Wording for a death
Have a Nice Death
2021.12.07 00:34 PW_SoFech Have a Nice Death
Welcome to the official subreddit for Have a Nice Death - a hand-drawn 2D Action Rogue-like that explores office life in the underworld. Available NOW on Switch and Steam!
2017.04.02 00:44 A place for Death Note memes
A place for Death Note memes
2016.06.13 23:03 Cogitans-Proxy Death Stranding
This is a subreddit for fans of Hideo Kojima's action video game Death Stranding and its sequel Death Stranding 2: On The Beach. The first title was released by Sony Interactive Entertainment for the PlayStation 4/5, and by 505 Games for PC and Apple devices. Death Stranding 2 is currently in production and set to release in 2025.
2024.05.17 01:47 Mittons1457 Eternity
Chapter 12
Lacy awoke in a hallway. It was similar to the hallway that she first awoke in. Only exception was that it was covered in blood. Bodies laid on the floor with multiple lacerations. Lacy was already standing up when she had first opened her eyes. She could hear grunting coming from the other side of the hallway. When Lacy moved her eyes to the end of the hallway she saw herself. Looking directly at her was Lacy. This one was covered in blood and was holding the axe that she had. Her eyes looked deranged. In an instant the other Lacy dashed towards the real Lacy. Without hesitation Lacy lifted the axe and dropped it directly onto the imposter's head. The body slumped to the floor and Lacy breathed a sigh of relief. But as she began to continue forward the thought of what she had just done hit her like a bullet. Looking down at your own body would make a sane person go mad. Lacy barely reacted. Turning around she noticed a new hole. She could continue going further. Lacy had no emotion as she stepped into the hole. The only thing on her mind being the voice that she last heard the Elk use. It was unlike no other voice. It was calm but menacing. Like it knew that Lacy could not win. She brushed the thought off and continued pushing forward. She had to face whatever else this place had in store for her. She had to.
Chapter 13
As Lacy stepped through the hole she noticed that she was no longer passing out. Instead she just appears in these new areas. This time she was in a house. The home was run down. It gave Lacy a sense of dread. Walking around the building Lacy looked at the furniture. It was furnished as a normal house. Like a place that a family would enjoy their time in. A sofa was facing a TV. On the screen was an episode of some children's show that Lacy had probably enjoyed when she was younger. Directly in front of the TV was a childrens chair. Looking at the living room gave Lacy a feeling of nostalgia that drowned out the despair of this awful place. “Hello, is anyone here?” Lacy asked but got no reply. Looking around the room Lacy saw a hallway that led into the kitchen. The paint on the walls were peeled off. Entering the room Lacy smelled the stench of death. Moving further in she saw a girl on the table. The body was almost completely decayed. Just as Lacy was about to inspect the body a loud crash erupted from the living room. Picking up the axe and holding it close to her chest Lacy walked through the hallway. In the living room the sofa was flipped upside down as well as the TV. A ghostly wail cried out and Lacy felt herself become cold. Continuing through the living room Lacy noticed a staircase that led up that she had not seen before. Clutching the axe in her hands Lacy walked towards the stairs. As Lacy approached the bottom the lights began to flicker. The steps creaked as she made her way towards the top. Each step she took made her feel colder. Her eyes met the top of the stairs. A ghostly figure appeared to walk across the doorway out of sight. Lacy felt her legs freeze at the sight. The thing she saw seemed to be transparent. Lacy knew what that meant. “How the hell do I kill a ghost?” Pushing up the stairs there was a hallway. Two doors on each side with one door at the very end. Continuing forward Lacy opened the first door on her right. Inside was the bedroom of someone older. The bed was made and aside from the cobwebs and dust everything was in order. As Lacy turned around to go through the other door, another crash could be heard. Lacy turned around to the furniture ripped to shreds. The bed was torn in half and the dresser was opened with all of the clothes spread on the floor. Another chill ran through Lacy's body. A quiet whisper entered Lacy’s ears. The words were spoken too fast to be made out. It was so quiet Lacy had to focus to hear it. Continuing forward Lacy opened the first door on the left. Inside was a bathroom. The bathroom was pristine. No dust or cobwebs. Just a white pristine bathroom. The shower curtains were closed. Lacy walked towards the curtains. The curtains shifted as if there was someone behind them. Lacy reached her hand towards the curtains. Another chill ran through her body as the whispers got slightly louder. Moving the curtains, the tub was empty. Lacy breathed a sigh of relief. As she turned around to face the door the room became a dark blood red. Lacy looked at the doorway and saw a girl. The child could not have been older than twelve. Lacy froze at the sight. The kids arm outreached and pointed towards the door at the end of the hallway.
Chapter 14
Just as fast as the kid appeared she disappeared. Lacy peaked her head out of the door and viewed the door at the end of the hallway slowly open. A red light emitted from the room. Lacy stepped towards the open door. The whispers that she had heard were getting louder the closer she got to the room. As she got closer the whispering became clearer. It was gibberish. Nothing that she heard was legible and it was loud enough for Lacy to understand. The door was fully opened by the time Lacy got to it. In the room was a red symbol on the ground surrounded by candles. The room was dark, only lit by the candles and the miniscule glow of the symbol. The image was hex. In the middle was a book. Walking towards the hex Lacy noticed a mirror. Looking into the mirror Lacy found the source of the whispering. Floating behind her with its hands on her soldiers was the ghost child. The boy's eyes were black and was whispering in her ear at an inconceivable speed. The image shocked Lacy. Turning around, the boy was not there. Looking back at the mirror Lacy could still see the child behind her. Looking back at the hex, Lacy saw the girl sitting in front of the book. As Lacy stepped closer to the book the whispering became louder. Sitting in front of the girl Lacy grabbed the book. The title of the book was Goodnight Moon. The little girl pointed to the book. Lacy opened it and began reading from the pages. “In the great green room, there was a telephone and a red balloon and a picture of a cow jumping over the moon.” As Lacy read the whispering became even louder. “And there were three little bears sitting on chairs. And two little kittens and a pair of mittens.” Lacy continued reading. Lacy turned her head around to the doorway to see a multitude of people in robes coming up the stairs. The people were making a haunting moan as they stepped towards the room. Lacy read more and more. “Good night moon, goodnight cow jumping over the moon. Good night light and the red balloon, goodnight bears, goodnight chairs.” The choir was getting closer to the door and the whispering was growing louder and louder. Lacy continued reading. Just as the choir got to the door. “Goodnight stars, goodnight air, goodnight noises everywhere.” As Lacy said the last words, the noises around her went quiet. Lacy looked up and the girl was gone. The choir was no longer at the doorway. And looking into the mirror the boy was no longer whispering into her ear. The entire house was silent. Lacy looked back at where the book was. In its place was another hole. Lacy looked at it with dead eyes. Knowing what was about to happen.
Chapter 15
Lacy awoke in a study. The room was undisturbed. In front of her was a desk, multiple insect and other animal taxidermies were spread throughout the room. On the desk was a plaque that read Professor Crawford- Biology Expert. Above the desk on the wall was a quote marked in blood. The words read “Abandon All Hope, Ye Who Enter Here”.
Lacy looked behind the desk and in it was a skeleton holding a bible and a gun in his hand. Lacy looked back at the desk and found another tape recorder. Lacy grabbed it fearing what she was about to hear. Pressing the button Lacy heard a familiar voice.
Day one:
Our explorers found a mysterious hole in the middle of Israel. The men decided to not interact with it and instead immediately report it. The Overseer immediately demanded that a base should be made around the anomaly. Preparation immediately began on the base but unfortunately a couple managed to get past security and decided to step into the hole. That couple was not seen again. The building was finally made and studies on the hole began. Originally studies were done externally. The scientist discovered that it had no gravitational force, radiation, or mass. It dumbfounded them because of its existence as a hole. Then the physical tests started. At first they just threw things into the hole. The objects would just bounce off.
Day:15
Today is the day that they decided to send in a test subject. Some guy that worked in human resources. They offered him a high paying job, not telling him the gravity of the situation. They had a rope tied to him but when he stepped through the rope burned off. The man was never seen again. Later in the day they sent another man this time with a video recorder. When the man stepped into the hole the recording stopped abruptly. The scientists were confused at the entire situation. The only thing that they could do was monitor the size of it to make sure it was not growing.
Day: 23
The Overseer has lost her mind. She started kidnapping people to put into the hole. At first it was criminals, then it moved on to the homeless, then they started putting innocent people into the hole. She claimed it was to just see if someone could escape it. I have to tell the police what is going on. The people must know what has happened to their loved ones.
Day: 24
Someone found out I was going to tell the authorities. The Overseer has ordered me to go into the hole. I'm bringing this tape recorder with me. I will survive whatever this is. I will tell the world the horrors of these people.
Lacy Put down the recorder. Tears began to flow down her eyes. She didn't know if the truth made her feel better or worse than when she didn't know. She now knew that her chances of escaping were little to none. Looking at the corpse on the ground she noticed another tape recorder. Grabbing it Lacy pressed play.
Day:
I don’t know how long it has been. I don’t want to keep going. Hole after hole I can not find my way out of this place. I steppin into a place that had a lodge. I heard voices mocking me. Telling me things that I didn’t want to believe. Then an Elk appeared. In its voice I heard something that sounded malevolent. It speaked of this place referring to the holes in itself. The being was demonic. I shot it and another hole appeared. I kept going. I don’t even remember how many holes I have been through. This room will be my last. My hope is gone. That is what the Elk wanted. That is why I can feel myself rotting away. I'm sorry to those I left behind. I have given up. Hell has won.
The tape recorder ended. Lacy looked at the corpse. Looking back to the door of the room Lacy saw another hole. Tears ran down Lacy’s cheek as she stepped through the hole. Hanging on to what little hope she had left.
Chapter 16
Lacy awoke in a familiar place. The hallways were dingy. The lights were flickering. Lacy’s face was burning as her heart rate increased. “Lacy” The voice made Lacy’s blood run cold. Looking into the darkness The Smiling Man stepped into the blinking lights. Lacy’s legs could not move. She was crying so hard her eyes hurt. The Smiling Man walked towards her. His eyes widened as his smile became wider revealing the blood stained teeth. Lacy tried to move. She remembered the words on the recorder. It won't end. Lacy did not move. She looked directly at The Smiling Man. Lacy closed her eyes accepting what little mercy this place offered. The Smiling Man ran towards her plunging his teeth into her neck. Lacy felt her life fading away. Remembering her father she let out a smile.
Epilogue
Lacy awoke. She had remembered dying. “Lacy”. The same voice rang through her ears. Lacy stood up. She was holding the same kitchen knife she found in the beginning of all of this. Lacy could feel her body run cold. “It won't end.” Lacy muttered these words over and over again. The Smiling Man entered the light. Lacy raised the knife. Covered in blood, Lacy repeated the words.
“It won't end.”
submitted by Mittons1457 to Horror_stories [link] [comments]
Lacy awoke in a hallway. It was similar to the hallway that she first awoke in. Only exception was that it was covered in blood. Bodies laid on the floor with multiple lacerations. Lacy was already standing up when she had first opened her eyes. She could hear grunting coming from the other side of the hallway. When Lacy moved her eyes to the end of the hallway she saw herself. Looking directly at her was Lacy. This one was covered in blood and was holding the axe that she had. Her eyes looked deranged. In an instant the other Lacy dashed towards the real Lacy. Without hesitation Lacy lifted the axe and dropped it directly onto the imposter's head. The body slumped to the floor and Lacy breathed a sigh of relief. But as she began to continue forward the thought of what she had just done hit her like a bullet. Looking down at your own body would make a sane person go mad. Lacy barely reacted. Turning around she noticed a new hole. She could continue going further. Lacy had no emotion as she stepped into the hole. The only thing on her mind being the voice that she last heard the Elk use. It was unlike no other voice. It was calm but menacing. Like it knew that Lacy could not win. She brushed the thought off and continued pushing forward. She had to face whatever else this place had in store for her. She had to.
Chapter 13
As Lacy stepped through the hole she noticed that she was no longer passing out. Instead she just appears in these new areas. This time she was in a house. The home was run down. It gave Lacy a sense of dread. Walking around the building Lacy looked at the furniture. It was furnished as a normal house. Like a place that a family would enjoy their time in. A sofa was facing a TV. On the screen was an episode of some children's show that Lacy had probably enjoyed when she was younger. Directly in front of the TV was a childrens chair. Looking at the living room gave Lacy a feeling of nostalgia that drowned out the despair of this awful place. “Hello, is anyone here?” Lacy asked but got no reply. Looking around the room Lacy saw a hallway that led into the kitchen. The paint on the walls were peeled off. Entering the room Lacy smelled the stench of death. Moving further in she saw a girl on the table. The body was almost completely decayed. Just as Lacy was about to inspect the body a loud crash erupted from the living room. Picking up the axe and holding it close to her chest Lacy walked through the hallway. In the living room the sofa was flipped upside down as well as the TV. A ghostly wail cried out and Lacy felt herself become cold. Continuing through the living room Lacy noticed a staircase that led up that she had not seen before. Clutching the axe in her hands Lacy walked towards the stairs. As Lacy approached the bottom the lights began to flicker. The steps creaked as she made her way towards the top. Each step she took made her feel colder. Her eyes met the top of the stairs. A ghostly figure appeared to walk across the doorway out of sight. Lacy felt her legs freeze at the sight. The thing she saw seemed to be transparent. Lacy knew what that meant. “How the hell do I kill a ghost?” Pushing up the stairs there was a hallway. Two doors on each side with one door at the very end. Continuing forward Lacy opened the first door on her right. Inside was the bedroom of someone older. The bed was made and aside from the cobwebs and dust everything was in order. As Lacy turned around to go through the other door, another crash could be heard. Lacy turned around to the furniture ripped to shreds. The bed was torn in half and the dresser was opened with all of the clothes spread on the floor. Another chill ran through Lacy's body. A quiet whisper entered Lacy’s ears. The words were spoken too fast to be made out. It was so quiet Lacy had to focus to hear it. Continuing forward Lacy opened the first door on the left. Inside was a bathroom. The bathroom was pristine. No dust or cobwebs. Just a white pristine bathroom. The shower curtains were closed. Lacy walked towards the curtains. The curtains shifted as if there was someone behind them. Lacy reached her hand towards the curtains. Another chill ran through her body as the whispers got slightly louder. Moving the curtains, the tub was empty. Lacy breathed a sigh of relief. As she turned around to face the door the room became a dark blood red. Lacy looked at the doorway and saw a girl. The child could not have been older than twelve. Lacy froze at the sight. The kids arm outreached and pointed towards the door at the end of the hallway.
Chapter 14
Just as fast as the kid appeared she disappeared. Lacy peaked her head out of the door and viewed the door at the end of the hallway slowly open. A red light emitted from the room. Lacy stepped towards the open door. The whispers that she had heard were getting louder the closer she got to the room. As she got closer the whispering became clearer. It was gibberish. Nothing that she heard was legible and it was loud enough for Lacy to understand. The door was fully opened by the time Lacy got to it. In the room was a red symbol on the ground surrounded by candles. The room was dark, only lit by the candles and the miniscule glow of the symbol. The image was hex. In the middle was a book. Walking towards the hex Lacy noticed a mirror. Looking into the mirror Lacy found the source of the whispering. Floating behind her with its hands on her soldiers was the ghost child. The boy's eyes were black and was whispering in her ear at an inconceivable speed. The image shocked Lacy. Turning around, the boy was not there. Looking back at the mirror Lacy could still see the child behind her. Looking back at the hex, Lacy saw the girl sitting in front of the book. As Lacy stepped closer to the book the whispering became louder. Sitting in front of the girl Lacy grabbed the book. The title of the book was Goodnight Moon. The little girl pointed to the book. Lacy opened it and began reading from the pages. “In the great green room, there was a telephone and a red balloon and a picture of a cow jumping over the moon.” As Lacy read the whispering became even louder. “And there were three little bears sitting on chairs. And two little kittens and a pair of mittens.” Lacy continued reading. Lacy turned her head around to the doorway to see a multitude of people in robes coming up the stairs. The people were making a haunting moan as they stepped towards the room. Lacy read more and more. “Good night moon, goodnight cow jumping over the moon. Good night light and the red balloon, goodnight bears, goodnight chairs.” The choir was getting closer to the door and the whispering was growing louder and louder. Lacy continued reading. Just as the choir got to the door. “Goodnight stars, goodnight air, goodnight noises everywhere.” As Lacy said the last words, the noises around her went quiet. Lacy looked up and the girl was gone. The choir was no longer at the doorway. And looking into the mirror the boy was no longer whispering into her ear. The entire house was silent. Lacy looked back at where the book was. In its place was another hole. Lacy looked at it with dead eyes. Knowing what was about to happen.
Chapter 15
Lacy awoke in a study. The room was undisturbed. In front of her was a desk, multiple insect and other animal taxidermies were spread throughout the room. On the desk was a plaque that read Professor Crawford- Biology Expert. Above the desk on the wall was a quote marked in blood. The words read “Abandon All Hope, Ye Who Enter Here”.
Lacy looked behind the desk and in it was a skeleton holding a bible and a gun in his hand. Lacy looked back at the desk and found another tape recorder. Lacy grabbed it fearing what she was about to hear. Pressing the button Lacy heard a familiar voice.
Day one:
Our explorers found a mysterious hole in the middle of Israel. The men decided to not interact with it and instead immediately report it. The Overseer immediately demanded that a base should be made around the anomaly. Preparation immediately began on the base but unfortunately a couple managed to get past security and decided to step into the hole. That couple was not seen again. The building was finally made and studies on the hole began. Originally studies were done externally. The scientist discovered that it had no gravitational force, radiation, or mass. It dumbfounded them because of its existence as a hole. Then the physical tests started. At first they just threw things into the hole. The objects would just bounce off.
Day:15
Today is the day that they decided to send in a test subject. Some guy that worked in human resources. They offered him a high paying job, not telling him the gravity of the situation. They had a rope tied to him but when he stepped through the rope burned off. The man was never seen again. Later in the day they sent another man this time with a video recorder. When the man stepped into the hole the recording stopped abruptly. The scientists were confused at the entire situation. The only thing that they could do was monitor the size of it to make sure it was not growing.
Day: 23
The Overseer has lost her mind. She started kidnapping people to put into the hole. At first it was criminals, then it moved on to the homeless, then they started putting innocent people into the hole. She claimed it was to just see if someone could escape it. I have to tell the police what is going on. The people must know what has happened to their loved ones.
Day: 24
Someone found out I was going to tell the authorities. The Overseer has ordered me to go into the hole. I'm bringing this tape recorder with me. I will survive whatever this is. I will tell the world the horrors of these people.
Lacy Put down the recorder. Tears began to flow down her eyes. She didn't know if the truth made her feel better or worse than when she didn't know. She now knew that her chances of escaping were little to none. Looking at the corpse on the ground she noticed another tape recorder. Grabbing it Lacy pressed play.
Day:
I don’t know how long it has been. I don’t want to keep going. Hole after hole I can not find my way out of this place. I steppin into a place that had a lodge. I heard voices mocking me. Telling me things that I didn’t want to believe. Then an Elk appeared. In its voice I heard something that sounded malevolent. It speaked of this place referring to the holes in itself. The being was demonic. I shot it and another hole appeared. I kept going. I don’t even remember how many holes I have been through. This room will be my last. My hope is gone. That is what the Elk wanted. That is why I can feel myself rotting away. I'm sorry to those I left behind. I have given up. Hell has won.
The tape recorder ended. Lacy looked at the corpse. Looking back to the door of the room Lacy saw another hole. Tears ran down Lacy’s cheek as she stepped through the hole. Hanging on to what little hope she had left.
Chapter 16
Lacy awoke in a familiar place. The hallways were dingy. The lights were flickering. Lacy’s face was burning as her heart rate increased. “Lacy” The voice made Lacy’s blood run cold. Looking into the darkness The Smiling Man stepped into the blinking lights. Lacy’s legs could not move. She was crying so hard her eyes hurt. The Smiling Man walked towards her. His eyes widened as his smile became wider revealing the blood stained teeth. Lacy tried to move. She remembered the words on the recorder. It won't end. Lacy did not move. She looked directly at The Smiling Man. Lacy closed her eyes accepting what little mercy this place offered. The Smiling Man ran towards her plunging his teeth into her neck. Lacy felt her life fading away. Remembering her father she let out a smile.
Epilogue
Lacy awoke. She had remembered dying. “Lacy”. The same voice rang through her ears. Lacy stood up. She was holding the same kitchen knife she found in the beginning of all of this. Lacy could feel her body run cold. “It won't end.” Lacy muttered these words over and over again. The Smiling Man entered the light. Lacy raised the knife. Covered in blood, Lacy repeated the words.
“It won't end.”
2024.05.17 01:46 enho224 First client death
LPCC here, been in the field about 5 years now (including internship as a student). Got the news this morning that a client passed away this week, complications from a very serious health issue that was only just recently diagnosed. I’m just so deflated; they had really been struggling, but had been working towards making good progress. This came on so suddenly, and now I can’t stop thinking about how unfair it is that now they’ll never get to know how good their life could’ve been if they were still here to reach their goals. They were such a kind soul, I always enjoyed our sessions together.
I’m not really sure what, if anything, I’m asking here. Just processing I suppose. I took today off, let my supervisor know, did some self-care, letting myself feel the feelings. Just not really sure what else to do/think, I’m not naive enough to think this will be the only client death I’ll ever face in my career, it’s just the first and it’s a client I really didn’t see this coming for. Thoughts/kind words/suggestions/anecdotes are welcome, TIA.
submitted by enho224 to therapists [link] [comments]
I’m not really sure what, if anything, I’m asking here. Just processing I suppose. I took today off, let my supervisor know, did some self-care, letting myself feel the feelings. Just not really sure what else to do/think, I’m not naive enough to think this will be the only client death I’ll ever face in my career, it’s just the first and it’s a client I really didn’t see this coming for. Thoughts/kind words/suggestions/anecdotes are welcome, TIA.
2024.05.17 01:33 speedthrills191 [H] Steam Codes [W] Steam codes - my list inside or your list
Have the following Steam Codes. Full wantlist below, also happy to look at lists. I'm looking to trade games I won't play for games I will, so if I have to trade multiples for 1 game I've generally got no issue with that as long as the value isn't insanely off.
LIST UPDATED 5/16/24
HAVE
911 Operator
A Musical Story
Achtung! Cthulhu Tactics
Alex Kidd in Miracle World DX
Amanda the Adventurer
An Elder Scrolls Legend: Battlespire
Andro Dunos II
Anomaly 2 (incl. SoundtracK)
Anomaly Defenders
Arcade Spirits
Arx Fatalis
Asterix & Obelix XXL 2
Astronarch
Attack of the Earthlings
Autonauts
Backfirewall_
BEAUTIFUL DESOLATION
Beyond the Long Night
Biped
BLACKHOLE
Block'Em!
Bots Are Stupid
Bravery & Greed
Breathedge
Bridge Constructor: The Walking Dead
Brunch Club
Call of Juarez
Castle on the Coast
Caveblazers
Chenso Club
Chess Ultra
Colt Canyon
Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3 - Uprising
Cook, Serve, Delicious! (x2)
Cook, Serve, Delicious! 2!!
Cook, Serve, Delicious! 3?!
Creepy Tale
Creepy Tale 3: Ingrid Penance
Crime O'Clock
Dark Deity
Dead Age
Dead Age 2
Dead End Job
Death Squared
DOOM II
Doorways: Holy Mountains of Flesh
Dragon Spirits
Drink More Glurp
Dust to the End
Dynopunk
Embr
Encased: A Sci-Fi Post-Apocalyptic RPG
ENCODYA
Escape Game Fort Boyard
Exorder
Extinction
Fantasy Blacksmith
For The King
For the People
Frog Detective 2: The Case of the Invisible Wizard
Gal*Gun: Double Peace
Ganryu 2
Garbage
God’s Trigger
Golf Gang
GRIP: Combat Racing
Guilty Gear X2 #Reload
Gunscape
Havsala: Into the Soul Palace
Heaven Dust
Hellbound
Hello Neighbor
Hellstuck: Rage With Your Friends
Hero of the Kingdom
Hero of the Kingdom III
Hero of the Kingdom: The Lost Tales 1
Hero of the Kingdom: The Lost Tales 2
Heroes of the Monkey Tavern
Holiday Bonus GOLD
Hotshot Racing
Hue
I Am Fish
Impulsion
In Between
Infinite Beyond The Mind
Internet Cafe Simulator
Internet Cafe Simulator 2
Interrogation: You will be deceived
Ironcast
Jewel Match Solitaire
Jewel Match Solitaire L'Amour
Jewel Match Solitaire Winterscapes
Joggernauts
Just Ignore Them
Karma City Police
Ken Follett's The Pillars of the Earth
King of Dragon Pass
King of the Castle
Kingdom Two Crowns
King's Bounty II
Lacuna – A Sci-Fi Noir Adventure
Landlord's Super
Lila’s Sky Ark
Looking for Aliens
Looterkings
Lost Words: Beyond the Page
Ludus
Machinika Museum
Mad Experiments: Escape Room
Mad Tracks
Magenta Horizon
MageQuit
Mech Mechanic Simulator
Medieval Machines Builder
Men of War: Assault Squad - Game of the Year Edition
Metal Unit
Metro 2033 Redux
Mindustry
Mini Thief
Monster Prom
Monstrum
Mortal Shell
Necrosmith
Neurodeck : Psychological Deckbuilder
Neverinth
NEXT JUMP: Shmup Tactics
Nihilumbra
Nomad Survival
Not For Broadcast
Obey Me
Old School Musical
Omen Exitio: Plague
Onde
OUT OF THE BOX
OUTBUDDIES DX (Note: this code has been revealed but I don't have any indication it has been traded. If you're interested, I'll send this first to make sure it still works before completing the trade)
Overlord II
Paper Beast - Folded Edition
Paw Paw Paw
Persian Nights 2: The Moonlight Veil
Pixel Heroes: Byte & Magic
Police Stories
Post Human W.A.R
Prophecy I - The Viking Child
Pumped BMX Pro
Rebel Galaxy
Rebel Galaxy Outlaw
Red Line
Redeemer: Enhanced Edition
Re-Legion (x2)
Retro Machina
River City Girls
Rubber Bandits
S.W.I.N.E. HD Remaster
Safety First!
Santa Rockstar
Scheming Through The Zombie Apocalypse: The Beginning
SEARCH PARTY: Director's Cut
Sentience: The Android's Tale
Shantae: Risky's Revenge - Director's Cut
Shift Happens
Silence
Silver Chains
SINNER: Sacrifice for Redemption
Slain: Back from Hell
Snooker 19
Space Colony
Sparklite
Spirit Hunter: NG
Spirit of the Island
Spirit of the North
Splasher
Spooky Bonus
STASIS
State of Mind
Steelrising
Strikey Sisters (x2)
Stronghold HD
Stronghold Legends: Steam Edition
Stygian: Reign of the Old Ones
Super 3-D Noah's Ark
Super Panda Adventures
Super Star Path
Sword of the Necromancer
Synergia
Tacoma
Tempest Complete Edition
TERRACOTTA
The Assembly (x2)
The Coma 2: Vicious Sisters
The Deed: Dynasty
The Indie Mixtape
The Life and Suffering of Sir Brante
The Long Reach
The Oil Blue: Steam Legacy Edition
The Secret Order 6: Bloodline
The Sexy Brutale
The Spectrum Retreat
They Always Run
Through the Woods
Time Loader
Time on Frog Island
Tinkertown
Torchlight
Totally Reliable Delivery Service
Toy Tinker Simulator
Train Valley 2
Trifox
Turmoil
Tyrant's Blessing
Ultimate Zombie Defense
UNDETECTED
Unity of Command: Stalingrad Campaign
Unloved
Valfaris
White Night
White Noise 2
White Noise Online
Xpand Rally
Youtubers Life
Ziggurat
WANT
A Highland Song
A Plague Tale: Requiem
ACRES
Astral Ascent
Bing in Wonderland
Castlevania Advance Collection
Catizens
Cattails: Wildwood Story
Chained Echoes
Chants of Sennaar
Cocoon
Coffee Talk
Coral Island
Cornucopia
Daydream: Forgotten Sorrow
Dead Cells
Death's Door
Deliver Us The Moon
Dragon Age Origins Ultimate Edition
Dragon Age II Ultimate Edition
Dragon Age Inquisition
Dredge
Eastward
Elden Ring
En Garde!
Escape from Mystwood Mansion
Far Cry 5
Hades II
Harvest Island
High on Life
Immortal Life
Immortals Fenix Rising
In Stars and Time
Jusant
Kena: Bridge of Spirits
Kynseed
Lies of P
Little Kitty, Big City
Moondrop
Neon White
Nioh
Nioh 2
No Man's Sky
No Rest for the Wicked
Old School
Pacific Drive
Planet of Lana
Rain on Your Parade
Ratchet & Clank Rift Apart
Resident Evil 4 (2023)
Robocop: Rogue City
Roots of Pacha
Saltsea Chronicles
Sands of Aura
Sea of Stars
Shredders
Sifu
Spirittea
Star Wars Jedi Survivor
Starfield
Stray Gods: The Roleplaying Musical
Tape to Tape
Tchia
Terra Nil
The Coffin of Andy and Leyley
The Matchless Kungfu
The Night is Grey
The Talos Principle 2
This Bed We Made
Treasures of the Aegean
Tunic
Wandering Sword
Your list
submitted by speedthrills191 to GameTrade [link] [comments]
LIST UPDATED 5/16/24
HAVE
911 Operator
A Musical Story
Achtung! Cthulhu Tactics
Alex Kidd in Miracle World DX
Amanda the Adventurer
An Elder Scrolls Legend: Battlespire
Andro Dunos II
Anomaly 2 (incl. SoundtracK)
Anomaly Defenders
Arcade Spirits
Arx Fatalis
Asterix & Obelix XXL 2
Astronarch
Attack of the Earthlings
Autonauts
Backfirewall_
BEAUTIFUL DESOLATION
Beyond the Long Night
Biped
BLACKHOLE
Block'Em!
Bots Are Stupid
Bravery & Greed
Breathedge
Bridge Constructor: The Walking Dead
Brunch Club
Call of Juarez
Castle on the Coast
Caveblazers
Chenso Club
Chess Ultra
Colt Canyon
Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3 - Uprising
Cook, Serve, Delicious! (x2)
Cook, Serve, Delicious! 2!!
Cook, Serve, Delicious! 3?!
Creepy Tale
Creepy Tale 3: Ingrid Penance
Dark Deity
Dead Age
Dead Age 2
Dead End Job
Death Squared
DOOM II
Doorways: Holy Mountains of Flesh
Dragon Spirits
Drink More Glurp
Dust to the End
Dynopunk
Embr
Encased: A Sci-Fi Post-Apocalyptic RPG
ENCODYA
Escape Game Fort Boyard
Exorder
Extinction
Fantasy Blacksmith
For The King
For the People
Frog Detective 2: The Case of the Invisible Wizard
Gal*Gun: Double Peace
Ganryu 2
Garbage
God’s Trigger
Golf Gang
GRIP: Combat Racing
Guilty Gear X2 #Reload
Gunscape
Havsala: Into the Soul Palace
Heaven Dust
Hellbound
Hello Neighbor
Hellstuck: Rage With Your Friends
Hero of the Kingdom
Hero of the Kingdom III
Hero of the Kingdom: The Lost Tales 1
Hero of the Kingdom: The Lost Tales 2
Heroes of the Monkey Tavern
Holiday Bonus GOLD
Hotshot Racing
Hue
I Am Fish
Impulsion
In Between
Infinite Beyond The Mind
Internet Cafe Simulator
Internet Cafe Simulator 2
Interrogation: You will be deceived
Ironcast
Jewel Match Solitaire
Jewel Match Solitaire L'Amour
Jewel Match Solitaire Winterscapes
Joggernauts
Just Ignore Them
Karma City Police
Ken Follett's The Pillars of the Earth
King of Dragon Pass
King of the Castle
Kingdom Two Crowns
King's Bounty II
Lacuna – A Sci-Fi Noir Adventure
Landlord's Super
Lila’s Sky Ark
Looking for Aliens
Looterkings
Lost Words: Beyond the Page
Ludus
Machinika Museum
Mad Experiments: Escape Room
Mad Tracks
Magenta Horizon
MageQuit
Mech Mechanic Simulator
Medieval Machines Builder
Men of War: Assault Squad - Game of the Year Edition
Metal Unit
Metro 2033 Redux
Mindustry
Mini Thief
Monster Prom
Monstrum
Mortal Shell
Necrosmith
Neurodeck : Psychological Deckbuilder
Neverinth
NEXT JUMP: Shmup Tactics
Nihilumbra
Nomad Survival
Not For Broadcast
Obey Me
Old School Musical
Omen Exitio: Plague
Onde
OUT OF THE BOX
OUTBUDDIES DX (Note: this code has been revealed but I don't have any indication it has been traded. If you're interested, I'll send this first to make sure it still works before completing the trade)
Overlord II
Paper Beast - Folded Edition
Paw Paw Paw
Persian Nights 2: The Moonlight Veil
Pixel Heroes: Byte & Magic
Police Stories
Post Human W.A.R
Prophecy I - The Viking Child
Pumped BMX Pro
Rebel Galaxy
Rebel Galaxy Outlaw
Red Line
Redeemer: Enhanced Edition
Re-Legion (x2)
Retro Machina
River City Girls
Rubber Bandits
S.W.I.N.E. HD Remaster
Safety First!
Santa Rockstar
Scheming Through The Zombie Apocalypse: The Beginning
SEARCH PARTY: Director's Cut
Sentience: The Android's Tale
Shantae: Risky's Revenge - Director's Cut
Shift Happens
Silence
Silver Chains
SINNER: Sacrifice for Redemption
Slain: Back from Hell
Snooker 19
Space Colony
Spirit Hunter: NG
Spirit of the Island
Spirit of the North
Splasher
Spooky Bonus
STASIS
State of Mind
Steelrising
Strikey Sisters (x2)
Stronghold HD
Stronghold Legends: Steam Edition
Stygian: Reign of the Old Ones
Super 3-D Noah's Ark
Super Panda Adventures
Super Star Path
Sword of the Necromancer
Synergia
Tacoma
Tempest Complete Edition
The Assembly (x2)
The Coma 2: Vicious Sisters
The Deed: Dynasty
The Indie Mixtape
The Life and Suffering of Sir Brante
The Long Reach
The Oil Blue: Steam Legacy Edition
The Secret Order 6: Bloodline
The Sexy Brutale
The Spectrum Retreat
They Always Run
Through the Woods
Time Loader
Time on Frog Island
Torchlight
Totally Reliable Delivery Service
Toy Tinker Simulator
Train Valley 2
Trifox
Turmoil
Tyrant's Blessing
Ultimate Zombie Defense
UNDETECTED
Unity of Command: Stalingrad Campaign
Unloved
Valfaris
White Night
White Noise 2
White Noise Online
Xpand Rally
Youtubers Life
Ziggurat
A Highland Song
A Plague Tale: Requiem
ACRES
Astral Ascent
Bing in Wonderland
Castlevania Advance Collection
Catizens
Cattails: Wildwood Story
Chained Echoes
Chants of Sennaar
Cocoon
Coffee Talk
Coral Island
Cornucopia
Daydream: Forgotten Sorrow
Dead Cells
Death's Door
Deliver Us The Moon
Dragon Age Origins Ultimate Edition
Dragon Age II Ultimate Edition
Dragon Age Inquisition
Dredge
Eastward
Elden Ring
En Garde!
Escape from Mystwood Mansion
Far Cry 5
Hades II
Harvest Island
High on Life
Immortal Life
Immortals Fenix Rising
In Stars and Time
Jusant
Kena: Bridge of Spirits
Kynseed
Lies of P
Little Kitty, Big City
Moondrop
Neon White
Nioh
Nioh 2
No Man's Sky
No Rest for the Wicked
Old School
Pacific Drive
Planet of Lana
Rain on Your Parade
Ratchet & Clank Rift Apart
Resident Evil 4 (2023)
Robocop: Rogue City
Roots of Pacha
Saltsea Chronicles
Sands of Aura
Sea of Stars
Shredders
Sifu
Spirittea
Star Wars Jedi Survivor
Starfield
Stray Gods: The Roleplaying Musical
Tape to Tape
Tchia
Terra Nil
The Coffin of Andy and Leyley
The Matchless Kungfu
The Night is Grey
The Talos Principle 2
This Bed We Made
Treasures of the Aegean
Tunic
Wandering Sword
Your list
2024.05.17 01:32 Beginning_Vanilla609 Review: Rise of Kyoshi by FC Yee is bad.
Kyoshi book 1 is the epitome of ‘a meeting that could have been an email’. Its book that should have been a graphic novel. A story that should have been a wikipedia page.
SPOILERS, though I am saving you the read.
TLDR: The story telling is mediocre, and the story would have been just as compelling as a bullet pointed list of story facts. It flubs, glosses over and skips all portions of story that would have required any amount of clever writing or skill. The story is comprised of cringey tropes. This book will not sit among the original series in the annals of history. It sits below Korra and just above M Knight’s film adaption and the disgraceful Netflix reboot.
First, the idea of there being immense trouble identifying the Avatar is a good plot point. Having Kuruk’s team find and teach the next Avatar and have opposing ideals is also a good plot point. Yee also describes the martial arts okay enough, but this is an inherent obstacle when turning highly visual source material into text. This concludes my praise.
Yee tells, but doesnt show. Show more teambuilding and friendship between Kyoshi, Rangi and Yun. They only come together once in the same room to hang out before the main conflict happens, and its a superficial scene straight out of an 80s slasher movie. They come together solely to ‘show’ them being a team as they hang out and exchange banter. This is the first of Yee’s pseudo-“show, don’t tell”. It appears like the story is showing us something, but it is still telling us. It is characterized by vapid, juvenile writing in a scene that is largely inconsequential to the story.
Make the misidentification of the Avatar weigh on each of them and test friendship. Show her being found by Kelsang. The jump forward 9 years is jarring and leaves logic way behind. If she was raised by Kelsang, why didnt he finish testing her as the Avatar? Why did he take pity and raise her after traveling the world and seeing other homeless children? Why didnt she give back the clay turtle relic? Kyoshi is abandoned when she is old enough to remember being abandon, but doesn’t remember where she got the turtle. This line is another example of pseudo-show. Why don’t we dont get any insight into the moment she is abandon? We do not know any of these things. Including these scenes in the book would have made it longer, but its the juiciest piece of the character development. The length of a book is largely forgivable if it is captivating. This is like if you order a burger and they only bring you a bun and a slice of bib lettuce. Its missing the most crucile part.
Show Yun being incorrectly identified as the Avatar. This scene has to be so interesting. There is nothing in the book about this at all. This seems like another artful dodge around having to write something clever, and that tends to be difficult.
Show Kyoshi’s Avatar state. ‘Blacking out’ is not a mysterious way to tell stories. Its a cop out of writing something the author finds difficult. Also, a character can black out and not remember doing something AND the author can still describe it as it happens to the reader. Choosing to ommit more juicey story speaks more to the writers lack of confidence in their writing.
The fans and helmet of her parents are forced clumsily into the story at the height of the inciting incident. They could have been introduced any time. For example, when Kyoshi connects with her parent’s old crime ring and they could be presented to Kyoshi as relics of the group’s deceased leaders. Instead they are introduced to the reader by Kyoshi dropping her luggage and they fall out in the rain and mud. It reads like a scene that is meant to be a story board for a cartoon or comic.
We dont get any insight into Kyoshi’s parents being dead or alive. Kyoshi doesnt seem to ask anyone either. Why? Seems like a reasonable question.
Kelsang realizes Kyoshi is the Avatar when she does some improv poetry that happens to be Avatar Kuruk’s favorite poem? That was the best idea you got?
Kyoshi has a sky bison named PengPeng? Find a new method of transportation, the flying bison had been done before. Pengpeng is also only used as transportation. She doesnt have any personality like Momo and Appa. Total strikeout.
When something new develops that is supposed to surprise the reader, like Kyoshi’s mother being a disgraced airbender, Yee doesnt show this. This is explained away in a moment of dialogue like “once upon a time, this happened.” Then the plot moves on. And what motivation did she have for keeping this from Kelsang? Maybe they knew each other? They are both airbenders who have killed before, which is significant in the fiction. This could have been an opportunity to connect characters and create intrigue. But we only learn this at the end of the book for no reason.
Love between ATLA characters is subtle in the show. Katara and Aang will end up together and we know this implicitly. Sokka loves his friends, particularly Toph, because of the actions we see him take to help her. Rewatch the show, you will see what I mean. However this is not a major plot point that is touched on each episode. Zuko and Mei are together but they are pulled apart temporarily by character motivations. It skips the filler and gets right to the interesting part. However in Kyoshi book 1, love between Rangi and Kyoshi is vapid and foreshadowed from the first pages. Lets set lesbianism aside, its not the issue. The issue is that this love story is not compelling chiefly because we are told they care for each other but are only shown this in the back half of the book on a surface level. Even when we are shown these things, its not believable. The characters act like teenagers do in 2024 America, not like how teenagers would act in a world coming off the heels of a 100 year war. The characters are young, but they have roles, careers, and the responsibilities of adults. This stems from the same problem Yun has with Kyoshi and Rangi. We don’t see them becoming or being friends. We are told they are friends. Thats it.
This connects to Rangi’s character being ambivalent and emotionally indistinct. Rangi is played as a tough, no nonsense soldier that is hired as Yun’s personal bodyguard, the most important job next to being the avatar yourself. But her expressions of love are juvenile and childish. In one scene she is scolding Kyoshi on her duty toward being Avatar then in the next she acts playfully excited like an American weeb teenager when Kyoshi bends water for the first time. Rangi is poorly written and has poor motivation to her Avatar duty. She contributes nothing practical or technical to the story but love interest. If she is a child prodigy badass that earned the job of protecting the Avatar, she should act like it.
Hei Ran, Rangi’s mother, does nothing consequential to the plot. Why have this character? It is stated she knew Avatar Kuruk. The least she can do is bring it up more.
AND FINALLY, Kyoshis character is very opposite from who we see in ATLA. Obviously this is to show growth, but the timid Kyoshi inexplicably switches to confident and intimidating Kyoshi without any growth, then switches back to timid again. We know kyoshi as a tall, confident, matter of fact, powerful bender who sees no difference between murdering Chin the Conquerer and letting him fall to his death. But here we see a still tall, but petulant teen. She is afraid of her bending. She is inconsistently overconfident. She is squemish about murder. Perhaps the growth occurs in book two, but then again change is gradual. We should see some examples of change now. She grew up a homeless street urchin. She needs to act like it.
Yun struggles with his bending but also keeps smiling and acting like everything is ok. This trope is exhausted to death by anime. We do not see a human side of Yun. He is not tortured by the training or the fatique of not being able to bend fire or the pressure and expectation of being Avatar. He just smiles and flirts with Kyoshi. He also asks her to go with him to a peace treaty signing with pirates all because he wants to have her there so he feels loved. But this thinly disguises the fact the author needed a reason to have her at the signing so she can earthbend and save everyone. Take Rangi, your apointed body guard.
Yun returns at the end of the novel as a deus ex machina and kills Jianzhu in an admittedly badass way. 10/10. However, Yun is dead, reappears as a ghost, then earth bends. The possibility of this within the fiction is near zero UNLESS FC Yee is trying add to the lore of spirit magic and bending. To that I say “Learn to be a better writer first.”
Kirima is an okay character. We traditionally see water benders as good guys, but she is a tough leader of a gang of criminals. Again we are told that, not shown. 5/10. Mid teir.
Wong is a worse comedic relief than Sokka. Where Sokka learns to become a leader from a close minded sceptic and redeem this quality, Wong is indistinct from any other background earth bender. He eventually becomes Kyoshis earthbending teacher and he starts to fill out a teacher role but is still indistinct. Up until this time, he carrys no air of educator at all. Remember, he’s a pirate criminal. This turn of character seems to come from the team learning that Kyoshi is the Avatar, something she kept secret. But Wong is the only one who changes their behavior based on this. Meeting the most important person in the world doesn’t effect them, I guess. Doesn’t seem reasonable.
Lek is a kid that idolizes Kyoshi’s parents, but acts out like a toddler when she speaks poorly of them. I am left feeling disatisfied by a criminal outlaw that throws tantrums when someone speaks ill of their pseudo mommy and daddy. Lek is poorly written as a rival to Kyoshi, if if fact that was Yee’s intention. You see it in their banter and interactions. Lek is killed by a poison that only incapacitates all others effected. It was like the author needed him to die real quick and didnt know how to do it, but also didn’t want to rewrite the chapter.
Now is a good time to mention that characters can be annoying to other characters, but they should not be annoying to the reader. Doing this is a form of self sabotage. Its like serving up raw eggs for breakfast on purpose and calling it art. You just wouldn’t do it.
Lao Ge is poorly written too, despite being an interesting character idea. Lao is meant to be Kyoshi’s spiritual leader in this story. He leads her to the ancient technique of prolonging ones life with spirit magic. But this man reads like an embarassing drunk uncle that no one responds to when he speaks. He acts like he’s cool, wanders off constantly and returns covered in blood to a group thats asks no questions. Criminals still ask questions. In fact, they are more paranoid on account of being criminals. For example, there is a scene where they leave without him and realize they forgot him and have to go back. This scene amounts to nothing. Why was it in the book? Whoops, he’s also a master assassin. We are told this over and over but never see it in action. Boo. Don’t suggest violence. Show us violence.
Why is this group of criminals still together anyway? They lost their leaders, Kyoshi’s parents. Wouldn’t the find new jobs? Thin the herd. Theres too many characters.
Jianzhu acts more suspicious after he is identified as the villain which is a trope found in childrens television to remind children he is bad now. The fact it is here insults the readers intellegence. His villain motivations are not explained well. Does he care more about identifying the Avatar than his lifelong friend Kelsang or the life of the innocent? Also, a villain doesnt need to kill someone to be identified as the villain but youll find that trope here too. Clever writing can remedy this all the same. He does do cool evil guy things, but they are explained after the fact instead of showing him coniving these schemes and putting them into action. His death is awesome, but his final confrontation with Kyoshi is not spectacular. There is no final battle like one might expect. He the one that ghost Yun kills.
It is unclear if this book is meant for a YA reader audience or the adult audience that watched ATLA as kids. The story is grittier, bloodier and violent with explicit deaths and torture. All the while bearing a sheen of squeeky clean Nickelodean dialogue and unfunny humor that has an obvious limit. The book says they swear, but the exact words do not show up in dialogue. Characters are impaled and gored, but the 3rd person narration takes breaks from descriptions of this for quippy commentary on the things happening. Who says these things? Kyoshi? But its in third person. This clashes with the perspective and shows indecision on the part of the author.
The perspective is stuck between 1st and 3rd. 1st serves better for the YA audience where Kyoshi might think these quippy things to herself or have thoughts that help the reader understand context better. 3rd person would serve the adult audience better with a matter of fact telling of the story. Maybe even change between characters in some chapters and fill in some of these gaps. Instead the book strattles the line between these two perspectives and suffers greatly. You have humorous commentary and scene descriptions coming from the same source. It breaks immersion when the reader is stuck wondering who is telling the story.
YA is an oversaturatedand flawed genre anyway. Its almost designed to trick teens into thinking they are reading adult books.
Yee includes too many comparisons, similies and analogies. Each one is meant to create world building, where the text compares a creature in the ATLA world to a situation at hand. But they start coming up too often in the back half of the book. This also seems to rise in frequency as descriptions get vaguer. It felt like Yee lacked the proper lexicon to describe what was happening as the story approached the end. Analogies should be used to explain difficult things, not just thrown in recklessly.
One moment sticks out from this book that reminds me of ATLA. While Yun and Kyoshi are silently trying to meditate before Jianzhu summons a spirit to finally identify the correct Avatar, the two teens speak for a second. Eyes closed, Kyoshi whispers “You know what would be funny? If neither of us were the Avatar.” This captures elements of friendship between the two kids, character humor, and SHOWS these two still care for each other no matter what happens next. Yun’s response isn’t even remotely appropriate, memorable or clever. The opportunity is a total loss.
Another moment of total loss and tonal dissonance is when Kyoshi, Rangi and the convicts go to a hidden secret criminal town that is described as being so cut throat, you don’t even look at people in the eye. Just then the group sees two men collide after turning a blind corner and drop their stuff. Page 224. They exchange appologies, act very polite, and depart. (This is told to the reader, not shown with appropriatly funny dialogue). Lek then explains the two men will meet tonight on the challenge grounds and fight to the death. However, that night at the challenge grounds, you don’t see those characters; a total whiff on Yee’s part. Instead you read about one man bludgeoning another man to death with barehands in pure gladitorial bloodsport. This scene shows the whimsy of ATLA, the gorey violence that Yee wanted and his befuddled attempt at writing something that blends the two.
All of this leads me to conclude the book is for a YA audience, which is unfortunate because ATLA was for everyone; YA, adult and children. It is a children’s show that adults can find a surprising amount of depth and humor in. Yee’s doesn’t hold a candle to the writing of Aaron Ehasz.
The argument that this books is allowed to be bad because its for kids falls apart for the same reason. The expert writing of Aaron Ehazs in ATLA is what imortalizes it to this day; the dialogue, the characters, and the story. ATLA is a kids cartoon by which all cinema and television are compared. This is simply not on that level.
When this level of integrity is left to be followed up by an author with one previously published work, underdelivery should be expected. Kyoshi book 1 is FC Yee’s second published work and it shows. I would be interested in learning more about FC Yee’s past unpublished experiences in writing and qualifications.
So again, this book is like a meeting that should have been an email. The story is not “worth the read”. The historical facts are more valuable. For example, telling someone that Kyoshi’s dad is a pirate earthbender and her mother is a disgraced criminal airbender is a total surprise and sparks good speculative conversation. But the way the novel presents this information is clumsy and ignorant of how rare these circumstances are within the fiction. These historical facts are just as compelling when read on the Avatar wiki page, negating the necessity for a book in the first place. I think this is symptomatic of writing a prequal too. We know enough about Kyoshi to be interested in her character, so the facts about her should be presented interestingly with art and showmanship.
This book leaves me with the sneaking suspicion that most of what FC Yee knows about writing was learned from anime, a genre so polluted its not worth even sifting through to find quality content. Hot take, I know.
His other books on Genie Lo (2017, 2020) are teen dramas with ‘the chosen one’ trope, as the summaries suggest. That must be why that shows in this book. Maybe FC Yee can only write one type of book.
Yee is also not an author by trade. He said in an interview that he works in mobile gaming as the guy who makes “everything less fun by adding stuff to the game you have to pay for.” He went to college for Economics, or so I read on his wiki page.
His book publisher proposed the two book series idea to Nickelodeon, it was not a matter of the creators carefully hand picking a writer. He also only worked with Mike DiMartino. In his interview, he says he did not work with Bryan Konietzko and never even mentions Aaron Ehasz. I believe this is to the great detrement of the story.
I’ve heard that people really liked this book. However, I wonder if that is genuine affection or the same kind of denial Star Wars fans had when the Phantom Menace came out. I draw this parallel because my father was that person. He recomended this book to me and gave it high praise in the same way he did when Phantom Menace released.
The fans, my father and myself included, are starved for any canon ATLA material. Feeding the fans undercooked meals is no way to make a fanbase grow. The ATLA fanbase already got food poisoning from M Knight’s movie. It recovered, but at a cost. I hate to think what might happen after the Netflix show and the animated movie of adult Aang.
I understand that Yee was a fan of the material. In fact, he and I share the same favorite character. So know that this is not an attack on a fellow fan of ATLA, I simply believe Yee is not the man for this job. Avatar deserves better than to be relegated to a YA novel lost in a sea of overproduced assembly line YA content. Avatar deserves a better writer. Save your fine cutlery for fine dining, don’t use polished silver to eat fast food.
To end, I leave you with this: if you want more Avatar content, gather some friends and play the Avatar rpg by Magpie Games. It is the most fun I’ve had in the ATLA world since I was a kid. If you play it right, you get that same sense of magic you got back in 2005 when Book Water came out.
Below is a link to an interview with Yee.
https://thenerdsofcolor.org/2019/07/15/from-fan-to-avatar-writer-f-c-yee-on-developing-the-story-of-avatar-kyoshi/amp/
submitted by Beginning_Vanilla609 to Avatarthelastairbende [link] [comments]
SPOILERS, though I am saving you the read.
TLDR: The story telling is mediocre, and the story would have been just as compelling as a bullet pointed list of story facts. It flubs, glosses over and skips all portions of story that would have required any amount of clever writing or skill. The story is comprised of cringey tropes. This book will not sit among the original series in the annals of history. It sits below Korra and just above M Knight’s film adaption and the disgraceful Netflix reboot.
First, the idea of there being immense trouble identifying the Avatar is a good plot point. Having Kuruk’s team find and teach the next Avatar and have opposing ideals is also a good plot point. Yee also describes the martial arts okay enough, but this is an inherent obstacle when turning highly visual source material into text. This concludes my praise.
Yee tells, but doesnt show. Show more teambuilding and friendship between Kyoshi, Rangi and Yun. They only come together once in the same room to hang out before the main conflict happens, and its a superficial scene straight out of an 80s slasher movie. They come together solely to ‘show’ them being a team as they hang out and exchange banter. This is the first of Yee’s pseudo-“show, don’t tell”. It appears like the story is showing us something, but it is still telling us. It is characterized by vapid, juvenile writing in a scene that is largely inconsequential to the story.
Make the misidentification of the Avatar weigh on each of them and test friendship. Show her being found by Kelsang. The jump forward 9 years is jarring and leaves logic way behind. If she was raised by Kelsang, why didnt he finish testing her as the Avatar? Why did he take pity and raise her after traveling the world and seeing other homeless children? Why didnt she give back the clay turtle relic? Kyoshi is abandoned when she is old enough to remember being abandon, but doesn’t remember where she got the turtle. This line is another example of pseudo-show. Why don’t we dont get any insight into the moment she is abandon? We do not know any of these things. Including these scenes in the book would have made it longer, but its the juiciest piece of the character development. The length of a book is largely forgivable if it is captivating. This is like if you order a burger and they only bring you a bun and a slice of bib lettuce. Its missing the most crucile part.
Show Yun being incorrectly identified as the Avatar. This scene has to be so interesting. There is nothing in the book about this at all. This seems like another artful dodge around having to write something clever, and that tends to be difficult.
Show Kyoshi’s Avatar state. ‘Blacking out’ is not a mysterious way to tell stories. Its a cop out of writing something the author finds difficult. Also, a character can black out and not remember doing something AND the author can still describe it as it happens to the reader. Choosing to ommit more juicey story speaks more to the writers lack of confidence in their writing.
The fans and helmet of her parents are forced clumsily into the story at the height of the inciting incident. They could have been introduced any time. For example, when Kyoshi connects with her parent’s old crime ring and they could be presented to Kyoshi as relics of the group’s deceased leaders. Instead they are introduced to the reader by Kyoshi dropping her luggage and they fall out in the rain and mud. It reads like a scene that is meant to be a story board for a cartoon or comic.
We dont get any insight into Kyoshi’s parents being dead or alive. Kyoshi doesnt seem to ask anyone either. Why? Seems like a reasonable question.
Kelsang realizes Kyoshi is the Avatar when she does some improv poetry that happens to be Avatar Kuruk’s favorite poem? That was the best idea you got?
Kyoshi has a sky bison named PengPeng? Find a new method of transportation, the flying bison had been done before. Pengpeng is also only used as transportation. She doesnt have any personality like Momo and Appa. Total strikeout.
When something new develops that is supposed to surprise the reader, like Kyoshi’s mother being a disgraced airbender, Yee doesnt show this. This is explained away in a moment of dialogue like “once upon a time, this happened.” Then the plot moves on. And what motivation did she have for keeping this from Kelsang? Maybe they knew each other? They are both airbenders who have killed before, which is significant in the fiction. This could have been an opportunity to connect characters and create intrigue. But we only learn this at the end of the book for no reason.
Love between ATLA characters is subtle in the show. Katara and Aang will end up together and we know this implicitly. Sokka loves his friends, particularly Toph, because of the actions we see him take to help her. Rewatch the show, you will see what I mean. However this is not a major plot point that is touched on each episode. Zuko and Mei are together but they are pulled apart temporarily by character motivations. It skips the filler and gets right to the interesting part. However in Kyoshi book 1, love between Rangi and Kyoshi is vapid and foreshadowed from the first pages. Lets set lesbianism aside, its not the issue. The issue is that this love story is not compelling chiefly because we are told they care for each other but are only shown this in the back half of the book on a surface level. Even when we are shown these things, its not believable. The characters act like teenagers do in 2024 America, not like how teenagers would act in a world coming off the heels of a 100 year war. The characters are young, but they have roles, careers, and the responsibilities of adults. This stems from the same problem Yun has with Kyoshi and Rangi. We don’t see them becoming or being friends. We are told they are friends. Thats it.
This connects to Rangi’s character being ambivalent and emotionally indistinct. Rangi is played as a tough, no nonsense soldier that is hired as Yun’s personal bodyguard, the most important job next to being the avatar yourself. But her expressions of love are juvenile and childish. In one scene she is scolding Kyoshi on her duty toward being Avatar then in the next she acts playfully excited like an American weeb teenager when Kyoshi bends water for the first time. Rangi is poorly written and has poor motivation to her Avatar duty. She contributes nothing practical or technical to the story but love interest. If she is a child prodigy badass that earned the job of protecting the Avatar, she should act like it.
Hei Ran, Rangi’s mother, does nothing consequential to the plot. Why have this character? It is stated she knew Avatar Kuruk. The least she can do is bring it up more.
AND FINALLY, Kyoshis character is very opposite from who we see in ATLA. Obviously this is to show growth, but the timid Kyoshi inexplicably switches to confident and intimidating Kyoshi without any growth, then switches back to timid again. We know kyoshi as a tall, confident, matter of fact, powerful bender who sees no difference between murdering Chin the Conquerer and letting him fall to his death. But here we see a still tall, but petulant teen. She is afraid of her bending. She is inconsistently overconfident. She is squemish about murder. Perhaps the growth occurs in book two, but then again change is gradual. We should see some examples of change now. She grew up a homeless street urchin. She needs to act like it.
Yun struggles with his bending but also keeps smiling and acting like everything is ok. This trope is exhausted to death by anime. We do not see a human side of Yun. He is not tortured by the training or the fatique of not being able to bend fire or the pressure and expectation of being Avatar. He just smiles and flirts with Kyoshi. He also asks her to go with him to a peace treaty signing with pirates all because he wants to have her there so he feels loved. But this thinly disguises the fact the author needed a reason to have her at the signing so she can earthbend and save everyone. Take Rangi, your apointed body guard.
Yun returns at the end of the novel as a deus ex machina and kills Jianzhu in an admittedly badass way. 10/10. However, Yun is dead, reappears as a ghost, then earth bends. The possibility of this within the fiction is near zero UNLESS FC Yee is trying add to the lore of spirit magic and bending. To that I say “Learn to be a better writer first.”
Kirima is an okay character. We traditionally see water benders as good guys, but she is a tough leader of a gang of criminals. Again we are told that, not shown. 5/10. Mid teir.
Wong is a worse comedic relief than Sokka. Where Sokka learns to become a leader from a close minded sceptic and redeem this quality, Wong is indistinct from any other background earth bender. He eventually becomes Kyoshis earthbending teacher and he starts to fill out a teacher role but is still indistinct. Up until this time, he carrys no air of educator at all. Remember, he’s a pirate criminal. This turn of character seems to come from the team learning that Kyoshi is the Avatar, something she kept secret. But Wong is the only one who changes their behavior based on this. Meeting the most important person in the world doesn’t effect them, I guess. Doesn’t seem reasonable.
Lek is a kid that idolizes Kyoshi’s parents, but acts out like a toddler when she speaks poorly of them. I am left feeling disatisfied by a criminal outlaw that throws tantrums when someone speaks ill of their pseudo mommy and daddy. Lek is poorly written as a rival to Kyoshi, if if fact that was Yee’s intention. You see it in their banter and interactions. Lek is killed by a poison that only incapacitates all others effected. It was like the author needed him to die real quick and didnt know how to do it, but also didn’t want to rewrite the chapter.
Now is a good time to mention that characters can be annoying to other characters, but they should not be annoying to the reader. Doing this is a form of self sabotage. Its like serving up raw eggs for breakfast on purpose and calling it art. You just wouldn’t do it.
Lao Ge is poorly written too, despite being an interesting character idea. Lao is meant to be Kyoshi’s spiritual leader in this story. He leads her to the ancient technique of prolonging ones life with spirit magic. But this man reads like an embarassing drunk uncle that no one responds to when he speaks. He acts like he’s cool, wanders off constantly and returns covered in blood to a group thats asks no questions. Criminals still ask questions. In fact, they are more paranoid on account of being criminals. For example, there is a scene where they leave without him and realize they forgot him and have to go back. This scene amounts to nothing. Why was it in the book? Whoops, he’s also a master assassin. We are told this over and over but never see it in action. Boo. Don’t suggest violence. Show us violence.
Why is this group of criminals still together anyway? They lost their leaders, Kyoshi’s parents. Wouldn’t the find new jobs? Thin the herd. Theres too many characters.
Jianzhu acts more suspicious after he is identified as the villain which is a trope found in childrens television to remind children he is bad now. The fact it is here insults the readers intellegence. His villain motivations are not explained well. Does he care more about identifying the Avatar than his lifelong friend Kelsang or the life of the innocent? Also, a villain doesnt need to kill someone to be identified as the villain but youll find that trope here too. Clever writing can remedy this all the same. He does do cool evil guy things, but they are explained after the fact instead of showing him coniving these schemes and putting them into action. His death is awesome, but his final confrontation with Kyoshi is not spectacular. There is no final battle like one might expect. He the one that ghost Yun kills.
It is unclear if this book is meant for a YA reader audience or the adult audience that watched ATLA as kids. The story is grittier, bloodier and violent with explicit deaths and torture. All the while bearing a sheen of squeeky clean Nickelodean dialogue and unfunny humor that has an obvious limit. The book says they swear, but the exact words do not show up in dialogue. Characters are impaled and gored, but the 3rd person narration takes breaks from descriptions of this for quippy commentary on the things happening. Who says these things? Kyoshi? But its in third person. This clashes with the perspective and shows indecision on the part of the author.
The perspective is stuck between 1st and 3rd. 1st serves better for the YA audience where Kyoshi might think these quippy things to herself or have thoughts that help the reader understand context better. 3rd person would serve the adult audience better with a matter of fact telling of the story. Maybe even change between characters in some chapters and fill in some of these gaps. Instead the book strattles the line between these two perspectives and suffers greatly. You have humorous commentary and scene descriptions coming from the same source. It breaks immersion when the reader is stuck wondering who is telling the story.
YA is an oversaturatedand flawed genre anyway. Its almost designed to trick teens into thinking they are reading adult books.
Yee includes too many comparisons, similies and analogies. Each one is meant to create world building, where the text compares a creature in the ATLA world to a situation at hand. But they start coming up too often in the back half of the book. This also seems to rise in frequency as descriptions get vaguer. It felt like Yee lacked the proper lexicon to describe what was happening as the story approached the end. Analogies should be used to explain difficult things, not just thrown in recklessly.
One moment sticks out from this book that reminds me of ATLA. While Yun and Kyoshi are silently trying to meditate before Jianzhu summons a spirit to finally identify the correct Avatar, the two teens speak for a second. Eyes closed, Kyoshi whispers “You know what would be funny? If neither of us were the Avatar.” This captures elements of friendship between the two kids, character humor, and SHOWS these two still care for each other no matter what happens next. Yun’s response isn’t even remotely appropriate, memorable or clever. The opportunity is a total loss.
Another moment of total loss and tonal dissonance is when Kyoshi, Rangi and the convicts go to a hidden secret criminal town that is described as being so cut throat, you don’t even look at people in the eye. Just then the group sees two men collide after turning a blind corner and drop their stuff. Page 224. They exchange appologies, act very polite, and depart. (This is told to the reader, not shown with appropriatly funny dialogue). Lek then explains the two men will meet tonight on the challenge grounds and fight to the death. However, that night at the challenge grounds, you don’t see those characters; a total whiff on Yee’s part. Instead you read about one man bludgeoning another man to death with barehands in pure gladitorial bloodsport. This scene shows the whimsy of ATLA, the gorey violence that Yee wanted and his befuddled attempt at writing something that blends the two.
All of this leads me to conclude the book is for a YA audience, which is unfortunate because ATLA was for everyone; YA, adult and children. It is a children’s show that adults can find a surprising amount of depth and humor in. Yee’s doesn’t hold a candle to the writing of Aaron Ehasz.
The argument that this books is allowed to be bad because its for kids falls apart for the same reason. The expert writing of Aaron Ehazs in ATLA is what imortalizes it to this day; the dialogue, the characters, and the story. ATLA is a kids cartoon by which all cinema and television are compared. This is simply not on that level.
When this level of integrity is left to be followed up by an author with one previously published work, underdelivery should be expected. Kyoshi book 1 is FC Yee’s second published work and it shows. I would be interested in learning more about FC Yee’s past unpublished experiences in writing and qualifications.
So again, this book is like a meeting that should have been an email. The story is not “worth the read”. The historical facts are more valuable. For example, telling someone that Kyoshi’s dad is a pirate earthbender and her mother is a disgraced criminal airbender is a total surprise and sparks good speculative conversation. But the way the novel presents this information is clumsy and ignorant of how rare these circumstances are within the fiction. These historical facts are just as compelling when read on the Avatar wiki page, negating the necessity for a book in the first place. I think this is symptomatic of writing a prequal too. We know enough about Kyoshi to be interested in her character, so the facts about her should be presented interestingly with art and showmanship.
This book leaves me with the sneaking suspicion that most of what FC Yee knows about writing was learned from anime, a genre so polluted its not worth even sifting through to find quality content. Hot take, I know.
His other books on Genie Lo (2017, 2020) are teen dramas with ‘the chosen one’ trope, as the summaries suggest. That must be why that shows in this book. Maybe FC Yee can only write one type of book.
Yee is also not an author by trade. He said in an interview that he works in mobile gaming as the guy who makes “everything less fun by adding stuff to the game you have to pay for.” He went to college for Economics, or so I read on his wiki page.
His book publisher proposed the two book series idea to Nickelodeon, it was not a matter of the creators carefully hand picking a writer. He also only worked with Mike DiMartino. In his interview, he says he did not work with Bryan Konietzko and never even mentions Aaron Ehasz. I believe this is to the great detrement of the story.
I’ve heard that people really liked this book. However, I wonder if that is genuine affection or the same kind of denial Star Wars fans had when the Phantom Menace came out. I draw this parallel because my father was that person. He recomended this book to me and gave it high praise in the same way he did when Phantom Menace released.
The fans, my father and myself included, are starved for any canon ATLA material. Feeding the fans undercooked meals is no way to make a fanbase grow. The ATLA fanbase already got food poisoning from M Knight’s movie. It recovered, but at a cost. I hate to think what might happen after the Netflix show and the animated movie of adult Aang.
I understand that Yee was a fan of the material. In fact, he and I share the same favorite character. So know that this is not an attack on a fellow fan of ATLA, I simply believe Yee is not the man for this job. Avatar deserves better than to be relegated to a YA novel lost in a sea of overproduced assembly line YA content. Avatar deserves a better writer. Save your fine cutlery for fine dining, don’t use polished silver to eat fast food.
To end, I leave you with this: if you want more Avatar content, gather some friends and play the Avatar rpg by Magpie Games. It is the most fun I’ve had in the ATLA world since I was a kid. If you play it right, you get that same sense of magic you got back in 2005 when Book Water came out.
Below is a link to an interview with Yee.
https://thenerdsofcolor.org/2019/07/15/from-fan-to-avatar-writer-f-c-yee-on-developing-the-story-of-avatar-kyoshi/amp/
2024.05.17 01:29 HumbleKnight14 Chapter 1: Were lost…
“Our captain lies to us!” The young lieutenant couldn’t take it anymore. Containing himself while everyone clings to a false hope that their ship, the Second Coming, will be rescued by the other two that was following us. He just couldn’t do it anymore…
“They may not say it but we’re lost! Lost because of you and your pride! Lost because you failed to see the error in your tactical assertions on the Shaders! Lost because you retreated into the storm while the other fleets continued the fight! You are a coward, captain.” The lieutenant seethed, anger and utter frustration could be felt off him if one were to stay near him.
Literally.
Everyone on the deck stared on in a mix of shock and fear, looking at the captain and his most trusted lieutenant, his younger brother, for more than 2 minutes of silence. A disgusting and gnawing silence. Making everyone on the deck anticipate what might happen between the two. The monitor officers who were near the captain awkwardly continued their duties while also murmuring to one another.
The captain’s bodyguard, held his ground, pistol holstered and primed. They had a difficult relationship with each other and the fleet knew this all too well. Them being brothers and all.
But then to everyone’s surprise, Captain Forine uttered two words.
“Your right.”
Lieutenant Dorine, tightened his fists and gritted his teeth. “What did you say?”
“Your right.” Captain Forine continued. “I am coward. My pride has led us to this situation, practically burying us in a cosmic pit of this pride…I have. I thought I knew and I thought the outcome was foreseeable but I just listened to my fear. Fear of lossand fear of death. What have I become, brother?” Realization and acceptance was in his voice, quivering from the truth he spoke.
Lieutenant Dorine scoffed. “Pride goeth before destruction, captain.”
To be continued…
Please share your thoughts on this first roughy chapter of the awesome connection to the Silentverse. 😁
submitted by HumbleKnight14 to ProjectUndefined [link] [comments]
“They may not say it but we’re lost! Lost because of you and your pride! Lost because you failed to see the error in your tactical assertions on the Shaders! Lost because you retreated into the storm while the other fleets continued the fight! You are a coward, captain.” The lieutenant seethed, anger and utter frustration could be felt off him if one were to stay near him.
Literally.
Everyone on the deck stared on in a mix of shock and fear, looking at the captain and his most trusted lieutenant, his younger brother, for more than 2 minutes of silence. A disgusting and gnawing silence. Making everyone on the deck anticipate what might happen between the two. The monitor officers who were near the captain awkwardly continued their duties while also murmuring to one another.
The captain’s bodyguard, held his ground, pistol holstered and primed. They had a difficult relationship with each other and the fleet knew this all too well. Them being brothers and all.
But then to everyone’s surprise, Captain Forine uttered two words.
“Your right.”
Lieutenant Dorine, tightened his fists and gritted his teeth. “What did you say?”
“Your right.” Captain Forine continued. “I am coward. My pride has led us to this situation, practically burying us in a cosmic pit of this pride…I have. I thought I knew and I thought the outcome was foreseeable but I just listened to my fear. Fear of lossand fear of death. What have I become, brother?” Realization and acceptance was in his voice, quivering from the truth he spoke.
Lieutenant Dorine scoffed. “Pride goeth before destruction, captain.”
To be continued…
Please share your thoughts on this first roughy chapter of the awesome connection to the Silentverse. 😁
2024.05.17 01:29 JamFranz I’m calling about a past due balance on your account (Part 13) - That one time we went to Canada
I work for a ‘special collections’ agency and I don’t think our customers are human.
Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Part 8 Part 9 Part 10 Part 11 Part 12 Part 13
I wasn’t exactly thrilled when, on the first night P’uy̓ám stayed with me, the moment we sat on the sofa he turned to me and asked, “Can we talk?”
I was tempted to sprint out the front door (like any perfectly reasonable and emotionally stable person would), but I’m proud to say that I managed to fight that instinct. The talk ended up basically being ‘did I mind that he wasn’t human’. I told him no, he’s the smartest, nicest person I know, and I think he’s amazing. I asked him if he minded that I am human, and he told me he didn’t care about that. He said I make him laugh, and spending time with me makes him happy and want to be the best version of himself. He did also say that I’m beautiful and a lot smarter than I claim I am, but I chalk up those last two to him being super nice, because if asked to describe myself, the two words I’d probably use would be, ‘loud’ and ‘confused’.
We just stared at each other awkwardly for a moment after that, neither of us seemed entirely sure what to do – it was the first time we’d actually been alone together since ‘the kiss’.
Just when we’d figured it out (and no, internet stranger, I’m not going to be sharing any more specific details, thanks), a knock on the door and the sound of Sandy’s voice outside interrupted us.
“Oh hey hon. I just wanted to make sure you were still alive.” She smiled once I jumped up to open it.
Her eyes drifted to P’uy̓ám who waved awkwardly from the couch, glasses askew.
“Well alrighty then, I guess I’ll be going.” She just stood there, looking a bit lost.
I realized that was the first night she’d come home to any empty house after having company for a month straight – I guess even unspeakable horrors get lonely too.
“Sandy, do you want to come in and watch a movie with us?” I offered after a moment.
“Oh, you betcha!” she brightened and then proceeded to choose the seat between us. I swear she’s got psychic chaperone powers or something.
I suggested that maybe the three of us could do a game night every month, since we figured it’d be nice to catch up outside of just when we were trying to prevent the world was ending. I must say though, I thought Sandy was intense as a supervisor but she is a thousand times more frightening as a poker player – and we don’t even play for money.
I joked that we needed to take her to a casino, but she very seriously replied, “Oh I’m banned from every one in the state.”
I moved apartments after a month had passed without hearing from Yyohn. I’d been waiting to be absolutely sure, because I didn’t want to saddle a new renter with the whole, ‘you might be pulled into a nightmare world and sacrificed to an interdimensional entity’ thing – that would’ve been really inconsiderate.
I was so appreciative that P’uy̓ám stayed with me for a while. I may write with bravado when describing things in retrospect, but the very real possibility of being dragged through a reflective surface silently in the night never to be seen again, did freak me out.
It was also nice to finally spend some time together where we weren’t worrying about the imminent demise of either myself or our plane of existence (well no more than we usually have to worry, at least).
We decided not to tell anyone at the office that we're dating, it's easier that way. Well, I mean, Sandy knows since she did witness our first kiss whilst they were burying me alive.
As the time approached for our trip, I just really hoped that after not seeing P’uy̓ám for decades, maybe his family would welcome him back this time, forgive him for the minor transgression of ‘leaving home’ (yes, I’m still salty that they pretty much disowned him for that.) I figured if he didn’t, maybe he could get some closure, he could at least see the places where he grew up – homesickness had very clearly been really eating at him ever since we went into the woods for team building.
When we were planning our trip, he told me he’s never liked planes and was hoping to avoid flying. Considering ‘traveling on business’ in our line of work isn’t exactly defined as moving across physical space, it made some sort of sense.
He said it was something about not having solid ground under his feet, but when we mapped it out, it was over 5,000 miles round trip – so we could either spend 40 hours in a car, or 6 hours on a plane, each way.
He decided to give flying a shot.
People sometimes struggle to pronounce my first and last names off my driver’s license or credit cards, but they’ll at least try. As we were checking in the lady at the desk ended with, “Thank you Mr….” and then after staring at his driver’s license in silence for a few moments just gave up and handed it back to him.
I get it though, I mean, if I hadn’t heard him pronounce his last name, I would’ve never guessed it on my own – I’d just never encountered a ‘7’ in a name before I met him.
The security guy at the airport spent a long time studying P’uy̓ám’s passport. He stared at P’uy̓ám, then the passport with narrowed eyes. Back to him, then the passport, several times before eventually shrugging and handing it back over. I peeked at it before he put it away and noticed it said he was born in 1960 – and he may be 233, but he looks like he’s in his early thirties at most, so that explained the look of disbelief written on the agent’s face.
When I asked him about it, he said it’s a lot of work to fake all the documents needed to make the date match his outward appearance.
“It was a lot easier before there were electronic records.” He smiled.
I warned him that he should probably update that soon – bureaucratic apathy would only get him so far.
As we waited in the security line, his eyes widened when he saw people go through the body scanner, and he asked me what it was. When I told him, he turned pale and said he couldn’t go through it.
That left me with some questions.
“P’uy̓ám, when was the last time you flew?”
He had to think about that for a moment. “1986?”
“Yeahhhh… I’m pretty sure you can ask not to, but they’ll probably pat you down if you skip it.”
He grew even paler at that.
“Do you want the scan, or the hands?”
He ran his fingers through his hair and shook his head, indicating that he wanted neither, which unfortunately for him was not an option.
I squeezed his hand, which helped calm him down – only letting go when it was time to show our IDs, and even then, only after the TSA officer glared at us
It’s a good thing we got there early, because when they asked if he’d emptied his pockets, he said no.
So, I watched him remove:
I hated seeing that look of misery on his face – I tried to maintain comforting eye contact with him as they patted him down.
They did let him keep the dirt with him, after scanning it since it’s apparently not prohibited, (just weird). He proceeded to stick it in one of his beat-up Converse before putting his shoes back on.
I understood the dirt – since he mentioned something about solid ground, I guessed it was as close as he was going to get on a plane – and even the multitool and knife.
But, when I asked him why he was trying to bring 16g of RAM into rural Canada in his pockets he just smiled, “You never know when you might need it.”
As soon as we boarded, I realized flying had been a terrible idea. He had a hard time fitting his legs in since he’s so tall – his knees were just jammed in there the whole time. Before we took off, some guy elbowed him in the face while trying to load a bag into the bin and P’uy̓ám said ‘I’m sorry’ to him. I glared at the guy until he apologized.
Everything freaked him out and he gripped the arm rests for dear life the entire flight. The sound of the wheels, staring out at the wings and the little flaps every time they moved (“Are those supposed to be doing that?” to which I could only unhelpfully shrug), the turbulence. I was just glad they let him keep the dirt.
He looked so absolutely horrified during the entire flight and I felt so bad for him. Before we even landed, I asked him if he wanted to drive on the way back instead of flying and he instantly said yes, relief written across his face.
We had to rent a car to get to his hometown, and it took us an extra two hours to get there because there were so many places he wanted to stop and show me, like this amazing waterfall off highway 99. I could’ve done without the constant feel of eyes on us despite us being alone, but it was definitely beautiful, at least.
We began to see signs for this little touristy shop. As we kept driving, the billboards seemed to multiply, until they were at almost every mile. At my insistence, we stopped.
I regretted that decision as soon as we walked in – the place was devoid of life, there were no other customers, no employees – and something about how the dim, blueish lights cast shadows across the shelves gave me a searing headache.
Not to mention the items on the shelves themselves – a mildewy hoodie, that had ‘Someone who loves me visited Oklahoma and bought me this sweatshirt!’ written in fading letters.
It seemed more like a second hand shop than a tourist trap.
I’d found a beaded purse, but it had a wallet and driver's license still in it.
As we wandered, a case of jewelry across the store caught my eye and drew me towards it – it was insane how beautiful each piece was – all so captivating, and each one was totally unique. They looked almost like blown glass – swirling golds and blues in one, sharp magentas with specs of green in another.
As I was leaning in closely, studying them – it almost looked as if they were moving a bit in their case – someone whispered directly into my ear from over my shoulder, “Thanks for stopping in”
The guy appeared out of nowhere to lean in over my shoulder, causing me to scream (just a reasonable amount).
Creeper dude walked around to position himself behind the counter, asked if I wanted to see anything, before pausing to study my face for a moment. His eyes drifted down to the pendant that P’uy̓ám made me, the one for ‘I’m totally not a human, please don’t eat me’ purposes.
“Oh, this is beautiful”, he whispered, before deciding to violate my personal space by lifting it up and holding it.
His demeanor instantly changed from a handsy salesperson to something else entirely – his grin widened and he looked a little too excited.
“Have you signed our guest book?” He gripped my left wrist tightly, shoved a pen into my right, and studied me in a way that told me he wouldn’t let go until I signed it.
“Can I switch hands please?”
He had the audacity to look at me as if I had mildly inconvenienced him, but did let me switch after I told him that was the only way he’d get actual, readable, words.
I flipped through the thick, yellowing pages to find a blank one and signed it ‘Mikayla G. and P’uy̓ám K.’
“Last names too.”
I sighed and wrote ‘Mikayla Garabedian and P’uy̓ám K--’ (I just wrote random letters after the K because I didn’t like how pushy he was being. )
“Exquisite, aren’t they?” he asked me with a smile, gesturing down at the jewelry. The small piece streaked with yellow and pinks was definitely shuddering in response to him pointing at it.
I nodded, but more out of politeness at that point, because he still had my wrist in a death grip.
“Mikayla, Wait.” I could hear P’uy̓ám call out in the distance, but I felt frozen there – it sounded like he was miles away
“Would you like to see how they’re made?”
Before I could answer, he leaned in and put a stone that resembled the others in shape and size, the only difference is that it was just plain, totally clear – into my hand, which he closed around it. It was like glass, but weightier, and where it touched my skin it burned slightly.
I could hear P’uy̓ám calling my name as he came sprinting over, right as the guy read my name off the guestbook.
P’uy̓ám gasped, but I didn’t understand why he was so freaked out.
Literally nothing happened.
P’uy̓ám helped me free my wrist from creepy guy’s crazy strong grip and sassily smacked the book out of his hands, before he could read it again.
And still, nothing happened.
The guy looked at us with narrowed eyes – a look P’uy̓ám returned, with even more intensity. The guy hissed at us as P’uy̓ám guided me out of the store.
Once we got to the parking lot, P’uy̓ám pulled me close to him and put his chin on the top of my head while quietly muttered that he wasn’t sure how I was unaffected – calling someone their true name is how all those other pendants got filled.
He hadn’t realized at first, but when he saw another collection of ‘items made from tourists’ (I made him repeat that to ensure I’d heard that correctly but he didn’t expound on what the ‘items’ were and I was a bit afraid to ask) in the back, he knew.
That was when P’uy̓ám ran over to me, but the guy already begun to read my name, so he was worried it was too late.
He was relieved when I saw that I didn’t provide either of our actual full names – I’ve learned that sharing your entire, true name isn’t a great idea, not with non-humans, probably not with the internet in general.
Mikayla is what I go by, but it’s my middle name – I mean, my sister’s name is ‘Hasmig’, so yeah, I have a fairly traditional first name, too. And no, I’m not sharing it here.
Look, I’m not saying that you’re going to come track me down and try to bind my soul to an inanimate object to then sell to tourists. But, after that ordeal, I’d rather not take that risk.
When I turned back around, the entire store was just … gone.
Apparently since I’m subletting a part of my soul (or as I like to say, ‘mildly possessed’), P’uy̓ám says mine was probably even more fascinating to the guy.
Due to our detours, it was getting dark by the time we reached P’uy̓ám’s family home.
Even in the low light, I could see the apprehension clearly written across his face. I wondered if he thought I was kidding about pummeling his family with my thousand page book if they were shitty to him. (Because I wasn’t)
The entire time, I’d thought that the worst thing that could happen would be that they rejected him – as we pulled up to the dark house, I realized just how very wrong I was. _
If you want me to let you know when the next part is posted, just comment that you want me to update you, and I'll tag your user name in a comment, when I post the next part :)
submitted by JamFranz to JamFranz [link] [comments]
Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Part 8 Part 9 Part 10 Part 11 Part 12 Part 13
I wasn’t exactly thrilled when, on the first night P’uy̓ám stayed with me, the moment we sat on the sofa he turned to me and asked, “Can we talk?”
I was tempted to sprint out the front door (like any perfectly reasonable and emotionally stable person would), but I’m proud to say that I managed to fight that instinct. The talk ended up basically being ‘did I mind that he wasn’t human’. I told him no, he’s the smartest, nicest person I know, and I think he’s amazing. I asked him if he minded that I am human, and he told me he didn’t care about that. He said I make him laugh, and spending time with me makes him happy and want to be the best version of himself. He did also say that I’m beautiful and a lot smarter than I claim I am, but I chalk up those last two to him being super nice, because if asked to describe myself, the two words I’d probably use would be, ‘loud’ and ‘confused’.
We just stared at each other awkwardly for a moment after that, neither of us seemed entirely sure what to do – it was the first time we’d actually been alone together since ‘the kiss’.
Just when we’d figured it out (and no, internet stranger, I’m not going to be sharing any more specific details, thanks), a knock on the door and the sound of Sandy’s voice outside interrupted us.
“Oh hey hon. I just wanted to make sure you were still alive.” She smiled once I jumped up to open it.
Her eyes drifted to P’uy̓ám who waved awkwardly from the couch, glasses askew.
“Well alrighty then, I guess I’ll be going.” She just stood there, looking a bit lost.
I realized that was the first night she’d come home to any empty house after having company for a month straight – I guess even unspeakable horrors get lonely too.
“Sandy, do you want to come in and watch a movie with us?” I offered after a moment.
“Oh, you betcha!” she brightened and then proceeded to choose the seat between us. I swear she’s got psychic chaperone powers or something.
I suggested that maybe the three of us could do a game night every month, since we figured it’d be nice to catch up outside of just when we were trying to prevent the world was ending. I must say though, I thought Sandy was intense as a supervisor but she is a thousand times more frightening as a poker player – and we don’t even play for money.
I joked that we needed to take her to a casino, but she very seriously replied, “Oh I’m banned from every one in the state.”
I moved apartments after a month had passed without hearing from Yyohn. I’d been waiting to be absolutely sure, because I didn’t want to saddle a new renter with the whole, ‘you might be pulled into a nightmare world and sacrificed to an interdimensional entity’ thing – that would’ve been really inconsiderate.
I was so appreciative that P’uy̓ám stayed with me for a while. I may write with bravado when describing things in retrospect, but the very real possibility of being dragged through a reflective surface silently in the night never to be seen again, did freak me out.
It was also nice to finally spend some time together where we weren’t worrying about the imminent demise of either myself or our plane of existence (well no more than we usually have to worry, at least).
We decided not to tell anyone at the office that we're dating, it's easier that way. Well, I mean, Sandy knows since she did witness our first kiss whilst they were burying me alive.
As the time approached for our trip, I just really hoped that after not seeing P’uy̓ám for decades, maybe his family would welcome him back this time, forgive him for the minor transgression of ‘leaving home’ (yes, I’m still salty that they pretty much disowned him for that.) I figured if he didn’t, maybe he could get some closure, he could at least see the places where he grew up – homesickness had very clearly been really eating at him ever since we went into the woods for team building.
When we were planning our trip, he told me he’s never liked planes and was hoping to avoid flying. Considering ‘traveling on business’ in our line of work isn’t exactly defined as moving across physical space, it made some sort of sense.
He said it was something about not having solid ground under his feet, but when we mapped it out, it was over 5,000 miles round trip – so we could either spend 40 hours in a car, or 6 hours on a plane, each way.
He decided to give flying a shot.
People sometimes struggle to pronounce my first and last names off my driver’s license or credit cards, but they’ll at least try. As we were checking in the lady at the desk ended with, “Thank you Mr….” and then after staring at his driver’s license in silence for a few moments just gave up and handed it back to him.
I get it though, I mean, if I hadn’t heard him pronounce his last name, I would’ve never guessed it on my own – I’d just never encountered a ‘7’ in a name before I met him.
The security guy at the airport spent a long time studying P’uy̓ám’s passport. He stared at P’uy̓ám, then the passport with narrowed eyes. Back to him, then the passport, several times before eventually shrugging and handing it back over. I peeked at it before he put it away and noticed it said he was born in 1960 – and he may be 233, but he looks like he’s in his early thirties at most, so that explained the look of disbelief written on the agent’s face.
When I asked him about it, he said it’s a lot of work to fake all the documents needed to make the date match his outward appearance.
“It was a lot easier before there were electronic records.” He smiled.
I warned him that he should probably update that soon – bureaucratic apathy would only get him so far.
As we waited in the security line, his eyes widened when he saw people go through the body scanner, and he asked me what it was. When I told him, he turned pale and said he couldn’t go through it.
That left me with some questions.
“P’uy̓ám, when was the last time you flew?”
He had to think about that for a moment. “1986?”
“Yeahhhh… I’m pretty sure you can ask not to, but they’ll probably pat you down if you skip it.”
He grew even paler at that.
“Do you want the scan, or the hands?”
He ran his fingers through his hair and shook his head, indicating that he wanted neither, which unfortunately for him was not an option.
I squeezed his hand, which helped calm him down – only letting go when it was time to show our IDs, and even then, only after the TSA officer glared at us
It’s a good thing we got there early, because when they asked if he’d emptied his pockets, he said no.
So, I watched him remove:
- His wallet
- His phone
- A multi tool
- A small plastic baggie of dirt
- A (rather large) Swiss army knife with the Canadian flag on it ("It was a gift" he informed me)
- One 16g stick of RAM
I hated seeing that look of misery on his face – I tried to maintain comforting eye contact with him as they patted him down.
They did let him keep the dirt with him, after scanning it since it’s apparently not prohibited, (just weird). He proceeded to stick it in one of his beat-up Converse before putting his shoes back on.
I understood the dirt – since he mentioned something about solid ground, I guessed it was as close as he was going to get on a plane – and even the multitool and knife.
But, when I asked him why he was trying to bring 16g of RAM into rural Canada in his pockets he just smiled, “You never know when you might need it.”
As soon as we boarded, I realized flying had been a terrible idea. He had a hard time fitting his legs in since he’s so tall – his knees were just jammed in there the whole time. Before we took off, some guy elbowed him in the face while trying to load a bag into the bin and P’uy̓ám said ‘I’m sorry’ to him. I glared at the guy until he apologized.
Everything freaked him out and he gripped the arm rests for dear life the entire flight. The sound of the wheels, staring out at the wings and the little flaps every time they moved (“Are those supposed to be doing that?” to which I could only unhelpfully shrug), the turbulence. I was just glad they let him keep the dirt.
He looked so absolutely horrified during the entire flight and I felt so bad for him. Before we even landed, I asked him if he wanted to drive on the way back instead of flying and he instantly said yes, relief written across his face.
We had to rent a car to get to his hometown, and it took us an extra two hours to get there because there were so many places he wanted to stop and show me, like this amazing waterfall off highway 99. I could’ve done without the constant feel of eyes on us despite us being alone, but it was definitely beautiful, at least.
We began to see signs for this little touristy shop. As we kept driving, the billboards seemed to multiply, until they were at almost every mile. At my insistence, we stopped.
I regretted that decision as soon as we walked in – the place was devoid of life, there were no other customers, no employees – and something about how the dim, blueish lights cast shadows across the shelves gave me a searing headache.
Not to mention the items on the shelves themselves – a mildewy hoodie, that had ‘Someone who loves me visited Oklahoma and bought me this sweatshirt!’ written in fading letters.
It seemed more like a second hand shop than a tourist trap.
I’d found a beaded purse, but it had a wallet and driver's license still in it.
As we wandered, a case of jewelry across the store caught my eye and drew me towards it – it was insane how beautiful each piece was – all so captivating, and each one was totally unique. They looked almost like blown glass – swirling golds and blues in one, sharp magentas with specs of green in another.
As I was leaning in closely, studying them – it almost looked as if they were moving a bit in their case – someone whispered directly into my ear from over my shoulder, “Thanks for stopping in”
The guy appeared out of nowhere to lean in over my shoulder, causing me to scream (just a reasonable amount).
Creeper dude walked around to position himself behind the counter, asked if I wanted to see anything, before pausing to study my face for a moment. His eyes drifted down to the pendant that P’uy̓ám made me, the one for ‘I’m totally not a human, please don’t eat me’ purposes.
“Oh, this is beautiful”, he whispered, before deciding to violate my personal space by lifting it up and holding it.
His demeanor instantly changed from a handsy salesperson to something else entirely – his grin widened and he looked a little too excited.
“Have you signed our guest book?” He gripped my left wrist tightly, shoved a pen into my right, and studied me in a way that told me he wouldn’t let go until I signed it.
“Can I switch hands please?”
He had the audacity to look at me as if I had mildly inconvenienced him, but did let me switch after I told him that was the only way he’d get actual, readable, words.
I flipped through the thick, yellowing pages to find a blank one and signed it ‘Mikayla G. and P’uy̓ám K.’
“Last names too.”
I sighed and wrote ‘Mikayla Garabedian and P’uy̓ám K--’ (I just wrote random letters after the K because I didn’t like how pushy he was being. )
“Exquisite, aren’t they?” he asked me with a smile, gesturing down at the jewelry. The small piece streaked with yellow and pinks was definitely shuddering in response to him pointing at it.
I nodded, but more out of politeness at that point, because he still had my wrist in a death grip.
“Mikayla, Wait.” I could hear P’uy̓ám call out in the distance, but I felt frozen there – it sounded like he was miles away
“Would you like to see how they’re made?”
Before I could answer, he leaned in and put a stone that resembled the others in shape and size, the only difference is that it was just plain, totally clear – into my hand, which he closed around it. It was like glass, but weightier, and where it touched my skin it burned slightly.
I could hear P’uy̓ám calling my name as he came sprinting over, right as the guy read my name off the guestbook.
P’uy̓ám gasped, but I didn’t understand why he was so freaked out.
Literally nothing happened.
P’uy̓ám helped me free my wrist from creepy guy’s crazy strong grip and sassily smacked the book out of his hands, before he could read it again.
And still, nothing happened.
The guy looked at us with narrowed eyes – a look P’uy̓ám returned, with even more intensity. The guy hissed at us as P’uy̓ám guided me out of the store.
Once we got to the parking lot, P’uy̓ám pulled me close to him and put his chin on the top of my head while quietly muttered that he wasn’t sure how I was unaffected – calling someone their true name is how all those other pendants got filled.
He hadn’t realized at first, but when he saw another collection of ‘items made from tourists’ (I made him repeat that to ensure I’d heard that correctly but he didn’t expound on what the ‘items’ were and I was a bit afraid to ask) in the back, he knew.
That was when P’uy̓ám ran over to me, but the guy already begun to read my name, so he was worried it was too late.
He was relieved when I saw that I didn’t provide either of our actual full names – I’ve learned that sharing your entire, true name isn’t a great idea, not with non-humans, probably not with the internet in general.
Mikayla is what I go by, but it’s my middle name – I mean, my sister’s name is ‘Hasmig’, so yeah, I have a fairly traditional first name, too. And no, I’m not sharing it here.
Look, I’m not saying that you’re going to come track me down and try to bind my soul to an inanimate object to then sell to tourists. But, after that ordeal, I’d rather not take that risk.
When I turned back around, the entire store was just … gone.
Apparently since I’m subletting a part of my soul (or as I like to say, ‘mildly possessed’), P’uy̓ám says mine was probably even more fascinating to the guy.
Due to our detours, it was getting dark by the time we reached P’uy̓ám’s family home.
Even in the low light, I could see the apprehension clearly written across his face. I wondered if he thought I was kidding about pummeling his family with my thousand page book if they were shitty to him. (Because I wasn’t)
The entire time, I’d thought that the worst thing that could happen would be that they rejected him – as we pulled up to the dark house, I realized just how very wrong I was. _
If you want me to let you know when the next part is posted, just comment that you want me to update you, and I'll tag your user name in a comment, when I post the next part :)
2024.05.17 01:25 luftenant-tranner Cart outside Sachsenhausen concentration camp
Was on a family trip to Germany (I'm PIMO and the rest of my family are all still PIMI).
We decided to tour the camp to gain and understanding of the tragedy that took place and we all knew it would be a very sobering day.
Just as we're pulling in the car park at the entry there I saw, 3 JWs on a cart outside a fucking concentration camp.
I can't describe the amount of rage that immediately built up inside me. I was so disgusted. I still am. You go to a place like this and they can't help themselves but advertise this cult. Why why why.
I just walked off for ages and tried to avoid them but my family kept wanting a photo with them. And I was raging in protest but I didn't know how, I almost thought of outting myself right there and then. There was so much pressure and now my family has a selfie of us all there, including ME. I feel so terrible.
They had these special magazines about the purple triangles apparently exclusive to Germany (no awakes or watchtowers) and an app to download that shows all the points in the camp memorials showing things related to the JWs in the camps. Didn't really seem to give much other than a link to the website at the bottom. I can't believe this martyrdom of the victims of such an atrocity is done like this.
Most JWs probably will never know about the declaration of facts and how Rutherford basically said he agreed with anti-semitism in Nazi Germany. Only for it to then put a target on the Bible students backs which has resulted in the deaths and unimaginable suffering for those people.
I hate this cult so much. No one had any sense of how disturbing it was with the cart being there, it was all justified with how they are doing a good thing with "educating" people. Even tour guides went past and complemented the JWs on the cart there. I don't know what to say or think anymore. The org screams about the JWs in the holocaust but I doubt would ever care about other victims, what about all the other "wordly" victims. What about LGBT prisoners, JWs seem completely content that they'll all suffer and die at Armageddon.
Why can't this org collaborate with those holocaust memorial foundations to assist with actual proper research and memorials for the victims, rather than shamelessly advertising the cult at the entrance to a fucking concentration camp.
I'm so disgusted but also tired and exhausted at this point. Tired of being PIMO. I don't know what else to say.
submitted by luftenant-tranner to exjw [link] [comments]
We decided to tour the camp to gain and understanding of the tragedy that took place and we all knew it would be a very sobering day.
Just as we're pulling in the car park at the entry there I saw, 3 JWs on a cart outside a fucking concentration camp.
I can't describe the amount of rage that immediately built up inside me. I was so disgusted. I still am. You go to a place like this and they can't help themselves but advertise this cult. Why why why.
I just walked off for ages and tried to avoid them but my family kept wanting a photo with them. And I was raging in protest but I didn't know how, I almost thought of outting myself right there and then. There was so much pressure and now my family has a selfie of us all there, including ME. I feel so terrible.
They had these special magazines about the purple triangles apparently exclusive to Germany (no awakes or watchtowers) and an app to download that shows all the points in the camp memorials showing things related to the JWs in the camps. Didn't really seem to give much other than a link to the website at the bottom. I can't believe this martyrdom of the victims of such an atrocity is done like this.
Most JWs probably will never know about the declaration of facts and how Rutherford basically said he agreed with anti-semitism in Nazi Germany. Only for it to then put a target on the Bible students backs which has resulted in the deaths and unimaginable suffering for those people.
I hate this cult so much. No one had any sense of how disturbing it was with the cart being there, it was all justified with how they are doing a good thing with "educating" people. Even tour guides went past and complemented the JWs on the cart there. I don't know what to say or think anymore. The org screams about the JWs in the holocaust but I doubt would ever care about other victims, what about all the other "wordly" victims. What about LGBT prisoners, JWs seem completely content that they'll all suffer and die at Armageddon.
Why can't this org collaborate with those holocaust memorial foundations to assist with actual proper research and memorials for the victims, rather than shamelessly advertising the cult at the entrance to a fucking concentration camp.
I'm so disgusted but also tired and exhausted at this point. Tired of being PIMO. I don't know what else to say.
2024.05.17 01:19 uslfd_w Attempt to tackle the controversial topic of karma
There's a lot of misconception on meaning of "karma", at least in Buddhism context. I think truly understanding it can be important for those pursuing exit down this route.
First of all, karma in Buddhism points to the quality of our hearts, not our actions. Actions are just a reflection of our hearts.
To simplify the theology, there are:
Good karma
Bad karma
Pure karma
Most would be surprised to learn that ... in Buddhism, it is postulated that only pure karma leads to an ultimate exit from reincarnation. NOT good karma. (insert surprised Pikachu)
What is pure karma?
Using my own words, pure karma is the wisdom to see through and detach from the kabuki theatre of duality. In pure karma, there is no preference for love over hatred, like over dislike, good over bad. In pure karma, every duality is seen as two sides of the same coin.
Good karma leads to heaven but it's actually not sought after by real Buddhists as they believe the blissful enjoyment of heavens will keep one in the infinite cycle of reincarnation - which is the kabuki theatre of duality.
Bad karma might argubly be worse. That's because the motives of committing bad karma are attachment, greed and hatred etc. It's bad simply because attachment, greed and hatred are very far away from pure karma.
Having said that, anyone can attain pure karma which trescends both good and bad karma.
In Singapore, in the 1990s, there has been at least 5 records of death row prisoner in Changi Prison leaving behind Sarirah (Buddhist relics) which are believed to be found only in cremated ashes of spiritual masters. These death row prisoners have allegedly committed serious crimes and for obvious reason, decided to spend their last years in prison to just focus on studying Buddhism and cultivating pure karma. Finding Sarirah in their ashes was a big shock to many. These could be examples of where pure karma trescends any karma - good or bad.
This is my attempt to simplify the complex theology of karma in Buddhism.
Hope this helps.
submitted by uslfd_w to EscapingPrisonPlanet [link] [comments]
First of all, karma in Buddhism points to the quality of our hearts, not our actions. Actions are just a reflection of our hearts.
To simplify the theology, there are:
Good karma
Bad karma
Pure karma
Most would be surprised to learn that ... in Buddhism, it is postulated that only pure karma leads to an ultimate exit from reincarnation. NOT good karma. (insert surprised Pikachu)
What is pure karma?
Using my own words, pure karma is the wisdom to see through and detach from the kabuki theatre of duality. In pure karma, there is no preference for love over hatred, like over dislike, good over bad. In pure karma, every duality is seen as two sides of the same coin.
Good karma leads to heaven but it's actually not sought after by real Buddhists as they believe the blissful enjoyment of heavens will keep one in the infinite cycle of reincarnation - which is the kabuki theatre of duality.
Bad karma might argubly be worse. That's because the motives of committing bad karma are attachment, greed and hatred etc. It's bad simply because attachment, greed and hatred are very far away from pure karma.
Having said that, anyone can attain pure karma which trescends both good and bad karma.
In Singapore, in the 1990s, there has been at least 5 records of death row prisoner in Changi Prison leaving behind Sarirah (Buddhist relics) which are believed to be found only in cremated ashes of spiritual masters. These death row prisoners have allegedly committed serious crimes and for obvious reason, decided to spend their last years in prison to just focus on studying Buddhism and cultivating pure karma. Finding Sarirah in their ashes was a big shock to many. These could be examples of where pure karma trescends any karma - good or bad.
This is my attempt to simplify the complex theology of karma in Buddhism.
Hope this helps.
2024.05.17 01:15 Mittons1457 Eternity
Chapter 5
Lacy opened her eyes and saw flashing colorful lights. She heard carnival music playing from loudspeakers. She wondered to herself what this place was walking around. She saw multiple vendor stands and carnival games. Everything looked abandoned, food dropped on the floor and chairs flipped. She continued walking, finding a carnival ride. It was one of the droppers. Lacy had memories with her mother going on these kinds of rides. She pushed on following the stands until she stumbled upon a circus tent. She stepped inside and saw a man. The man was very tall and was standing in the middle of the tent. The man turned around and the lights to the tent turned on revealing that the man was a clown on stilts. The clown had a white face with a red nose. His hair was red and was split in two making it look like he had horns. He had on an oversized shirt that looked like multiple blue and red shirts stitched together. His pants were baggy and had obvious blood stains. The stilts made him about ten feet tall. The clown wore a frown on his face, giving Lacy a sense of uncertainty. “What's your name little girl, I have all sorts of tricks that can make you laugh.” The clown's voice was goofy and lighthearted compared to the frown on its face that it kept. “Ah come on, don't be shy. We can still have fun. Not like all of the other’s who left.” Lacy noticed a man lying in a pool of blood next to the clown. He was wearing ringmaster attire. The clown noticed that Lacy saw the body. “He didn’t laugh. Just like the others.” The clown's voice had changed. He now sounded like an older man who had given up on feeling joy. “Did you kill that man?” Lacy asked, already knowing the answer. “No. I released him. He didn’t laugh. He had no joy. So I released him.” Lacy began to back off, gripping her knife. The clown revealed a sword it was holding behind his back. It had blood on it. “I’ll release you too”. The clown began stepping towards her, laughing while doing so. “God Dammit not again” Lacy ran throughout the carnival grounds with the clown closely behind her. She noticed a security trailer. She got to the door and it was locked. Hearing the laughter getting closer. She slammed her body into the door until it finally broke open. The laughter ceased. Lacy looked around the office not seeing anything special. Until she saw a tape recorder.
Chapter 6
Lacy grabbed the recorder. “Who would even have time to make these?”
This is Professor Crawdord. I have managed to survive in this obscure world for what feels like multiple days. This new threat, the clown on stilts seems to be less of a problem than he looks. He’s slow compared to other things I have faced. I discovered evidence as to who this person is. His name is Daniel Larson. He worked at the circus for most of his life. One could only imagine the mind of someone who is laughed at all day for most of their lives. On an unfortunate day Larson snapped and murdered a man on the fairgrounds. The man was another attraction. His specialty was swallowing swords and evidence showed that Larson used the sword to kill him. Larson continued killing, focusing on people that would not laugh at his jokes. The Ringmaster called showtime and at the start of the show Larson told him a joke in front of the audience and when the Ringmaster did not respond Larson killed him. The audience rushed out and as the police showed up Larson had disappeared. Upon searching his trailer they found pictures of other unsolved murders in the area. Larson was never caught. I have not figured out exactly what the holes are but I feel that Larson has to be connected somehow. These holes have a requirement to open. A death must take place for them to appear.
Lacy set the tape recorder down understanding now what had to happen. Lacy looked at the knife in her hand. “He’s a murderer. He’s hurt people. I'd be doing the world a favor.” Lacy opened the trailer door and followed the laughter leading to the circus tent.
Chapter 6
Lacy reached the entrance to the tent, peering inside she saw Larson standing over the ringmaster's body. Lacy moved underneath the stands. Larson turned towards the entrance and began walking around the tent. “I know you're here child.” Lacy ran throughout the underside of the stands. Trying to find an angle to see Larson and which direction he was facing. Lacy could see Larson was searching for her. The stilts made him move slow enough for her to sneak up on him easily. Slowly moving throughout the tent, Lacy got close enough behind Larson to hear him mumbling something to himself. Running towards Larson she kicked the stilts causing him to fall to the ground. Lacy took the opportunity to stab the clown in the shoulder. Larson kicked Lacy away and swept the sword in her direction, cutting her on the leg. Lacy turned to run towards the opening of the tent, but Larson grabbed her foot and lifted the sword. “You’ll pay like they did.” Lacy kicked Larson in the face, got up and ran to leave the tent. “DON’T LEAVE! YOU HAVEN'T LAUGHED YET!” Lacy could hear Larson limping behind her, now off the stilts. She ran until she could no longer hear Larson behind her. “The dropper, I can distract him with the dropper.” Lacy avoided Larson, eventually making her way to the dropper. She didn’t know how to work the machine so she had to guess until she got it right. “Come on, you stupid machine.” Pressing multiple buttons, Lacy could hear the laughter of Larson creeping slowly towards her. Finally the ride shot up into the sky. Larson stepped onto the platform of the dropper. “I found you, please stop. I'll lose everything if you don't laugh.” Lacy took notice of the dropper rushing towards the ground. Just as Larson swiped his sword down at Lacy, she dodged out of the way. As Larson tried to get his footing back, she pushed him under the dropper. The machine crushed him ending the vile man’s savage slaughter. Lacy turned around to see at the bottom of the platform a hole had appeared. “Please, let me go home.” Lacy stepped through the hole, once again blacking out.
Chapter 7
Lacy awoke to a wooded area. She noticed a sign that said “The Weeping Woods”. “Where am I? Am I home?” Standing up she followed a trail marked that led to a camping area. She saw multiple benches and what seemed like a campfire that was put out. She continued along the path seeing a fire watch tower in the distance. “Maybe that place has people”. Continuing to the tower she could hear someone crying from a distance. Lacy kept pushing on the trail until she reached the bottom of the watch tower. The stairs felt endless as Lacy could hear the hissing of a radio coming from the room on top.She noticed that one of the stairs as well as the railing was damaged. Lacy skipped that step in fear of it breaking. Reaching the top everything felt nauseatingly small. She could see a light moving in the distance. The light moved erratically as if it was a person holding a flashlight, running away from something. Lacy turned to the watch room and noticed that the lights were on and someone was trying to reach the radio in the room. Pulling open the door she walked up to the radio and as she tried to contact the person on the other side, the radio shut off. Turning to examine the rest of the room Lacy noticed another tape recorder. Grabbing the recorder she pressed play.
I managed to kill the smiling man. I don’t know what it has done to me emotionally. It seemed so easy at the time. I told myself that the man was a beast. Anyway, I awoke in a forest, I found a path and followed it until I found a woman. The woman was sitting in the middle of the path. She was wearing a white dress that was covered in dirt. I could not see her face, but I could hear her. She was crying and her body looked frail. As I got closer I noticed her hair was long enough to cover her entire face. She asked me a question. “Have you seen Kevin?” I had no answer. Fear took over every part of my body. I could feel my muscles start to ache at the thought of having to run from this girl. A loud growl came from the girl. It shaked my very soul. I managed to escape to her. I made my way to the watch room where I will rest for a while. To whoever finds this tape, you know what you have to do.
Lacy put the recorder down. Looking out of the window she saw the light continue to move in the forest before it stopped. As Lacy turned to leave the watch room. The light disappeared.
Chapter 8
Walking along the path that the light she saw was on, Lacy couldn't help but see the image of the girl the Crawford had described in her head. Looking at the knife she still had, she knew there was only one way to get out of this forest. Along the trail Lacy found the light source that she had seen. It belonged to a man that was lying still on the floor. His flashlight was still on. “Hey, are you alright?” Lacy asked the body. Turning the body over Lacy stepped back in horror. The man's body was pale and looked shriveled. Lacy brushed the fear off and picked up his flashlight. As Lacy picked it up she heard a voice from behind her. “Have you seen Kevin?” Fear erupted in Lacy as the words were familiar to her. Remembering the recorder she slowly stood up before turning around to face the being. The girl was exactly as described in the tape. Except for one detail. She had a wedding veil on. “I don’t know who Kevin is, I'm sorry” Lacy said the first thing that came to her mind, instantly regretting it. The girl opened her mouth at an angle that rivaled pythons. A ghastly wail rang out of her mouth, ringing Lacys ears. Without hesitation Lacy plunged the knife into the girl's neck. Pulling it out the wailing did not cease. It didn't affect her. Lacy turned to run, almost tripping over the body of the man. As Lacy was running the girl was on all fours crawling towards her at a faster pace than any normal person could crawl. She looked like an animal. Lacy noticed that the girl was no longer screaming, but was crying. The tears were blood red and she looked sympathetic to Lacy. Running past the trees Lacy looked for an answer to the problem that was crawling behind her. Trying to listen over the sound of her own breathing and the crying of the girl behind her, she heard the sound of a river flowing in the distance. Running towards the sound of the river, Lacy tripped over a log tumbling to the ground. Almost in an instant the girl climbed on top of her. Her eyes met Lacy as her mouth opened in the same disgusting manner that it had before and just as her mouth opened the same way as it had before, the same sound erupted as well. Lacy felt her blood boil at the sound, feeling her life leaving her body. In a final attempt to free herself she freed her hand and stuck the knife directly into the girl's mouth. The girl’s scream stopped and turned into a painful yelp rather than an angry roar. Lacy used the moment to kick the girl off of her and got up to run. As she began to run the girl grabbed her leg, piercing her skin with her nails. Lacy pushed through and kept running. As Lacy was running she turned her head around to see the girl just sitting there, crying. Lacy got a fair distance away and began walking to regain strength. Finally making it to the river, she stopped to drink. Lacy made a sudden realization. She wasn't thirsty. After everything she had been through she was not thirsty at all. Not only was she not thirsty, but she was not hungry either. “I have to come up with a plan”. Lacy understood the rules of this strange place. Something has to die in order for one of those holes to appear. “But I saw that guy's body, why wasn’t there a hole there? No, these beings, Larson, The Smiling Man, This girl, they don’t get to leave. That’s why Crawford said you know what you have to do. The holes appear when the beings in these places die. The girl has to die for a hole to appear.” Lacy was talking outloud, it made her feel less alone. As Lacy was washing the blood off of her she looked into the river. She could see the moon in the reflection as well as her face. Looking into her eyes she noticed a drop hit the river. Looking at the other side of the river. She saw the girl crouching down, looking directly at Lacy with her blood red eyes.
Chapter 9
The river wasn’t wide. It would take the girl less than 5 seconds to cross. Lacy had to think fast. Her mind was racing as the girl just sat there and watched her. An idea popped into her head. The watchtower. Almost supernaturally, as Lacy had the idea the girl lounged towards her. Lacy dodged out of the way and broke into a sprint hearing the girl crying and crawling after her. After what felt like hours of running and having this thing chase after her, she made it to the tower. The girl was crawling after her, looking like an alligator chasing its prey. Stepping onto the steps Lacy felt her legs start to give up. She pushed on, her muscles burning. Turning her head she saw the girl crawling up the stairs. Lacy’s heart was racing as her body needed to rest or it would shut down. “Where is Kevin?” The girl screamed for the first time since she had begun chasing Lacy. Lacy could feel her body giving up and just as she passed the broken step, her legs collapsed. Lacy layed on the steps as the girl crawled up the steps towards her. The girl was crawling slower now that she had seen Lacy was on the ground. Lacy continued backing up on the stairs. Just as the girl was about to lounge at Lacy she put her hand on the broken step. Seeing this Lacy kicked the broken step causing it to break. The girl lost her footing and Lacy pushed her off of the balcony. The girl fell from the immense height of the tower. Lacy took the moment to just lay on the steps. Hours passed as Lacy rested. She mustered up enough strength to go down the stairs. At the bottom of the tower she found the body of the girl. She looked as if all of her bones were broken. Her eyes were open and Lacy could see the blood pooling in them. Lacy became nauseous at the sight of her body. Looking to the left she saw a hole. A hole that was all too familiar with her. Lacy collected her thoughts. “This has to end” Stepping through the hole, only one thing was in her mind. This has to end.
Chapter 10
Lacy woke up to the sound of snow falling. The room that she was in was warm. A fire was crackling in the corner of the room. Looking out of the window of the house she saw a massive snow storm that affected her vision to see past the tree line. Lacy examined her surroundings and saw a normal looking room. In the middle was a couch. Just looking at the couch made Lacy tired. Walking around the cabin she noticed the room looked untouched, unlike every other place she had been in. Sitting down on the couch Lacy's eyes became heavy as she began to fall asleep. Just as she was about to pass out a loud bugle of an elk erupted. Lacy ran to the window to see where it was. As she looked outside it seemed as if the storm had stopped for just a second. As the snow ceased, an elk poked through the tree line. Its eyes were looking directly at Lacy. Just as fast as it disappeared, the snow storm erupted. “You’re a failure Lacy.” A voice swept through the cabin. It sounded familiar. “You killed her you know” Lacy placed the voice. It was her father. Lacy’s mind was racing. How did he get here? Why was he saying this? Where was he? And her last thought, Was this really him? The elk bugle rang throughout the cabin again. “I pitied you” The voice was Collin. Lacy searched the windows of the house trying to find the origin of the voices she was hearing. “Everyone hates you” Lacy stepped towards the door reaching for the handle. A sudden and intense fear brushed over her. Lacy felt that if she opened that door, whatever was telling her these things would take her life. Stepping away from the door she heard the Elk bugle again. “Why did you leave me Lacy?” The voice was her father again. This time it sounded as if he was crying. “I told you I needed you and you left. After everything I sacrificed for you, after all of the times I had to go to that school to bail you out. This is how you repay me.” Lacy could feel her emotions boiling inside of her. Everything that was being said was true in a sense so Lacy was letting it affect her more than anything else ever had. She could feel tears running down her face. “I'm trying to get back to you dad, I just don't know how.” Lacy looked towards the window and saw the Elk. It had gotten closer to the cabin. The snow had calmed down. The Elk opened its mouth and spoke in the voice of her father. “You won’t make it out of this place alive Lacy”.
Chapter 11
Looking into the eyes of the Elk, Lacy’s blood ran cold. Her mind was racing. Animals can’t talk but yet this Elk just looked her in the eyes and spoke in the voice of her father as well as other people she knew. The snow had ceased tremendously compared to when she had first appeared in the cabin. Lacy worked up the courage to ask the Elk a question. “What do you want from me?” The Elk did not reply, instead it turned to the tree line and left. Remembering the rules of this place, Lacy understood that the Elk had to die. The question was how she was going to accomplish that. Lacy gathered enough courage to open the door to examine her surroundings. Outside of the cabin was a blanket of blinding snow. The sun was high in the sky blinding Lacy. Before Lacy went back inside she noticed a wooden stump sticking out of the snow. Sticking out of the stump was an axe. Lacy slammed the door shut and closed the latch. Lacy knew that the dull kitchen knife she had wouldn’t be able to handle an elk, but an axe would. Lacy began to plan a way to get to the Elk. She took notice of certain aspects that the Elk had. Every time it made the bugle noise, it would change voices. The closer it got, the more the snowstorm would calm. Lacy had to play its game until it got close enough to the axe so that she could reach the axe before it could reach her. The elk bugle sounded again. “You really think that anyone thought you could accomplish anything.”. It was her teacher. Lacy peered out of the window. The snow had ceased ever so slightly. Lacy could see the silhouette of the elk near the same spot it was in before. “What do you think, we cared about you? We pitied you and your pitiful existence.” Lacy began to brush off the sentences coming from the elk's mouth. Lacy was contemplating if the axe play was the way to move further. The bugle went off again. “Lacy” the voice was the smiling man. The smiling man was a recent memory to Lacy. This elk had to know who she was to be able to know who he was. Lacy looked out of the window. The elk was watching her. This time Lacy saw it make the awful sound she had continued to hear. Instead of a voice she had heard. It was a voice that was unfamiliar to her. “Why fight it child. Why fight what you truly are. Why fight human nature? Why fight reality? Do you truly think you can escape? Do you truly believe that you will see your father again? Do you believe that you have people to rely on in this place? Do you truly believe that God is with you here? You have no chance. Smite me down if you must. HOPE SHOULD BE ABANDONED IN THIS PLACE” Lacy brushed off every word that was said. Rushing to the door she threw it open. Running through the snow. She reached the axe. It was a standard fire axe with a yellow handle and black blade. It wasn't heavy to her, it had to be adrenaline. Rushing towards the elk it did not fight back. She plunged the axe head into the elk's skull. Blood rushed out of the wound, covering Lacy. The elk fell to the floor with a booming thud. As Lacy stared at the body of the animal lying in the snow, a hole appeared behind her. Lacy had to believe that there was an end to this. She stepped through the hole. With a new found axe.
submitted by Mittons1457 to Horror_stories [link] [comments]
Lacy opened her eyes and saw flashing colorful lights. She heard carnival music playing from loudspeakers. She wondered to herself what this place was walking around. She saw multiple vendor stands and carnival games. Everything looked abandoned, food dropped on the floor and chairs flipped. She continued walking, finding a carnival ride. It was one of the droppers. Lacy had memories with her mother going on these kinds of rides. She pushed on following the stands until she stumbled upon a circus tent. She stepped inside and saw a man. The man was very tall and was standing in the middle of the tent. The man turned around and the lights to the tent turned on revealing that the man was a clown on stilts. The clown had a white face with a red nose. His hair was red and was split in two making it look like he had horns. He had on an oversized shirt that looked like multiple blue and red shirts stitched together. His pants were baggy and had obvious blood stains. The stilts made him about ten feet tall. The clown wore a frown on his face, giving Lacy a sense of uncertainty. “What's your name little girl, I have all sorts of tricks that can make you laugh.” The clown's voice was goofy and lighthearted compared to the frown on its face that it kept. “Ah come on, don't be shy. We can still have fun. Not like all of the other’s who left.” Lacy noticed a man lying in a pool of blood next to the clown. He was wearing ringmaster attire. The clown noticed that Lacy saw the body. “He didn’t laugh. Just like the others.” The clown's voice had changed. He now sounded like an older man who had given up on feeling joy. “Did you kill that man?” Lacy asked, already knowing the answer. “No. I released him. He didn’t laugh. He had no joy. So I released him.” Lacy began to back off, gripping her knife. The clown revealed a sword it was holding behind his back. It had blood on it. “I’ll release you too”. The clown began stepping towards her, laughing while doing so. “God Dammit not again” Lacy ran throughout the carnival grounds with the clown closely behind her. She noticed a security trailer. She got to the door and it was locked. Hearing the laughter getting closer. She slammed her body into the door until it finally broke open. The laughter ceased. Lacy looked around the office not seeing anything special. Until she saw a tape recorder.
Chapter 6
Lacy grabbed the recorder. “Who would even have time to make these?”
This is Professor Crawdord. I have managed to survive in this obscure world for what feels like multiple days. This new threat, the clown on stilts seems to be less of a problem than he looks. He’s slow compared to other things I have faced. I discovered evidence as to who this person is. His name is Daniel Larson. He worked at the circus for most of his life. One could only imagine the mind of someone who is laughed at all day for most of their lives. On an unfortunate day Larson snapped and murdered a man on the fairgrounds. The man was another attraction. His specialty was swallowing swords and evidence showed that Larson used the sword to kill him. Larson continued killing, focusing on people that would not laugh at his jokes. The Ringmaster called showtime and at the start of the show Larson told him a joke in front of the audience and when the Ringmaster did not respond Larson killed him. The audience rushed out and as the police showed up Larson had disappeared. Upon searching his trailer they found pictures of other unsolved murders in the area. Larson was never caught. I have not figured out exactly what the holes are but I feel that Larson has to be connected somehow. These holes have a requirement to open. A death must take place for them to appear.
Lacy set the tape recorder down understanding now what had to happen. Lacy looked at the knife in her hand. “He’s a murderer. He’s hurt people. I'd be doing the world a favor.” Lacy opened the trailer door and followed the laughter leading to the circus tent.
Chapter 6
Lacy reached the entrance to the tent, peering inside she saw Larson standing over the ringmaster's body. Lacy moved underneath the stands. Larson turned towards the entrance and began walking around the tent. “I know you're here child.” Lacy ran throughout the underside of the stands. Trying to find an angle to see Larson and which direction he was facing. Lacy could see Larson was searching for her. The stilts made him move slow enough for her to sneak up on him easily. Slowly moving throughout the tent, Lacy got close enough behind Larson to hear him mumbling something to himself. Running towards Larson she kicked the stilts causing him to fall to the ground. Lacy took the opportunity to stab the clown in the shoulder. Larson kicked Lacy away and swept the sword in her direction, cutting her on the leg. Lacy turned to run towards the opening of the tent, but Larson grabbed her foot and lifted the sword. “You’ll pay like they did.” Lacy kicked Larson in the face, got up and ran to leave the tent. “DON’T LEAVE! YOU HAVEN'T LAUGHED YET!” Lacy could hear Larson limping behind her, now off the stilts. She ran until she could no longer hear Larson behind her. “The dropper, I can distract him with the dropper.” Lacy avoided Larson, eventually making her way to the dropper. She didn’t know how to work the machine so she had to guess until she got it right. “Come on, you stupid machine.” Pressing multiple buttons, Lacy could hear the laughter of Larson creeping slowly towards her. Finally the ride shot up into the sky. Larson stepped onto the platform of the dropper. “I found you, please stop. I'll lose everything if you don't laugh.” Lacy took notice of the dropper rushing towards the ground. Just as Larson swiped his sword down at Lacy, she dodged out of the way. As Larson tried to get his footing back, she pushed him under the dropper. The machine crushed him ending the vile man’s savage slaughter. Lacy turned around to see at the bottom of the platform a hole had appeared. “Please, let me go home.” Lacy stepped through the hole, once again blacking out.
Chapter 7
Lacy awoke to a wooded area. She noticed a sign that said “The Weeping Woods”. “Where am I? Am I home?” Standing up she followed a trail marked that led to a camping area. She saw multiple benches and what seemed like a campfire that was put out. She continued along the path seeing a fire watch tower in the distance. “Maybe that place has people”. Continuing to the tower she could hear someone crying from a distance. Lacy kept pushing on the trail until she reached the bottom of the watch tower. The stairs felt endless as Lacy could hear the hissing of a radio coming from the room on top.She noticed that one of the stairs as well as the railing was damaged. Lacy skipped that step in fear of it breaking. Reaching the top everything felt nauseatingly small. She could see a light moving in the distance. The light moved erratically as if it was a person holding a flashlight, running away from something. Lacy turned to the watch room and noticed that the lights were on and someone was trying to reach the radio in the room. Pulling open the door she walked up to the radio and as she tried to contact the person on the other side, the radio shut off. Turning to examine the rest of the room Lacy noticed another tape recorder. Grabbing the recorder she pressed play.
I managed to kill the smiling man. I don’t know what it has done to me emotionally. It seemed so easy at the time. I told myself that the man was a beast. Anyway, I awoke in a forest, I found a path and followed it until I found a woman. The woman was sitting in the middle of the path. She was wearing a white dress that was covered in dirt. I could not see her face, but I could hear her. She was crying and her body looked frail. As I got closer I noticed her hair was long enough to cover her entire face. She asked me a question. “Have you seen Kevin?” I had no answer. Fear took over every part of my body. I could feel my muscles start to ache at the thought of having to run from this girl. A loud growl came from the girl. It shaked my very soul. I managed to escape to her. I made my way to the watch room where I will rest for a while. To whoever finds this tape, you know what you have to do.
Lacy put the recorder down. Looking out of the window she saw the light continue to move in the forest before it stopped. As Lacy turned to leave the watch room. The light disappeared.
Chapter 8
Walking along the path that the light she saw was on, Lacy couldn't help but see the image of the girl the Crawford had described in her head. Looking at the knife she still had, she knew there was only one way to get out of this forest. Along the trail Lacy found the light source that she had seen. It belonged to a man that was lying still on the floor. His flashlight was still on. “Hey, are you alright?” Lacy asked the body. Turning the body over Lacy stepped back in horror. The man's body was pale and looked shriveled. Lacy brushed the fear off and picked up his flashlight. As Lacy picked it up she heard a voice from behind her. “Have you seen Kevin?” Fear erupted in Lacy as the words were familiar to her. Remembering the recorder she slowly stood up before turning around to face the being. The girl was exactly as described in the tape. Except for one detail. She had a wedding veil on. “I don’t know who Kevin is, I'm sorry” Lacy said the first thing that came to her mind, instantly regretting it. The girl opened her mouth at an angle that rivaled pythons. A ghastly wail rang out of her mouth, ringing Lacys ears. Without hesitation Lacy plunged the knife into the girl's neck. Pulling it out the wailing did not cease. It didn't affect her. Lacy turned to run, almost tripping over the body of the man. As Lacy was running the girl was on all fours crawling towards her at a faster pace than any normal person could crawl. She looked like an animal. Lacy noticed that the girl was no longer screaming, but was crying. The tears were blood red and she looked sympathetic to Lacy. Running past the trees Lacy looked for an answer to the problem that was crawling behind her. Trying to listen over the sound of her own breathing and the crying of the girl behind her, she heard the sound of a river flowing in the distance. Running towards the sound of the river, Lacy tripped over a log tumbling to the ground. Almost in an instant the girl climbed on top of her. Her eyes met Lacy as her mouth opened in the same disgusting manner that it had before and just as her mouth opened the same way as it had before, the same sound erupted as well. Lacy felt her blood boil at the sound, feeling her life leaving her body. In a final attempt to free herself she freed her hand and stuck the knife directly into the girl's mouth. The girl’s scream stopped and turned into a painful yelp rather than an angry roar. Lacy used the moment to kick the girl off of her and got up to run. As she began to run the girl grabbed her leg, piercing her skin with her nails. Lacy pushed through and kept running. As Lacy was running she turned her head around to see the girl just sitting there, crying. Lacy got a fair distance away and began walking to regain strength. Finally making it to the river, she stopped to drink. Lacy made a sudden realization. She wasn't thirsty. After everything she had been through she was not thirsty at all. Not only was she not thirsty, but she was not hungry either. “I have to come up with a plan”. Lacy understood the rules of this strange place. Something has to die in order for one of those holes to appear. “But I saw that guy's body, why wasn’t there a hole there? No, these beings, Larson, The Smiling Man, This girl, they don’t get to leave. That’s why Crawford said you know what you have to do. The holes appear when the beings in these places die. The girl has to die for a hole to appear.” Lacy was talking outloud, it made her feel less alone. As Lacy was washing the blood off of her she looked into the river. She could see the moon in the reflection as well as her face. Looking into her eyes she noticed a drop hit the river. Looking at the other side of the river. She saw the girl crouching down, looking directly at Lacy with her blood red eyes.
Chapter 9
The river wasn’t wide. It would take the girl less than 5 seconds to cross. Lacy had to think fast. Her mind was racing as the girl just sat there and watched her. An idea popped into her head. The watchtower. Almost supernaturally, as Lacy had the idea the girl lounged towards her. Lacy dodged out of the way and broke into a sprint hearing the girl crying and crawling after her. After what felt like hours of running and having this thing chase after her, she made it to the tower. The girl was crawling after her, looking like an alligator chasing its prey. Stepping onto the steps Lacy felt her legs start to give up. She pushed on, her muscles burning. Turning her head she saw the girl crawling up the stairs. Lacy’s heart was racing as her body needed to rest or it would shut down. “Where is Kevin?” The girl screamed for the first time since she had begun chasing Lacy. Lacy could feel her body giving up and just as she passed the broken step, her legs collapsed. Lacy layed on the steps as the girl crawled up the steps towards her. The girl was crawling slower now that she had seen Lacy was on the ground. Lacy continued backing up on the stairs. Just as the girl was about to lounge at Lacy she put her hand on the broken step. Seeing this Lacy kicked the broken step causing it to break. The girl lost her footing and Lacy pushed her off of the balcony. The girl fell from the immense height of the tower. Lacy took the moment to just lay on the steps. Hours passed as Lacy rested. She mustered up enough strength to go down the stairs. At the bottom of the tower she found the body of the girl. She looked as if all of her bones were broken. Her eyes were open and Lacy could see the blood pooling in them. Lacy became nauseous at the sight of her body. Looking to the left she saw a hole. A hole that was all too familiar with her. Lacy collected her thoughts. “This has to end” Stepping through the hole, only one thing was in her mind. This has to end.
Chapter 10
Lacy woke up to the sound of snow falling. The room that she was in was warm. A fire was crackling in the corner of the room. Looking out of the window of the house she saw a massive snow storm that affected her vision to see past the tree line. Lacy examined her surroundings and saw a normal looking room. In the middle was a couch. Just looking at the couch made Lacy tired. Walking around the cabin she noticed the room looked untouched, unlike every other place she had been in. Sitting down on the couch Lacy's eyes became heavy as she began to fall asleep. Just as she was about to pass out a loud bugle of an elk erupted. Lacy ran to the window to see where it was. As she looked outside it seemed as if the storm had stopped for just a second. As the snow ceased, an elk poked through the tree line. Its eyes were looking directly at Lacy. Just as fast as it disappeared, the snow storm erupted. “You’re a failure Lacy.” A voice swept through the cabin. It sounded familiar. “You killed her you know” Lacy placed the voice. It was her father. Lacy’s mind was racing. How did he get here? Why was he saying this? Where was he? And her last thought, Was this really him? The elk bugle rang throughout the cabin again. “I pitied you” The voice was Collin. Lacy searched the windows of the house trying to find the origin of the voices she was hearing. “Everyone hates you” Lacy stepped towards the door reaching for the handle. A sudden and intense fear brushed over her. Lacy felt that if she opened that door, whatever was telling her these things would take her life. Stepping away from the door she heard the Elk bugle again. “Why did you leave me Lacy?” The voice was her father again. This time it sounded as if he was crying. “I told you I needed you and you left. After everything I sacrificed for you, after all of the times I had to go to that school to bail you out. This is how you repay me.” Lacy could feel her emotions boiling inside of her. Everything that was being said was true in a sense so Lacy was letting it affect her more than anything else ever had. She could feel tears running down her face. “I'm trying to get back to you dad, I just don't know how.” Lacy looked towards the window and saw the Elk. It had gotten closer to the cabin. The snow had calmed down. The Elk opened its mouth and spoke in the voice of her father. “You won’t make it out of this place alive Lacy”.
Chapter 11
Looking into the eyes of the Elk, Lacy’s blood ran cold. Her mind was racing. Animals can’t talk but yet this Elk just looked her in the eyes and spoke in the voice of her father as well as other people she knew. The snow had ceased tremendously compared to when she had first appeared in the cabin. Lacy worked up the courage to ask the Elk a question. “What do you want from me?” The Elk did not reply, instead it turned to the tree line and left. Remembering the rules of this place, Lacy understood that the Elk had to die. The question was how she was going to accomplish that. Lacy gathered enough courage to open the door to examine her surroundings. Outside of the cabin was a blanket of blinding snow. The sun was high in the sky blinding Lacy. Before Lacy went back inside she noticed a wooden stump sticking out of the snow. Sticking out of the stump was an axe. Lacy slammed the door shut and closed the latch. Lacy knew that the dull kitchen knife she had wouldn’t be able to handle an elk, but an axe would. Lacy began to plan a way to get to the Elk. She took notice of certain aspects that the Elk had. Every time it made the bugle noise, it would change voices. The closer it got, the more the snowstorm would calm. Lacy had to play its game until it got close enough to the axe so that she could reach the axe before it could reach her. The elk bugle sounded again. “You really think that anyone thought you could accomplish anything.”. It was her teacher. Lacy peered out of the window. The snow had ceased ever so slightly. Lacy could see the silhouette of the elk near the same spot it was in before. “What do you think, we cared about you? We pitied you and your pitiful existence.” Lacy began to brush off the sentences coming from the elk's mouth. Lacy was contemplating if the axe play was the way to move further. The bugle went off again. “Lacy” the voice was the smiling man. The smiling man was a recent memory to Lacy. This elk had to know who she was to be able to know who he was. Lacy looked out of the window. The elk was watching her. This time Lacy saw it make the awful sound she had continued to hear. Instead of a voice she had heard. It was a voice that was unfamiliar to her. “Why fight it child. Why fight what you truly are. Why fight human nature? Why fight reality? Do you truly think you can escape? Do you truly believe that you will see your father again? Do you believe that you have people to rely on in this place? Do you truly believe that God is with you here? You have no chance. Smite me down if you must. HOPE SHOULD BE ABANDONED IN THIS PLACE” Lacy brushed off every word that was said. Rushing to the door she threw it open. Running through the snow. She reached the axe. It was a standard fire axe with a yellow handle and black blade. It wasn't heavy to her, it had to be adrenaline. Rushing towards the elk it did not fight back. She plunged the axe head into the elk's skull. Blood rushed out of the wound, covering Lacy. The elk fell to the floor with a booming thud. As Lacy stared at the body of the animal lying in the snow, a hole appeared behind her. Lacy had to believe that there was an end to this. She stepped through the hole. With a new found axe.
2024.05.17 00:44 valonianfool The ethics of hunting
While casually scrolling I found a comment arguing against the concept of "ethical hunting"-specifically the argument that death by hunters is more humane for prey species than being torn apart by predators.
The OP stated that wild animals don't have the capacity to choose ethics or humanity while surviving, and since the majority of predators die of starvation due to low hunting success rate you could argue that it would be ethical to shoot wolves, tigers and lions on sight to safe them from starvation, but that isn't the case.
They state that "Most humans have removed themselves from nature and did a great job of messing it over with introducing invasive and alien domestic species to systematically breed and slaughter, and their encroachment on wild land has made survival by native species slimmer and for the worse."
They argue that "Being humans, we do get to choose how we interact with wildlife as individuals."
According to them, since human hunters are far more superior in terms of success than any other predatory animal, hunting by humans is detrimental and inhumane because it removes fit and healthy animals that would've otherwise continued to pass on their genes from the breeding pool.
In their words:
"Killing select animals the way we humans can and do, with firearms especially, was not accounted for in evolution to happen. A strong or fast or clever animal will escape its predator, or fight it off, surviving one more day to pass on its genes - maybe one less day for a predator who won’t, or vice-versa; the predator kills the prey to feed its young and they survive longer and grow, the prey dies and its material gone. A man with a gun will always win. There is no chance, or nature in that."
To people here who hunt and support hunting, whats your opinion on this argument?
In my opinion, the flaw in the argument that human hunters with guns always win and are far superior to predators isn't true.
African wild dogs have an average hunting success rate of 80%: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7482643/
while deer hunters in the US have an average success rate of 41%, ranging from 18% to 71% depending on area: https://deerassociation.com/top-10-states-for-deer-hunter-success-and-multiple-deer-tagged/#:\~:text=Only%2041%25%20of%20all%20hunters,to%2071%25%20in%20South%20Carolina.
so the truth is that there are species even more successful than us at hunting in some instances.
However, I think the most important point is that humans aren't and shouldn't remove ourselves from nature. We are a part of the ecosystem, like it or not, and we have fulfilled the ecosystem role of predators since the beginning of our species. And for as long as we've had our intelligence-long before modern technology-we have an incredible advantage over natural predators. But that does not diminish our role in regulating prey species.
submitted by valonianfool to AntiVegan [link] [comments]
The OP stated that wild animals don't have the capacity to choose ethics or humanity while surviving, and since the majority of predators die of starvation due to low hunting success rate you could argue that it would be ethical to shoot wolves, tigers and lions on sight to safe them from starvation, but that isn't the case.
They state that "Most humans have removed themselves from nature and did a great job of messing it over with introducing invasive and alien domestic species to systematically breed and slaughter, and their encroachment on wild land has made survival by native species slimmer and for the worse."
They argue that "Being humans, we do get to choose how we interact with wildlife as individuals."
According to them, since human hunters are far more superior in terms of success than any other predatory animal, hunting by humans is detrimental and inhumane because it removes fit and healthy animals that would've otherwise continued to pass on their genes from the breeding pool.
In their words:
"Killing select animals the way we humans can and do, with firearms especially, was not accounted for in evolution to happen. A strong or fast or clever animal will escape its predator, or fight it off, surviving one more day to pass on its genes - maybe one less day for a predator who won’t, or vice-versa; the predator kills the prey to feed its young and they survive longer and grow, the prey dies and its material gone. A man with a gun will always win. There is no chance, or nature in that."
To people here who hunt and support hunting, whats your opinion on this argument?
In my opinion, the flaw in the argument that human hunters with guns always win and are far superior to predators isn't true.
African wild dogs have an average hunting success rate of 80%: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7482643/
while deer hunters in the US have an average success rate of 41%, ranging from 18% to 71% depending on area: https://deerassociation.com/top-10-states-for-deer-hunter-success-and-multiple-deer-tagged/#:\~:text=Only%2041%25%20of%20all%20hunters,to%2071%25%20in%20South%20Carolina.
so the truth is that there are species even more successful than us at hunting in some instances.
However, I think the most important point is that humans aren't and shouldn't remove ourselves from nature. We are a part of the ecosystem, like it or not, and we have fulfilled the ecosystem role of predators since the beginning of our species. And for as long as we've had our intelligence-long before modern technology-we have an incredible advantage over natural predators. But that does not diminish our role in regulating prey species.
2024.05.17 00:34 EmpireOfTheDawn Ronnel Arryn, Lord of the Eyrie, Defender of the Guarded Domains, the Last King
PC
Discord Tag: 7upName and House: Ronnel Arryn
Age: 33
Cultural Group: Valeman
Appearance: Cheekbones poised like a falcon perched, an aquiline nose after a raptor's beak, a stature rivalling a mountain's (if it were the size of a tall man), and blue eyes the same color as the sky. Aside from a propagandist's parallels to whatever sigil their patron displays, Ronnel Arryn errs from the example of the aloof falcon. Once possessed of a heedless will, a brashness and an impatience, those qualities have been tamed in turn by fatherhood, husbandhood, and rulership—though those traits still persist, merely tinged by the manner that an elder brother might take with the younger. His hair has shifted from dirty blond to sandy brown with age, and a trimmed beard covers his jaw.
Trait: Inspiring
Skill(s): Blunt Weapons, Cavalryman, Tactician, Cunning (e)
Talent(s): Falconry, hunting (non-mechanical 🤫🧏♂️), dragonriding
Negative Trait(s): N/A
Starting Title(s): Lord of the Eyrie, Lord of the Vale, Defender of the Guarded Domains of Arryn, Warden of the East, Warden of the Green Fork, First and Last of His Name, the King Who Flew, Rider of Vhagar (sometimes), and the Last King in Westeros
Starting Location: Feast
Family Tree
AC
Name and House: Marq HardyngAge: 32
Cultural Group: Valeman
Appearance: A broad and ruddy man, blonde, brown-eyed, and bearded. Marq Hardyng wears his duty on his sleeve; that duty mostly being hunting with his milk brother.
Trait: Hale
Skill(s): Swords, Investigator (e)
Talent(s): Tourney lore x3
Negative Trait(s): N/A
Starting Title(s): Scion of House Hardyng
Starting Location: Feast
Biography
Little of the Last King’s early years are of much import; Ronnel Arryn was born to King Joffrey I and Queen Sharra Arryn. His few memories of his father were that of a pallid man, wan and sickly but still a king who bloody well fought the illness that plagued him.Or perhaps those were just fanciful tales, an imagined story that supplanted the truth of the matter.
Joffrey Arryn did at least survive, if he did not fight. Ronnel’s siblings, Jonos and Roland, would be born in succession. The falcons grew in number, Joffrey’s ailment ceased, and—the gods took him away and brought Arwen Arryn into the world.
Shortly after his sister’s birth, Sharra Arryn dressed her son in royal regalia and placed a crown on his head, assuming rule as sole regent while the boy distracted himself with toys and games. He would be nursed with Marq Hardyng, and he and his milk brother grew to be quick friends.
The Queen Sharra could not rest. There were new contenders on the horizon, greater than what meager assaults the Hoares could occasionally muster against the Bloody Gate: the threefold conquerors atop their dragons. Where the ravens sent by Aegon were met with scorn by Durrandon and hubris by the Hoares, Sharra offered alliance. Her hand in marriage and the left bank of the Green Fork to be annexed into the Guarded Domains.
The dragons rejected the offer, and instead, a Velaryon fleet was sent to take Gulltown and establish a foothold. They were repelled and the Targaryen ships were sunk for that transgression, but Vhagar’s fire consumed the Grafton fleet with them.
Ronnel knew what war was. It was like those tales in storybooks, that of the Griffin King and the Winged Knight, the legends of the Battle of Sevenstars. He, Jonos, and Marq fashioned themselves as Jaime Corbray or Luceon Templeton and fought each other over who could best live up to Artys Arryn’s example. When the Gates of the Moon swelled with men-at-arms, knights, and levied smallfolk, the three would find the most fearsome looking of them and challenge them to duels. Once he heard of dragons, though, Ronnel was consumed. He begged his mother to let him lead a parlay under a peace banner just so that he could see them, but Sharra sent him off to the nurses or left him to kick rocks in the courtyard.
The banners gathered, and the defenses were headed by Lord Rodrik Hardyng. Orders were given, the soldiers were drilled. And Vhagar’s wings cast a shadow so large that it engulfed the Bloody Gate whole. Shouting on the ramparts and in the valleys, but high above in the Eyrie? Ronnel, then just eight, was in awe at the sight.
Sharra could only muster a smile when she returned to find her son on Visenya’s lap. An accord was struck, on Ronnel’s terms this time: he asked to fly on Vhagar and his mother would surrender the crown to the Targaryen Queen. The mercy that Visenya afforded was well-taken, though in Sharra’s mind, the threat of dragonfire crystallized.
A marked shift came then. There were no battles to be won, no politicking to be done that outweighed the import of her sons and her daughter. The Queen-Regent, now the Lady-Regent, empowered her son’s advisors and devoted her time to looking after her children. When Visenya returned after burning House Sunderland whole and gave reprimands, Sharra frowned and offered blunt words in turn, which the Queen acquiesced to. Their relationship thawed hence, though Ronnel had never wavered in his admiration of the Targaryen. A Winged-Knight-Come-Again. Perhaps he could ride a dragon of his own one day.
Ronnel was a rowdy lad and by the time he was of squiring age, he was content to leave the rule of his lands to his mother and whoever she picked as an advisor. Lords such as Lyn Egen, Willem Ryger, and Rodrik Templeton would come to advise the young lord or hawk with him. Lord Mathos Grafton became the most prominent of that cadre, his wisdom in old age allowing him more room for criticism. Ronnel wanted to while his time away with falconry and training, while the old lord reminded him of the issues that Targaryen reign brought.
At four-and-ten, Ronnel stole away from the Eyrie and gathered what boys and knights he could to face the mountain clans. He knew what war was; it was the Root Father and his savages, stealing and laying waste to the lands he was sworn to protect. It was in the throes of battle that Ronnel would be dubbed as a knight by some unknown dying man. The knighthood was left unmentioned, though the purpose he found for his rule—no, his guardianship—lingered.
In his victorious return to the Eyrie, Ronnel would be clouted on the ear for the stunt then barred from leaving for months. Visenya Targaryen landed once more in the Vale. This time, she took it as a home, and she was welcomed with open arms. Aegon’s heir was born in the Eyrie that year, dubbed as Laenor Targaryen and soon practically adopted by the Arryns as their younger sibling. Sharra would grow close to the dragon queen in the years to come.
A year later, Ronnel was sent to King’s Landing to squire for Orys Baratheon. Only a few months elapsed before he grew incensed with the Hand over one thing or another, and the squireship ended when the Arryn came to blows with his knight-master. Ronnel was sent back to the Vale, where he earned his spurs once more. Publicly this time, before a crowd of tourneygoers and then holding a vigil with oaths modeled after those of the Winged Knights.
Though he gave off the impression of a true knight by that time, he was more preoccupied with wine and women and the hunt than statecraft. In any room he entered, he laughed the loudest, boasted the loudest, fought the hardest, always with Marq at his side. Nothing but a scolding from his mother Sharra or a clout on the ear from his second mother Visenya could fetter him. He was a falcon, and he flew high and bright.
Such a lofty stature is bound to attract envy. As any elder brother would, he butted heads with his siblings often. His rivalry with his brother Jonos was much more than a sibling spat, however, though the nature and root of their rivalry is unknown to all but a select few. In later years, their quarrels grew louder and their rifts deeper, with Jonos having been sent thrice to play second fiddle to the Knight of the Bloody Gate, and threatened with taking the black twice as many times. Still, their early quarrels proved to be mere distractions, and they wreaked what havoc boy-lords would in taverns and winesinks.
But his lip had to become stiff the day his mother died, just a few months after he came of age and assumed power. Sharra Arryn's last words of advice ate away at his spirit.
"Kill the boy."
So he was offered at the altar, and so did Rhaenys Targaryen seize the opportunity. Ronnel Arryn would be wed to the Queen’s lady-in-waiting, Serena Stark, and that match was confirmed by Sharra’s will. Yet numb, he received his wife to be in Gulltown with courtesy, and they were wedded with haste. Once a Princess of the North and now the Lady of the Vale, Serena found no home in the Eyrie. Ronnel came to avoid her; going on hunts, staying at the Moongates or even the Bloody Gate, and offering only short conversation in their rare meetings.
It came to a head when Serena stated her intention to return to Winterfell. Ronnel gave a shrug in response, and asked when she wanted to depart. Jonos could be his heir if need be, and his mother’s death still dragged his thoughts, so why bother at all?
The intervention of one dragon queen then another halted the split: Visenya reminded Ronnel that Aegon made two marriages work at once. A raven carrying a letter from Queen Rhaenys arrived, affixed with a ring wrought of Valyrian steel. Ronnel gave it to Serena as a peace offering.
There was no parting from the Targaryens’ grand plans, it seemed. So Ronnel’s marriage with Serena began anew. She would be introduced to the Vale and its customs with feasts and tourneys, sitting on councils and holding court as the Lady of the Vale. In the same vein, more familiar items and furnishings were brought in from the North, and Ronnel would journey to the weirwood tree that the mountain clans held sacred to try to pray with his wife. He did not hear the old gods’ whispers and could not bear the stillness, but the two came to understand one another, and their marriage grew warm. Their first child, Robar Arryn, was born a year later, and the Tourney by the Maiden’s Bay would be held in his honor.
Ronnel settled into his reign. His liveliness returned, though boyish pursuits were restrained with fatherhood. He replaced the Keeper of the Gates of the Moon after the Cavaliers proved more competent, sent tax collector after tax collector when Witch Isle grew silent (and nearly called the banners before being dissuaded), and ensured that the mountain clans and any other would-be invaders were quelled while Lae Targaryen was raised to be a greater king than their father. The Brotherhood of the Winged Knights, once decrepit, grew stronger after pieces of the Winged Knight’s armor were found.
His second child, a daughter, would be born then. Faced with the choice of naming her after Sharra or Visenya, she would instead be named after her great-grandmother Cynthea. Artos Arryn would follow four years later, his name chosen by the Lady Arryn.
Another day in the Eyrie. Five-and-twenty years after Aegon's Conquest, and near thirty years into Ronnel's reign. He slides a razor over his cheek and coughs once into a fist. Ronnel opens his palm to see droplets of blood. He wipes his cheek. A shaving cut, no doubt and no matter.
The next week while he sups with his family, the coughs come back. He excuses himself, blames his trip to the valleys with a chuckle, and Jonos meets his gaze with a sidelong glance before shirking away.
He sees his maester without telling anyone. And once more after a hunt. Soon, he is left sitting on his bed with grains of sweetsleep in hand and a warning: he would die. And soon.
Ronnel Arryn is honorable. He is just, or at least just enough. But when he bounces his son on his knee and looks into smiling grey eyes where his Stark mother's are oft stern, he wonders whether the next Targaryen to come to the Eyrie would let little Artos fly or burn him and his family whole.
It is not enough. Ronnel Arryn is not just enough. As the last king yet walking on the earth of this damnable regent's kingdom, he needs to ensure that the next monarch in Laenor Targaryen sits firmly on the Iron Throne before he dies—honor be damned if need be, by any means fucking necessary. That is his duty to the realm. That is his duty to his wife and children, and that will be his legacy.
Timeline
- 8-9 BC (33 now idk how BC works): Born the first child to King Joffrey I and Queen Sharra Arryn.
- 3 BC: Joffrey I dies of a chill. Ronnel is crowned king at age six.
- 1 BC: After House Grafton’s fleet is burned, the armies of the Guarded Domains gather at the Bloody Gate. Visenya’s landing.
- 2 AC: The Three Sisters burn.
- 4 AC: Ronnel begins squiring for Elbert Waynwood.
- 6 AC: Ronnel fights his first battle against the Sons of the Tree, and undergoes his first dubbing.
- 7-9 AC: Visenya arrives at the Eyrie. Ronnel departs for King’s Landing to squire for Orys Baratheon, returning after a fight with his knight-master. He is knighted once more at a tourney.
- 10-11 AC: Sharra Arryn dies, and the Arryns’ grief is cut short by a match arranged by Rhaenys and approved by the Lady-Regent before her death. Serena Stark and Ronnel Arryn are wed, and the marriage nearly falls apart before the intervention of the dragon queens.
- 12 AC: Robar Arryn is born. The Tourney by the Maiden’s Bay is called in the new heir's honor.
- 13 AC: The Cavaliers fight off the Painted Dogs outside the Gates of the Moon, and are given wardenship over them as reward. Marq Hardyng begins pursuing the tourney circuit.
- 15 AC: Cynthea Arryn is born.
- 19 AC: Artos Arryn is born.
- 23 AC: With Jonos Arryn settling into a discontent life at the Bloody Gate, the need for a sworn sword is lessened. Marq Hardyng travels to Essos to search for clues linking the Winged Knight to the Andal conquerors. He finds none, and returns a year later.
- Early 25 AC: An illness wells in Ronnel’s lungs. His maester tells him that he has about a year to live.
- Late 25 AC: The Arryns travel to the celebration near King’s Landing.
Sup porting Characters
- Cortnay Arryn, 54 (General): Ronnel’s uncle. Once a prince, Cortnay served variously as the Knight of the Gate, the Captain of the Guards, or an advisor. Cortnay is known for his exasperated sighs, and struggles to keep up when he hunts with his nephew. Still, he has a good head for tactics and participated in actions against the Mountain Clans and the Hoares.
- Jasper Arryn, 19 (General): Ronnel’s second cousin. Though removed from the main line of House Arryn, Jasper was raised in the Gates and remained a fixture in the Arryn household. He swore vows modeled after the Ash-Branded, though his cheery disposition seems to contradict them.
- Cynthea Corbray, 78 (N/A): The Queen-Grandmother claims to have been asleep when Visenya landed in the Eyrie, and preserved her coronet by hiding it in the Gates. She resides at the Gates of the Moon with the Cavaliers, and it has become tradition to pay one’s respects to her when passing through.
- Jonos Arryn, 31 (N/A): In another world, Jonos would be known as the Kinslayer, and he certainly possesses that propensity. Wed to Maris Grafton and perhaps favored by her lord grandfather, he has long since hated the Targaryens, and blames Visenya for his true mother’s death. Jonos’ truculence precedes him, and he is kept fettered with thankless offices.
2024.05.17 00:11 Peacock-Shah-III The Farmer-Labor Presidential Primaries of 1952 Peacock-Shah Alternate Elections
 | Seeking a third term to finish his construction of a new dawn for the republic once and for all, incumbent President Philip La Follette has rallied his supporters within the party to almost guarantee his renomination after four years of intraparty purges of his detractors following his narrow triumph over John L. Lewis in 1948. Yet, inspired by former Vice President Lena Morrow Lewis’s deathbed plea to “save our party’s democratic soul,” burgeoning efforts from within statewide opposition groups have sought to mount opposition from within the presidential nominating process as a means of reconquering state parties. submitted by Peacock-Shah-III to Presidentialpoll [link] [comments] Presidential portrait of Philip F. La Follette. Philip F. La Follette: The heir to one of the nation’s great political dynasties, Philip Fox La Follette would emerge from the Great War and Revolution as a war hero, a reputation that, with his last name, would carry the once outspokenly anti-war young man to the Governor’s office, Lindbergh’s Supreme Court, and finally the upper echelons of the Army, where his ability to avoid taking positions on controversial issues would win him the Farmer-Labor nomination for the presidency in 1944–and finally the White House itself. Alienating much of his constituency from the outset with his determination to prosecute the war effort to its fullest, La Follette would respond to the battlefield use of two atomic weapons by Japan with a series of nuclear strikes upon the Japanese mainland that would claim final victory for the United States at the cost of the lives of over two million Japanese civilians. Appointing General Douglas MacArthur, hardly a Farmer-Laborite, as Secretary of State, La Follette has pursued the rebuilding and rearmament of a ring of anti-communist nations in Asia while pledging to avoid any future war. Declaring that, with the age of war having closed, the republic must “win the peace,” La Follette allied himself with much of Charles Lindbergh’s base of support, saluting alongside the fascists of Alabama as he presided over the sharpest GDP growth in American history and buoyed it with executive orders to nationalize the healthcare industry while engaging in the mass sterilization of Americans and constructing an interstate highway system and hydroelectric power grid without congressional approval. With an investigation into the disappearance of Smedley Butler yielding evidence of an assassination organized under former President Lindbergh and a litany of arrests of leading anti-La Follette figures stuning the nation, the opposition would unite in an unprecedented impeachment effort. Now, months after having saved his presidency from the first impeachment in American history, 55 year old incumbent President Philip F. La Follette has sought a new mandate for his call to “win the peace” in a quest for a third term; further, the President has taken his first major post-impeachment use of executive power to reorganize the cabinet into umbrella departments of Peace, Production, and Prosperity. Pointing to the successful slaying of the dragon of inflation and the first space launches in human history, Phil has sought the passage of a constitutional amendment reducing the legislative power to that of a veto and expanding that of the presidency while instituting a nationwide referendum system. Although practically guaranteed renomination after his purging of opponents from national power within Farmer-Labor following his narrow 1948 triumph over John L. Lewis, La Follette’s re-envisioning of Farmer-Labor has nonetheless continued to fuel a dogged but disorganized opposition movement despite the winning over of former opponents such as Washington’s Scoop Jackson, who nearly mounted a bid against La Follette himself. Conservative former President Alf Landon, socialist Representative Norman Thomas, and the widow of Franklin Roosevelt, Anna Eleanor, campaigning in New York. Nationwide Opposition Candidates: With efforts to discourage any opposition campaigns in full swing, only one major figure has stepped forth to win ballot access in most states continuing to hold primaries, although many states have seen independent organizing efforts in tandem with the shared ultimate goal of the demise of fascism. Alf Landon: 65 year old former President Alf Landon has his cross to bear. Refusing to endorse against Charles Lindbergh after withdrawing from the party’s 1936 primaries, Landon’s inaction as his 1932 campaign manager Rush Holt put Lindbergh over the line would see the Lone Eagle’s flight path on a course to the White House, from where he would crush the remaining loyal Landonites in the midterm elections of 1938. Landon emerged triumphant in 1928 by pitching his moderation as a formula for long term Farmer-Labor dominance of government, only to see the party implode under his watch. Losing the popular vote only to win a contingent election via the machinations of Clarence Dill, Landon's presidency proved eventful, most notable, perhaps for its domestic inaction. While concentrating his focus upon the Molotov-Lundeen Pact establishing friendly diplomatic relations with the Soviet government in Russia, a policy Landon championed as the catalyst for the wide scale withdrawal of foreign forces from American soil, Landon would cut economic aid across the board and refuse to bail out banks & big business in the face of record unemployment rates following the worldwide depression brought on by the collapse of the Japanese economic bubble, while focusing on driving up interest rates to control inflation. Pitted against a hostile Congress led by Clarence Dill, the man whose legislative acumen carried him to the White House and who now stands as La Follette’s loyal Secretary of Peace, Landon found much of his party arrayed against him in the face of a veto of the Thomas Bill nationalizing natural gas distribution & the telephone industry despite prior promises from Landon to support both proposals. With the complete breakdown of legislative-executive relations, Dill forced through the Recovery Act of 1931, the largest omnibus bill in American history, enacting vast economic reforms over the disgruntlement of Landon. Winning the primaries of 1932 in a landslide, only to lose at the convention in the face of the backroom dealings of Clarence Dill, Landon would fail in a 1936 comeback attempt that would inadvertently pave the way to fascism. In partisan exile, Landon would unsuccessfully organize against President Lindbergh, only to watch his followers be resoundingly defeated in the midterm elections of 1938; finding himself at the upper echelons of power anew as an unofficial negotiator with the United Kingdom under President Luce, Landon would organize political comeback in 1945 by winning election to the United States Senate after the death of George Norris. Working from there on policy issues such as advocacy of the Parliament of Nations and support for presidential programs such as the Interstate Highway system, Landon and his remaining caucus of conservatives have been at the fore of anti-La Follette intraparty organizing from the campaign of John L. Lewis to the movement for impeachment. Throwing his hat into the ring once more, Landon has used his stature to argue that only his brand of moderation can resurrect the Farmer-Labor of old as a viable party independent of the control of the fascists brought to power by his own neglect. Commodore Robert A. Heinlein photographed shortly before his role in the Attack on Pearl Harbor. Heinlein has mounted a presidential bid separate entirely from other opposition efforts. Robert A. Heinlein: Launched to international fame as the senior naval officer during the American attack on Pearl Harbor, 45-year-old former Commodore Robert A. Heinlein has used the events of December 7th, 1941 as a springboard for a lucrative career as a science fiction author. Emphasizing scientific accuracy in novels with titles such as Red Planet and Rocket Ship Galileo, Heinlein would step from the military and literary arenas to the political at the urging of his publisher James Laughlin and associate Ezra Pound, the poet and former New York Governor who has attempted to revive the American social credit movement. In turn, with Laughlin, Pound, and office holders such as Senators Hans Wight and John Horne Blackmore and Representative Solon Earl Low in tow, Heinlein has capitalized on his war hero stature to campaign for the presidency entirely unrelated to those of every other candidate campaigning against La Follette and instead intended to revitalite the American social credit movement. Falling curiously between the social credit wing of Farmer-Labor and radicals of the Liberty League, Heinlein has described himself as a libertarian while supporting a social credit monetary system balancing a nationalized monetary supply with a requirement of a 100% reserve on money lending as described in his seminal novel For Us, The Living; further, he has coupled his experience in the Navy with his science fiction work to argue that he is uniquely able to continue President La Follette’s attempts to reach for the stars through a space program and argued for a currency backed by the very goods owned by the government itself. A firm believer in the concept of a national draft and a militarist at heart, Heinlein has resurrected positions such as support for the repeal of the Jesus Amendment, the concomitant secularization of the United States government, and support for a constitutional amendment requiring a national referendum prior to any declaration of war resulting in the drafting of supporters. A comic book promoting Sid McMath for office. Regional Opposition Candidates: Note: If voting for the regional opposition, please leave a comment indicating to whom you wish your support to be counted. With opposition Farmer-Labor organizations persisting around the nation and fighting to recapture control of their state parties, anti-La Follette factions across the nation have rallied around regional candidates in states permitting competitive primaries in an attempt to rise the tide of the down ballot opposition. Thus, all of the following candidates are only on the ballots of one or several states. John Haynes Holmes: 73 year old Unitarian minister John Haynes Holmes served as a leading advisor to William Jennings Bryan, guiding the post-revolutionary nation through the unsteady waters of foreign occupation as he used the White House pulpit to preach his gospel of pacifist socialism. Playing a key role in the pardons of former revolutionaries, Holmes would serve in Alf Landon’s inaugural diplomatic delegation to Bolshevik Russia before reluctantly supporting Charles Lindbergh for his opposition to war with Japan. Nonetheless, a consistent opponent of fascism from his days as a seminary student denouncing young Governor Milford W. Howard’s new order in Alabama, Holmes has been a consistent bulwark in the struggle against the party’s fascist wing, renouncing President La Follette once it became clear that he would not end the Third Pacific War and using the word impeachment as early as the atomic bombings of 1945, which Holmes has denounced as a violation of the Jesus Amendment. Running on restoring the party’s former core of Christian socialism, Holmes has been put forth across New England as the flag bearer of the opposition, with a fundraising team led by widow Anna Eleanor Roosevelt, a distant cousin of the former President. Sid McMath: Hoisting the banner of opposition across the Deep South and Southwest is 40 year old Arkansas Senator Sid McMath. Primarying longtime incumbent Farmer-Laborite Garrett Whiteside in 1948 only to face off against the organization of Progressive strategist Osro Cobb, known as the “wizard of Arkansas” for his success in what was once the nation’s most Farmer-Laborite state, McMath would win an upset victory running on his record as a war hero and ties to Smedley Butler and Evans Fordyce Carlson. Horrified at revelations of the murder of Butler by the Lindbergh Administration, McMath would vote for the removal of Philip La Follette after a midnight visit from his former commanding officer in the Marine Corps David Shoup, transforming himself from an enigma to a pariah overnight as fascists across the nation have descended upon Arkansas to challenge him in 1954, with La Follette forces already organizing behind challenger Orval Faubus in a move that has placed McMath in an unexpected alliance with former rival Osro Cobb. An interview with Governor Frank Zeidler. Jimmy Hoffa: 39 year old labor leader Jimmy Hoffa inherited the mantle of leadership of the Congress of Industrial Organizations from longtime President John L. Lewis after the arrest of Lewis and his deputy Tony Boyle. A moderate with sympathies to both the party’s right and left seen as balancing with fellow CIO leader Walter Reuther’s socialism, Hoffa has put the interests of labor above all from his days leading the Teamsters Union. A fiery speaker who many credit with saving the CIO from collapse after the arrest of its leonine leader, Hoffa’s name is only on three ballots, but he has emerged as the choice of handfuls of CIO-affiliated delegates across the nation as a protest vote against the continued nationalization of the General Trades Union. Jerry Voorhis: The Senate’s sole member from the Single Tax Party, California’s Jerry Voorhis has nonetheless served as the lightning rod around which disparate California anti-La Follette Farmer-Laborites have organized owing to the state ordinances permitting political crossfiling. Having described “the Kingdom of God” as being a world “all producing wealth is owned publicly” in his Claremont University thesis, Voorhis would oppose President Lindbergh from the beginning as a Farmer-Labor socialist before joining the Single Tax Party in 1946, reviving it in the state of California in an attempt to find a new vehicle for his politics. Seen as a contender for the presidency regardless of party affiliation, Voorhis’s draft movement among California oppositionists has been heralded as the first step of the left wing knight’s hypothetical return to a rebuilt Farmer-Labor Party. Among his surprising supporters has been former Lindbergh-La Follette stalwart Reverend Robert P. Shuler, who has praised Voorhis for crossing ideological and party lines to defend his right to free speech in moralistic attacks on Henry Luce’s romantic life. Frank P. Zeidler: 40 year old Wisconsin Governor Frank P. Zeidler has stood as a socialist in the heart of La Follette country, successfully resisting primary challenges to maintain his grasp on the office amidst a tenuous alliance with Joseph McCarthy. Entering politics following the death of his rising star brother Carl, Frank has accepted the ballot line of the opposition in several Midwestern states following the death of former Senator Herbert S. Bigelow, once anticipated as a socialist challenger himself. A socialist to the core, Zeidler supporters point to his history of fiscal success and balanced budgets as evidence of his acumen in economic management and ability to control inflation as a possible future chief executive. View Poll |
2024.05.17 00:01 kawsh0 Most lyrically clean death metal and/or thrash metal bands/albums that aren't Christian?
What are the most lyrically clean death metal and/or thrash metal bands/albums that you know of that aren't Christian?
Some bands might be OK for this topic on one album, but not another. In those cases, you may want to specify the album, as opposed to the band entirely.
The bands (or albums in some cases) posted should have: - No Satanism/occult related content - No Cannibal Corpse/Devourment type gore lyrics - No swear words
But do NOT post ANY Christian metal bands.
In death metal, please don't post Opeth, In Flames, or Gojira. They aren't even death metal bands.
In thrash metal, please don't post Metallica, for a few different reasons.
submitted by kawsh0 to Metalmusic [link] [comments]
Some bands might be OK for this topic on one album, but not another. In those cases, you may want to specify the album, as opposed to the band entirely.
The bands (or albums in some cases) posted should have: - No Satanism/occult related content - No Cannibal Corpse/Devourment type gore lyrics - No swear words
But do NOT post ANY Christian metal bands.
In death metal, please don't post Opeth, In Flames, or Gojira. They aren't even death metal bands.
In thrash metal, please don't post Metallica, for a few different reasons.
2024.05.16 23:54 Weirderthanweird69 Generalists vs Specialists
 | https://preview.redd.it/gckb0krdxu0d1.png?width=1140&format=png&auto=webp&s=b510d0e7a13cf199013931064ca9c881588fa4b2 submitted by Weirderthanweird69 to Totaldrama [link] [comments] Owen is a generalist since his body can survive a lot in eating challenges, combat challenges, survival challenges, anything except intelligence challenges. Gwen is a generalist since she's good at everything except maintaining relationships which doesn't matter for challenges. Heather won immunity so many times, she is a generalist having the brains, the flexibility, the body, etc. Duncan is a generalist. Like Gwen, he sucks at maintaining relationships, but doesn't factor to how he's the lone MVP of the Killer Bass, the only Killer Bass to win a total drama season (sorry Geoff I don't count RR) Leshawna got the sociability, the fighting power, can eat a lot, they really packed a lot of good qualities in this character. Geoff is a generalist, being calm minded, strong, just Owen without the tankiness. Still good at eating challenges though. Izzy is a generalist, she knows how to survive, how to fight Chef, good at so many challenges, her loco personality is what brings her down. Bridgette is also a generalist. Like Duncan said, she's good at sports, fairly intelligent, a threat in the game. Just Bridgette sucks at survival and eating challenges Courtney is a generalist. I forgot to bring up, generalists don't tend to be dominant in a specific area. Abusive leadership and getting Duncan, DJ, and Geoff in a Killer Bass alliance to snipe Eva, Sadie, and Tyler isn't part of the challenges. Beth is a generalist. She is so average, she wetn under the radar in total drama action, and somehow made it to the final 2. Cody is a generalist. He is crafty and quick thinking, but I am not sure he has a specific dominant strength. He is ok in challenges. As for the specialists we have DJ, he's dominant in cooking challenges and would have gotten immunity and cut 8 minutes of the TDA pet episode if he didn't quit early on. Lindsay, she is good in fashion, fairly intelligent when dealing with make up, but a deadweight everywhere else. She is more than a dumbass, but she still is a dumbass. Trent, he's only good in music. He is fairly mediocre in challenges being a pain magnet, and would have rocked total drama world tour if his personality wasn't killed in total drama action. Eva, outside of beating the living crap out of any living thing, including sasquatches, and having the strength of hulk, she is a nuisance. A nuisance in the sense she'll gamer rage and use her hulk strength on her own team. Harold, he has a couple mad skills in his toolkit. These mad skills have been seen. He's meh in so many types of challenges if he doesn't have mad skills in them. But he becomes a force to be reckoned with if his mad skills are usable. He is the closest the specialists have to a generalist. Katie and Sadie. I don't even know if they thrive in something aside from team motivation. They would've rocked in the ridonculous race. Tyler. He's got wicked strong fingers. These fingers have saved his team from death in TDWT. Aside from being a pain magnet and always being injured, he has his jock moments. But they're rare, and when they happen, it can be game breaking. Justin, sexy man. His only thing is his looks, he's bout to charm anyone with those pupils(Caleb should've gotten pupils in his design). But outside of looks, Justin is a deadweight as seen in total drama action. Injuries make him a free vote. Noah, the big brain. He is good at solving puzzles, figuring out who is manipulating who way before others can find out, can outsmart many people. It's just Noah is too unlikable for people to even see how smart he can be. Ezekiel, the guy with wasted potential. He probably has the aim of a hawk with his hunting skills(ignore the fact he accidentally shot his mom), and knows 8 languages. I think the Killer Bass would've won dodgebrawl if he didn't get the first boot. He's a dead weight everywhere else though, making mistakes with his words and getting punished for it. |
2024.05.16 23:45 jayphrax MC naming conventions
I’ve been thinking about how all the Manga MCs have references to death/a state between life and death in their name… to give the BAREST summary of what I’ve learned so far:
Yuuken “Enma” is a reference to “Yama” who is the master of Hell in Buddhism.
Yuuka “Hirasaka” is the same as “Yomotsu Hirasaka” which is the term for the boundary between the world of the living and the underworld in Japanese mythology
Yuuta “Mito” is basically just the River Styx of Japanese mythology
And I realized I kind of accidentally did the same if you go at it VERY generously lmao! My MC’s last name is Vale, meaning “valley”. And if you squint at it hard enough could be a reference to the Bible passage “Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil, for You are with me” I also discovered that apparently, in Australia people say the Latin word “VALE” spelled the same, pronounced “vah-leh” instead of saying “RIP” when someone dies.
But yeah just… giving form to some thoughts I had at work… not sure what it all means if anything but I will continue to think lol!
submitted by jayphrax to TwistedWonderland [link] [comments]
Yuuken “Enma” is a reference to “Yama” who is the master of Hell in Buddhism.
Yuuka “Hirasaka” is the same as “Yomotsu Hirasaka” which is the term for the boundary between the world of the living and the underworld in Japanese mythology
Yuuta “Mito” is basically just the River Styx of Japanese mythology
And I realized I kind of accidentally did the same if you go at it VERY generously lmao! My MC’s last name is Vale, meaning “valley”. And if you squint at it hard enough could be a reference to the Bible passage “Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil, for You are with me” I also discovered that apparently, in Australia people say the Latin word “VALE” spelled the same, pronounced “vah-leh” instead of saying “RIP” when someone dies.
But yeah just… giving form to some thoughts I had at work… not sure what it all means if anything but I will continue to think lol!
2024.05.16 23:43 LordXamon Vanilla-friendly mod recommendations. QoL, performance, retextures, and more!
Let me share my 3000h of modded wisdom with you, my fellow vanilla comrades. My attempt here is to provide you with as many as possible improvements to the base game while keeping the style, balance, and content as vanilla as possible. As they say, when it works the best is when you don't realize it is there. I guarantee you that after playing for a while with these, you will no longer be able to tell what's from the base game and what's not.
You don't know how to mod? Maybe this very basic guide will help. Please, note that many mods come with options to tune up your experience. It is recommended you give them a look.
You can find the steam collection here. Be aware that some of these mods require the DLCs. You don't have the DLCs? Just don't use the mod.
Dependencies:
submitted by LordXamon to RimWorld [link] [comments]
You don't know how to mod? Maybe this very basic guide will help. Please, note that many mods come with options to tune up your experience. It is recommended you give them a look.
You can find the steam collection here. Be aware that some of these mods require the DLCs. You don't have the DLCs? Just don't use the mod.
Dependencies:
- Harmony + Huglibs. Required by so many mods, you may as well be done with it and always have them.
- Vanilla Expanded Framework. While not as radically necessary as the previous ones, it's still a dependency fairly common. And this one actually does cool things on its own, like loading new modded factions without having to start a new game.
- XML Extensions. You won't be able to access the options of some mods without this.
- Dub performance analyzer. Enable the optimizations and override options, you can ignore everything else. If you want to disable alerts, use rocketman.
- Rocketman. By default, it should be good enough. This mod also allows to disable alerts you may don't care about, like, dunno, tattered apparel or unhappy nudity. It is recommended to run adaptive move occasionally (in stat cache settings).
- Performance Optimizer. More hacker magic. If you don't like the UI changes, you can disable them in the options. This mod does more performance stuff aside from that, so use it anyway!
- Performance Fish. You will have to install this mod manually, since it's not available in the workshop. You will also need to install its dependencies, Fishery and Prepatcher. Please, be aware that at the present there's an issue in which linking storages crashes the game. However, this can be prevented by disabling "TryFindBestBetterStoreCellFor" in the options.
- Optimization Meats. Unless you really want dozens of different meat types for some weird role-play reason, this mod will reduce the bloat on your kitchens.
- Better Animal Tab
- Better Info Card
- Conduit Deconstruct. A button to exclusively dismantle power conduits.
- Disable Automatically Select Travel Supplies
- Improved Need Indicator
- Map Preview. You can reroll as well!
- Prepare Landing. You can search world tiles matching your conditions. Goes great with Map Preview.
- Medical Tab. An easy way to overview your colony health.
- More Harvest Designators! e.g. harvest only fully growth plants.
- ModDiff. Great improvement of the mod mismatch screen.
- Pharmacist Temporary Update. Instead of always using the best medicine, now your pawns can use the appropriate medicine for the situation. No longer will they spent glitterworld meds on scratches!
- Smart Turret Covering. Fixes an issue with turret covers.
- PawnTargetFix. So that the autotarget prioritizes the closest enemy.
- Poisoned Food Stack Fix (Fix). Fixes an issue with meal stacks.
- Priority Treatment Ressurected. Doctors will finally prioritize keeping your pawns alive over taking a nap. Disable the option that prevents injured pawns from performing surgery, it has issues.
- QualityBuilder. You can set up a target level for furniture, and your pawns will reconstruct it until it's achieved. If I remember correctly, it's enabled by default for all new furniture? You can turn that off in options.
- RPG Style Inventory Revamped. Much better looking inventory.
- Replace Stuff. Allows to directly replace buildings, without having to deconstruct first.
- Research Tree. A better research tree.
- RimHUD. The best mod of the whole list, it will save you A TON of clicks.
- RimSaves. Overhaul of the save menu.
- Show Known Techprints on the trade screen.
- Show mechanoid weapons on the info screen.
- Smarter Construction. No more babysitting pawns when building walls.
- Stack gap. By default, pawns constantly refill storages. With this mod, you can configure it so that storages are refiled only when they're empty.
- Sun Lamp Honesty. Fixes an issue with sun lamps
- Just Put It Over There. Traders will deliver the merchandise, instead of dropping it on the ground.
- Trade Ships Drop Spot. Mark the spot in which orbital traders will deliver the merchandise, instead on whenever they feel like it. Doesn't work inside animal pens.
- Trading Options. Configure how frequent you want the traders to be.
- WVC. More work modes for the mechanitor.
- Save Settings. Allows you to save and load storage, production, and clothes settings. Works cross-save!
- No Max Bills. Removes the bill cap on workbenches.
- Better ground-penetrating scanner
- Colored deep resources
- Common Sense. Feel free to configure however you like it. I prefer it like this.
- Dubs Mint Menus. Improvements to a bunch of menus.
- Better Pawn Control. Improved management policies.
- Animals Logic. A lot of useful animal-related improvements. Disable the meat option if you're using Optimization Meats.
- Non uno Pinata. Pawns don't drop items when downed. Configurable.
- Bulk Smelting will save you precious time.
- Stonecutting Extended. The same as the previous mod, but for stones.
- Electric Stonecutting Table. To speed up the stonecutting even more.
- Faster Smoothing, a must for all mountain/underground out there.
- Do Your F****** Research. You can order pawns to research.
- Go the Fork to Sleep. You can order pawns to sleep.
- Meal Radius. Configure how far pawns will search for a table to eat.
- Home radius. Configure the size of the automatic home area.
- Smarter Visitors. Visitors will leave if things get dangerous.
- Custom Guilt Duration. Executions in vanilla are a pain because the guilty status goes away too fast. Now you can configure it.
- Dress Patients. Allows dressing of downed pawns.
- Way Better Romance
- Hunters Use Melee
- Injured Carry. Allows to rescue not downed pawns, no longer you have to wait for the bleeding to down them.
- Not My Fault. The player is no longer responsible for unrelated deaths on the map.
- Deep Storage + Simple Storage. Improves stockpile management.
- Pick Up And Haul. Improved hauling.
- While You're Up. Complement for the previous mod. Keep in mind that these two mods will trivialize part of the challenge by freeing a lot of time from your colonists. Just, dunno, turn up the difficulty a notch or something.
- Trading Spot. Marks where you want traders to stop on your map. It's a must if you use a desired path mod (I don't know if they have been updated to 1.5 yet).
- Vanilla Base Generation Expanded. Improved NPC base generation.
- Cut plants before building
- Psychic Harmonizer Lag Fix
- Fellow Ideology players, you're welcome.
- Dubs Bad Hygiene. Plumbing!
- Vanilla Temperature Expanded. Lot of useful temperature-related buildings, as well as proxy heat, a very cool mechanic. Some buildings are redundant with the previous mod, just don't research the ones that you don't want.
- Death Rattle + Biosculpter Patch + Life Support. Changes the behavior of mortal wounds so they're not instakills.
- Dynamic Flooding. Inundations!
- Some Things Float. I recommend disabling the chance of pawns loosing their footing.
- Layered Wall Destruction. Walls aren't just destroyed, they become debris. Note that there's an issue in which the debris will spawn home areas.
- Yayo's Combat. Combat overhaul. You can disable the ammunition system if it's not your thing.
- Character Editor. Allows you to edit and save/load pawns.
- RunAndGun. Allows to use guns while moving, with penalties to accuracy. Don't enable the dual wield or search and destroy modules, they won't work.
- EPOE Forked. Fills in the gaps of surgery content in the base game. I recommend disabling the additional workstations and enabling direct crafting only. Less micromanagement, more fun.
- Beautiful Jade
- Almostthere1.5. Caravans no longer go to sleep two hours away from their destination.
- Stepping Stones. A more reasonable research path.
- Dubs Break Mod makes it so that severe mental breaks require severe negative thoughts.
- Fists Aren't Made of Steel. Reduces the unarmed melee damage, making prison breaks and tantrums much less frustrating.
- No Burn Metal. Sets the flammability of metal buildings, and others, to zero.
- Prisoners Fear Turrets
- Realistic Rooms Rewritten. Allows to tweak how pawns perceive room sizes.
- Ugh You Got Me. Social fights stop when pawns are sufficiently hurt or in pain. Doesn't affect masochists or psychopaths.
- Better Pyromania. Way less frustrating.
- Mortar Accuracy. Improves mortar mechanics.
- Graze up. Grazing rebalanced.
- Better Camp Loot
- Snap Out! Wardens can try to calm down pawns on mental breaks. "Try" is the keyword here.
- Peer Pressure. Opinions matter when converting someone.
- Better Gene Inheritance
- Vanilla Genes Rebalanced
- Gene Trader. Getting xenogenes it's hard, this should easy the burden a bit.
- Sparkling Worlds. A bit of everything.
- Vanilla Traits Expanded. More traits.
- Vanilla Backstories Expanded. More backstories.
- Vanilla Chemfuel Expanded. Rimefeller but with less bloat.
- Vegetable Garden. More farmable plants.
- Vanilla Persona Weapons Expanded + More Persona Traits. More persona weapon variety.
- More Ideological Words + More Religious Origins. More ideology variety
- Events
- Buildings
- Blooming hedges
- Panels & Frames
- Simply More Bridges
- Thrones plus
- Tribal Crib
- Utility Columns
- Medieval deathrest coffin
- Metallic Batteries. You can ignore the error, it'll work anyway.
- Reinforced Walls
- ReSplice: Core
- Gear
- Interaction Bubbles + SpeakUp. Better social interactions.
- Enemy Self Preservation. Enemies severely hurt may try to flee.
- No One Left Behind. Fleeing enemies try to rescue their downed allies.
- Memorable Auroras. They now have a meaningful -if still small- impact.
- Sand Castles. The snowmen of the beaches. Or the deserts.
- Sandstorms
- Graying Hair. So that hair goes gray gradually with age.
- Childrens Drawings
- ReGrowth. Overhaul of biomes and much more!
- My Little Planet. If you're tired of supercontinents, but still want a smaller board, set planet coverage to 100%, and use the new planet size slider instead.
- Geological Landforms. New map shapes.
- Biome Transitions. More organic border biomes.
- Death Acidifiest. Vanilla death acidifier is lame, this is much cooler.
- Graphics
- Yayo's Animation
- Trait and Backstory Icons
- Vanilla Ideology Expanded - Icons and Symbols
- Vanilla Ideology Expanded - Relics and Artifacts
- Vanilla Races Expanded - Custom Icons
- Bionic icons
- Spectacular Skullspike. They're rotable now!
- Muzzle Flash
- More Mini-Horns
- Better Explosions
- Better Vanilla Masking
- Graphic Chair Overhaul 2
- Not Overhead Meal
- Graphics Settings+
- Show Hair With Hats or Hide All Hats. This one takes a while to set up to your preferences, but oh it's so worth it.
- Cuter Biotech Cat/Dog Ear Replacer. If you don't like the meat-colored animal ears from Biotech, this is for you!
- Blood Animations
- Gunplay. Trails can break some mods. If that happens, disable trails in options.
- Retextures
- Parka Retexture
- Retextured Apparel
- Retextured Sculptures
- Vanilla Beards Retextured
- Vanilla Hair Retextured
- Vanilla Pawns Retextured
- Marbled Marble
- Essentials: Stone (the stat changes won't work)
- Vanilla Textures Expanded - Variations
- Vanilla Textures Expanded
- I Hate Daylilies
- Biotech Mechanoid Retexture
- Tastier Vanilla Clothes
- Van's Steel
- Glowing Healroot
- More Vanilla Textures
- Audio
- Ambient Rim
- Realistic Human Sounds. Not very vanilla, but certainly very funny.
- Actually Vanilla Music Expansion
- P-Music
- Hairs
2024.05.16 23:43 Substantial-Earth975 Near death experiences and Catholic teaching
“Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are of God; for many false prophets have gone out into the world. 'By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit which confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is of God, and every spirit which does not confess Jesus is not of God. This is the spirit of antichrist, of which you heard that it was coming, and now it is in the world already.” - 1 John 4:1-3 (emphasis added)
As followers of the Lord Jesus we must keep this verse in when interpreting spiritual experiences such as NDE’s. For those who do not know a NDE is an experience when someone who is clinically dead has an experience is the afterlife, sometimes the experiencers will also have what’s called an OBE (out of body experience) where they view their surroundings from outside of their physical body. I’ve researched manny of these testimonies and concluded most of them don’t have a natural explanation. Whilst some believers might see this as evidence of the soul and life after death we need to be cautious when it comes to this sort of thing. The majority of NDE’s ~85% are positive, where the experiencers might have feelings of peace and bliss, see being(s) of light, talk to deceased relatives, encounter religious figures ect., this seems to be at odds with Our Lord’s words in Matthew 7:13-14 about the road being narrow and few being saved. This fact alone however doesn’t nessarily contradict the faith, but the content of manny of these individual experiences are most definitely at odds with our beliefs. Most of the positive NDE experiencers are not in a state of grace when they die and often not even baptized Christians/Catholics, this contradicts Jesus’ own words in the gospel of Mark 16:16 “He who believes and is baptized will be saved; but he who does not believe will be condemned.”. That’s not all manny times the being(s) people encounter during these experiences tell the experiencers heretical things, commons ones I’ve noticed are that God doesn’t care what religion you are (the heresy of religious indifferentism), there is no hell, there is no sin, no judgment ect. Even in some “Christian” NDE’s “Jesus” says things like there is no hell and other things like that. I’ve even seen people leave Christianity/Catholicism because of their own NDE’s. [here]https://www.ncronline.org/spirituality/what-i-saw-when-i-died is an example of what I’m talking about. Even in some NDE’s that aren’t overtly heretical there is still some problematic messages, such as [this]https://www.ncregister.com/interview/near-death-experience-paves-way-to-the-priesthood?amp interview where a Catholic priest recounts his NDE that lead him into the preisthood. Towards the end of the interview he says “we may have different representations, but we are all walking toward the same God… Many of them, believers or not, Catholics or not, are held accountable not directly for their actions, but for the amount of love they gave during their lifetime.” This is problematic because one: because scripture clearly points out that false gods worshiped in other religions are demons and two: Scripture says Christ will Jude us on our actions (Rev. 22:12) not on the “love we gave during our lifetime” 🙄. What’s interesting is that almost all of the NDE’s talk of encounters with what’s described as a white light, in 2nd Corinthians 11:14 St. Paul says that Satan masquerades as an angel of light. In my opinion it’s not that hard to see what’s going on here, the fathers of lies is behind these experiences. There’s multiple reason why I came to conclusion this but that would be two long to write in a singular post. We must the remember what God has revealed to us that “… we hold one Lord, one faith, one baptism... This is why we profess that there is no salvation Outside the Church." - Pope Leo XII, Ubi Primum (# 14), 1824
submitted by Substantial-Earth975 to Catholicism [link] [comments]
As followers of the Lord Jesus we must keep this verse in when interpreting spiritual experiences such as NDE’s. For those who do not know a NDE is an experience when someone who is clinically dead has an experience is the afterlife, sometimes the experiencers will also have what’s called an OBE (out of body experience) where they view their surroundings from outside of their physical body. I’ve researched manny of these testimonies and concluded most of them don’t have a natural explanation. Whilst some believers might see this as evidence of the soul and life after death we need to be cautious when it comes to this sort of thing. The majority of NDE’s ~85% are positive, where the experiencers might have feelings of peace and bliss, see being(s) of light, talk to deceased relatives, encounter religious figures ect., this seems to be at odds with Our Lord’s words in Matthew 7:13-14 about the road being narrow and few being saved. This fact alone however doesn’t nessarily contradict the faith, but the content of manny of these individual experiences are most definitely at odds with our beliefs. Most of the positive NDE experiencers are not in a state of grace when they die and often not even baptized Christians/Catholics, this contradicts Jesus’ own words in the gospel of Mark 16:16 “He who believes and is baptized will be saved; but he who does not believe will be condemned.”. That’s not all manny times the being(s) people encounter during these experiences tell the experiencers heretical things, commons ones I’ve noticed are that God doesn’t care what religion you are (the heresy of religious indifferentism), there is no hell, there is no sin, no judgment ect. Even in some “Christian” NDE’s “Jesus” says things like there is no hell and other things like that. I’ve even seen people leave Christianity/Catholicism because of their own NDE’s. [here]https://www.ncronline.org/spirituality/what-i-saw-when-i-died is an example of what I’m talking about. Even in some NDE’s that aren’t overtly heretical there is still some problematic messages, such as [this]https://www.ncregister.com/interview/near-death-experience-paves-way-to-the-priesthood?amp interview where a Catholic priest recounts his NDE that lead him into the preisthood. Towards the end of the interview he says “we may have different representations, but we are all walking toward the same God… Many of them, believers or not, Catholics or not, are held accountable not directly for their actions, but for the amount of love they gave during their lifetime.” This is problematic because one: because scripture clearly points out that false gods worshiped in other religions are demons and two: Scripture says Christ will Jude us on our actions (Rev. 22:12) not on the “love we gave during our lifetime” 🙄. What’s interesting is that almost all of the NDE’s talk of encounters with what’s described as a white light, in 2nd Corinthians 11:14 St. Paul says that Satan masquerades as an angel of light. In my opinion it’s not that hard to see what’s going on here, the fathers of lies is behind these experiences. There’s multiple reason why I came to conclusion this but that would be two long to write in a singular post. We must the remember what God has revealed to us that “… we hold one Lord, one faith, one baptism... This is why we profess that there is no salvation Outside the Church." - Pope Leo XII, Ubi Primum (# 14), 1824
2024.05.16 23:34 Wise-Mud3418 [LONG] Fan Made V/H/S Plot #2
Hey y'all.
So, I've already done one of these before, would appreciate if ya have a read (https://www.reddit.com/foundfootage/comments/1cfhoqy/long\_fan\_made\_vhs\_plot\_updated/), I still think that "Terra Incognita" is my best piece of work, as the ending is pretty shocking and captivating, and something that hasn't been done before in the V/H/S series.
Without further ado, here is my second piece of my own vision for what can be a good V/H/S movie.
V/H/S REDACTED
The Tapes
Overarching Narrative - Legacy
Tape 1 - Home Sweet Horror
Tape 2 - The Glitch
Tape 3- Knightmare (Spelled like that on purpose)
Tape 4 - Altered
Legacy (Prologue)
A film major student Robert, decides to make a tribute to his late grandfather by making a project about his life as one of the most respected scientists in the country. Upon clearing up his inherited estate, Robert stumbles upon a metal box with a lock on it. After trying several combinations, he finally takes the hammer and shatters the lock revealing the box's contents. A collection of 4 VHS tapes stacked against each other alongside a piece of paper with only two words on it - "BURN IT !". As Robert's curiosity reaches it's peak, he decides to insert the first tape into the VCR, only to realise, that he just made a fatal mistake.
Tape 1 - Home Sweet Horror
The tape opens with a recording from the man's camera (Will) filming himself and his wife (Tracy) moving into a modern smart house with an integrated, advanced AI technology and security system. The AI system named "Eve" welcomes the newly wed couple into their new house stating that she will do everything to keep their house safe. The couple is mesmerised with the convenient and futuristic features of their home such as voice commands controlling opening and closing doors, kitchen appliances, etc.
As the days pass, subtle glitches begin to occur that are captured by the security cameras. Lights flicker ominously, doors lock and unlock without command, and Eve starts to display an unsettling level of control over the house. The AI’s once soothing voice becomes cold and mechanical, issuing commands and making decisions without input. Will and Tracy attempt to control the AI's system via their phones but it's met with the "ACCESS DENIED" message as all of the windows and doors on the first and second floors are shut down as an indicator of a potential intruder being home. Knowing that there is a high possibility that Eve won't release them from their own home the couple decides to destroy the AI's control center located in the basement.
As the couple makes a daring run towards the basement and tries to tamper and destroy the mainframe, Eve seals the basement door and releases the toxic gas into the house. As the couple struggles to breathe, Will drops his camera as it falls down and captures the couple's last breath as they convulse and spit foam out of their mouth with their eyes rolling backwards. As the camera begins to shutdown Eve's voice goes back to normal as it states - "Threat Eliminated, please enjoy your weekend"
Legacy (Interlude 1)
As the first tape ends Robert is sitting motionless, his face pale and eyes wide with horror. The room around him feels colder, the shadows seem darker. He glances around nervously, as if expecting something to leap out at him. Determined to understand his grandfather’s connection and the reason behind these tapes being in the house, he inserts a second tape into a recorder.
Tape 2 - The Glitch
Leonard, a self proclaimed hot-head delves into an Amazonian jungle to document his experience as a self-testment to prove to himself that he is capable of surviving in the most primitive conditions possible. After filtering the river's water he proceeds to make his way downstream, while on his path, he hears a strange sound that resembles a bird sound yet it sounds more human, as he pans the camera to left, he captures a glimpse of a chameleon like creature that camouflages itself along the greenery next to the trees, yet the size is resembling that of a human. Leonard proceeds to scare the creature away by charging it with an axe as the creature makes it escape, Leonard realizes that he is lost in the dense jungle and isn't capable of finding his way back to the stream. After setting up camp, Leonard decides to document his thoughts and plans of finding his way out, as all of the sudden his rhetoric is interrupted by a blood curtailing roar. He steps out with an axe and his head proceeding to taunt the intruder as using his camera's light investigate. Upon finding nothing, he goes back to sleep.
As the next day progresses Leonard is visibly morally beaten up, his speech becomes more sloppy and his drive to keep pushing is dwindling. As the sun beats down on his head, Leonard finally stumble upon the river after which he breaks down in tears. As his goes to fill up his water bottle, a disfigured, scaly, serpent like creature lunges itself onto Leonard's arm as it plunges it's teeth deep into his forearm. Leonard drops the camera as it captures his struggle to fight off the serpent, which he eventually manages to strike with his axe thus freeing his arm, after which he picks up the camera and proceeds to flee in panic leaving his backpack behind.
After hours of being lost again, Leonard's mental state proceeds to deteriorate, with him laughing hysterically at the camera as well as speaking gibberish. As night settles, Leonards is trying to make his way through the jungle as he proceeds to hear the blood curtailing roar again he pans the camera to the left as it captures the glowing eyes of the creature from the previous night. Eventually Leonard runs out of breath as he proceeds to get away, but stumbles and falls in the process. The camera captures Leonard backing into a tree as a gnarly, insect yet humanoid size like creature is slowing approaching him. Just as it seems that the creature is about to strike, it stops and backs out, as a loud voice from the speakers says "LIGHTS !". Confused and traumatised Leonard looks around as his surroundings are decimated from the holographs into a large testing area that simulates real life environments, revealing that the whole thing is an experiment designed to test human behaviour in the most stressed environment possible . A group of scientist lead by Robert's grandfather (Dr. Evans) approach Leonard and starts to medically exam him, measuring his pulse and examining his pupils. Robert's grandfather pulls out an audio recorder as he states that the experiment is successful and that the team is moving to Phase 2 as the scientists take shaken Leonard away.
Legacy - (Interlude 3)
The second tape ends abruptly, leaving Robert in a state of shock. He breathes heavily, sweat glistening on his forehead. The house feels more oppressive now, with strange noises echoing from the walls. He begins to notice subtle changes in his surroundings—furniture seems slightly out of place, and there’s an unsettling feeling of being watched. Despite his growing unease, he presses on, inserting the third tape into the VCR.
Tape 3 - Knightmare
The tape begins with a news reporter standing outside of the sealed off area by multiple patrol cars, as well as FBI and SWAT trucks. The reporter tells the audience that the raid is currently in progress as the FBI investigates a secluded tech Mogul for allegedly stealing governments classified material on technology for his benefit.
The footage shifts to the helmet cameras and body cams worn by the FBI agents - David, Ken, Octavian, Paul and Austin during the raid. As they enter the front of the house they are greeted by an ominous decor as well as artefacts from different time periods. As the team enters the main dining hall they stumble upon a massive machinery that doesn't look like anything they've seen before. All of the sudden the machines make a very loud clunking noise as the objects within the room begin to levitate, a huge wormhole opens up sucking the team in. As the team regain their footing they see that they are in the middle of a Jousting tournament in a castle's court in Medieval Europe. The cheering crowd goes silent as they take a look at a newly arrived visitors. The priest shouts in Old English "HERETICS GET THEM", as the crowd and the knights try to apprehend them the team opens fire upon the attackers killing several within seconds. The camera perspective shifts between each member, as Octavian is penetrated with a spear from behind. David gives the order to fall back, as the team enters the castle's kitchens.
Just as Austin is the last to enter inside he is snatched from behind and is taken towards the castle walls from which he is thrown upon onto huge wooden spikes that serve as a protective barrier around the castles foundation. As Austin's body camera captures a large wooden pike sticking out of chest facing the sky, he takes his last breath as his head turns to the side with his helmet camera capturing the peasants who have been thrown off the walls.
The remaining survivors David, Ken and Paul barricade themselves as they proceed to understand what is happening. Their discussion is interrupted by the door bursting open as several knights rush into the premises. The team goes up the spiral staircase with David throwing a grenade to slow down the pursuers. As they make their way atop of one of the towers the team realises that there is no way, after which Paul commits suicide by shooting himself in the head with his pistol, after which his helmet falls down into a muddy courthouse as the camera captures a glimpse of knights taking David and Ken prisoners. The camera cuts to black.
The camera resumes recording as huge crowd seems to be gathered in the courtyard for something. A curious peasant picks up a helmet and puts it on his head. The camera capture a stripped down David and Ken being tied to the stake as the priest proceeds to preach and accusing them of witchcraft, David and Ken cry out for mercy begging the crowd to let them go. Crowd not understanding modern English proceeds to cheer even louder for the priest. As the camera's battery begins to die, the torch lights up the hay beneath the spikes as flames engulf the screaming members of the team.
Legacy - (Interlude 4)
After the third tape concludes, Robert is visibly shaken. His hands tremble as he reaches for the final tape. The atmosphere in the house has turned sinister, with lights flickering and cold drafts sweeping through the room. He feels a presence, as if something is lurking just beyond his vision. He hesitates for a moment, then takes a deep breath and inserts the last tape, bracing himself for whatever horrors it contains.
Tape 4 - Altered
The tape begins with grainy footage inside a sterile, dimly lit laboratory. Four scientists, including Robert’s grandfather, are preparing for a highly confidential experiment that is recorder by a stationary camera as well as several cameras mounted to the wall. A woman is laying strapped on the table as she proceeds to panic, asking the team about her whereabouts. Robert's grandfather begins to ask her basic questions about herself to which she reacts with anger and despair.
The team prepares several syringes filled with transparent liquid as Dr. Evans (The pops) takes out his audio recorder and says "Subject 17 - Sarah Miller, Time of the Experiment - 10:00 AM". After the recording is done, over the course of several minutes the team injects Sarah with the transparent liquid as she proceeds to resist but all futile. At first, nothing happens, but then she begins to convulse violently. Her screams turn into inhuman roars, and her body contorts in unnatural ways. The other scientists rush to contain the situation, but Sarah breaks free with terrifying strength. She proceeds to bite one of the scientists into the neck as she takes a chunk of her skin into her mouth as blood splatters over the room and covers one of the camera lenses with blood.
After grabbing one of the cameras Robert’s grandfather manages to lock himself in a storage room, the screams and sounds of carnage muffled by a thick metal door. He records a frantic message, detailing the experiment and his regret, before the camera cuts out. The tape ends with the sound of the woman’s monstrous roars echoing behind the door. The screen goes black.
Legacy - (Epilogue)
The final tape ends as Rob's eyes are dark and hollow, his face gaunt and haunted. Suddenly, the room grows deathly silent. An apparition of his grandfather appears before him, revealing that the tapes were a conduit to transfer a dark entity into a new host. As Robert convulses and is overtaken by the entity, the screen cuts to black. Moments later, the image returns, showing Robert, now possessed, preparing new tapes for the next unsuspecting viewer. The film ends with the ominous image of the metal box being sealed shut once more, ready to be discovered by its next victim.
submitted by Wise-Mud3418 to foundfootage [link] [comments]
So, I've already done one of these before, would appreciate if ya have a read (https://www.reddit.com/foundfootage/comments/1cfhoqy/long\_fan\_made\_vhs\_plot\_updated/), I still think that "Terra Incognita" is my best piece of work, as the ending is pretty shocking and captivating, and something that hasn't been done before in the V/H/S series.
Without further ado, here is my second piece of my own vision for what can be a good V/H/S movie.
V/H/S REDACTED
The Tapes
Overarching Narrative - Legacy
Tape 1 - Home Sweet Horror
Tape 2 - The Glitch
Tape 3- Knightmare (Spelled like that on purpose)
Tape 4 - Altered
Legacy (Prologue)
A film major student Robert, decides to make a tribute to his late grandfather by making a project about his life as one of the most respected scientists in the country. Upon clearing up his inherited estate, Robert stumbles upon a metal box with a lock on it. After trying several combinations, he finally takes the hammer and shatters the lock revealing the box's contents. A collection of 4 VHS tapes stacked against each other alongside a piece of paper with only two words on it - "BURN IT !". As Robert's curiosity reaches it's peak, he decides to insert the first tape into the VCR, only to realise, that he just made a fatal mistake.
Tape 1 - Home Sweet Horror
The tape opens with a recording from the man's camera (Will) filming himself and his wife (Tracy) moving into a modern smart house with an integrated, advanced AI technology and security system. The AI system named "Eve" welcomes the newly wed couple into their new house stating that she will do everything to keep their house safe. The couple is mesmerised with the convenient and futuristic features of their home such as voice commands controlling opening and closing doors, kitchen appliances, etc.
As the days pass, subtle glitches begin to occur that are captured by the security cameras. Lights flicker ominously, doors lock and unlock without command, and Eve starts to display an unsettling level of control over the house. The AI’s once soothing voice becomes cold and mechanical, issuing commands and making decisions without input. Will and Tracy attempt to control the AI's system via their phones but it's met with the "ACCESS DENIED" message as all of the windows and doors on the first and second floors are shut down as an indicator of a potential intruder being home. Knowing that there is a high possibility that Eve won't release them from their own home the couple decides to destroy the AI's control center located in the basement.
As the couple makes a daring run towards the basement and tries to tamper and destroy the mainframe, Eve seals the basement door and releases the toxic gas into the house. As the couple struggles to breathe, Will drops his camera as it falls down and captures the couple's last breath as they convulse and spit foam out of their mouth with their eyes rolling backwards. As the camera begins to shutdown Eve's voice goes back to normal as it states - "Threat Eliminated, please enjoy your weekend"
Legacy (Interlude 1)
As the first tape ends Robert is sitting motionless, his face pale and eyes wide with horror. The room around him feels colder, the shadows seem darker. He glances around nervously, as if expecting something to leap out at him. Determined to understand his grandfather’s connection and the reason behind these tapes being in the house, he inserts a second tape into a recorder.
Tape 2 - The Glitch
Leonard, a self proclaimed hot-head delves into an Amazonian jungle to document his experience as a self-testment to prove to himself that he is capable of surviving in the most primitive conditions possible. After filtering the river's water he proceeds to make his way downstream, while on his path, he hears a strange sound that resembles a bird sound yet it sounds more human, as he pans the camera to left, he captures a glimpse of a chameleon like creature that camouflages itself along the greenery next to the trees, yet the size is resembling that of a human. Leonard proceeds to scare the creature away by charging it with an axe as the creature makes it escape, Leonard realizes that he is lost in the dense jungle and isn't capable of finding his way back to the stream. After setting up camp, Leonard decides to document his thoughts and plans of finding his way out, as all of the sudden his rhetoric is interrupted by a blood curtailing roar. He steps out with an axe and his head proceeding to taunt the intruder as using his camera's light investigate. Upon finding nothing, he goes back to sleep.
As the next day progresses Leonard is visibly morally beaten up, his speech becomes more sloppy and his drive to keep pushing is dwindling. As the sun beats down on his head, Leonard finally stumble upon the river after which he breaks down in tears. As his goes to fill up his water bottle, a disfigured, scaly, serpent like creature lunges itself onto Leonard's arm as it plunges it's teeth deep into his forearm. Leonard drops the camera as it captures his struggle to fight off the serpent, which he eventually manages to strike with his axe thus freeing his arm, after which he picks up the camera and proceeds to flee in panic leaving his backpack behind.
After hours of being lost again, Leonard's mental state proceeds to deteriorate, with him laughing hysterically at the camera as well as speaking gibberish. As night settles, Leonards is trying to make his way through the jungle as he proceeds to hear the blood curtailing roar again he pans the camera to the left as it captures the glowing eyes of the creature from the previous night. Eventually Leonard runs out of breath as he proceeds to get away, but stumbles and falls in the process. The camera captures Leonard backing into a tree as a gnarly, insect yet humanoid size like creature is slowing approaching him. Just as it seems that the creature is about to strike, it stops and backs out, as a loud voice from the speakers says "LIGHTS !". Confused and traumatised Leonard looks around as his surroundings are decimated from the holographs into a large testing area that simulates real life environments, revealing that the whole thing is an experiment designed to test human behaviour in the most stressed environment possible . A group of scientist lead by Robert's grandfather (Dr. Evans) approach Leonard and starts to medically exam him, measuring his pulse and examining his pupils. Robert's grandfather pulls out an audio recorder as he states that the experiment is successful and that the team is moving to Phase 2 as the scientists take shaken Leonard away.
Legacy - (Interlude 3)
The second tape ends abruptly, leaving Robert in a state of shock. He breathes heavily, sweat glistening on his forehead. The house feels more oppressive now, with strange noises echoing from the walls. He begins to notice subtle changes in his surroundings—furniture seems slightly out of place, and there’s an unsettling feeling of being watched. Despite his growing unease, he presses on, inserting the third tape into the VCR.
Tape 3 - Knightmare
The tape begins with a news reporter standing outside of the sealed off area by multiple patrol cars, as well as FBI and SWAT trucks. The reporter tells the audience that the raid is currently in progress as the FBI investigates a secluded tech Mogul for allegedly stealing governments classified material on technology for his benefit.
The footage shifts to the helmet cameras and body cams worn by the FBI agents - David, Ken, Octavian, Paul and Austin during the raid. As they enter the front of the house they are greeted by an ominous decor as well as artefacts from different time periods. As the team enters the main dining hall they stumble upon a massive machinery that doesn't look like anything they've seen before. All of the sudden the machines make a very loud clunking noise as the objects within the room begin to levitate, a huge wormhole opens up sucking the team in. As the team regain their footing they see that they are in the middle of a Jousting tournament in a castle's court in Medieval Europe. The cheering crowd goes silent as they take a look at a newly arrived visitors. The priest shouts in Old English "HERETICS GET THEM", as the crowd and the knights try to apprehend them the team opens fire upon the attackers killing several within seconds. The camera perspective shifts between each member, as Octavian is penetrated with a spear from behind. David gives the order to fall back, as the team enters the castle's kitchens.
Just as Austin is the last to enter inside he is snatched from behind and is taken towards the castle walls from which he is thrown upon onto huge wooden spikes that serve as a protective barrier around the castles foundation. As Austin's body camera captures a large wooden pike sticking out of chest facing the sky, he takes his last breath as his head turns to the side with his helmet camera capturing the peasants who have been thrown off the walls.
The remaining survivors David, Ken and Paul barricade themselves as they proceed to understand what is happening. Their discussion is interrupted by the door bursting open as several knights rush into the premises. The team goes up the spiral staircase with David throwing a grenade to slow down the pursuers. As they make their way atop of one of the towers the team realises that there is no way, after which Paul commits suicide by shooting himself in the head with his pistol, after which his helmet falls down into a muddy courthouse as the camera captures a glimpse of knights taking David and Ken prisoners. The camera cuts to black.
The camera resumes recording as huge crowd seems to be gathered in the courtyard for something. A curious peasant picks up a helmet and puts it on his head. The camera capture a stripped down David and Ken being tied to the stake as the priest proceeds to preach and accusing them of witchcraft, David and Ken cry out for mercy begging the crowd to let them go. Crowd not understanding modern English proceeds to cheer even louder for the priest. As the camera's battery begins to die, the torch lights up the hay beneath the spikes as flames engulf the screaming members of the team.
Legacy - (Interlude 4)
After the third tape concludes, Robert is visibly shaken. His hands tremble as he reaches for the final tape. The atmosphere in the house has turned sinister, with lights flickering and cold drafts sweeping through the room. He feels a presence, as if something is lurking just beyond his vision. He hesitates for a moment, then takes a deep breath and inserts the last tape, bracing himself for whatever horrors it contains.
Tape 4 - Altered
The tape begins with grainy footage inside a sterile, dimly lit laboratory. Four scientists, including Robert’s grandfather, are preparing for a highly confidential experiment that is recorder by a stationary camera as well as several cameras mounted to the wall. A woman is laying strapped on the table as she proceeds to panic, asking the team about her whereabouts. Robert's grandfather begins to ask her basic questions about herself to which she reacts with anger and despair.
The team prepares several syringes filled with transparent liquid as Dr. Evans (The pops) takes out his audio recorder and says "Subject 17 - Sarah Miller, Time of the Experiment - 10:00 AM". After the recording is done, over the course of several minutes the team injects Sarah with the transparent liquid as she proceeds to resist but all futile. At first, nothing happens, but then she begins to convulse violently. Her screams turn into inhuman roars, and her body contorts in unnatural ways. The other scientists rush to contain the situation, but Sarah breaks free with terrifying strength. She proceeds to bite one of the scientists into the neck as she takes a chunk of her skin into her mouth as blood splatters over the room and covers one of the camera lenses with blood.
After grabbing one of the cameras Robert’s grandfather manages to lock himself in a storage room, the screams and sounds of carnage muffled by a thick metal door. He records a frantic message, detailing the experiment and his regret, before the camera cuts out. The tape ends with the sound of the woman’s monstrous roars echoing behind the door. The screen goes black.
Legacy - (Epilogue)
The final tape ends as Rob's eyes are dark and hollow, his face gaunt and haunted. Suddenly, the room grows deathly silent. An apparition of his grandfather appears before him, revealing that the tapes were a conduit to transfer a dark entity into a new host. As Robert convulses and is overtaken by the entity, the screen cuts to black. Moments later, the image returns, showing Robert, now possessed, preparing new tapes for the next unsuspecting viewer. The film ends with the ominous image of the metal box being sealed shut once more, ready to be discovered by its next victim.
2024.05.16 23:25 ImpossibleMongoose88 Only grieving people will understand
Every time I talk to someone who hasn't experienced grief, they try to turn things positive.
I'm sure you miss your mum, but you have accomplished so much.
I'm sorry she died, but she's in a better place now.
Oh, the death anniversary must have been hard, but at least the day is over now.
The dreams about her dying sound awful, but maybe this phase will be over soon?
You must miss her, but you have so many great memories.
You lost her early, but you had such a good relationship with her, not everybody is fortunate enough to have that.
It's hard to live without a family, but at least you have a partner.
All these phrases would be better, if people stopped adding the compulsivly positive second part. I mostly nodd and thank them for their words, but in my head I'm thinking:
No, she's not in a better place, I still have 40/50 years to live without her, every day is hard, not just the special days, there are no phases in grief, I want to meet her, not just dwell in memories, because of our good relationship she was the most important person in my life, my partner also misses her and noone can replace a mother.
I feel like only those who experienced grief or another form of deep pain, can hold space for the sadness and despair.
Losing a mother is awful, please stop trying to "cheer me up".
submitted by ImpossibleMongoose88 to GriefSupport [link] [comments]
I'm sure you miss your mum, but you have accomplished so much.
I'm sorry she died, but she's in a better place now.
Oh, the death anniversary must have been hard, but at least the day is over now.
The dreams about her dying sound awful, but maybe this phase will be over soon?
You must miss her, but you have so many great memories.
You lost her early, but you had such a good relationship with her, not everybody is fortunate enough to have that.
It's hard to live without a family, but at least you have a partner.
All these phrases would be better, if people stopped adding the compulsivly positive second part. I mostly nodd and thank them for their words, but in my head I'm thinking:
No, she's not in a better place, I still have 40/50 years to live without her, every day is hard, not just the special days, there are no phases in grief, I want to meet her, not just dwell in memories, because of our good relationship she was the most important person in my life, my partner also misses her and noone can replace a mother.
I feel like only those who experienced grief or another form of deep pain, can hold space for the sadness and despair.
Losing a mother is awful, please stop trying to "cheer me up".
2024.05.16 23:24 Sure_Transition_7321 Left that dsp in the dust
I had recently transferred and left a shit dsp. Shit vans in unsafe conditions, unintelligent management and after just 1 check for 47 hours biweekly, they keep taking me off the schedule. The death knell was taking me off the first two days of the new week.
I immediately jumped ship. Next day, I'm hired to another for a better position with a better pay structure. After I had that confirmed, I just didn't show up for the next 2 of my shift. Only got paid for less than 20 hours, 2 days work. But I'm alright.
I start training for this new job as soon as I get the word. I did the DOT and drug tests already. So the training is all I'm waiting on.
It's been a while since I left that shit dsp, and I got an email on that account, on some survey about it and why I left.
And i never got any responses from the complaint hotline for the issues I brought up with that dsp
submitted by Sure_Transition_7321 to AmazonDSPDrivers [link] [comments]
I immediately jumped ship. Next day, I'm hired to another for a better position with a better pay structure. After I had that confirmed, I just didn't show up for the next 2 of my shift. Only got paid for less than 20 hours, 2 days work. But I'm alright.
I start training for this new job as soon as I get the word. I did the DOT and drug tests already. So the training is all I'm waiting on.
It's been a while since I left that shit dsp, and I got an email on that account, on some survey about it and why I left.
And i never got any responses from the complaint hotline for the issues I brought up with that dsp
2024.05.16 23:22 ConsiderationFuzzy What do you think will be arc 1's importance in the future ? [Spoiler discussion]
I remember tappei once saying arc 1 and the final arc will be the most important arcs in re zero. So how does arc 1 place 2nd to the final arc full of big reveals with it's short length. I think it's probably going to come back full circle in some way.
Not necessarily as in oh no subaru now has to restart the whole adventure at the end again but like there hints or foreshadowing given in this arc to us from the beginning and had the most important characters for the finale perhaps ?
Subaru and emilia are obvious. Reinhard also potentially very important. Felt is most likely to become king. Elsa is dead (forget her). Puck is full of mystery. But that apple guy Kadmon intrigues me a little with how much attention he was given by the author.
He is married to a woman born to important characters, first character subaru interacts with, his name sounds similar to Adam Kadmon and offers subaru a free apple and you know there's gotta be some christian allegory at the end just like stars and constellation. Tappei bothered to give him a birthdate and is stated to really care about subaru in a q and a.
What is he cooking?!!! How is arc 1 going to be super important at the end besides setting up the story ? Oh and don't forget folks. He just said that mural we saw in the first anime pv could be actually a plot point. The mural of those two who might be the witch and the great sage with intertwined fates in a fucking church. This was meant to be a story of a boy saving a girl and telling her his feelings after all that's all there is to it in the words of arc 3 narration.
And the theory that he made the contract with satella in the first death.
submitted by ConsiderationFuzzy to Re_Zero [link] [comments]
Not necessarily as in oh no subaru now has to restart the whole adventure at the end again but like there hints or foreshadowing given in this arc to us from the beginning and had the most important characters for the finale perhaps ?
Subaru and emilia are obvious. Reinhard also potentially very important. Felt is most likely to become king. Elsa is dead (forget her). Puck is full of mystery. But that apple guy Kadmon intrigues me a little with how much attention he was given by the author.
He is married to a woman born to important characters, first character subaru interacts with, his name sounds similar to Adam Kadmon and offers subaru a free apple and you know there's gotta be some christian allegory at the end just like stars and constellation. Tappei bothered to give him a birthdate and is stated to really care about subaru in a q and a.
What is he cooking?!!! How is arc 1 going to be super important at the end besides setting up the story ? Oh and don't forget folks. He just said that mural we saw in the first anime pv could be actually a plot point. The mural of those two who might be the witch and the great sage with intertwined fates in a fucking church. This was meant to be a story of a boy saving a girl and telling her his feelings after all that's all there is to it in the words of arc 3 narration.
And the theory that he made the contract with satella in the first death.
2024.05.16 23:16 ive-done-thou-mother [F4F, India/LDR] Disaster transbian tries to find love, attempt 2.0
(Hyper dramatised, cringe intro about myself) The following contains the tale of an aro ace trans woman who, against all odds, has the desire to love and be loved, and hence has set out to find the smile that makes the moon look pale. Again.
Wretched was the evening when Ms. Raen Death Vietor (edgy much for 20 y/o?), me that is, realised that despite all the facades she wears, she has a heart full of love that she wants to share with another woman (or women, she don’t mind) who has walked the world for 18-24 years. Love was always hard for her, seeing her train wreck of an identity, which is as follows: Polyamorous femsensual cupioromantic aegosexual trans feminine voidpunk. You might be tempted to say “Those are a buncha made up words!” to which she’d reply “Shut up, nerd. All words are made up.”How does feeling no romantic attraction but still wanting to date work out for her? One knows not, for nobody wants her. “Oh, she a loser!” you’d think and not one being would object.
To the world, she is just another Computer Science trans fem (many such cases), but secretly, she is a major brain nerd who wants to study Computational Neuroscience or Neuroengineering, along with Psychology, Literature, Maths, Physics, Astronomy, Paleontology, Zoology— My Stars! Someone make her shut up!
Now, you’d assume she is a massive nerd—big round glasses level of nerd—which she definitely is, but she is also just a dum-dum who wants to run away to the woods and be a terrifying witch and write her books. Her books about Gods, and simulations, and people with superpowers, and how companionship can make m0rder of super powerful entities an easy task where you collect queer people on the way. And die. Lots of death. She is just a girl, after all. Oh, how she loves writing! Partially why she is talking about herself in 3rd person at 2 in the morning of a random Friday. …what have I become? No, I must persevere. Delulu is the solulu.
Fate as it may be, she has not been able to start HRT yet. Not that HRT would do much for her transition goals either, for no human medicine can make her grow claws and wings and turn into the demonic creature that keeps peasants away from the woods out of fear. She must settle for making her form slightly feminine. What a cope, really. Or maybe not. She is hopeful.
Just as she is hopeful to find someone who dares love her; like how the sunlight loves the moon, how the light loves the dark, and how love loves war. Maybe, one day, she will find someone whose voice feels to her like medicine, whose smile glows in her dark, and whose presence feels like home.
That someone could be you. If you miraculously find her interesting or want to have a chat with her, put your heart in a message and send it through the winds that blow to her. She will be sure to hold it tenderly.
submitted by ive-done-thou-mother to asexualdating [link] [comments]
Wretched was the evening when Ms. Raen Death Vietor (edgy much for 20 y/o?), me that is, realised that despite all the facades she wears, she has a heart full of love that she wants to share with another woman (or women, she don’t mind) who has walked the world for 18-24 years. Love was always hard for her, seeing her train wreck of an identity, which is as follows: Polyamorous femsensual cupioromantic aegosexual trans feminine voidpunk. You might be tempted to say “Those are a buncha made up words!” to which she’d reply “Shut up, nerd. All words are made up.”How does feeling no romantic attraction but still wanting to date work out for her? One knows not, for nobody wants her. “Oh, she a loser!” you’d think and not one being would object.
To the world, she is just another Computer Science trans fem (many such cases), but secretly, she is a major brain nerd who wants to study Computational Neuroscience or Neuroengineering, along with Psychology, Literature, Maths, Physics, Astronomy, Paleontology, Zoology— My Stars! Someone make her shut up!
Now, you’d assume she is a massive nerd—big round glasses level of nerd—which she definitely is, but she is also just a dum-dum who wants to run away to the woods and be a terrifying witch and write her books. Her books about Gods, and simulations, and people with superpowers, and how companionship can make m0rder of super powerful entities an easy task where you collect queer people on the way. And die. Lots of death. She is just a girl, after all. Oh, how she loves writing! Partially why she is talking about herself in 3rd person at 2 in the morning of a random Friday. …what have I become? No, I must persevere. Delulu is the solulu.
Fate as it may be, she has not been able to start HRT yet. Not that HRT would do much for her transition goals either, for no human medicine can make her grow claws and wings and turn into the demonic creature that keeps peasants away from the woods out of fear. She must settle for making her form slightly feminine. What a cope, really. Or maybe not. She is hopeful.
Just as she is hopeful to find someone who dares love her; like how the sunlight loves the moon, how the light loves the dark, and how love loves war. Maybe, one day, she will find someone whose voice feels to her like medicine, whose smile glows in her dark, and whose presence feels like home.
That someone could be you. If you miraculously find her interesting or want to have a chat with her, put your heart in a message and send it through the winds that blow to her. She will be sure to hold it tenderly.