, fresh out of college, and making 35k/year as a teacher in NC. At the time, I was constantly on the credit card float and I think I was mostly using YNAB as a tracker, rather than its intended use, so I was always overspending categories. I also had a lottttt of venmo transactions back then as I was living with roommates, and YNAB very quickly became confusing and depressing. I gave it up.
Flash forward about ten years. I'm 31 (female) and quit teaching about 2.5 years ago. When I did so, I greatly increased my salary (I work in tech now). For the first time in my life I'm making "real money." I'm also married, and while my wife doesn't make a ton of money in the healthcare world, having a combined income truly does make life so much easier. Having more money has made me want to be more responsible with my money, especially as I realized how quickly lifestyle creep can hit you (ie. how was I still living paycheck to paycheck and overspending on credit cards a year after quitting teaching and getting that salary bump??). I also went through a phase of massively overspending on my wife and friends, as I think I felt some guilt about my new corporate salary.
My whole life, I have been socialized to think money is "too hard", that I'll never understand it, and I also always thought I'd always work in a helping profession making pennies. As I come into my thirties with some big goals (having kids as a queer couple, buying a house someday soon, travel), I'm working hard to unlearn those mindsets. I'm a smart woman, and I can certainly be good with money without compromising my values.
Enter my second stab at YNAB. It's been about two months and I have:
submitted by No_Recognition2026 to ynab [link] [comments]
My YNAB story: I first downloaded YNAB when I was in my early twenties, fresh out of college, and making 35k/year as a teacher in NC. At the time, I was constantly on the credit card float and I think I was mostly using YNAB as a tracker, rather than its intended use, so I was always overspending categories. I also had a lottttt of venmo transactions back then as I was living with roommates, and YNAB very quickly became confusing and depressing. I gave it up.
Flash forward about ten years. I'm 31 (female) and quit teaching about 2.5 years ago. When I did so, I greatly increased my salary (I work in tech now). For the first time in my life I'm making "real money." I'm also married, and while my wife doesn't make a ton of money in the healthcare world, having a combined income truly does make life so much easier. Having more money has made me want to be more responsible with my money, especially as I realized how quickly lifestyle creep can hit you (ie. how was I still living paycheck to paycheck and overspending on credit cards a year after quitting teaching and getting that salary bump??). I also went through a phase of massively overspending on my wife and friends, as I think I felt some guilt about my new corporate salary.
My whole life, I have been socialized to think money is "too hard", that I'll never understand it, and I also always thought I'd always work in a helping profession making pennies. As I come into my thirties with some big goals (having kids as a queer couple, buying a house someday soon, travel), I'm working hard to unlearn those mindsets. I'm a smart woman, and I can certainly be good with money without compromising my values.
Enter my second stab at YNAB. It's been about two months and I have:
- Watched approximately every single video on the YNAB youtube channel and listened to many of their podcasts, too
- Created, re-created, and refined a detailed spending plan for our family (why is it so fun??)
- Paid off all my credit cards and my wife's credit cards (this wasn't too hard, as my primary goal prior to re-downloading YNAB had been to earn a little extra income in order to FINALLY get off the credit card float, so I'd pretty much achieved this already) and utilized YNAB's credit card system to ensure that moving forward we only carry a balance that we can fully pay with cash on hand
- Starting saving towards sinking funds/true expenses for the FIRST TIME IN MY LIFE (LITERALLY WHY DON'T THEY TEACH YOU THIS IN SCHOOL). While we have a lot of sinking funds and a ways to go, there are already several hundreds of dollars sitting ready to cover specific emergencies that come our way
- Realized that I don't need to be relying on or paying someone else to manage my money, which led me down a whole saga of realizing that the NWM "financial advisor" I started using in my early twenties had sold us some pretty bad whole life insurance. Bit the bullet, surrendered our policies (paying a pretty hefty "education fee"), fired the guy in a kind but firm way that I'm proud of, and got us invested in much cheaper term life policies with wayyy more coverage. I still have a couple of investment accounts through them that I plan to rollover into Fidelity soon
- Started educating myself more on investing and reading several books on investing so that I never have to rely on anyone else's bad advice or mansplaining again
- Increased some student loan payments to be more aggressive with payoff and interest saving
- Gotten in the habit of finding the money first on my YNAB app rather than credit-and-forget it
- Contributed about $2000 to our most important financial goals: house and fertility process
- ALMOST gotten us a month ahead. It's June 9th and we've funded about 80% of our targets for June
2024.06.09 23:47 Tour_True I find this common as a trans woman but I often get from the non-binary people in my life their view and conformity to be non-conforming to the binary
This is just my usual experience lately. I make plenty of friends with non-binary people but I'm a trans woman not non-binary and often feel like I'm pressured to non-binary ideas. So I have this one friend who hates gender expression but they are a punk non-binary person. They do still prefer considering themselves closer to masc. It makes sense to me for a non-binary person may not to be interested to conform to gender expression and maybe not feel the euphoria from them the way I would to express them as but for me they are important for myself. I feel that it's okay for them to pick and choose like and binary person. However I am binary and feel better with my femininity
For bathrooms many mention to use both and happy to use either or for non-binary and the 3rd bathroom asides taking away from disabled people. Though it can be troubling to explain to them I'm a trans woman I represent as a woman. If there is a woman's bathroom I'd prefer to use it. To use a third bathroom feels like an attack on my identity and I wouldn't want to use the males bathroom for that reason too as well as for safety reasons.
Some of the trans places I go for trans people seem actually more dominant on non-binary people then binary trans people. I think a lot of their ideology gets pushed un my community. When we talked about sexuality at our trans library I mentioned how we're very diverse sexually if we are straight or gay/ lesbians we still do get treated towards the social norms when one wanted to promote it at the library. They said that that trans people had no binary. I explained that I am binary so they made a joke of 1010101010. I said well if I didn't have a binary I'd be non-binary and I'm not. I'm a trans woman.
They talked about having an exercise program and I mentioned I wanted to get myself in shape and plenty of trans women do to support the shape they are in. That I also wanted to learn to dance eventually and get more flexible and move my hips more. I showed this video explaining feminine dance styles vs masculine and that people can use either and also a video showing on walking more femininely that I'd been practicing. I explained that I gender expression made me feel happier. This got turned around of course about non-conforming and being sexist. It really does not feel good that I can't express myself as a woman and be happy. I'm not non-binary and I do conform to several binary gender expressions including clothes and make up.
I don't feel like I should be pressured to conform to their view on gender. I'm not non-binary. I'm a trans woman and have a binary. I really enjoy non-binary people but I don't like being put down for my gender expressions and to be push to conform to theirs. I'm sorry for this. I just wanted to relate and maybe hear from others about this. I'm kind of feeling like distancing myself from the Library as much as it is one of my only supports.
submitted by Tour_True to asktransgender [link] [comments]
For bathrooms many mention to use both and happy to use either or for non-binary and the 3rd bathroom asides taking away from disabled people. Though it can be troubling to explain to them I'm a trans woman I represent as a woman. If there is a woman's bathroom I'd prefer to use it. To use a third bathroom feels like an attack on my identity and I wouldn't want to use the males bathroom for that reason too as well as for safety reasons.
Some of the trans places I go for trans people seem actually more dominant on non-binary people then binary trans people. I think a lot of their ideology gets pushed un my community. When we talked about sexuality at our trans library I mentioned how we're very diverse sexually if we are straight or gay/ lesbians we still do get treated towards the social norms when one wanted to promote it at the library. They said that that trans people had no binary. I explained that I am binary so they made a joke of 1010101010. I said well if I didn't have a binary I'd be non-binary and I'm not. I'm a trans woman.
They talked about having an exercise program and I mentioned I wanted to get myself in shape and plenty of trans women do to support the shape they are in. That I also wanted to learn to dance eventually and get more flexible and move my hips more. I showed this video explaining feminine dance styles vs masculine and that people can use either and also a video showing on walking more femininely that I'd been practicing. I explained that I gender expression made me feel happier. This got turned around of course about non-conforming and being sexist. It really does not feel good that I can't express myself as a woman and be happy. I'm not non-binary and I do conform to several binary gender expressions including clothes and make up.
I don't feel like I should be pressured to conform to their view on gender. I'm not non-binary. I'm a trans woman and have a binary. I really enjoy non-binary people but I don't like being put down for my gender expressions and to be push to conform to theirs. I'm sorry for this. I just wanted to relate and maybe hear from others about this. I'm kind of feeling like distancing myself from the Library as much as it is one of my only supports.
2024.06.09 23:43 Melodic_Quiet_1481 [discussion] Idea for a Rewrite (Dragon Slayer Focused)
This post is not directing hate towards the manga author in any way, or me trying to say I could write better than him. During Natsu's coma-induced dream during the Alvarez arc, it was revealed that all the dragon slayers were born over 400 years ago and were sent to the year July 7th X777 to defeat Acnologia. Some other things were revealed too (EX: How Zeref met Igneel and created Natsu. Where Natsu's scarf came from? Anna and Layla's importance)
My version is WAY more angsty. Like abandonment issues, dysfunctional families, and sibling hatred kind of angst. Rewriting the way Anna Heartfilia is framed - flesh her character out a bit. Rewriting each of the most important fights each individual dragon slayer had in the Alvarez arc. Tweaking every character's attribute and attitude as well. However, this is all additional in comparison to my main focus, which would be the dragon slayers.
After the Grand Magic Games, the five dragon slayers genuinely start to bond after realizing how similar their experiences. Having their own meetups and hangouts as true dragon slayers, kids who were forced to survive on their own after their dragons left/died. The more they spend time together, the more vivid their visions become. Who are these other dragons? What is this place? Why does Natsu look so... different?
Their curiosity only increases as time goes on. Why is it only them that are plagued by these visions? What of the second-gen, Cobra and Laxus? The answers they were all searching for were finally right under their noses when their dragon parents finally decided to reveal themselves, until Acnologia ruined everything. Slaughtering Igneel like a pig before venturing off. They all watched as their caretakers faded away, whilst Natsu swore to slay the dragon king. The firebreather took off on his own adventure with his exceed partner, Happy. Unbeknownst to him, Fairy Tail had disbanded, but the dragon slayer. The last four (Gajeel, Wendy, and the Sabertooth twins) continued to meet up despite having their new jobs and lives to worry about.
They grow closer to uncovering the true sources of their power, and their chronic dreams. Natsu is too focused on getting stronger. Strong enough to slay the self-proclaimed dragon king. Strong enough to defeat this black wizard. By the time Natsu returns and Fairy Tail is back in action, his friends are eager to share what they've learned, but he brushes it off. He is far too concerned with the new battle on the horizon (Zeref. Spriggan 12)
Nothing goes as planned. Natsu is forced into a coma caused by his own genetics, while his dragon slayer kin are thrust into battles with enemies that inadvertently help unlock many, many memories. Vivid, blood-curdling memories they weren't ready to face. Memories they can't ignore fully no matter how many times Natsu urges them to do so. "Focusing on the future is what's important!" In order to take on the future, they need to fully grasp their checkered past and discover the answers to so many unresolved questions. What was Anna hiding?
Defeating Acnologia brought peace to Fiore. To the world. But not them. Two of the dragon slayers were ok with playing pretend. They didn't mind smiling, drinking, and playfighting alongside their guildmates despite their jumbled brains. They could manage. The other three, however. They were restless.
Their curiosity turned into desperation. Their childlike eagerness became greedy impatience. They were going to figure out the truth. They were going to find out what lies beneath their broken memories. They didn't care how much power it took. Their questions were going to be answered.
And nobody, not even Fairy Tail, was going to stop them.
Sorry about the long post, lol. Gonna post the fanfic on ao3 as a series. Most likely gonna title it "The Shattered Prophecy" If you're interested based on my reddit post alone, great! If you think it's trash, that's cool too.
submitted by Melodic_Quiet_1481 to fairytail [link] [comments]
My version is WAY more angsty. Like abandonment issues, dysfunctional families, and sibling hatred kind of angst. Rewriting the way Anna Heartfilia is framed - flesh her character out a bit. Rewriting each of the most important fights each individual dragon slayer had in the Alvarez arc. Tweaking every character's attribute and attitude as well. However, this is all additional in comparison to my main focus, which would be the dragon slayers.
Dragon Slayers My AU:
Their memories had never left them. Instead, they were locked away in the depths of their subconscious mind. Purposely sealed away by a powerful wizard. Not just their memories, but core parts of their raw power as well. In spite of that, each dragon slayer had their own fateful encounters with one another (Natsu & Gajeel, Natsu & Wendy, Natsu meeting Sting and Rogue). Each meeting sparked something in their minds, but the situations they were involved in were too dire to push aside, so they left it at that for the moment.After the Grand Magic Games, the five dragon slayers genuinely start to bond after realizing how similar their experiences. Having their own meetups and hangouts as true dragon slayers, kids who were forced to survive on their own after their dragons left/died. The more they spend time together, the more vivid their visions become. Who are these other dragons? What is this place? Why does Natsu look so... different?
Their curiosity only increases as time goes on. Why is it only them that are plagued by these visions? What of the second-gen, Cobra and Laxus? The answers they were all searching for were finally right under their noses when their dragon parents finally decided to reveal themselves, until Acnologia ruined everything. Slaughtering Igneel like a pig before venturing off. They all watched as their caretakers faded away, whilst Natsu swore to slay the dragon king. The firebreather took off on his own adventure with his exceed partner, Happy. Unbeknownst to him, Fairy Tail had disbanded, but the dragon slayer. The last four (Gajeel, Wendy, and the Sabertooth twins) continued to meet up despite having their new jobs and lives to worry about.
They grow closer to uncovering the true sources of their power, and their chronic dreams. Natsu is too focused on getting stronger. Strong enough to slay the self-proclaimed dragon king. Strong enough to defeat this black wizard. By the time Natsu returns and Fairy Tail is back in action, his friends are eager to share what they've learned, but he brushes it off. He is far too concerned with the new battle on the horizon (Zeref. Spriggan 12)
Nothing goes as planned. Natsu is forced into a coma caused by his own genetics, while his dragon slayer kin are thrust into battles with enemies that inadvertently help unlock many, many memories. Vivid, blood-curdling memories they weren't ready to face. Memories they can't ignore fully no matter how many times Natsu urges them to do so. "Focusing on the future is what's important!" In order to take on the future, they need to fully grasp their checkered past and discover the answers to so many unresolved questions. What was Anna hiding?
Defeating Acnologia brought peace to Fiore. To the world. But not them. Two of the dragon slayers were ok with playing pretend. They didn't mind smiling, drinking, and playfighting alongside their guildmates despite their jumbled brains. They could manage. The other three, however. They were restless.
Their curiosity turned into desperation. Their childlike eagerness became greedy impatience. They were going to figure out the truth. They were going to find out what lies beneath their broken memories. They didn't care how much power it took. Their questions were going to be answered.
And nobody, not even Fairy Tail, was going to stop them.
Sorry about the long post, lol. Gonna post the fanfic on ao3 as a series. Most likely gonna title it "The Shattered Prophecy" If you're interested based on my reddit post alone, great! If you think it's trash, that's cool too.
2024.06.09 23:43 realkostas Who is asshole? Was I fairly accused of flirting at a birthday party or gaslighted.
I (M35) was invited to a birthday party at a bar by my workmate (F32), whom we'll call P. She seemed active, assertive, and easy-going, and we share many common interests. I am happily married, and she knows my wife.
When I arrived, I gave a thoughtfully selected gift and sat at a table where I saw another workmate (F) and a young married lady, T, whose friendly personality I enjoy, our families met before. Another lady joined, so I was at a table with three women.
T is very easy to talk to, and I also tried to break the ice with others. We were all chatting actively and enjoying each other’s company. It’s worth noting that we are all from different countries, living in the Nordic region. In my Southeastern European culture, sharing food and drinks is important, so I shared some with everyone at the table, including P, the birthday girl.
T, the extroverted lady near me, showed non-verbal signals that she enjoyed our interaction, such as eye contact and pats on the shoulder. I felt a friendly connection with her, nothing more, since we know each other’s partners and also discussed family life.
Later, I sat at a different table to meet more people. Suddenly, P asked me, "Are you hitting on women?" I was shocked and laughed, but she repeated, "Be careful, dude, be careful."
People at the table were confused, so I tried to lighten the mood with a joke, “Are you warning me about STDs?” P seriously repeated, "Be careful, dude," and walked away.
The atmosphere became tense. P was actively giving attention to one handsome guy who didn’t seem very interested. After P went outside again, I followed to ask what she meant. She complimented me, saying she liked me a lot, and I am warm and charismatic but too flirty. I replied impulsively , “Can’t you say the same about yourself?” She looked confused and moody. I asked, “Maybe my culture is warmer and can be seen as flirting? Or are you talking about our idea to go jogging together?” She said, “Maybe. And you’re too flirty with T.”
I was taken aback. T is charming, but acting on any feelings would be so unethical and destructive to everyone so big NO-NO even thinking about her as woman . I hadn’t touched her, looked at her inappropriately, or made any appearance-based compliments. I denied, “No, that’s not true.”
Then P asked, “So we are friends, okay?” I agreed, and we hugged. To ease the drama, I joked, “Consider me your gay friend from Sex and the City,” and she quickly went off to other people. I continued chatting with others and exchanged warm goodbyes and contacts with T when she left.
Later, I found P sitting alone and smoking. I wanted to fix the miscommunication and asked, “P., you’re fabulous and I like your personality as a friend. If you find any of my manners uncomfortable, how would you suggest I improve them?” P looked sad dramatic and dreamy and said, “Don’t stare at girls so much...” As the bar was closing, P repeated the phrase in front of everyone.
I felt the conversation was unfixable, so I politely said goodbye and went to another bar to dance the stress out before telling the story to my wife.
Can it be considered flirting if I only made eye contact, gestures, and listened actively? Having lived in Spain, I may have adopted some of their manners. I believe I was one of the least flirtatious people there. Could it be also cultural differences?
Am I wrong for not noticing P’s discomfort and should I have left earlier? Perhaps P was frustrated by her unsuccessful flirtations and projected her feelings onto me.
Personally, I think subtle flirty attention is normal as long as it’s ethical and mutual. Isn’t it not P’s business if two consenting adults have flirtatious manners as a sign of kindness and appreciation?
In summary, I felt P was not empathetic to me and showed a toxic side, needing psychological help. Or am I just being an asshole?
submitted by realkostas to AITAH [link] [comments]
When I arrived, I gave a thoughtfully selected gift and sat at a table where I saw another workmate (F) and a young married lady, T, whose friendly personality I enjoy, our families met before. Another lady joined, so I was at a table with three women.
T is very easy to talk to, and I also tried to break the ice with others. We were all chatting actively and enjoying each other’s company. It’s worth noting that we are all from different countries, living in the Nordic region. In my Southeastern European culture, sharing food and drinks is important, so I shared some with everyone at the table, including P, the birthday girl.
T, the extroverted lady near me, showed non-verbal signals that she enjoyed our interaction, such as eye contact and pats on the shoulder. I felt a friendly connection with her, nothing more, since we know each other’s partners and also discussed family life.
Later, I sat at a different table to meet more people. Suddenly, P asked me, "Are you hitting on women?" I was shocked and laughed, but she repeated, "Be careful, dude, be careful."
People at the table were confused, so I tried to lighten the mood with a joke, “Are you warning me about STDs?” P seriously repeated, "Be careful, dude," and walked away.
The atmosphere became tense. P was actively giving attention to one handsome guy who didn’t seem very interested. After P went outside again, I followed to ask what she meant. She complimented me, saying she liked me a lot, and I am warm and charismatic but too flirty. I replied impulsively , “Can’t you say the same about yourself?” She looked confused and moody. I asked, “Maybe my culture is warmer and can be seen as flirting? Or are you talking about our idea to go jogging together?” She said, “Maybe. And you’re too flirty with T.”
I was taken aback. T is charming, but acting on any feelings would be so unethical and destructive to everyone so big NO-NO even thinking about her as woman . I hadn’t touched her, looked at her inappropriately, or made any appearance-based compliments. I denied, “No, that’s not true.”
Then P asked, “So we are friends, okay?” I agreed, and we hugged. To ease the drama, I joked, “Consider me your gay friend from Sex and the City,” and she quickly went off to other people. I continued chatting with others and exchanged warm goodbyes and contacts with T when she left.
Later, I found P sitting alone and smoking. I wanted to fix the miscommunication and asked, “P., you’re fabulous and I like your personality as a friend. If you find any of my manners uncomfortable, how would you suggest I improve them?” P looked sad dramatic and dreamy and said, “Don’t stare at girls so much...” As the bar was closing, P repeated the phrase in front of everyone.
I felt the conversation was unfixable, so I politely said goodbye and went to another bar to dance the stress out before telling the story to my wife.
Can it be considered flirting if I only made eye contact, gestures, and listened actively? Having lived in Spain, I may have adopted some of their manners. I believe I was one of the least flirtatious people there. Could it be also cultural differences?
Am I wrong for not noticing P’s discomfort and should I have left earlier? Perhaps P was frustrated by her unsuccessful flirtations and projected her feelings onto me.
Personally, I think subtle flirty attention is normal as long as it’s ethical and mutual. Isn’t it not P’s business if two consenting adults have flirtatious manners as a sign of kindness and appreciation?
In summary, I felt P was not empathetic to me and showed a toxic side, needing psychological help. Or am I just being an asshole?
2024.06.09 23:42 A_Vespertine I'm Always Chasing Rainbows
When you were a kid, and you saw a rainbow, did you ever want to try to get to the end of it? I bet you did. I did, anyway. It wasn’t the mythical pot of gold that tempted me. Wealth was too abstract of a concept at that age to dream about, and leprechauns were creepy little bastards. I just wanted to see what the rainbow looked like up close, and maybe even try to climb it.
Of course, you can’t get to the end of a rainbow because not only is there no end, but there isn’t even really a rainbow. It’s an illusion caused by the sunlight passing through raindrops at the right angle. If you did try to chase a rainbow down, it would move with you until it faded away. That’s why chasing rainbows is a pretty good metaphor for pursuing a beautiful illusion that can never manifest as anything concrete.
I bring all this up because I think it was that same type of urge that compelled me to chase down the Effulgent One. It’s not a perfect analogy, however, considering that I did actually catch up to the eldritch bastard.
I first saw the Effulgent One a little over two years ago. My employer – who happens to be an occultist mad scientist by the name of Erich Thorne – had tasked me with returning a young girl named Elifey to her village on the northern edges of the county. The people of Virklitch Village are very nice, but they’re also an insular, Luddite cult who worship a colossal spectral entity they call the Effulgent One. I saw this Titan during my first visit to Virklitch, and more importantly, he saw me. He left a streak of black in my soul, marking me as one of his followers. I can feel him now, when he walks in our world. Sometimes, if I look towards the horizon after sundown, I can even see him.
This entity, and my connection to him, is understandably something my employer has taken an interest in. I’ve been to Virklitch many times since my first visit, and I’ve successfully collected a good deal of vital information about the Effulgent One. The Virklitchen are the only ones who know how to summon him, and coercing them into doing so would only earn us his wrath. He’s sworn to protect them, though I haven’t the slightest idea of what motivates him to do so.
Even though I can see him, I usually try not to look, to pretend he’s not there. The Virklitchen have warned me never to chase after him. Before Virklitch was founded, the First Nations people who lived in this region were aware of the Effulgent One, though they called him the Sky Strider. Any of them that went chasing after him either failed, went mad, or were never seen again.
I was out driving after sunset, during astronomical twilight when the trees are just black silhouettes against a burnt orange horizon, when I sensed the presence of the Effulgent One. He was to the east, towering along the darkening skyline, idling amidst the fields of cyclopean wind turbines. I could see their flashing red lights in the periphery of my vision, and I knew that one of those lights was him. I tried to fight the urge to look, but fear began to gnaw at me. What if he was heading towards me right now? What if I was in danger and needed to run?
Risking a single sideways glance, I spotted his gangly form standing listlessly between the wind turbines, his long arms gently swaying as his glowing red face bobbed to and fro.
I exhaled a sigh of relief, now that I knew he wasn’t chasing me. That relief didn’t even last a moment before it was transformed into a dangerous realization. He wasn’t just not chasing me; he wasn’t moving at all. He was still. This was rare, and it presented me with a rare opportunity. I could approach him. I could speak with him.
This wasn’t a good idea, and I knew it. The Effulgent One interacted with his followers on his terms. If I annoyed him, he could squash me like a bug. Or worse. Much worse. But he had marked me as his follower and I wanted to know why. If there was any chance I could get him to answer me, I was going to take it.
“Hey Lumi,” I said to the proprietary AI assistant in my company car. “Play the cover of I’m Always Chasing Rainbows from the Hazbin Hotel pilot.”
With the mood appropriately set, I veered east the first chance I got.
Almost immediately, I noticed that the highway seemed eerily abandoned. Even if anyone else had been capable of perceiving the Effulgent One, there was no one around to see him. I got this creeping sense that the closer I drew to him, I was actually shifting more and more out of my world and more and more into his. The wind picked up and dark clouds blew in, snuffing out the fading twilight and plunging everything into an overcast night.
The Effulgent One didn’t seem to notice me as I drew closer. He was as tall as the wind turbines he stood beside, his gaunt body plated in dull iridescent scales infected with trailing fungus. The head on his lanky neck was completely hollow and filled with a glowing red light that dimly bounced off his scales.
Seeing him standing still was a lot more surreal than seeing him when he was active. As impossibly large as he is, when he’s moving it just naturally triggers your fight or flight response and you don’t really have time to take it all in. But when he’s just standing there, and you can look at him and question what you’re seeing, it just hits differently.
It wasn’t until I started slowing down that he finally turned his head in my direction, briefly engulfing me in a blinding red light. When it passed, I saw that the Effulgent One had turned away from me and I was striding down the highway. Even though his gait was casual, his stride was so long that he was still moving as quickly as any vehicle.
Reasoning that if he didn’t want me to follow him he wouldn’t be walking along the road, I slammed my foot down on the accelerator pedal and sped after him.
That’s when things started to get weird.
You know how when you’re driving at night through the country, you can’t see anything beyond your own headlights? With no visual landmarks to go by, it’s easy to get disoriented. All you have to go by is the signs, and I wasn’t paying any attention to those. All my focus was on the Effulgent One, so much so that if someone had jumped out in front of me I probably would have killed them.
I turned down at least one sideroad in my pursuit of the Effulgent One. Maybe two or three. I’m really not sure. All I know for sure is that I was so desperate not to lose him that I had become completely lost myself.
He never looked back to see if I was still following, or gave any indication that he knew or cared if I was still there. He just made his way along the backroads, his bloodred searchlight sweeping back and forth all the while, as if he was desperately seeking something of grave importance. Finally, he abandoned the road altogether and began to climb a gently rolling hill with a solitary wind turbine on top of it. I gently slowed my car to a stop and watched to see what he would do.
I had barely been keeping up with him on the roadways, so I knew I’d never catch him going off-road. If he didn’t stop at the wind turbine, then that would be the end of my little misadventure. As I watched the Effulgent One climb up the hill and cast his light upon it, I saw that the structure at the summit wasn’t a wind turbine at all, but a windmill.
It was a mammoth windmill, the size of a wind turbine, made from enormous blocks of rugged black stone. It was as impossible as the Effulgent One himself. No stone structure other than a pyramid or ziggurat could possibly be that big, and the windmill barely tapered at all towards the top. Its blades were made from a ragged black cloth that reminded me of pirate sails, and near the top I could see a light coming from a single balcony.
When the Effulgent One reached the hill’s summit, he not only came to a stop but turned back around to face me, his light illuminating the entire hillside. Whether or not it was his intention to make it easier for me to follow him up the hill, it was nonetheless the effect, so I decided not to squander it.
Grabbing the thousand-lumen flashlight from my emergency kit, I left my car on the side of the road and began the short but challenging trek up the hill.
I honestly had no idea where I was at that point. Nothing looked familiar, and the overgrown grass seemed so alien in the red light. The way it moved in the wind was so fluid it looked more like seaweed than grass. The clouds overhead seemed equally otherworldly, moving not only unusually fast but in strange patterns that didn’t seem purely meteorological in nature.
With the Effulgent One’s light aimed directly at me, there was no doubt in my mind that he had seen me, but he still gave no indication that he cared. The closer I drew to him, the more I was confronted by his unfathomable scale. I really was an insect compared to him, and it seemed inconceivable that he would make any distinction between anthropods and arthropods. He could strike me down as effortlessly and carelessly as any other bothersome bug. I approached cautiously, watching intently for any sign of hostility from him, but he remained completely and utterly unmoved.
The closer I got to him, the harder I found it to press on. From a distance, the Effulgent One is surreal enough that he doesn’t completely shatter your sense of reality, but that’s a luxury that goes down the toilet when he’s only a few strides or less from stomping you into the ground. His emaciated form wasn’t merely skeletal, but elongated; his limbs, digits, and neck all stretched out to disquieting proportions. His dull scales now seemed to be a shimmering indigo, and the fungal growths between them pulsed rhythmically with some kind of life. Whether it was with his or theirs, I cannot say. There were no ears on his round head. No features at all aside from the frontwards-facing cavity that held the searing red light.
As I slowly and timidly approached the windmill, he remained by its side, peering out across the horizon. I turned to see what he was looking at, but saw nothing. I immediately turned back to him and craned my neck skywards, marvelling at him in dumbstruck awe. I’d chased him down so that I could demand why he had marked me as one of his followers, but now that I had succeeded, I was horrified by how suicidally naïve that plan now felt.
Many an internet atheist has pontificated about how if there were a God and if they ever met Him, they would remain every bit as irreverent and defiant and hold Him to account the same as any tyrant. But when faced with a being of unfathomable cosmic power, I don’t think there truly is anyone who wouldn’t lose their nerve.
So I just stood there, gaping up at the Effulgent One like a moron, with no idea of what to do next.
Fortunately for me, it was then that the Effulgent One finally acknowledged my presence.
Slowly, he turned his face downwards and cast his spotlight upon me, holding it there for a few long seconds before turning it to the door at the base of the windmill. I glanced up at the balcony above, and saw that it aligned almost perfectly with his head.
Evidently, he wanted to meet me face to face.
Nodding obediently, I raced to the heavy wooden door and pushed it open with all my might. The inside was dark, and I couldn’t see very well after standing right in the Effulgent One’s light, but I could hear the sounds of metal gears slowly grinding and clanking away. When I turned on my flashlight, the first thing I was able to make out was the enormous millstone. It moved slowly and steadily, squelching and squishing so that even in the poor light I knew that it wasn’t grain that was being milled.
The next thing I saw was a flight of rickety wooden stairs that snaked up all along the interior of the windmill. Each step creaked and groaned beneath my weight as I climbed them, but I nonetheless ascended them with reckless abandon. If a single one of them had given out beneath me, I could have fallen to my death, and the staircase shook back and forth so much that sometimes it felt as if it was intentionally trying to throw me off.
When I reached the top floor, I saw that the windshaft was encased in a crystalline sphere etched with leylines and strange symbols, and inside of it was some kind of complex clockwork apparatus that was powered by the spinning of the shaft. Though I was briefly curious as to the device’s purpose, it wasn’t what I had come up there for.
Turning myself towards the only door, I ran through and out onto the upper balcony. The Effulgent One was still standing just beside it, his head several times taller than I was. He looked out towards the horizon and pointed an outstretched arm in that direction, indicating that I should do the same.
From the balcony, I could see a spire made of purple volcanic glass, carved as if it was made of two intertwining gargantuan rose vines, with a stained-glass roof that made it look like a rose in full bloom. The spire was surrounded by many twisting and shifting shadows, and I could perceive a near infinitude of superimposed potential pathways branching out from the spire and stretching out across the planes.
The Effulgent One reached out and plucked at one of the pathways running over us like it was a harp string, sending vibrations down along to the spire and then back out through the entire network. I saw the sky above the spire shatter like glass, revealing a floating maelstrom of festering black fluid that had congealed into a thousand wailing faces. It began to descend as if it meant to devour the spire, but as it did so the spire pulled in the web of pathways around it like a net. The storm writhed and screamed as it tried to escape, but the spire held the net tight as a swarm of creatures too small for me to identify congregated upon the storm and began to feed upon it. But the fluid the maelstrom was composed of seemed to be corrosive, and the net began to rot beneath its influence. It sagged and it strained, until finally giving way.
A chaotic battle ensued between the spire and the maelstrom, but it hardly seemed to matter. What both I and the Efflugent One noticed the most was that the pathways that had been bound to the spire were now severed and stained by the Black Bile, drifting away wherever the wind took them.
The Effulgent One caught one of them in his hand and tugged it downwards, staring at it pensively for a long moment.
“That… that didn’t actually just happen, did it?” I asked meekly. I waited patiently for the Effulgent One to respond, but he just kept staring at the severed thread. “But… it’s going to happen? Or, it could happen?”
A slow and solemn nod confirmed that what he had shown me had portended to a possible future.
“That’s why you marked me as your follower then, isn’t it?” I asked. “You needed someone, someone other than the Virklitchen, someone who’s already involved in this bullshit and can help stop it from deteriorating into whatever the hell you just showed me. If Erich had picked anyone else to go to Virklitch that night, or hadn’t asked me to stay for the festival, it wouldn’t have been me! It didn’t have to have been me!”
His head remained somberly hung, and I hadn’t really been expecting him to respond at all to my outburst.
“Elifey liked you,” he said in a metallic, fluid voice that sounded like it was resonating out of his chest rather than his face. “I would not have chosen you if she hadn’t.”
He twirled the thread in between his fingers before gently handing it down to me like it was a streamer on a balloon. I hesitantly accepted the gesture, wrapping as much of my hand around the spectral cord as I could. The instant I touched it, a radiant and spiralling rainbow shot down its length and arced across the sky. When it reached the chaotic battle on the horizon, it dispelled the maelstrom on contact, banishing it back into the nether and signalling in biblical fashion that the storm had passed. The other wayward pathways were cleansed of the Black Bile as well, and I watched in amazement as they slowly started to reweave themselves back into an interconnected web.
“But… what does this mean? What do I actually have to do to make this a reality?” I asked.
The Effulgent One reached out his hand and pinched the cord, choking off the rainbow and ending the vision he had shown me.
“A reality?” he asked as he held his palm out flat and adjacent to the balcony. “It’s already a reality. All you need to do is make it yours.”
It seemed to me that I wasn’t likely to get anything less cryptic than that out of him, so I accepted the lift down. He took me down the hill and set me down gently beside my car before setting off out of sight and beyond my ability to pursue him.
Even though my GPS wasn’t working, the moment I was sitting in the driver’s seat the autopilot kicked in and didn’t ask me to take control until I was back on a familiar road. I know that windmill isn’t just a short drive away, and I’ll never see it again unless the Effulgent One wants me to. I don’t think I can say I’m exactly happy with how that turned out, but I suppose I accomplished what I set out to achieve. I know what the Effulgent One wants of me now, and why he chose me specifically. If it had been all his decision I think I’d still be feeling kind of torn about it, but knowing that I’ve been roped into this because of Elifey makes it a lot easier to bear.
And… I did actually manage to catch a rainbow. I just needed a giant’s help to reach it.
submitted by A_Vespertine to ChillingApp [link] [comments]
Of course, you can’t get to the end of a rainbow because not only is there no end, but there isn’t even really a rainbow. It’s an illusion caused by the sunlight passing through raindrops at the right angle. If you did try to chase a rainbow down, it would move with you until it faded away. That’s why chasing rainbows is a pretty good metaphor for pursuing a beautiful illusion that can never manifest as anything concrete.
I bring all this up because I think it was that same type of urge that compelled me to chase down the Effulgent One. It’s not a perfect analogy, however, considering that I did actually catch up to the eldritch bastard.
I first saw the Effulgent One a little over two years ago. My employer – who happens to be an occultist mad scientist by the name of Erich Thorne – had tasked me with returning a young girl named Elifey to her village on the northern edges of the county. The people of Virklitch Village are very nice, but they’re also an insular, Luddite cult who worship a colossal spectral entity they call the Effulgent One. I saw this Titan during my first visit to Virklitch, and more importantly, he saw me. He left a streak of black in my soul, marking me as one of his followers. I can feel him now, when he walks in our world. Sometimes, if I look towards the horizon after sundown, I can even see him.
This entity, and my connection to him, is understandably something my employer has taken an interest in. I’ve been to Virklitch many times since my first visit, and I’ve successfully collected a good deal of vital information about the Effulgent One. The Virklitchen are the only ones who know how to summon him, and coercing them into doing so would only earn us his wrath. He’s sworn to protect them, though I haven’t the slightest idea of what motivates him to do so.
Even though I can see him, I usually try not to look, to pretend he’s not there. The Virklitchen have warned me never to chase after him. Before Virklitch was founded, the First Nations people who lived in this region were aware of the Effulgent One, though they called him the Sky Strider. Any of them that went chasing after him either failed, went mad, or were never seen again.
I was out driving after sunset, during astronomical twilight when the trees are just black silhouettes against a burnt orange horizon, when I sensed the presence of the Effulgent One. He was to the east, towering along the darkening skyline, idling amidst the fields of cyclopean wind turbines. I could see their flashing red lights in the periphery of my vision, and I knew that one of those lights was him. I tried to fight the urge to look, but fear began to gnaw at me. What if he was heading towards me right now? What if I was in danger and needed to run?
Risking a single sideways glance, I spotted his gangly form standing listlessly between the wind turbines, his long arms gently swaying as his glowing red face bobbed to and fro.
I exhaled a sigh of relief, now that I knew he wasn’t chasing me. That relief didn’t even last a moment before it was transformed into a dangerous realization. He wasn’t just not chasing me; he wasn’t moving at all. He was still. This was rare, and it presented me with a rare opportunity. I could approach him. I could speak with him.
This wasn’t a good idea, and I knew it. The Effulgent One interacted with his followers on his terms. If I annoyed him, he could squash me like a bug. Or worse. Much worse. But he had marked me as his follower and I wanted to know why. If there was any chance I could get him to answer me, I was going to take it.
“Hey Lumi,” I said to the proprietary AI assistant in my company car. “Play the cover of I’m Always Chasing Rainbows from the Hazbin Hotel pilot.”
With the mood appropriately set, I veered east the first chance I got.
Almost immediately, I noticed that the highway seemed eerily abandoned. Even if anyone else had been capable of perceiving the Effulgent One, there was no one around to see him. I got this creeping sense that the closer I drew to him, I was actually shifting more and more out of my world and more and more into his. The wind picked up and dark clouds blew in, snuffing out the fading twilight and plunging everything into an overcast night.
The Effulgent One didn’t seem to notice me as I drew closer. He was as tall as the wind turbines he stood beside, his gaunt body plated in dull iridescent scales infected with trailing fungus. The head on his lanky neck was completely hollow and filled with a glowing red light that dimly bounced off his scales.
Seeing him standing still was a lot more surreal than seeing him when he was active. As impossibly large as he is, when he’s moving it just naturally triggers your fight or flight response and you don’t really have time to take it all in. But when he’s just standing there, and you can look at him and question what you’re seeing, it just hits differently.
It wasn’t until I started slowing down that he finally turned his head in my direction, briefly engulfing me in a blinding red light. When it passed, I saw that the Effulgent One had turned away from me and I was striding down the highway. Even though his gait was casual, his stride was so long that he was still moving as quickly as any vehicle.
Reasoning that if he didn’t want me to follow him he wouldn’t be walking along the road, I slammed my foot down on the accelerator pedal and sped after him.
That’s when things started to get weird.
You know how when you’re driving at night through the country, you can’t see anything beyond your own headlights? With no visual landmarks to go by, it’s easy to get disoriented. All you have to go by is the signs, and I wasn’t paying any attention to those. All my focus was on the Effulgent One, so much so that if someone had jumped out in front of me I probably would have killed them.
I turned down at least one sideroad in my pursuit of the Effulgent One. Maybe two or three. I’m really not sure. All I know for sure is that I was so desperate not to lose him that I had become completely lost myself.
He never looked back to see if I was still following, or gave any indication that he knew or cared if I was still there. He just made his way along the backroads, his bloodred searchlight sweeping back and forth all the while, as if he was desperately seeking something of grave importance. Finally, he abandoned the road altogether and began to climb a gently rolling hill with a solitary wind turbine on top of it. I gently slowed my car to a stop and watched to see what he would do.
I had barely been keeping up with him on the roadways, so I knew I’d never catch him going off-road. If he didn’t stop at the wind turbine, then that would be the end of my little misadventure. As I watched the Effulgent One climb up the hill and cast his light upon it, I saw that the structure at the summit wasn’t a wind turbine at all, but a windmill.
It was a mammoth windmill, the size of a wind turbine, made from enormous blocks of rugged black stone. It was as impossible as the Effulgent One himself. No stone structure other than a pyramid or ziggurat could possibly be that big, and the windmill barely tapered at all towards the top. Its blades were made from a ragged black cloth that reminded me of pirate sails, and near the top I could see a light coming from a single balcony.
When the Effulgent One reached the hill’s summit, he not only came to a stop but turned back around to face me, his light illuminating the entire hillside. Whether or not it was his intention to make it easier for me to follow him up the hill, it was nonetheless the effect, so I decided not to squander it.
Grabbing the thousand-lumen flashlight from my emergency kit, I left my car on the side of the road and began the short but challenging trek up the hill.
I honestly had no idea where I was at that point. Nothing looked familiar, and the overgrown grass seemed so alien in the red light. The way it moved in the wind was so fluid it looked more like seaweed than grass. The clouds overhead seemed equally otherworldly, moving not only unusually fast but in strange patterns that didn’t seem purely meteorological in nature.
With the Effulgent One’s light aimed directly at me, there was no doubt in my mind that he had seen me, but he still gave no indication that he cared. The closer I drew to him, the more I was confronted by his unfathomable scale. I really was an insect compared to him, and it seemed inconceivable that he would make any distinction between anthropods and arthropods. He could strike me down as effortlessly and carelessly as any other bothersome bug. I approached cautiously, watching intently for any sign of hostility from him, but he remained completely and utterly unmoved.
The closer I got to him, the harder I found it to press on. From a distance, the Effulgent One is surreal enough that he doesn’t completely shatter your sense of reality, but that’s a luxury that goes down the toilet when he’s only a few strides or less from stomping you into the ground. His emaciated form wasn’t merely skeletal, but elongated; his limbs, digits, and neck all stretched out to disquieting proportions. His dull scales now seemed to be a shimmering indigo, and the fungal growths between them pulsed rhythmically with some kind of life. Whether it was with his or theirs, I cannot say. There were no ears on his round head. No features at all aside from the frontwards-facing cavity that held the searing red light.
As I slowly and timidly approached the windmill, he remained by its side, peering out across the horizon. I turned to see what he was looking at, but saw nothing. I immediately turned back to him and craned my neck skywards, marvelling at him in dumbstruck awe. I’d chased him down so that I could demand why he had marked me as one of his followers, but now that I had succeeded, I was horrified by how suicidally naïve that plan now felt.
Many an internet atheist has pontificated about how if there were a God and if they ever met Him, they would remain every bit as irreverent and defiant and hold Him to account the same as any tyrant. But when faced with a being of unfathomable cosmic power, I don’t think there truly is anyone who wouldn’t lose their nerve.
So I just stood there, gaping up at the Effulgent One like a moron, with no idea of what to do next.
Fortunately for me, it was then that the Effulgent One finally acknowledged my presence.
Slowly, he turned his face downwards and cast his spotlight upon me, holding it there for a few long seconds before turning it to the door at the base of the windmill. I glanced up at the balcony above, and saw that it aligned almost perfectly with his head.
Evidently, he wanted to meet me face to face.
Nodding obediently, I raced to the heavy wooden door and pushed it open with all my might. The inside was dark, and I couldn’t see very well after standing right in the Effulgent One’s light, but I could hear the sounds of metal gears slowly grinding and clanking away. When I turned on my flashlight, the first thing I was able to make out was the enormous millstone. It moved slowly and steadily, squelching and squishing so that even in the poor light I knew that it wasn’t grain that was being milled.
The next thing I saw was a flight of rickety wooden stairs that snaked up all along the interior of the windmill. Each step creaked and groaned beneath my weight as I climbed them, but I nonetheless ascended them with reckless abandon. If a single one of them had given out beneath me, I could have fallen to my death, and the staircase shook back and forth so much that sometimes it felt as if it was intentionally trying to throw me off.
When I reached the top floor, I saw that the windshaft was encased in a crystalline sphere etched with leylines and strange symbols, and inside of it was some kind of complex clockwork apparatus that was powered by the spinning of the shaft. Though I was briefly curious as to the device’s purpose, it wasn’t what I had come up there for.
Turning myself towards the only door, I ran through and out onto the upper balcony. The Effulgent One was still standing just beside it, his head several times taller than I was. He looked out towards the horizon and pointed an outstretched arm in that direction, indicating that I should do the same.
From the balcony, I could see a spire made of purple volcanic glass, carved as if it was made of two intertwining gargantuan rose vines, with a stained-glass roof that made it look like a rose in full bloom. The spire was surrounded by many twisting and shifting shadows, and I could perceive a near infinitude of superimposed potential pathways branching out from the spire and stretching out across the planes.
The Effulgent One reached out and plucked at one of the pathways running over us like it was a harp string, sending vibrations down along to the spire and then back out through the entire network. I saw the sky above the spire shatter like glass, revealing a floating maelstrom of festering black fluid that had congealed into a thousand wailing faces. It began to descend as if it meant to devour the spire, but as it did so the spire pulled in the web of pathways around it like a net. The storm writhed and screamed as it tried to escape, but the spire held the net tight as a swarm of creatures too small for me to identify congregated upon the storm and began to feed upon it. But the fluid the maelstrom was composed of seemed to be corrosive, and the net began to rot beneath its influence. It sagged and it strained, until finally giving way.
A chaotic battle ensued between the spire and the maelstrom, but it hardly seemed to matter. What both I and the Efflugent One noticed the most was that the pathways that had been bound to the spire were now severed and stained by the Black Bile, drifting away wherever the wind took them.
The Effulgent One caught one of them in his hand and tugged it downwards, staring at it pensively for a long moment.
“That… that didn’t actually just happen, did it?” I asked meekly. I waited patiently for the Effulgent One to respond, but he just kept staring at the severed thread. “But… it’s going to happen? Or, it could happen?”
A slow and solemn nod confirmed that what he had shown me had portended to a possible future.
“That’s why you marked me as your follower then, isn’t it?” I asked. “You needed someone, someone other than the Virklitchen, someone who’s already involved in this bullshit and can help stop it from deteriorating into whatever the hell you just showed me. If Erich had picked anyone else to go to Virklitch that night, or hadn’t asked me to stay for the festival, it wouldn’t have been me! It didn’t have to have been me!”
His head remained somberly hung, and I hadn’t really been expecting him to respond at all to my outburst.
“Elifey liked you,” he said in a metallic, fluid voice that sounded like it was resonating out of his chest rather than his face. “I would not have chosen you if she hadn’t.”
He twirled the thread in between his fingers before gently handing it down to me like it was a streamer on a balloon. I hesitantly accepted the gesture, wrapping as much of my hand around the spectral cord as I could. The instant I touched it, a radiant and spiralling rainbow shot down its length and arced across the sky. When it reached the chaotic battle on the horizon, it dispelled the maelstrom on contact, banishing it back into the nether and signalling in biblical fashion that the storm had passed. The other wayward pathways were cleansed of the Black Bile as well, and I watched in amazement as they slowly started to reweave themselves back into an interconnected web.
“But… what does this mean? What do I actually have to do to make this a reality?” I asked.
The Effulgent One reached out his hand and pinched the cord, choking off the rainbow and ending the vision he had shown me.
“A reality?” he asked as he held his palm out flat and adjacent to the balcony. “It’s already a reality. All you need to do is make it yours.”
It seemed to me that I wasn’t likely to get anything less cryptic than that out of him, so I accepted the lift down. He took me down the hill and set me down gently beside my car before setting off out of sight and beyond my ability to pursue him.
Even though my GPS wasn’t working, the moment I was sitting in the driver’s seat the autopilot kicked in and didn’t ask me to take control until I was back on a familiar road. I know that windmill isn’t just a short drive away, and I’ll never see it again unless the Effulgent One wants me to. I don’t think I can say I’m exactly happy with how that turned out, but I suppose I accomplished what I set out to achieve. I know what the Effulgent One wants of me now, and why he chose me specifically. If it had been all his decision I think I’d still be feeling kind of torn about it, but knowing that I’ve been roped into this because of Elifey makes it a lot easier to bear.
And… I did actually manage to catch a rainbow. I just needed a giant’s help to reach it.
2024.06.09 23:38 anonymoooooous Help! The intimacy is terrible, and the spark is disappearing
I've started seeing someone (we're both in our 40s), and every bit of intimacy is bad. He's a terrible kisser, he's got premature ejaculation (we're talking less than 30sec of ANY stimulation), I'm pretty sure he doesn't know what a clitoris is, and foreplay doesn't seem to be a thing.
We get on so well, and it was probably a month of dating before we hit the bedroom (mostly due to circumstances, kids etc), so built a great friendship first.
But I'm just not enjoying any of the physical side... We've spoken a bit it, the likely causes of his finishing early issues, but he's obviously really embarrassed by it. I think there's a medical component to it, but he doesn't seem interested in seeing help.
He's an awesome guy though. For those who've been in a similar place, is it possible to build intimacy, and a good sex life?? Can I teach him how to please me, and help build his confidence? Intimacy is so important to me, is it worth pushing through??
submitted by anonymoooooous to dating [link] [comments]
We get on so well, and it was probably a month of dating before we hit the bedroom (mostly due to circumstances, kids etc), so built a great friendship first.
But I'm just not enjoying any of the physical side... We've spoken a bit it, the likely causes of his finishing early issues, but he's obviously really embarrassed by it. I think there's a medical component to it, but he doesn't seem interested in seeing help.
He's an awesome guy though. For those who've been in a similar place, is it possible to build intimacy, and a good sex life?? Can I teach him how to please me, and help build his confidence? Intimacy is so important to me, is it worth pushing through??
2024.06.09 23:38 Anon__3423 Freyja update 🦋
 | It’s been a few days since I have posted Freyja, but during those few days we have made some major improvements! submitted by Anon__3423 to papillon [link] [comments] June 4th Freyja had her first annual exam with me and she did great. All her blood work, urine, (still have to get a fecal sample) and physical is all great! She also did very well at the vet 💗 She is a very healthy Papillon. She needs a dental scaling/cleaning soon. Her teeth aren’t in bad shape, but just some build up since her last cleaning in 2022. But it is needed because we don’t want it to eventually lead to anything bad! For the past two weeks I have been working on getting her used to having her teeth brushed which has been interesting to say the least lol but her teeth health is extremely important and she may not ever realize it, but it’s the best for her! As far as her training she has made such big changes! She’s getting more used to her new life and environment and is mentally doing a lot better around her triggers. She is settling in well and I am so proud of her. People started noticing that she likes to hang out on the cat window bed and window watch when they’re outside walking or walking their dogs and she’s bringing a smile to peoples faces here! It’s really cute lol. I’ll have to upload a picture of her hanging out there. It’s for my cat, but Freyja uses it more lol |
2024.06.09 23:37 jargoned Applied for a job I REALLY want. Want to know if I should follow up with HR.
I am 18 and have been looking for a part time job for the summer that I will also hopefully keep as a student. I am a Teaching of English major, which means everything English and literacy related is something I am passionate about. I have been waiting for my local library to open applications for a Patron Services position for months now, and discovered just recently that they had, and I applied for it about 5 days ago through email. In the email I spoke about my interest in the position as a prospective English teacher and how important literacy is to me in just a sentence. I feel like I should do more to show my interest in the position. I tried to figure out who the hiring manager was but couldn't find any information online. Should I follow up with HR and reiterate my interest, or should I just wait?
submitted by jargoned to jobs [link] [comments]
2024.06.09 23:36 Usual-Manner-8540 Can someone explain shared values to me?
I’ve been struggling to find someone who wants to commit to something serious over the past few years of dating. When choosing partners, I obviously go for people I find physically attractive (I have quite an obvious ‘type’), people I have interests in common with (I’m autistic and so it’s really important that a partner shares my love for things like music and gaming - doesn’t have to be exact but I really value having someone I can bond with by going to gigs together or playing games together), and similar worldviews and lifestyles. Obviously a lot of these things are intangible and unconscious - you can’t control who you’re attracted to - and I don’t force them, they’re just commonalities that have come up. But I’ve been told that I need to place more of an emphasis on shared values when choosing partners and that these are the most important thing when it comes to compatibility, that having interests in common doesn’t matter so much long term aside from this?
So I guess I want to know, what exactly are shared values and how can they make me more compatible with someone? For example, I’ve seen people throw things around like ‘communication’ and ‘empathy’ but doesn’t everyone want these things, and isn’t everyone striving to be better at them? I also see people talking about choosing someone who values the same things politically as you and in terms of compatible lifestyles but I already do have these things in mind, pretty much everyone I meet shares similar politics, has a similar lifestyle in creative industries, doesn’t want kids etc. Just being a decent person on the same wavelength isn’t really … enough for me to want to spend the rest of my life with someone?
submitted by Usual-Manner-8540 to dating_advice [link] [comments]
So I guess I want to know, what exactly are shared values and how can they make me more compatible with someone? For example, I’ve seen people throw things around like ‘communication’ and ‘empathy’ but doesn’t everyone want these things, and isn’t everyone striving to be better at them? I also see people talking about choosing someone who values the same things politically as you and in terms of compatible lifestyles but I already do have these things in mind, pretty much everyone I meet shares similar politics, has a similar lifestyle in creative industries, doesn’t want kids etc. Just being a decent person on the same wavelength isn’t really … enough for me to want to spend the rest of my life with someone?
2024.06.09 23:36 sacrunner916 Tunnel Marathon Race Report: Marathon #7 in 2024 (BQ and unexpected sub-3)
Race Information
- Name: Tunnel Marathon
- Date: June 9, 2024
- Distance: 26.2 miles
- Location: North Bend, WA
- Website: tunnelmarathon.com
- Strava: https://www.strava.com/activities/11613716588
- Time: 2:56:50
Goals
| Goal | Description | Completed? |
|---|---|---|
| A | Have fun | Yes |
| B | Sub 3:05 | Yes |
Splits
| Mile | Time |
|---|---|
| 1 | 7:17 |
| 2 | 7:33 |
| 3 | 7:07 |
| 4 | 6:39 |
| 5 | 6:56 |
| 6 | 6:45 |
| 7 | 6:47 |
| 8 | 6:40 |
| 9 | 6:46 |
| 10 | 6:46 |
| 11 | 6:49 |
| 12 | 6:38 |
| 13 | 6:52 |
| 14 | 6:46 |
| 15 | 6:41 |
| 16 | 6:46 |
| 17 | 6:42 |
| 18 | 6:48 |
| 19 | 6:47 |
| 20 | 6:47 |
| 21 | 6:49 |
| 22 | 6:49 |
| 23 | 6:41 |
| 24 | 6:29 |
| 25 | 6:31 |
| 26 | 6:25 |
| 27 | 5:51 |
Training
For background, I (36M) started running in 2020, set the goal of running 12 marathons in 2024 and have completed six so far: Houston (3:12), Surf City (3:14), Napa (3:11), LA (3:25), Eugene (3:06) and Ogden (3:06). Number seven would be the Tunnel Marathon.After Ogden, I finally started to feel the cumulative effects of seven marathons in six months, dating back to CIM in December. It seemed like every lower body part that could ache was aching -- toes, arches, ankles, achilles and shins -- and recovery took longer than usual.
Even though my body was barking at me, I still felt like I was in good marathon shape, and metathon predicted a 3:06 one week out, which was close enough to a BQ time for me to decide to use the Tunnel Marathon to take a second crack at running under 3:05. With summer having arrived early in northern California, I also told myself that it would be my last PR-type effort for a few months at minimum.
During the three weeks between Ogden and Tunnel -- before beginning a 6-day taper -- I squeezed in one long run of 21 miles and a handful of medium long runs between 12 to 15 miles. My last quality session before the taper was a half-marathon, in which I set a PB of 1:28. While it may not have been the most sensible decision, it gave me a confidence boost that I might be able to hold 7-minute mile pace for a little more than three hours.
Pre-race
I flew into Seattle Friday morning and rented a car to drive to one of the race-affiliated hotels in Issaquah. The hotel was within walking distance to a Safeway where I picked up a box of uncrustables and several pints of ice cream since I have the palate of a toddler.On Saturday morning, I stuck to my usual pre-marathon 4-mile run and ended up getting a bit carried away, logging two miles at sub-7-minute pace. Afterwards, I noshed on pasta, pizza and cookies until packet pick-up, which was held between 12pm-4pm at a local middle school parking lot. From the time I parked to the time I got my bib, not more than 5 minutes passed, which is the quickest bib pick-up I've experienced.
Race morning, I woke up at 3:15am, had coffee, did some light stretching and set off on a 40-minute drive to the start line at the Snoqualmie Pass. I didn't have an appetite but forced down a few mini graham crackers Southwest hands out during flights.
Over the past few marathons, I've lucked out on the weather, and this marathon continued that trend: low 50's with plenty of cloud cover at the start with highs in the 70's later in the day.
Race
After letting myself get sucked into the 3:05 pacer's race in Ogden, the phrase that kept swirling around in my head at the start area was "Run your race," which to a large extent meant start conservatively. To reinforce that approach, I ordered a pace band from findmymarathon and selected the very conservative start strategy, which had me aiming for between 7:10 to 7:20 per mile through the first three miles.One of the appeals of the Tunnel Marathons is getting to run through a tunnel for a little over 2 miles, and this is where things got perilous. The terrain in the tunnel is straight out of Home Alone 2 with a litany of booby traps: uneven pavement, huge potholes, mud and puddles of water. Even though I and everyone around me had their head lamps on, someone a few feet in front of me took a nasty fall, and I rolled my ankle due to a pothole.
After making it out of the tunnel, I caught up to the 3-hour pace group, which is not something I've ever done before, and ran with them for about a mile. Due to the near disaster earlier, I decided to pass the 3-hour pace group so I could see the pavement in front of me, and this became one of my primary objectives for the remainder of the race.
And so, from mile 4 on, I was more or less on my own, occasionally passing an early start marathoner or having to dodge oncoming bike riders. I did make a point of taking in the scenery when crossing bridges, but as soon as gravel was underfoot again, I quickly turned my attention to the ground in front of me.
After coming through the half well under 1:30, I thought perhaps I was going too fast and needed to dial it back. I took inventory of how I was feeling, and the effort didn't feel particularly labored, so I just kept clipping off sub-6:50 miles (which feels bananas to write).
At mile 20, I took my fourth and final gel and allowed myself to entertain the thought of running under 3 hours. Given the struggles I've had in the last 5k of marathons, I told myself to take it one mile at a time. As I entered those final miles, my legs were feeling good, so I started to crank down the pace, dropping down into threshold pace for miles 24 through 26. Making the last turn and entering the final straightaway, I could vaguely see 2:50 something on the clock and gave one final push to the finish.
Post-race
After crossing the finish line, I was in disbelief. Not only did I run under 3:05, but I ran under 3 hours, which frankly is not something I ever thought was in the cards for me. A volunteer handed me a cold towel and cup of water, and I spent a few minutes soaking in the finish line area.There was an interesting variety of treats, from potato chips to fresh fruit and slices of cake and mixed nuts, but I just grabbed a couple cans of coke and cartons of chocolate milk before hopping on a bus back to the start line.
At the risk of statng the obvious, the Tunnel Marathon is a very fast course, though the terrain does present some challenges. Certainly happy I got a chance to run this marathon and wouldn't hesitate recommending it to others.
Made with a new race report generator created by herumph.
2024.06.09 23:35 tovarischstalin The Lazy Student’s Guide to EECS 281
“If you do it all in one night, it only takes one night” -Me
Per the syllabus, minimum competency in the course is defined as a minimum of a 55% project average, 50% curved exam average, and a 75% lab average, all independent of each other. This guide is not for students who actually wish to fully engage with the material taught in 281, and is not recommended for students with no prior knowledge of any of the course concepts (i.e. BFS). Instead, it is targeted for students who wish to spend their time in other, non-academic endeavors (i.e hobbies, hanging out with friends, perhaps recruiting) and minimize the time spent on 281 by hitting the shockingly low bar for minimum competency in each category with the least amount of work
The merits of doing so may be debatable, but the amount of time saved is undeniable. Anecdotally, as I am the only person I know who took this approach, 281 was the lightest class among any CS course I have taken thus far (183, 203, 280, 281, 370, 376, 485, 482). Average time spent per week probably roughly came out to ~10 hours at max.
If you really need to go over a concept, skim the relevant section in AJ Zhou’s notes (https://ajzhou.gitlab.io/eecs281/notes/)
submitted by tovarischstalin to uofm [link] [comments]
Preface
Have you ever felt like you were spending too much time on class work? Too many late nights spent working on those pesky EECS projects? Would you rather be spending your time in other, more fun ways instead? The answer to all your problems lies in the post below.Introduction
Those who have not yet taken 281 may be familiar with its reputation. People claim it’s the first “hard” or “real” EECS class in the sequence, probably due to the lack of starter code for the projects. Whether or not this is true is debatable. However, what is important is that for the lazy student, this class is shockingly easy to pass.Per the syllabus, minimum competency in the course is defined as a minimum of a 55% project average, 50% curved exam average, and a 75% lab average, all independent of each other. This guide is not for students who actually wish to fully engage with the material taught in 281, and is not recommended for students with no prior knowledge of any of the course concepts (i.e. BFS). Instead, it is targeted for students who wish to spend their time in other, non-academic endeavors (i.e hobbies, hanging out with friends, perhaps recruiting) and minimize the time spent on 281 by hitting the shockingly low bar for minimum competency in each category with the least amount of work
The merits of doing so may be debatable, but the amount of time saved is undeniable. Anecdotally, as I am the only person I know who took this approach, 281 was the lightest class among any CS course I have taken thus far (183, 203, 280, 281, 370, 376, 485, 482). Average time spent per week probably roughly came out to ~10 hours at max.
Breakdown
Lecture
🤣If you really need to go over a concept, skim the relevant section in AJ Zhou’s notes (https://ajzhou.gitlab.io/eecs281/notes/)
Lab
The syllabus may claim that “There are no drops”. For our purposes, this is a lie. With a total of 10 labs assignments, a 75% competency threshold means you can skip 2 entire labs. However, this is not recommended. The optimal approach is to complete all handwritten problems and quizzes, and instead drop 3 coding assignments. Those reading this guide can double check calculations themselves, but this should ensure you still hit the 75% threshold. In particular, dropping the coding portion of Lab 2 - String, Lab 7- Hashmap, and Lab 10 - DP is recommended.Projects
With a 55% competency threshold, you essentially only have to complete 2 projects (99.5 average on autograder) and can “drop” the other 2 by only submitting some test cases or trivial code. It is highly recommended to complete Project 1. I personally dropped 2 & 3, and completed 4. However, due to the nature of certain optimizations for part 3 of p4, one could also choose to drop 3 & 4 and complete 2 instead. Dropping p3 is highly recommended, test cases for 10 points are easy to catch on this one and AJ Zhou’s notes pretty much has a step-by-step guide for an implementation on one part to grab another 10 points for free. With 5 easy test case points on the remaining project, this guarantees a 55%.Exams
Unfortunately, this is the only part of the course where spending some time is recommended. There are no short cuts here, though I will once again note 50% curved is not a high bar to meet. Reviewing some past practice exams should do the trick here.Conclusion
This guide is meant to help students who wish to just pass 281 save the most time. Can do similar writeups for other classes in the future if there is interest 🫡2024.06.09 23:34 CromaShin [THEORY] The End of Kep1everse.
![[THEORY] The End of Kep1everse.](https://b.thumbs.redditmedia.com/7NmTWEHaV_hj5Frb8IfDYYJViU90RYsDeoeh4S4tUMc.jpg "[THEORY] The End of Kep1everse.") | Hello Kep1ians, so much time has passed from my last [THEORY] post, did you miss me? I'm here once again to dive deep inside the lore of the last comeback of Kep1er as 9 members and with all chances the last post I will make. Here I will recap all major events happened during Kep1er music videos, analyze the last MV "Shooting Star", point out interesting lyrics and wrap everything up with a last theory. submitted by CromaShin to kep1er [link] [comments] Here below you can read all previous [THEORY] posts if you have never read them, anyway I'm about to recap everything so don't worry, you (I) wont miss anything. The Creation of Adam - Michelangelo, 1512 Kep1er lore summaryPre-DebutLet's rewind back the time, to October 2021. At that time Kep1er was announced with a logo motion of two suns colliding. Through my theories we learnt that a NASA mission called Kepler, as the famous astronomer, discovered systems of Binary Stars, basically solar systems made of two big stars revolving together. Debut, WA DA DA Era Kep1er debuted on Mnet M Countdown with an intro before their Hot Debut stage. In this intro Chaehyun is the first girl in a silent universe, so she start sending radio signals. The other girls copy, now they want to find each others. At that time the two suns are getting closer. When they'll become one, the whole universe will be painted lavender. In Wa Da Da they tried to find each other by sending and receiving those radio signals. Someone responded and that's how the travel has begun. Queendom 2 Era In the stages performed during the show various world were visited, from an underwater planet to a dying planet and even a wonderland planet. The search has just started. Up! Era They land in a Earth-like planet. Chaehyun looked like she was waiting for them, Mashiro keeps receiving signals from the radio and checking other devices. In this world they find a blinking lemon, maybe through this they will get more information on the exact location of the other selves. Wing Wing Era Their Japanese debut adds little to no lore. Some references were made with loud speakers and satellite dishes, meaning that the search is still going on. Sugar Rush Era Here they visit a Dreamworld to help a little girl get over a nightmare, revealing that they can travel through both real and imaginary dimensions. We Fresh Era This time they land on a futuristic cyberpunk world where they're secret heroes in training. In a galaxy far, far away, there existed a special planet, where heroes are born, we welcome you to Kep1anet." From this point on, all events happen in this world. I Do, do you? Era Kep1er are still girls in love and they end up having a prom party but things goes wrong when the guy they had to meet dances with another girl. Giddy Era A huge crustal heart lands on Kep1anet, infusing love and curiosity in Kep1er. They somehow manage to enter in this extraterrestrial body with a key and destroy it, painting the town pink. Galileo Era While visiting an art gallery Kep1er end up inside the paintings while chasing after the gallery owner, a cat named Galileo. You know what? The actual owner was Xiaoting for the entire time! As you can read, Kep1er lore has not ever been so deep. Important events happened only until We Fresh, where after several light years travelled around the galaxy Kep1er found the most suitable planet for them to wait for any further signals from their other alter-egos they've searched so far. This time has finally come at the very last of their career as a whole group. Welcome to the last chapter of Kep1er lore, this is the Epilogue. Close Encounters of the Third Kind - Steven Spielberg, 1977 MV BreakdownNine comets are traveling through outer space, these shooting stars are Kep1er alter-egos, running to meet the other selves the kept searching since ever. In a scene inside a fictitious shooting stastarship Bahiyyh senses something as the comet approaches the Milky Way galaxy. Xiaoting feel this sense in a deeper way, she has a vision of a wavy holographic orb glowing and a glimpse of the planet Earth. What is this orb?The shooting stars have reached Earth and they start falling in its atmosphere, heading to the city where their Kep1er alter-egos are located. Finally, they land in the modern city as nine white luminescent avatars with Kep1er resemblances. The two alter-ego teams meet on a rooftop. The Earthlings seems surprised but happy, like a meeting between old friends, their smile is bittersweet because they know they won't meet again. They came, in this moment they're together, that's what it matters. Now they're complete. Light Kep1ers fly around the city. While Mashiro is wandering through Seoul by night, the wavy orb Xiaoting dreamed of is seen shining in the sky in pink and yellow. Could this be the Sun that has become one? And just how they came, the shooting stars flew away. They were like a dream, a dream you remember for life. Despite the rushed MV production, we got the message clear. The distant Kep1er alter-egos that kept sending their signals finally located other selves on Kep1anet (Earth) so they came as shooting stars. They met, shared this union between the two suns and flew by. to new, other girls like Kep1er earthlings in other planets in the vast universe. Kep1er starship Earthlanding Lyrics BreakdownShooting StarAnnouncing another beginning (Let's start) The Light Kep1er will embark in a new journey to find other girls, this Earth ark has ended and they will start again (from the next comeback, with 2 members less). Oh, all the time, following the light In that moment, I found you just like that day, I appear in front of you like destiny Light Kep1er found Earth Kep1er as fate said, they "appeared" exactly like in the MV. See you again and again and again, In another galaxy as Light-Kep1er travel at light speed they will see other Kep1er of different timelines and galaxies. Embracing each other's flames fully Two suns embracing their flames fully together, when they merge into one. Curious Keep it up, you and my orbit that seems to overlap Light Kep1er are like comets in outer space so they can overlap with other celestial bodies. I found you in Columbus Can't find anything astronomical about Columbus besides a spacecraft module, but I'm sure it's something related. Double Up! Have an unforgettable voyage the journey Light Kep1er are doing across the whole universe Kep 1 going Up! Ah, the sun I encountered when the two suns meet, when the two Kep1er united on Earth. Why does this orb look so similar to the METABALL that connects I-LAND to GROUND in the new Mnet survival show I-Land 2... Last TheoryBy recalling what was discussed in Wa Da Da [THEORY] post, there was a scene where Kep1er walked away from a screen showing other Kep1er in a house. Those girls could be the future shooting stars which started their journey in that moment, or it was just one of the dimensions/worlds they visited to find all other Kep1er."The whole universe colored with lavender" could have a new final meaning: Kep1er wandering in every galaxy to find girls like them, connect with all of them and spreading their message, their dream, their color. Third Impact, The End of Evangelion (why is there a star in a different color...) FarewellThat's it, the end. The Kep1ore has ended and with it our two years and half with all the girls. The story behind their videos has never been very deep, enigmatic or twisted like other groups unfortunately, but I managed somehow to connect everything together to get give them dignity. Let's hope a brighter future for all members of Kep1er and a more interesting story concept behind their next contents in the entertainment industry, under any agency they will re-debut.It was such a pleasure to write these little analyses comeback by comeback, especially each time a new teaser was uploaded. I wish you enjoyed reading my theories as much as I enjoyed writing them. I'll stop making these [THEORY] posts for Kep1er but if you like this content maybe you can look up at my other [THEORY] posts I write on with the same structure. Let's meet again in other subs, in other theories threads. Let's support the girls in their next groups or other careers they want to follow. Bye bye! https://preview.redd.it/qqor3nt67m5d1.jpg?width=1387&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=406d236323243909807a0a48f0c899dbd5321f22 |
2024.06.09 23:33 Kentucky_Fried_Dodo What alternative to the Trinity do you think is the most reasonable?
Hello,
The Trinity is undoubtedly one of the favorite subjects for other churches to criticize the Witnesses about. The reason for this is relatively well known. In most churches, the Trinity is preached repetitively over decades without most people even understanding what it means theologically.
When they encounter the Witnesses who tell them that Jesus is not God (which is actually incorrect since, according to Witness teaching, Jesus is a lesser god, just not Jehovah), quick negative judgments are often made, and the topic is dismissed.
Of course, there are also people, even here in this sub, who are so pissed off at the Witnesses that they support the Trinity just because the Witnesses do not.
So, here are the biblical and historical facts:
The Trinity, in neither word nor meaning, is in the Bible. There is simply not a single verse that states something like: "God is one and consists of three persons who are equal to themselves and also God."
Nowhere.
Mind you, everything else, such as the fact that Jesus descended from David and exactly how with every single ancestor, and that he is the Messiah are all written into it. All of that and many other side notes are interestingly all in the Bible.
But something as "important" as the Trinity? Seriously?
What Trinitarians use as "arguments" is cherry-picking. They piece together their doctrine throughout the entire book.
Is that wrong? No, but it can just as easily be used against them.
Someone says: John 10:30 "I and the Father are one."
I say: John 14:28 "The Father is greater than I."
Someone else says: John 14:9 "Whoever has seen Jesus has seen the Father."
I say: John 5:30 "I (Jesus) can do nothing on my own."
We could play this "game" for years. It makes no sense. Almost every verse can be interpreted differently, in a way that contradicts the interpretations of others.
"Yes, but John 1:1!!!1111!!!111"
There's a whole article on Wikipedia that clearly states that both Jesus is „God", „a god," and "of divine nature" can be translated simultaneously.
That argument doesn't work.
The Trinity prevailed because the Arians lost politically at the beginning of the Middle Ages. Why? Because they wanted to honor Jesus by deifying him but didn't want to break with the Jewish traditions of the Father. After that, Trinitarian Bible scholars translated their Bible - usually quite correctly - in a way that leads more towards Trinitarian thinking. And that cycle repeats until today.
Fact is: 1 ≠ 3.
God is not irrational or contradictory. The Trinity is.
Anyone who seriously believes that a God would truthfully reveal himself to his people by claiming on the one hand that he is immortal because he is eternal but on the other hand that he can be killed by the cross and rise again, I can't help.
And yes, when Trinitarians say that Jesus is 100% God and 100% man always and everywhere, even a kindergarten child understands that God the Father must also be mortal because he shares his essence with the Son and is somehow also separated from him.
And that's just one of many examples of what happens when you try to connect the properties of an imperfect created being - a human - with those of an almighty creator God.
There are even more examples, like why Jesus doesn't know when the end times will occur and refers to the Father, who supposedly "knows more" than he does in this context. But it is literally the same God refering to himself is it not, eh ?
And yes, I have intentionally shortened the discussion of the Trinity for simple reasons because I don't feel like writing 200 pages about something that doesn't make sense anyway.
It just doesn't work. Period.
By the way, the argument "You can't fully understand God" doesn't apply either.
If I couldn't understand God at all, I couldn't get to know him. Ergo, Christianity would be a huge farce.
I can certainly admit that as an imperfect being, I understand God imperfectly. That's not hard. I know 100% what it's like to be here and now in this place at this time.
Maybe I can remember yesterday and maybe think about tomorrow.
But only God can be everywhere fully, at every place and every time, and that 100%, and I can't, and that's why God is almighty and not me.
That's logical and can also be presented that way. After all, the Bible itself says that God is the origin of time; otherwise, the statement that he is the Alpha and Omega wouldn't make any sense.
So yes, God is logical, 100%, and the Trinity is illogical and therefore, by definition, not a suitable description of God.
So, what are the alternatives? I see three different fitting models that I'd like to discuss with you.
If God is an Arian element, then it is fire, and heat and light are its products. The products depend on the fire but not vice versa.
Nestorians reject the hypostatic union and postulate the existence of two separate existences of Jesus Christ - Human Jesus and Jesus the God.
Mormons argue differently in that all three beings (FatheSon/Spirit) are completely separate and only act together "socially." That is, they reject the intrinsic Trinity but not the ecumenical one outwardly.
submitted by Kentucky_Fried_Dodo to JehovahsWitnesses [link] [comments]
The Trinity is undoubtedly one of the favorite subjects for other churches to criticize the Witnesses about. The reason for this is relatively well known. In most churches, the Trinity is preached repetitively over decades without most people even understanding what it means theologically.
When they encounter the Witnesses who tell them that Jesus is not God (which is actually incorrect since, according to Witness teaching, Jesus is a lesser god, just not Jehovah), quick negative judgments are often made, and the topic is dismissed.
Of course, there are also people, even here in this sub, who are so pissed off at the Witnesses that they support the Trinity just because the Witnesses do not.
So, here are the biblical and historical facts:
The Trinity, in neither word nor meaning, is in the Bible. There is simply not a single verse that states something like: "God is one and consists of three persons who are equal to themselves and also God."
Nowhere.
Mind you, everything else, such as the fact that Jesus descended from David and exactly how with every single ancestor, and that he is the Messiah are all written into it. All of that and many other side notes are interestingly all in the Bible.
But something as "important" as the Trinity? Seriously?
What Trinitarians use as "arguments" is cherry-picking. They piece together their doctrine throughout the entire book.
Is that wrong? No, but it can just as easily be used against them.
Someone says: John 10:30 "I and the Father are one."
I say: John 14:28 "The Father is greater than I."
Someone else says: John 14:9 "Whoever has seen Jesus has seen the Father."
I say: John 5:30 "I (Jesus) can do nothing on my own."
We could play this "game" for years. It makes no sense. Almost every verse can be interpreted differently, in a way that contradicts the interpretations of others.
"Yes, but John 1:1!!!1111!!!111"
There's a whole article on Wikipedia that clearly states that both Jesus is „God", „a god," and "of divine nature" can be translated simultaneously.
That argument doesn't work.
The Trinity prevailed because the Arians lost politically at the beginning of the Middle Ages. Why? Because they wanted to honor Jesus by deifying him but didn't want to break with the Jewish traditions of the Father. After that, Trinitarian Bible scholars translated their Bible - usually quite correctly - in a way that leads more towards Trinitarian thinking. And that cycle repeats until today.
Fact is: 1 ≠ 3.
God is not irrational or contradictory. The Trinity is.
Anyone who seriously believes that a God would truthfully reveal himself to his people by claiming on the one hand that he is immortal because he is eternal but on the other hand that he can be killed by the cross and rise again, I can't help.
And yes, when Trinitarians say that Jesus is 100% God and 100% man always and everywhere, even a kindergarten child understands that God the Father must also be mortal because he shares his essence with the Son and is somehow also separated from him.
And that's just one of many examples of what happens when you try to connect the properties of an imperfect created being - a human - with those of an almighty creator God.
There are even more examples, like why Jesus doesn't know when the end times will occur and refers to the Father, who supposedly "knows more" than he does in this context. But it is literally the same God refering to himself is it not, eh ?
And yes, I have intentionally shortened the discussion of the Trinity for simple reasons because I don't feel like writing 200 pages about something that doesn't make sense anyway.
It just doesn't work. Period.
By the way, the argument "You can't fully understand God" doesn't apply either.
If I couldn't understand God at all, I couldn't get to know him. Ergo, Christianity would be a huge farce.
I can certainly admit that as an imperfect being, I understand God imperfectly. That's not hard. I know 100% what it's like to be here and now in this place at this time.
Maybe I can remember yesterday and maybe think about tomorrow.
But only God can be everywhere fully, at every place and every time, and that 100%, and I can't, and that's why God is almighty and not me.
That's logical and can also be presented that way. After all, the Bible itself says that God is the origin of time; otherwise, the statement that he is the Alpha and Omega wouldn't make any sense.
So yes, God is logical, 100%, and the Trinity is illogical and therefore, by definition, not a suitable description of God.
So, what are the alternatives? I see three different fitting models that I'd like to discuss with you.
- Arianism
If God is an Arian element, then it is fire, and heat and light are its products. The products depend on the fire but not vice versa.
- Modalism
- Mormons and Nestorians
Nestorians reject the hypostatic union and postulate the existence of two separate existences of Jesus Christ - Human Jesus and Jesus the God.
Mormons argue differently in that all three beings (FatheSon/Spirit) are completely separate and only act together "socially." That is, they reject the intrinsic Trinity but not the ecumenical one outwardly.
2024.06.09 23:33 A_Vespertine I'm Always Chasing Rainbows
When you were a kid, and you saw a rainbow, did you ever want to try to get to the end of it? I bet you did. I did, anyway. It wasn’t the mythical pot of gold that tempted me. Wealth was too abstract of a concept at that age to dream about, and leprechauns were creepy little bastards. I just wanted to see what the rainbow looked like up close, and maybe even try to climb it.
Of course, you can’t get to the end of a rainbow because not only is there no end, but there isn’t even really a rainbow. It’s an illusion caused by the sunlight passing through raindrops at the right angle. If you did try to chase a rainbow down, it would move with you until it faded away. That’s why chasing rainbows is a pretty good metaphor for pursuing a beautiful illusion that can never manifest as anything concrete.
I bring all this up because I think it was that same type of urge that compelled me to chase down the Effulgent One. It’s not a perfect analogy, however, considering that I did actually catch up to the eldritch bastard.
I first saw the Effulgent One a little over two years ago. My employer – who happens to be an occultist mad scientist by the name of Erich Thorne – had tasked me with returning a young girl named Elifey to her village on the northern edges of the county. The people of Virklitch Village are very nice, but they’re also an insular, Luddite cult who worship a colossal spectral entity they call the Effulgent One. I saw this Titan during my first visit to Virklitch, and more importantly, he saw me. He left a streak of black in my soul, marking me as one of his followers. I can feel him now, when he walks in our world. Sometimes, if I look towards the horizon after sundown, I can even see him.
This entity, and my connection to him, is understandably something my employer has taken an interest in. I’ve been to Virklitch many times since my first visit, and I’ve successfully collected a good deal of vital information about the Effulgent One. The Virklitchen are the only ones who know how to summon him, and coercing them into doing so would only earn us his wrath. He’s sworn to protect them, though I haven’t the slightest idea of what motivates him to do so.
Even though I can see him, I usually try not to look, to pretend he’s not there. The Virklitchen have warned me never to chase after him. Before Virklitch was founded, the First Nations people who lived in this region were aware of the Effulgent One, though they called him the Sky Strider. Any of them that went chasing after him either failed, went mad, or were never seen again.
I was out driving after sunset, during astronomical twilight when the trees are just black silhouettes against a burnt orange horizon, when I sensed the presence of the Effulgent One. He was to the east, towering along the darkening skyline, idling amidst the fields of cyclopean wind turbines. I could see their flashing red lights in the periphery of my vision, and I knew that one of those lights was him. I tried to fight the urge to look, but fear began to gnaw at me. What if he was heading towards me right now? What if I was in danger and needed to run?
Risking a single sideways glance, I spotted his gangly form standing listlessly between the wind turbines, his long arms gently swaying as his glowing red face bobbed to and fro.
I exhaled a sigh of relief, now that I knew he wasn’t chasing me. That relief didn’t even last a moment before it was transformed into a dangerous realization. He wasn’t just not chasing me; he wasn’t moving at all. He was still. This was rare, and it presented me with a rare opportunity. I could approach him. I could speak with him.
This wasn’t a good idea, and I knew it. The Effulgent One interacted with his followers on his terms. If I annoyed him, he could squash me like a bug. Or worse. Much worse. But he had marked me as his follower and I wanted to know why. If there was any chance I could get him to answer me, I was going to take it.
“Hey Lumi,” I said to the proprietary AI assistant in my company car. “Play the cover of I’m Always Chasing Rainbows from the Hazbin Hotel pilot.”
With the mood appropriately set, I veered east the first chance I got.
Almost immediately, I noticed that the highway seemed eerily abandoned. Even if anyone else had been capable of perceiving the Effulgent One, there was no one around to see him. I got this creeping sense that the closer I drew to him, I was actually shifting more and more out of my world and more and more into his. The wind picked up and dark clouds blew in, snuffing out the fading twilight and plunging everything into an overcast night.
The Effulgent One didn’t seem to notice me as I drew closer. He was as tall as the wind turbines he stood beside, his gaunt body plated in dull iridescent scales infected with trailing fungus. The head on his lanky neck was completely hollow and filled with a glowing red light that dimly bounced off his scales.
Seeing him standing still was a lot more surreal than seeing him when he was active. As impossibly large as he is, when he’s moving it just naturally triggers your fight or flight response and you don’t really have time to take it all in. But when he’s just standing there, and you can look at him and question what you’re seeing, it just hits differently.
It wasn’t until I started slowing down that he finally turned his head in my direction, briefly engulfing me in a blinding red light. When it passed, I saw that the Effulgent One had turned away from me and I was striding down the highway. Even though his gait was casual, his stride was so long that he was still moving as quickly as any vehicle.
Reasoning that if he didn’t want me to follow him he wouldn’t be walking along the road, I slammed my foot down on the accelerator pedal and sped after him.
That’s when things started to get weird.
You know how when you’re driving at night through the country, you can’t see anything beyond your own headlights? With no visual landmarks to go by, it’s easy to get disoriented. All you have to go by is the signs, and I wasn’t paying any attention to those. All my focus was on the Effulgent One, so much so that if someone had jumped out in front of me I probably would have killed them.
I turned down at least one sideroad in my pursuit of the Effulgent One. Maybe two or three. I’m really not sure. All I know for sure is that I was so desperate not to lose him that I had become completely lost myself.
He never looked back to see if I was still following, or gave any indication that he knew or cared if I was still there. He just made his way along the backroads, his bloodred searchlight sweeping back and forth all the while, as if he was desperately seeking something of grave importance. Finally, he abandoned the road altogether and began to climb a gently rolling hill with a solitary wind turbine on top of it. I gently slowed my car to a stop and watched to see what he would do.
I had barely been keeping up with him on the roadways, so I knew I’d never catch him going off-road. If he didn’t stop at the wind turbine, then that would be the end of my little misadventure. As I watched the Effulgent One climb up the hill and cast his light upon it, I saw that the structure at the summit wasn’t a wind turbine at all, but a windmill.
It was a mammoth windmill, the size of a wind turbine, made from enormous blocks of rugged black stone. It was as impossible as the Effulgent One himself. No stone structure other than a pyramid or ziggurat could possibly be that big, and the windmill barely tapered at all towards the top. Its blades were made from a ragged black cloth that reminded me of pirate sails, and near the top I could see a light coming from a single balcony.
When the Effulgent One reached the hill’s summit, he not only came to a stop but turned back around to face me, his light illuminating the entire hillside. Whether or not it was his intention to make it easier for me to follow him up the hill, it was nonetheless the effect, so I decided not to squander it.
Grabbing the thousand-lumen flashlight from my emergency kit, I left my car on the side of the road and began the short but challenging trek up the hill.
I honestly had no idea where I was at that point. Nothing looked familiar, and the overgrown grass seemed so alien in the red light. The way it moved in the wind was so fluid it looked more like seaweed than grass. The clouds overhead seemed equally otherworldly, moving not only unusually fast but in strange patterns that didn’t seem purely meteorological in nature.
With the Effulgent One’s light aimed directly at me, there was no doubt in my mind that he had seen me, but he still gave no indication that he cared. The closer I drew to him, the more I was confronted by his unfathomable scale. I really was an insect compared to him, and it seemed inconceivable that he would make any distinction between anthropods and arthropods. He could strike me down as effortlessly and carelessly as any other bothersome bug. I approached cautiously, watching intently for any sign of hostility from him, but he remained completely and utterly unmoved.
The closer I got to him, the harder I found it to press on. From a distance, the Effulgent One is surreal enough that he doesn’t completely shatter your sense of reality, but that’s a luxury that goes down the toilet when he’s only a few strides or less from stomping you into the ground. His emaciated form wasn’t merely skeletal, but elongated; his limbs, digits, and neck all stretched out to disquieting proportions. His dull scales now seemed to be a shimmering indigo, and the fungal growths between them pulsed rhythmically with some kind of life. Whether it was with his or theirs, I cannot say. There were no ears on his round head. No features at all aside from the frontwards-facing cavity that held the searing red light.
As I slowly and timidly approached the windmill, he remained by its side, peering out across the horizon. I turned to see what he was looking at, but saw nothing. I immediately turned back to him and craned my neck skywards, marvelling at him in dumbstruck awe. I’d chased him down so that I could demand why he had marked me as one of his followers, but now that I had succeeded, I was horrified by how suicidally naïve that plan now felt.
Many an internet atheist has pontificated about how if there were a God and if they ever met Him, they would remain every bit as irreverent and defiant and hold Him to account the same as any tyrant. But when faced with a being of unfathomable cosmic power, I don’t think there truly is anyone who wouldn’t lose their nerve.
So I just stood there, gaping up at the Effulgent One like a moron, with no idea of what to do next.
Fortunately for me, it was then that the Effulgent One finally acknowledged my presence.
Slowly, he turned his face downwards and cast his spotlight upon me, holding it there for a few long seconds before turning it to the door at the base of the windmill. I glanced up at the balcony above, and saw that it aligned almost perfectly with his head.
Evidently, he wanted to meet me face to face.
Nodding obediently, I raced to the heavy wooden door and pushed it open with all my might. The inside was dark, and I couldn’t see very well after standing right in the Effulgent One’s light, but I could hear the sounds of metal gears slowly grinding and clanking away. When I turned on my flashlight, the first thing I was able to make out was the enormous millstone. It moved slowly and steadily, squelching and squishing so that even in the poor light I knew that it wasn’t grain that was being milled.
The next thing I saw was a flight of rickety wooden stairs that snaked up all along the interior of the windmill. Each step creaked and groaned beneath my weight as I climbed them, but I nonetheless ascended them with reckless abandon. If a single one of them had given out beneath me, I could have fallen to my death, and the staircase shook back and forth so much that sometimes it felt as if it was intentionally trying to throw me off.
When I reached the top floor, I saw that the windshaft was encased in a crystalline sphere etched with leylines and strange symbols, and inside of it was some kind of complex clockwork apparatus that was powered by the spinning of the shaft. Though I was briefly curious as to the device’s purpose, it wasn’t what I had come up there for.
Turning myself towards the only door, I ran through and out onto the upper balcony. The Effulgent One was still standing just beside it, his head several times taller than I was. He looked out towards the horizon and pointed an outstretched arm in that direction, indicating that I should do the same.
From the balcony, I could see a spire made of purple volcanic glass, carved as if it was made of two intertwining gargantuan rose vines, with a stained-glass roof that made it look like a rose in full bloom. The spire was surrounded by many twisting and shifting shadows, and I could perceive a near infinitude of superimposed potential pathways branching out from the spire and stretching out across the planes.
The Effulgent One reached out and plucked at one of the pathways running over us like it was a harp string, sending vibrations down along to the spire and then back out through the entire network. I saw the sky above the spire shatter like glass, revealing a floating maelstrom of festering black fluid that had congealed into a thousand wailing faces. It began to descend as if it meant to devour the spire, but as it did so the spire pulled in the web of pathways around it like a net. The storm writhed and screamed as it tried to escape, but the spire held the net tight as a swarm of creatures too small for me to identify congregated upon the storm and began to feed upon it. But the fluid the maelstrom was composed of seemed to be corrosive, and the net began to rot beneath its influence. It sagged and it strained, until finally giving way.
A chaotic battle ensued between the spire and the maelstrom, but it hardly seemed to matter. What both I and the Efflugent One noticed the most was that the pathways that had been bound to the spire were now severed and stained by the Black Bile, drifting away wherever the wind took them.
The Effulgent One caught one of them in his hand and tugged it downwards, staring at it pensively for a long moment.
“That… that didn’t actually just happen, did it?” I asked meekly. I waited patiently for the Effulgent One to respond, but he just kept staring at the severed thread. “But… it’s going to happen? Or, it could happen?”
A slow and solemn nod confirmed that what he had shown me had portended to a possible future.
“That’s why you marked me as your follower then, isn’t it?” I asked. “You needed someone, someone other than the Virklitchen, someone who’s already involved in this bullshit and can help stop it from deteriorating into whatever the hell you just showed me. If Erich had picked anyone else to go to Virklitch that night, or hadn’t asked me to stay for the festival, it wouldn’t have been me! It didn’t have to have been me!”
His head remained somberly hung, and I hadn’t really been expecting him to respond at all to my outburst.
“Elifey liked you,” he said in a metallic, fluid voice that sounded like it was resonating out of his chest rather than his face. “I would not have chosen you if she hadn’t.”
He twirled the thread in between his fingers before gently handing it down to me like it was a streamer on a balloon. I hesitantly accepted the gesture, wrapping as much of my hand around the spectral cord as I could. The instant I touched it, a radiant and spiralling rainbow shot down its length and arced across the sky. When it reached the chaotic battle on the horizon, it dispelled the maelstrom on contact, banishing it back into the nether and signalling in biblical fashion that the storm had passed. The other wayward pathways were cleansed of the Black Bile as well, and I watched in amazement as they slowly started to reweave themselves back into an interconnected web.
“But… what does this mean? What do I actually have to do to make this a reality?” I asked.
The Effulgent One reached out his hand and pinched the cord, choking off the rainbow and ending the vision he had shown me.
“A reality?” he asked as he held his palm out flat and adjacent to the balcony. “It’s already a reality. All you need to do is make it yours.”
It seemed to me that I wasn’t likely to get anything less cryptic than that out of him, so I accepted the lift down. He took me down the hill and set me down gently beside my car before setting off out of sight and beyond my ability to pursue him.
Even though my GPS wasn’t working, the moment I was sitting in the driver’s seat the autopilot kicked in and didn’t ask me to take control until I was back on a familiar road. I know that windmill isn’t just a short drive away, and I’ll never see it again unless the Effulgent One wants me to. I don’t think I can say I’m exactly happy with how that turned out, but I suppose I accomplished what I set out to achieve. I know what the Effulgent One wants of me now, and why he chose me specifically. If it had been all his decision I think I’d still be feeling kind of torn about it, but knowing that I’ve been roped into this because of Elifey makes it a lot easier to bear.
And… I did actually manage to catch a rainbow. I just needed a giant’s help to reach it.
submitted by A_Vespertine to DarkTales [link] [comments]
Of course, you can’t get to the end of a rainbow because not only is there no end, but there isn’t even really a rainbow. It’s an illusion caused by the sunlight passing through raindrops at the right angle. If you did try to chase a rainbow down, it would move with you until it faded away. That’s why chasing rainbows is a pretty good metaphor for pursuing a beautiful illusion that can never manifest as anything concrete.
I bring all this up because I think it was that same type of urge that compelled me to chase down the Effulgent One. It’s not a perfect analogy, however, considering that I did actually catch up to the eldritch bastard.
I first saw the Effulgent One a little over two years ago. My employer – who happens to be an occultist mad scientist by the name of Erich Thorne – had tasked me with returning a young girl named Elifey to her village on the northern edges of the county. The people of Virklitch Village are very nice, but they’re also an insular, Luddite cult who worship a colossal spectral entity they call the Effulgent One. I saw this Titan during my first visit to Virklitch, and more importantly, he saw me. He left a streak of black in my soul, marking me as one of his followers. I can feel him now, when he walks in our world. Sometimes, if I look towards the horizon after sundown, I can even see him.
This entity, and my connection to him, is understandably something my employer has taken an interest in. I’ve been to Virklitch many times since my first visit, and I’ve successfully collected a good deal of vital information about the Effulgent One. The Virklitchen are the only ones who know how to summon him, and coercing them into doing so would only earn us his wrath. He’s sworn to protect them, though I haven’t the slightest idea of what motivates him to do so.
Even though I can see him, I usually try not to look, to pretend he’s not there. The Virklitchen have warned me never to chase after him. Before Virklitch was founded, the First Nations people who lived in this region were aware of the Effulgent One, though they called him the Sky Strider. Any of them that went chasing after him either failed, went mad, or were never seen again.
I was out driving after sunset, during astronomical twilight when the trees are just black silhouettes against a burnt orange horizon, when I sensed the presence of the Effulgent One. He was to the east, towering along the darkening skyline, idling amidst the fields of cyclopean wind turbines. I could see their flashing red lights in the periphery of my vision, and I knew that one of those lights was him. I tried to fight the urge to look, but fear began to gnaw at me. What if he was heading towards me right now? What if I was in danger and needed to run?
Risking a single sideways glance, I spotted his gangly form standing listlessly between the wind turbines, his long arms gently swaying as his glowing red face bobbed to and fro.
I exhaled a sigh of relief, now that I knew he wasn’t chasing me. That relief didn’t even last a moment before it was transformed into a dangerous realization. He wasn’t just not chasing me; he wasn’t moving at all. He was still. This was rare, and it presented me with a rare opportunity. I could approach him. I could speak with him.
This wasn’t a good idea, and I knew it. The Effulgent One interacted with his followers on his terms. If I annoyed him, he could squash me like a bug. Or worse. Much worse. But he had marked me as his follower and I wanted to know why. If there was any chance I could get him to answer me, I was going to take it.
“Hey Lumi,” I said to the proprietary AI assistant in my company car. “Play the cover of I’m Always Chasing Rainbows from the Hazbin Hotel pilot.”
With the mood appropriately set, I veered east the first chance I got.
Almost immediately, I noticed that the highway seemed eerily abandoned. Even if anyone else had been capable of perceiving the Effulgent One, there was no one around to see him. I got this creeping sense that the closer I drew to him, I was actually shifting more and more out of my world and more and more into his. The wind picked up and dark clouds blew in, snuffing out the fading twilight and plunging everything into an overcast night.
The Effulgent One didn’t seem to notice me as I drew closer. He was as tall as the wind turbines he stood beside, his gaunt body plated in dull iridescent scales infected with trailing fungus. The head on his lanky neck was completely hollow and filled with a glowing red light that dimly bounced off his scales.
Seeing him standing still was a lot more surreal than seeing him when he was active. As impossibly large as he is, when he’s moving it just naturally triggers your fight or flight response and you don’t really have time to take it all in. But when he’s just standing there, and you can look at him and question what you’re seeing, it just hits differently.
It wasn’t until I started slowing down that he finally turned his head in my direction, briefly engulfing me in a blinding red light. When it passed, I saw that the Effulgent One had turned away from me and I was striding down the highway. Even though his gait was casual, his stride was so long that he was still moving as quickly as any vehicle.
Reasoning that if he didn’t want me to follow him he wouldn’t be walking along the road, I slammed my foot down on the accelerator pedal and sped after him.
That’s when things started to get weird.
You know how when you’re driving at night through the country, you can’t see anything beyond your own headlights? With no visual landmarks to go by, it’s easy to get disoriented. All you have to go by is the signs, and I wasn’t paying any attention to those. All my focus was on the Effulgent One, so much so that if someone had jumped out in front of me I probably would have killed them.
I turned down at least one sideroad in my pursuit of the Effulgent One. Maybe two or three. I’m really not sure. All I know for sure is that I was so desperate not to lose him that I had become completely lost myself.
He never looked back to see if I was still following, or gave any indication that he knew or cared if I was still there. He just made his way along the backroads, his bloodred searchlight sweeping back and forth all the while, as if he was desperately seeking something of grave importance. Finally, he abandoned the road altogether and began to climb a gently rolling hill with a solitary wind turbine on top of it. I gently slowed my car to a stop and watched to see what he would do.
I had barely been keeping up with him on the roadways, so I knew I’d never catch him going off-road. If he didn’t stop at the wind turbine, then that would be the end of my little misadventure. As I watched the Effulgent One climb up the hill and cast his light upon it, I saw that the structure at the summit wasn’t a wind turbine at all, but a windmill.
It was a mammoth windmill, the size of a wind turbine, made from enormous blocks of rugged black stone. It was as impossible as the Effulgent One himself. No stone structure other than a pyramid or ziggurat could possibly be that big, and the windmill barely tapered at all towards the top. Its blades were made from a ragged black cloth that reminded me of pirate sails, and near the top I could see a light coming from a single balcony.
When the Effulgent One reached the hill’s summit, he not only came to a stop but turned back around to face me, his light illuminating the entire hillside. Whether or not it was his intention to make it easier for me to follow him up the hill, it was nonetheless the effect, so I decided not to squander it.
Grabbing the thousand-lumen flashlight from my emergency kit, I left my car on the side of the road and began the short but challenging trek up the hill.
I honestly had no idea where I was at that point. Nothing looked familiar, and the overgrown grass seemed so alien in the red light. The way it moved in the wind was so fluid it looked more like seaweed than grass. The clouds overhead seemed equally otherworldly, moving not only unusually fast but in strange patterns that didn’t seem purely meteorological in nature.
With the Effulgent One’s light aimed directly at me, there was no doubt in my mind that he had seen me, but he still gave no indication that he cared. The closer I drew to him, the more I was confronted by his unfathomable scale. I really was an insect compared to him, and it seemed inconceivable that he would make any distinction between anthropods and arthropods. He could strike me down as effortlessly and carelessly as any other bothersome bug. I approached cautiously, watching intently for any sign of hostility from him, but he remained completely and utterly unmoved.
The closer I got to him, the harder I found it to press on. From a distance, the Effulgent One is surreal enough that he doesn’t completely shatter your sense of reality, but that’s a luxury that goes down the toilet when he’s only a few strides or less from stomping you into the ground. His emaciated form wasn’t merely skeletal, but elongated; his limbs, digits, and neck all stretched out to disquieting proportions. His dull scales now seemed to be a shimmering indigo, and the fungal growths between them pulsed rhythmically with some kind of life. Whether it was with his or theirs, I cannot say. There were no ears on his round head. No features at all aside from the frontwards-facing cavity that held the searing red light.
As I slowly and timidly approached the windmill, he remained by its side, peering out across the horizon. I turned to see what he was looking at, but saw nothing. I immediately turned back to him and craned my neck skywards, marvelling at him in dumbstruck awe. I’d chased him down so that I could demand why he had marked me as one of his followers, but now that I had succeeded, I was horrified by how suicidally naïve that plan now felt.
Many an internet atheist has pontificated about how if there were a God and if they ever met Him, they would remain every bit as irreverent and defiant and hold Him to account the same as any tyrant. But when faced with a being of unfathomable cosmic power, I don’t think there truly is anyone who wouldn’t lose their nerve.
So I just stood there, gaping up at the Effulgent One like a moron, with no idea of what to do next.
Fortunately for me, it was then that the Effulgent One finally acknowledged my presence.
Slowly, he turned his face downwards and cast his spotlight upon me, holding it there for a few long seconds before turning it to the door at the base of the windmill. I glanced up at the balcony above, and saw that it aligned almost perfectly with his head.
Evidently, he wanted to meet me face to face.
Nodding obediently, I raced to the heavy wooden door and pushed it open with all my might. The inside was dark, and I couldn’t see very well after standing right in the Effulgent One’s light, but I could hear the sounds of metal gears slowly grinding and clanking away. When I turned on my flashlight, the first thing I was able to make out was the enormous millstone. It moved slowly and steadily, squelching and squishing so that even in the poor light I knew that it wasn’t grain that was being milled.
The next thing I saw was a flight of rickety wooden stairs that snaked up all along the interior of the windmill. Each step creaked and groaned beneath my weight as I climbed them, but I nonetheless ascended them with reckless abandon. If a single one of them had given out beneath me, I could have fallen to my death, and the staircase shook back and forth so much that sometimes it felt as if it was intentionally trying to throw me off.
When I reached the top floor, I saw that the windshaft was encased in a crystalline sphere etched with leylines and strange symbols, and inside of it was some kind of complex clockwork apparatus that was powered by the spinning of the shaft. Though I was briefly curious as to the device’s purpose, it wasn’t what I had come up there for.
Turning myself towards the only door, I ran through and out onto the upper balcony. The Effulgent One was still standing just beside it, his head several times taller than I was. He looked out towards the horizon and pointed an outstretched arm in that direction, indicating that I should do the same.
From the balcony, I could see a spire made of purple volcanic glass, carved as if it was made of two intertwining gargantuan rose vines, with a stained-glass roof that made it look like a rose in full bloom. The spire was surrounded by many twisting and shifting shadows, and I could perceive a near infinitude of superimposed potential pathways branching out from the spire and stretching out across the planes.
The Effulgent One reached out and plucked at one of the pathways running over us like it was a harp string, sending vibrations down along to the spire and then back out through the entire network. I saw the sky above the spire shatter like glass, revealing a floating maelstrom of festering black fluid that had congealed into a thousand wailing faces. It began to descend as if it meant to devour the spire, but as it did so the spire pulled in the web of pathways around it like a net. The storm writhed and screamed as it tried to escape, but the spire held the net tight as a swarm of creatures too small for me to identify congregated upon the storm and began to feed upon it. But the fluid the maelstrom was composed of seemed to be corrosive, and the net began to rot beneath its influence. It sagged and it strained, until finally giving way.
A chaotic battle ensued between the spire and the maelstrom, but it hardly seemed to matter. What both I and the Efflugent One noticed the most was that the pathways that had been bound to the spire were now severed and stained by the Black Bile, drifting away wherever the wind took them.
The Effulgent One caught one of them in his hand and tugged it downwards, staring at it pensively for a long moment.
“That… that didn’t actually just happen, did it?” I asked meekly. I waited patiently for the Effulgent One to respond, but he just kept staring at the severed thread. “But… it’s going to happen? Or, it could happen?”
A slow and solemn nod confirmed that what he had shown me had portended to a possible future.
“That’s why you marked me as your follower then, isn’t it?” I asked. “You needed someone, someone other than the Virklitchen, someone who’s already involved in this bullshit and can help stop it from deteriorating into whatever the hell you just showed me. If Erich had picked anyone else to go to Virklitch that night, or hadn’t asked me to stay for the festival, it wouldn’t have been me! It didn’t have to have been me!”
His head remained somberly hung, and I hadn’t really been expecting him to respond at all to my outburst.
“Elifey liked you,” he said in a metallic, fluid voice that sounded like it was resonating out of his chest rather than his face. “I would not have chosen you if she hadn’t.”
He twirled the thread in between his fingers before gently handing it down to me like it was a streamer on a balloon. I hesitantly accepted the gesture, wrapping as much of my hand around the spectral cord as I could. The instant I touched it, a radiant and spiralling rainbow shot down its length and arced across the sky. When it reached the chaotic battle on the horizon, it dispelled the maelstrom on contact, banishing it back into the nether and signalling in biblical fashion that the storm had passed. The other wayward pathways were cleansed of the Black Bile as well, and I watched in amazement as they slowly started to reweave themselves back into an interconnected web.
“But… what does this mean? What do I actually have to do to make this a reality?” I asked.
The Effulgent One reached out his hand and pinched the cord, choking off the rainbow and ending the vision he had shown me.
“A reality?” he asked as he held his palm out flat and adjacent to the balcony. “It’s already a reality. All you need to do is make it yours.”
It seemed to me that I wasn’t likely to get anything less cryptic than that out of him, so I accepted the lift down. He took me down the hill and set me down gently beside my car before setting off out of sight and beyond my ability to pursue him.
Even though my GPS wasn’t working, the moment I was sitting in the driver’s seat the autopilot kicked in and didn’t ask me to take control until I was back on a familiar road. I know that windmill isn’t just a short drive away, and I’ll never see it again unless the Effulgent One wants me to. I don’t think I can say I’m exactly happy with how that turned out, but I suppose I accomplished what I set out to achieve. I know what the Effulgent One wants of me now, and why he chose me specifically. If it had been all his decision I think I’d still be feeling kind of torn about it, but knowing that I’ve been roped into this because of Elifey makes it a lot easier to bear.
And… I did actually manage to catch a rainbow. I just needed a giant’s help to reach it.
2024.06.09 23:32 Additional_Duty1564 How should I respond to a potential PhD supervisor?
Hi everyone, Im currently in communication with a potential supervisor for a phd program. Ive sent the intial email with my cv, transcript and a sample of my writing. The supervisor has responded asking for a "1-2 page statement that includes the topic I would be most interested in studying, and how I can see myself engaging in research to address it including the nature of the project" I was wondering what are the most important things I should cover in my statement when answering those questions and if there are any additional things I need?
submitted by Additional_Duty1564 to PhD [link] [comments]
2024.06.09 23:31 A_Vespertine I'm Always Chasing Rainbows
When you were a kid, and you saw a rainbow, did you ever want to try to get to the end of it? I bet you did. I did, anyway. It wasn’t the mythical pot of gold that tempted me. Wealth was too abstract of a concept at that age to dream about, and leprechauns were creepy little bastards. I just wanted to see what the rainbow looked like up close, and maybe even try to climb it.
Of course, you can’t get to the end of a rainbow because not only is there no end, but there isn’t even really a rainbow. It’s an illusion caused by the sunlight passing through raindrops at the right angle. If you did try to chase a rainbow down, it would move with you until it faded away. That’s why chasing rainbows is a pretty good metaphor for pursuing a beautiful illusion that can never manifest as anything concrete.
I bring all this up because I think it was that same type of urge that compelled me to chase down the Effulgent One. It’s not a perfect analogy, however, considering that I did actually catch up to the eldritch bastard.
I first saw the Effulgent One a little over two years ago. My employer – who happens to be an occultist mad scientist by the name of Erich Thorne – had tasked me with returning a young girl named Elifey to her village on the northern edges of the county. The people of Virklitch Village are very nice, but they’re also an insular, Luddite cult who worship a colossal spectral entity they call the Effulgent One. I saw this Titan during my first visit to Virklitch, and more importantly, he saw me. He left a streak of black in my soul, marking me as one of his followers. I can feel him now, when he walks in our world. Sometimes, if I look towards the horizon after sundown, I can even see him.
This entity, and my connection to him, is understandably something my employer has taken an interest in. I’ve been to Virklitch many times since my first visit, and I’ve successfully collected a good deal of vital information about the Effulgent One. The Virklitchen are the only ones who know how to summon him, and coercing them into doing so would only earn us his wrath. He’s sworn to protect them, though I haven’t the slightest idea of what motivates him to do so.
Even though I can see him, I usually try not to look, to pretend he’s not there. The Virklitchen have warned me never to chase after him. Before Virklitch was founded, the First Nations people who lived in this region were aware of the Effulgent One, though they called him the Sky Strider. Any of them that went chasing after him either failed, went mad, or were never seen again.
I was out driving after sunset, during astronomical twilight when the trees are just black silhouettes against a burnt orange horizon, when I sensed the presence of the Effulgent One. He was to the east, towering along the darkening skyline, idling amidst the fields of cyclopean wind turbines. I could see their flashing red lights in the periphery of my vision, and I knew that one of those lights was him. I tried to fight the urge to look, but fear began to gnaw at me. What if he was heading towards me right now? What if I was in danger and needed to run?
Risking a single sideways glance, I spotted his gangly form standing listlessly between the wind turbines, his long arms gently swaying as his glowing red face bobbed to and fro.
I exhaled a sigh of relief, now that I knew he wasn’t chasing me. That relief didn’t even last a moment before it was transformed into a dangerous realization. He wasn’t just not chasing me; he wasn’t moving at all. He was still. This was rare, and it presented me with a rare opportunity. I could approach him. I could speak with him.
This wasn’t a good idea, and I knew it. The Effulgent One interacted with his followers on his terms. If I annoyed him, he could squash me like a bug. Or worse. Much worse. But he had marked me as his follower and I wanted to know why. If there was any chance I could get him to answer me, I was going to take it.
“Hey Lumi,” I said to the proprietary AI assistant in my company car. “Play the cover of I’m Always Chasing Rainbows from the Hazbin Hotel pilot.”
With the mood appropriately set, I veered east the first chance I got.
Almost immediately, I noticed that the highway seemed eerily abandoned. Even if anyone else had been capable of perceiving the Effulgent One, there was no one around to see him. I got this creeping sense that the closer I drew to him, I was actually shifting more and more out of my world and more and more into his. The wind picked up and dark clouds blew in, snuffing out the fading twilight and plunging everything into an overcast night.
The Effulgent One didn’t seem to notice me as I drew closer. He was as tall as the wind turbines he stood beside, his gaunt body plated in dull iridescent scales infected with trailing fungus. The head on his lanky neck was completely hollow and filled with a glowing red light that dimly bounced off his scales.
Seeing him standing still was a lot more surreal than seeing him when he was active. As impossibly large as he is, when he’s moving it just naturally triggers your fight or flight response and you don’t really have time to take it all in. But when he’s just standing there, and you can look at him and question what you’re seeing, it just hits differently.
It wasn’t until I started slowing down that he finally turned his head in my direction, briefly engulfing me in a blinding red light. When it passed, I saw that the Effulgent One had turned away from me and I was striding down the highway. Even though his gait was casual, his stride was so long that he was still moving as quickly as any vehicle.
Reasoning that if he didn’t want me to follow him he wouldn’t be walking along the road, I slammed my foot down on the accelerator pedal and sped after him.
That’s when things started to get weird.
You know how when you’re driving at night through the country, you can’t see anything beyond your own headlights? With no visual landmarks to go by, it’s easy to get disoriented. All you have to go by is the signs, and I wasn’t paying any attention to those. All my focus was on the Effulgent One, so much so that if someone had jumped out in front of me I probably would have killed them.
I turned down at least one sideroad in my pursuit of the Effulgent One. Maybe two or three. I’m really not sure. All I know for sure is that I was so desperate not to lose him that I had become completely lost myself.
He never looked back to see if I was still following, or gave any indication that he knew or cared if I was still there. He just made his way along the backroads, his bloodred searchlight sweeping back and forth all the while, as if he was desperately seeking something of grave importance. Finally, he abandoned the road altogether and began to climb a gently rolling hill with a solitary wind turbine on top of it. I gently slowed my car to a stop and watched to see what he would do.
I had barely been keeping up with him on the roadways, so I knew I’d never catch him going off-road. If he didn’t stop at the wind turbine, then that would be the end of my little misadventure. As I watched the Effulgent One climb up the hill and cast his light upon it, I saw that the structure at the summit wasn’t a wind turbine at all, but a windmill.
It was a mammoth windmill, the size of a wind turbine, made from enormous blocks of rugged black stone. It was as impossible as the Effulgent One himself. No stone structure other than a pyramid or ziggurat could possibly be that big, and the windmill barely tapered at all towards the top. Its blades were made from a ragged black cloth that reminded me of pirate sails, and near the top I could see a light coming from a single balcony.
When the Effulgent One reached the hill’s summit, he not only came to a stop but turned back around to face me, his light illuminating the entire hillside. Whether or not it was his intention to make it easier for me to follow him up the hill, it was nonetheless the effect, so I decided not to squander it.
Grabbing the thousand-lumen flashlight from my emergency kit, I left my car on the side of the road and began the short but challenging trek up the hill.
I honestly had no idea where I was at that point. Nothing looked familiar, and the overgrown grass seemed so alien in the red light. The way it moved in the wind was so fluid it looked more like seaweed than grass. The clouds overhead seemed equally otherworldly, moving not only unusually fast but in strange patterns that didn’t seem purely meteorological in nature.
With the Effulgent One’s light aimed directly at me, there was no doubt in my mind that he had seen me, but he still gave no indication that he cared. The closer I drew to him, the more I was confronted by his unfathomable scale. I really was an insect compared to him, and it seemed inconceivable that he would make any distinction between anthropods and arthropods. He could strike me down as effortlessly and carelessly as any other bothersome bug. I approached cautiously, watching intently for any sign of hostility from him, but he remained completely and utterly unmoved.
The closer I got to him, the harder I found it to press on. From a distance, the Effulgent One is surreal enough that he doesn’t completely shatter your sense of reality, but that’s a luxury that goes down the toilet when he’s only a few strides or less from stomping you into the ground. His emaciated form wasn’t merely skeletal, but elongated; his limbs, digits, and neck all stretched out to disquieting proportions. His dull scales now seemed to be a shimmering indigo, and the fungal growths between them pulsed rhythmically with some kind of life. Whether it was with his or theirs, I cannot say. There were no ears on his round head. No features at all aside from the frontwards-facing cavity that held the searing red light.
As I slowly and timidly approached the windmill, he remained by its side, peering out across the horizon. I turned to see what he was looking at, but saw nothing. I immediately turned back to him and craned my neck skywards, marvelling at him in dumbstruck awe. I’d chased him down so that I could demand why he had marked me as one of his followers, but now that I had succeeded, I was horrified by how suicidally naïve that plan now felt.
Many an internet atheist has pontificated about how if there were a God and if they ever met Him, they would remain every bit as irreverent and defiant and hold Him to account the same as any tyrant. But when faced with a being of unfathomable cosmic power, I don’t think there truly is anyone who wouldn’t lose their nerve.
So I just stood there, gaping up at the Effulgent One like a moron, with no idea of what to do next.
Fortunately for me, it was then that the Effulgent One finally acknowledged my presence.
Slowly, he turned his face downwards and cast his spotlight upon me, holding it there for a few long seconds before turning it to the door at the base of the windmill. I glanced up at the balcony above, and saw that it aligned almost perfectly with his head.
Evidently, he wanted to meet me face to face.
Nodding obediently, I raced to the heavy wooden door and pushed it open with all my might. The inside was dark, and I couldn’t see very well after standing right in the Effulgent One’s light, but I could hear the sounds of metal gears slowly grinding and clanking away. When I turned on my flashlight, the first thing I was able to make out was the enormous millstone. It moved slowly and steadily, squelching and squishing so that even in the poor light I knew that it wasn’t grain that was being milled.
The next thing I saw was a flight of rickety wooden stairs that snaked up all along the interior of the windmill. Each step creaked and groaned beneath my weight as I climbed them, but I nonetheless ascended them with reckless abandon. If a single one of them had given out beneath me, I could have fallen to my death, and the staircase shook back and forth so much that sometimes it felt as if it was intentionally trying to throw me off.
When I reached the top floor, I saw that the windshaft was encased in a crystalline sphere etched with leylines and strange symbols, and inside of it was some kind of complex clockwork apparatus that was powered by the spinning of the shaft. Though I was briefly curious as to the device’s purpose, it wasn’t what I had come up there for.
Turning myself towards the only door, I ran through and out onto the upper balcony. The Effulgent One was still standing just beside it, his head several times taller than I was. He looked out towards the horizon and pointed an outstretched arm in that direction, indicating that I should do the same.
From the balcony, I could see a spire made of purple volcanic glass, carved as if it was made of two intertwining gargantuan rose vines, with a stained-glass roof that made it look like a rose in full bloom. The spire was surrounded by many twisting and shifting shadows, and I could perceive a near infinitude of superimposed potential pathways branching out from the spire and stretching out across the planes.
The Effulgent One reached out and plucked at one of the pathways running over us like it was a harp string, sending vibrations down along to the spire and then back out through the entire network. I saw the sky above the spire shatter like glass, revealing a floating maelstrom of festering black fluid that had congealed into a thousand wailing faces. It began to descend as if it meant to devour the spire, but as it did so the spire pulled in the web of pathways around it like a net. The storm writhed and screamed as it tried to escape, but the spire held the net tight as a swarm of creatures too small for me to identify congregated upon the storm and began to feed upon it. But the fluid the maelstrom was composed of seemed to be corrosive, and the net began to rot beneath its influence. It sagged and it strained, until finally giving way.
A chaotic battle ensued between the spire and the maelstrom, but it hardly seemed to matter. What both I and the Efflugent One noticed the most was that the pathways that had been bound to the spire were now severed and stained by the Black Bile, drifting away wherever the wind took them.
The Effulgent One caught one of them in his hand and tugged it downwards, staring at it pensively for a long moment.
“That… that didn’t actually just happen, did it?” I asked meekly. I waited patiently for the Effulgent One to respond, but he just kept staring at the severed thread. “But… it’s going to happen? Or, it could happen?”
A slow and solemn nod confirmed that what he had shown me had portended to a possible future.
“That’s why you marked me as your follower then, isn’t it?” I asked. “You needed someone, someone other than the Virklitchen, someone who’s already involved in this bullshit and can help stop it from deteriorating into whatever the hell you just showed me. If Erich had picked anyone else to go to Virklitch that night, or hadn’t asked me to stay for the festival, it wouldn’t have been me! It didn’t have to have been me!”
His head remained somberly hung, and I hadn’t really been expecting him to respond at all to my outburst.
“Elifey liked you,” he said in a metallic, fluid voice that sounded like it was resonating out of his chest rather than his face. “I would not have chosen you if she hadn’t.”
He twirled the thread in between his fingers before gently handing it down to me like it was a streamer on a balloon. I hesitantly accepted the gesture, wrapping as much of my hand around the spectral cord as I could. The instant I touched it, a radiant and spiralling rainbow shot down its length and arced across the sky. When it reached the chaotic battle on the horizon, it dispelled the maelstrom on contact, banishing it back into the nether and signalling in biblical fashion that the storm had passed. The other wayward pathways were cleansed of the Black Bile as well, and I watched in amazement as they slowly started to reweave themselves back into an interconnected web.
“But… what does this mean? What do I actually have to do to make this a reality?” I asked.
The Effulgent One reached out his hand and pinched the cord, choking off the rainbow and ending the vision he had shown me.
“A reality?” he asked as he held his palm out flat and adjacent to the balcony. “It’s already a reality. All you need to do is make it yours.”
It seemed to me that I wasn’t likely to get anything less cryptic than that out of him, so I accepted the lift down. He took me down the hill and set me down gently beside my car before setting off out of sight and beyond my ability to pursue him.
Even though my GPS wasn’t working, the moment I was sitting in the driver’s seat the autopilot kicked in and didn’t ask me to take control until I was back on a familiar road. I know that windmill isn’t just a short drive away, and I’ll never see it again unless the Effulgent One wants me to. I don’t think I can say I’m exactly happy with how that turned out, but I suppose I accomplished what I set out to achieve. I know what the Effulgent One wants of me now, and why he chose me specifically. If it had been all his decision I think I’d still be feeling kind of torn about it, but knowing that I’ve been roped into this because of Elifey makes it a lot easier to bear.
And… I did actually manage to catch a rainbow. I just needed a giant’s help to reach it.
submitted by A_Vespertine to stayawake [link] [comments]
Of course, you can’t get to the end of a rainbow because not only is there no end, but there isn’t even really a rainbow. It’s an illusion caused by the sunlight passing through raindrops at the right angle. If you did try to chase a rainbow down, it would move with you until it faded away. That’s why chasing rainbows is a pretty good metaphor for pursuing a beautiful illusion that can never manifest as anything concrete.
I bring all this up because I think it was that same type of urge that compelled me to chase down the Effulgent One. It’s not a perfect analogy, however, considering that I did actually catch up to the eldritch bastard.
I first saw the Effulgent One a little over two years ago. My employer – who happens to be an occultist mad scientist by the name of Erich Thorne – had tasked me with returning a young girl named Elifey to her village on the northern edges of the county. The people of Virklitch Village are very nice, but they’re also an insular, Luddite cult who worship a colossal spectral entity they call the Effulgent One. I saw this Titan during my first visit to Virklitch, and more importantly, he saw me. He left a streak of black in my soul, marking me as one of his followers. I can feel him now, when he walks in our world. Sometimes, if I look towards the horizon after sundown, I can even see him.
This entity, and my connection to him, is understandably something my employer has taken an interest in. I’ve been to Virklitch many times since my first visit, and I’ve successfully collected a good deal of vital information about the Effulgent One. The Virklitchen are the only ones who know how to summon him, and coercing them into doing so would only earn us his wrath. He’s sworn to protect them, though I haven’t the slightest idea of what motivates him to do so.
Even though I can see him, I usually try not to look, to pretend he’s not there. The Virklitchen have warned me never to chase after him. Before Virklitch was founded, the First Nations people who lived in this region were aware of the Effulgent One, though they called him the Sky Strider. Any of them that went chasing after him either failed, went mad, or were never seen again.
I was out driving after sunset, during astronomical twilight when the trees are just black silhouettes against a burnt orange horizon, when I sensed the presence of the Effulgent One. He was to the east, towering along the darkening skyline, idling amidst the fields of cyclopean wind turbines. I could see their flashing red lights in the periphery of my vision, and I knew that one of those lights was him. I tried to fight the urge to look, but fear began to gnaw at me. What if he was heading towards me right now? What if I was in danger and needed to run?
Risking a single sideways glance, I spotted his gangly form standing listlessly between the wind turbines, his long arms gently swaying as his glowing red face bobbed to and fro.
I exhaled a sigh of relief, now that I knew he wasn’t chasing me. That relief didn’t even last a moment before it was transformed into a dangerous realization. He wasn’t just not chasing me; he wasn’t moving at all. He was still. This was rare, and it presented me with a rare opportunity. I could approach him. I could speak with him.
This wasn’t a good idea, and I knew it. The Effulgent One interacted with his followers on his terms. If I annoyed him, he could squash me like a bug. Or worse. Much worse. But he had marked me as his follower and I wanted to know why. If there was any chance I could get him to answer me, I was going to take it.
“Hey Lumi,” I said to the proprietary AI assistant in my company car. “Play the cover of I’m Always Chasing Rainbows from the Hazbin Hotel pilot.”
With the mood appropriately set, I veered east the first chance I got.
Almost immediately, I noticed that the highway seemed eerily abandoned. Even if anyone else had been capable of perceiving the Effulgent One, there was no one around to see him. I got this creeping sense that the closer I drew to him, I was actually shifting more and more out of my world and more and more into his. The wind picked up and dark clouds blew in, snuffing out the fading twilight and plunging everything into an overcast night.
The Effulgent One didn’t seem to notice me as I drew closer. He was as tall as the wind turbines he stood beside, his gaunt body plated in dull iridescent scales infected with trailing fungus. The head on his lanky neck was completely hollow and filled with a glowing red light that dimly bounced off his scales.
Seeing him standing still was a lot more surreal than seeing him when he was active. As impossibly large as he is, when he’s moving it just naturally triggers your fight or flight response and you don’t really have time to take it all in. But when he’s just standing there, and you can look at him and question what you’re seeing, it just hits differently.
It wasn’t until I started slowing down that he finally turned his head in my direction, briefly engulfing me in a blinding red light. When it passed, I saw that the Effulgent One had turned away from me and I was striding down the highway. Even though his gait was casual, his stride was so long that he was still moving as quickly as any vehicle.
Reasoning that if he didn’t want me to follow him he wouldn’t be walking along the road, I slammed my foot down on the accelerator pedal and sped after him.
That’s when things started to get weird.
You know how when you’re driving at night through the country, you can’t see anything beyond your own headlights? With no visual landmarks to go by, it’s easy to get disoriented. All you have to go by is the signs, and I wasn’t paying any attention to those. All my focus was on the Effulgent One, so much so that if someone had jumped out in front of me I probably would have killed them.
I turned down at least one sideroad in my pursuit of the Effulgent One. Maybe two or three. I’m really not sure. All I know for sure is that I was so desperate not to lose him that I had become completely lost myself.
He never looked back to see if I was still following, or gave any indication that he knew or cared if I was still there. He just made his way along the backroads, his bloodred searchlight sweeping back and forth all the while, as if he was desperately seeking something of grave importance. Finally, he abandoned the road altogether and began to climb a gently rolling hill with a solitary wind turbine on top of it. I gently slowed my car to a stop and watched to see what he would do.
I had barely been keeping up with him on the roadways, so I knew I’d never catch him going off-road. If he didn’t stop at the wind turbine, then that would be the end of my little misadventure. As I watched the Effulgent One climb up the hill and cast his light upon it, I saw that the structure at the summit wasn’t a wind turbine at all, but a windmill.
It was a mammoth windmill, the size of a wind turbine, made from enormous blocks of rugged black stone. It was as impossible as the Effulgent One himself. No stone structure other than a pyramid or ziggurat could possibly be that big, and the windmill barely tapered at all towards the top. Its blades were made from a ragged black cloth that reminded me of pirate sails, and near the top I could see a light coming from a single balcony.
When the Effulgent One reached the hill’s summit, he not only came to a stop but turned back around to face me, his light illuminating the entire hillside. Whether or not it was his intention to make it easier for me to follow him up the hill, it was nonetheless the effect, so I decided not to squander it.
Grabbing the thousand-lumen flashlight from my emergency kit, I left my car on the side of the road and began the short but challenging trek up the hill.
I honestly had no idea where I was at that point. Nothing looked familiar, and the overgrown grass seemed so alien in the red light. The way it moved in the wind was so fluid it looked more like seaweed than grass. The clouds overhead seemed equally otherworldly, moving not only unusually fast but in strange patterns that didn’t seem purely meteorological in nature.
With the Effulgent One’s light aimed directly at me, there was no doubt in my mind that he had seen me, but he still gave no indication that he cared. The closer I drew to him, the more I was confronted by his unfathomable scale. I really was an insect compared to him, and it seemed inconceivable that he would make any distinction between anthropods and arthropods. He could strike me down as effortlessly and carelessly as any other bothersome bug. I approached cautiously, watching intently for any sign of hostility from him, but he remained completely and utterly unmoved.
The closer I got to him, the harder I found it to press on. From a distance, the Effulgent One is surreal enough that he doesn’t completely shatter your sense of reality, but that’s a luxury that goes down the toilet when he’s only a few strides or less from stomping you into the ground. His emaciated form wasn’t merely skeletal, but elongated; his limbs, digits, and neck all stretched out to disquieting proportions. His dull scales now seemed to be a shimmering indigo, and the fungal growths between them pulsed rhythmically with some kind of life. Whether it was with his or theirs, I cannot say. There were no ears on his round head. No features at all aside from the frontwards-facing cavity that held the searing red light.
As I slowly and timidly approached the windmill, he remained by its side, peering out across the horizon. I turned to see what he was looking at, but saw nothing. I immediately turned back to him and craned my neck skywards, marvelling at him in dumbstruck awe. I’d chased him down so that I could demand why he had marked me as one of his followers, but now that I had succeeded, I was horrified by how suicidally naïve that plan now felt.
Many an internet atheist has pontificated about how if there were a God and if they ever met Him, they would remain every bit as irreverent and defiant and hold Him to account the same as any tyrant. But when faced with a being of unfathomable cosmic power, I don’t think there truly is anyone who wouldn’t lose their nerve.
So I just stood there, gaping up at the Effulgent One like a moron, with no idea of what to do next.
Fortunately for me, it was then that the Effulgent One finally acknowledged my presence.
Slowly, he turned his face downwards and cast his spotlight upon me, holding it there for a few long seconds before turning it to the door at the base of the windmill. I glanced up at the balcony above, and saw that it aligned almost perfectly with his head.
Evidently, he wanted to meet me face to face.
Nodding obediently, I raced to the heavy wooden door and pushed it open with all my might. The inside was dark, and I couldn’t see very well after standing right in the Effulgent One’s light, but I could hear the sounds of metal gears slowly grinding and clanking away. When I turned on my flashlight, the first thing I was able to make out was the enormous millstone. It moved slowly and steadily, squelching and squishing so that even in the poor light I knew that it wasn’t grain that was being milled.
The next thing I saw was a flight of rickety wooden stairs that snaked up all along the interior of the windmill. Each step creaked and groaned beneath my weight as I climbed them, but I nonetheless ascended them with reckless abandon. If a single one of them had given out beneath me, I could have fallen to my death, and the staircase shook back and forth so much that sometimes it felt as if it was intentionally trying to throw me off.
When I reached the top floor, I saw that the windshaft was encased in a crystalline sphere etched with leylines and strange symbols, and inside of it was some kind of complex clockwork apparatus that was powered by the spinning of the shaft. Though I was briefly curious as to the device’s purpose, it wasn’t what I had come up there for.
Turning myself towards the only door, I ran through and out onto the upper balcony. The Effulgent One was still standing just beside it, his head several times taller than I was. He looked out towards the horizon and pointed an outstretched arm in that direction, indicating that I should do the same.
From the balcony, I could see a spire made of purple volcanic glass, carved as if it was made of two intertwining gargantuan rose vines, with a stained-glass roof that made it look like a rose in full bloom. The spire was surrounded by many twisting and shifting shadows, and I could perceive a near infinitude of superimposed potential pathways branching out from the spire and stretching out across the planes.
The Effulgent One reached out and plucked at one of the pathways running over us like it was a harp string, sending vibrations down along to the spire and then back out through the entire network. I saw the sky above the spire shatter like glass, revealing a floating maelstrom of festering black fluid that had congealed into a thousand wailing faces. It began to descend as if it meant to devour the spire, but as it did so the spire pulled in the web of pathways around it like a net. The storm writhed and screamed as it tried to escape, but the spire held the net tight as a swarm of creatures too small for me to identify congregated upon the storm and began to feed upon it. But the fluid the maelstrom was composed of seemed to be corrosive, and the net began to rot beneath its influence. It sagged and it strained, until finally giving way.
A chaotic battle ensued between the spire and the maelstrom, but it hardly seemed to matter. What both I and the Efflugent One noticed the most was that the pathways that had been bound to the spire were now severed and stained by the Black Bile, drifting away wherever the wind took them.
The Effulgent One caught one of them in his hand and tugged it downwards, staring at it pensively for a long moment.
“That… that didn’t actually just happen, did it?” I asked meekly. I waited patiently for the Effulgent One to respond, but he just kept staring at the severed thread. “But… it’s going to happen? Or, it could happen?”
A slow and solemn nod confirmed that what he had shown me had portended to a possible future.
“That’s why you marked me as your follower then, isn’t it?” I asked. “You needed someone, someone other than the Virklitchen, someone who’s already involved in this bullshit and can help stop it from deteriorating into whatever the hell you just showed me. If Erich had picked anyone else to go to Virklitch that night, or hadn’t asked me to stay for the festival, it wouldn’t have been me! It didn’t have to have been me!”
His head remained somberly hung, and I hadn’t really been expecting him to respond at all to my outburst.
“Elifey liked you,” he said in a metallic, fluid voice that sounded like it was resonating out of his chest rather than his face. “I would not have chosen you if she hadn’t.”
He twirled the thread in between his fingers before gently handing it down to me like it was a streamer on a balloon. I hesitantly accepted the gesture, wrapping as much of my hand around the spectral cord as I could. The instant I touched it, a radiant and spiralling rainbow shot down its length and arced across the sky. When it reached the chaotic battle on the horizon, it dispelled the maelstrom on contact, banishing it back into the nether and signalling in biblical fashion that the storm had passed. The other wayward pathways were cleansed of the Black Bile as well, and I watched in amazement as they slowly started to reweave themselves back into an interconnected web.
“But… what does this mean? What do I actually have to do to make this a reality?” I asked.
The Effulgent One reached out his hand and pinched the cord, choking off the rainbow and ending the vision he had shown me.
“A reality?” he asked as he held his palm out flat and adjacent to the balcony. “It’s already a reality. All you need to do is make it yours.”
It seemed to me that I wasn’t likely to get anything less cryptic than that out of him, so I accepted the lift down. He took me down the hill and set me down gently beside my car before setting off out of sight and beyond my ability to pursue him.
Even though my GPS wasn’t working, the moment I was sitting in the driver’s seat the autopilot kicked in and didn’t ask me to take control until I was back on a familiar road. I know that windmill isn’t just a short drive away, and I’ll never see it again unless the Effulgent One wants me to. I don’t think I can say I’m exactly happy with how that turned out, but I suppose I accomplished what I set out to achieve. I know what the Effulgent One wants of me now, and why he chose me specifically. If it had been all his decision I think I’d still be feeling kind of torn about it, but knowing that I’ve been roped into this because of Elifey makes it a lot easier to bear.
And… I did actually manage to catch a rainbow. I just needed a giant’s help to reach it.
2024.06.09 23:29 Additional_Duty1564 How Do I Respond To A Potential Supervisor?
Hi everyone, Im currently in communication with a potential supervisor for a phd program. Ive sent the intial email with my cv, transcript and a sample of my writing. The supervisor has responded asking for a "1-2 page statement that includes the topic I would be most interested in studying, and how I can see myself engaging in research to address it including the nature of the project" I was wondering what are the most important things I should cover in my statement when answering those questions and if there are any additional things I need?
submitted by Additional_Duty1564 to AskAcademia [link] [comments]
2024.06.09 23:29 creganreed Welcome to GoTRP!
Welcome to Game of Thrones Roleplay!
GameofThronesRP is a storytelling role-play set in the world of George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire. Over 200 years have passed since the War of the Five Kings, but the game of thrones continues in Westeros and beyond.
Creating your Character
Will you be a Westerosi lady, a Pentoshi magister, a Wildling spearwife, or a maester of Oldtown? What about a travelling bard or the heir to an ambitious house? Take your imagination over to the character creation thread on our Community Subreddit and be sure to look over the rules and Recent Events. Interested in joining the noble class? Check out the list of Available Houses to see which are available to play!
Joining the Community
We’re glad you’ve taken an interest in our RP and can’t wait for you to join our story! We primarily organize on our Discord Server, so come chat with us! If you’ve got an idea of the type of character you want to play, we’re happy to help you find a place to begin your tale!
Learning the Lore
GoTRP has been running for almost a decade, and we have a lot of story built up, but please don’t be daunted! You’re not expected to have an encyclopaedic knowledge from the jump, you can learn as you go. We do, however, have a few resources to help lore-lovers catch up:
The Wiki is our central database of everything that’s happened in the sub. It’s imperfect, so let us know if you have any questions on the Discord Server!
The White Book tracks the history of the Kingsguard throughout both the pre-sub history and the sub so far, and gives a quick impression of the Baratheon Dynasty that began with King Stannis!
The Timeline is a quick overview of some of the most important events of GoTRP and when they happened, both in- and out-of-universe.
Note: GoTRP is an inclusive community that values good storytelling and great interpersonal relationships. We believe that good stories are diverse stories, and great relationships are built on respect.
submitted by creganreed to GameofThronesRP [link] [comments]
GameofThronesRP is a storytelling role-play set in the world of George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire. Over 200 years have passed since the War of the Five Kings, but the game of thrones continues in Westeros and beyond.
Creating your Character
Will you be a Westerosi lady, a Pentoshi magister, a Wildling spearwife, or a maester of Oldtown? What about a travelling bard or the heir to an ambitious house? Take your imagination over to the character creation thread on our Community Subreddit and be sure to look over the rules and Recent Events. Interested in joining the noble class? Check out the list of Available Houses to see which are available to play!
Joining the Community
We’re glad you’ve taken an interest in our RP and can’t wait for you to join our story! We primarily organize on our Discord Server, so come chat with us! If you’ve got an idea of the type of character you want to play, we’re happy to help you find a place to begin your tale!
Learning the Lore
GoTRP has been running for almost a decade, and we have a lot of story built up, but please don’t be daunted! You’re not expected to have an encyclopaedic knowledge from the jump, you can learn as you go. We do, however, have a few resources to help lore-lovers catch up:
The Wiki is our central database of everything that’s happened in the sub. It’s imperfect, so let us know if you have any questions on the Discord Server!
The White Book tracks the history of the Kingsguard throughout both the pre-sub history and the sub so far, and gives a quick impression of the Baratheon Dynasty that began with King Stannis!
The Timeline is a quick overview of some of the most important events of GoTRP and when they happened, both in- and out-of-universe.
Note: GoTRP is an inclusive community that values good storytelling and great interpersonal relationships. We believe that good stories are diverse stories, and great relationships are built on respect.