2008.06.19 07:23 Dark Netflix Original Series
2008.03.12 23:51 Be you. - /r/Gay
2016.12.30 03:43 JoNiro Avatar Memes
2024.06.09 15:38 SubstantialSuccess81 Mad Titan Rework gets a lot right
I have to give a lot of credit to the Thanos rework. There’s a lot of things in this particular update that I really enjoy. Most notably, the update to the sp Most notably, the update to the Space Stone. That feels like an appropriate Thanos level card. Nothing can stop him from being played or destroyed anywhere. It feels as though a lot of the powers were broken out among the stones more equally. And I think there’s a decent balance between ongoing and on reveal. I miss the Time stone energy boost. submitted by SubstantialSuccess81 to MarvelSnap [link] [comments] After second dinner had tinkered with Thanos (whenever the Mind Stone became 2 cost-ish) I had put him on the bench. He was too inconsistent and wasn't fun. in the whole problem with Thanos and the first place was that you played his stones, but never Thanos himself. Now there actually feels like dread of where, and when Thanos could appear on the board. That's what a great 6 power card should feel like. Thanos is coming. And with each stone the dread gets larger (yes I know unless you have Killmonger). The game is literally called Marvel Snap and I am so happy to see him back in his throne. i’m not saying he’s perfect. But he now has so many different play types and cards he can be built around. Whether you're a newer player or someone that's been around he definitely is worth 6k tokens. I'm CL 16k and here's a fun bonus. I was so excited to play him, I decided to get a border too and not something I had planned to do, so spent gold on a cosmetic. But again, I've enjoyed playing with him again and appreciate what they did to make him at least B Tier (maybe higher??). Anyways, I usually complain a lot and need to make sure I tell when I like stuff too. Later |
2024.06.09 15:31 Rusted-1 ARK 8 Chapter 23-Unlucky
To kill for yourself is murder. To kill for your government is heroic. To kill for entertainment is harmless. What is it to kill for religion? - Unknown submitted by Rusted-1 to NatureofPredators [link] [comments] This fanfic is based on the fanfic The Isolationists, by Seeyouon_otherside, and a continuation of the stronger_together series. Constructive criticism is appreciated. Time Since First Contact: Y:0 M:1 W:0 D:3 Memory Transcript Subject: Private Brolien “Lucky” Tiwond of the enforcers. “Wait, the humans call you that? Why?” My buddy Rohan asked me as we patrolled the streets of the capital city of Finalshape under the night sky. You could actually see one of the aliens' ships flying overhead, which was fantastic. I felt like a kid watching them, just in awe at the technological marvels. Our power armor was clanking and clunking as we went about our day, heavy auto rifles in hand, a good breakfast this morning, kissed the kids and misses goodbye for today, promising little ones I’ll bring them back a souvenir of some kind. We walked through the snow that had to yet be cleared by the snow plows, and I just enjoyed the forever-green grass and trees. Just admiring the city that we lived in “Yeah, I was on the plane next to the human ARK ship when I went down.” “Wait, that was you?!” Rohan practically yelled, getting the attention of many people around us. “How come you’re still not in the Air Force anymore?” “That crash rattled me pretty bad, So I stepped down for that position and took up a job as a trooper,” I respond casually. “It was fun for a while being in the Air Force, but now, with seven kids and a wife, I can’t take that risk anymore. I’d rather do something more laid-back to have a higher chance of survival. So I can spend more time with my beloved and see my little ones grow up.” I said. Then I revealed my trap card. “I also got a spot on the Land Tank. “Yeah, I get that-YOU WHAT!?” He yelled. I let out a hearty laugh as he began to freak out. “Yep! I will be one of the lead anti-air and anti-space gunnery commanders. The pay is fantastic. I’m going to spoil my family rotten.” He made an odd noise and launched himself at me. “HOLLY SHIT DUDE! YOU’VE ALWAYS WANTED A JOB ON THAT HUNK OF HISTORY! I’M SO PROUD OF YOU!” He patted me on the back a few times and then let go. “But I get what you mean by anti-air, but what do you mean by anti-space?” I sighed and looked around before switching to helmet-to-helmet communication so no one could hear us. "You're aware that Lord Lieutenant Commander Canilia Feral doesn't fully trust the aliens, right?” Rohan nodded. I couldn’t see his expression under the heavy metal helmet, but we had known each other since we were kids, so I could tell he was somber. “Yeah, I'm not the biggest fan of that. But that doesn't mean I don't understand it. The aliens are fun, lovely, adorable, and huggable. I can say a hundred other nice things about them, but I won't because I don't want to bore you to death. They are still a massive unknown; they've been sharing more and more information with us, and I know the one, Captain Leo, is preparing to hold some… not ceremony, what do you call it…I want to say it's a seminar about how they got here and their history. I'm going to it, but I don't know when it will be.” I nodded in agreement. “ I am with you on every single one of those points. As amazing as they are, there are so many unknowns about them… which is why Lord Lieutenant Commander Canilia Feral has started a program meant to counteract the aliens' most powerful tools: their droids and ships.” Rohan looked at me. I could tell from underneath his helmet he looked surprised. “Wait, weapons?” It was my turn to be somber. “She says it's to prepare for if they turn on us. She made it very apparent that she hoped she would never have to use these weapons, but she wanted to be prepared.” “Does Commander Fango Feral know about this?” I scoffed at that thought. “Well, yeah, this project would have never gotten the green light anyway. Plus, we're talking about Lord Lieutenant Commander Canilia Feral here. Going behind her uncle's back is the last thing she would do." Rohan nodded. "What do you know about the project?" He asked "What little I know about the project is that I will be operating an ASRFC, an anti-space rapid-fire cannon. It’s designed to do what it sounds like: it shoots or, rather, assists in launching incredibly fast-moving projectiles, similar to missiles but different somehow. They should be coated in the specialized electricity designed to short out alien systems. She's also been developing handheld weapons to short out their droids.” Rohan was silent. Then spoke. “Geez. That's… a lot. I'm just hoping the aliens don't find out.” My shoulder sagged as I hated the thought of operating a weapon like that against two species that have been nothing but kind to us. “Same, we all share the same sentiment at the Land Tank. We are on our hands and knees, praying to the great protector that we never have to use these guns. Lord Lieutenant Commander Canilia Feral is probably the person who is hoping the most. However, I get the odd feeling that they would understand why we would make these weapons. I think they'd be mad, but they wouldn't be upset. They'd be understanding.” I looked over at my childhood best friend. “Honestly, considering your Borderline addiction to anything alien right now, I'm surprised you're taking this as well as you are.” He shook his head. “I'm not really… it's hard making guns and weapons to kill a person who has been nothing but kind to you simply because you don't fully trust them. But I understand and support the logic behind it. However, it is comforting to know that everyone working on this project hopes and prays that they don't have to use them. Not much, but a bit.” Rohan sighed, and we walked in silence for a while. He perked up, his posture became slightly straighter, and he pointed to my chest. “What is that anyway on your chest? I’ve never seen a dialect or a plant like that,” he asked. I looked down and laughed. “Yeah, that’s human dialect. I want to say it’s the one called English, but it could also be the one called Japanese or Russian. I really have no idea. It says, “Lucky, the falling star.” The symbol is of what they called a four-leaf clover, a type of plant back on the human homeworld that was considered lucky, surrounded by a star, and there are trails to the side of it, or to make it look like it’s falling.” Rohan stopped for a minute, got the joke, and nearly busted a gut laughing. When he finally calmed down, he looked at me. “How the hell did Humans and Zeyzell convince you to get that painted on your armor!?” he asked through laughs. “Well, I was at a drink stop, a bar as most of you normals call it, forget which one, when out of the blue, a bunch of humans popped up, and they recognized me as a pilot. I don’t know how, but they did.” I answered, “Ask me all sorts of questions like how I survived. How was I doing? Generally, they were good questions and warmed my heart that they were worried about me. It was nice, anywho, they were going on about this plant on the human home world called the four-leaf clover, and this represents luck or something. They asked if they could paint my armor with it. I had just gotten my shiny new power armor, so I was like, sure, go ahead and paint it. Then, they whipped out a bunch of little pups, or kids and kits, as the humans call them. As in little humans who are ADORIBLE, and they started painting my armor as I started talking to the adults. Two hours later, bam, you got this masterpiece painted all over my armor. I swear they took the little ones out of their pockets if I didn’t know better. After all that, I wanted it back to camp, and the paint had dried. I tried getting off, even though it was a nice gesture. I was kind of sad about it, but I don’t know what the void they used is. This stuff is not coming off. I scrubbed for a good hour, and it didn’t come off. So when I had to fall in with everyone at Camp and with everyone with their new hand-me-down E-10 power armor. I stood out like a sore thumb.” “And you had petty officer Gotrom, didn’t you?” Rohana teasingly said. I shook my head in pain, causing him to laugh. “I’ll take that as a yes.” “Yep, I had him, the man of the petty ones. The moment he laid eyes on me. His eyes did the whole bleeding thing. I hate it when he does that and starts screaming at me. I mean, this dude is slightly above me in rank, but he takes his job too seriously. So, after five minutes of chewing me out, I thought he would pass out with the amount of hot air he was spewing. He asked me what my excuse was.” “What do you say to him?” Rohan asks. I laughed. “It was like the great protector had whispered exactly what I should say into my ear. “Interacting with the new locals, sir. Just letting them know that we are their friends, not their wardens.” And you won’t freaking believe this, he took it.” “He what?! he took it as a valid answer?!” Rohan asked. “I myself was still surprised that he took that as a valid answer, but yes, he did. Then he immediately brought me to the front of all three hundred troops and started to yell at them, tearing them a new one by telling them how I was the only one here who had made any attempt to meet with the alien. Even though we all know that’s not true, they found me. He patted me on the back, congratulated me, and sent me off to get some extra food.” “By the old void, that guy gets stranger and stranger every time.” I shrugged. “I honestly have no clue, and I think he was telling everyone to step up the game in greeting the aliens, but other than that, I have no idea. The Humans are super nice, and I often find them chatting with someone or petting someone. Void, I’ve even seen an entire group of humans swarm a giant and start petting it. It was cute to watch. The Zeyzell seem far more reserved than the humans, but you can have interesting conversations with them.” We continued to patrol the streets in silence for a while after that, making a bit of small talk to break it, but nothing much, just observing people going about their business. That’s when we saw an out-of-breath Tiwond with a human gently helping him drink a bottle of water. A Zeyzell clung to the human's back, laughing his lungs out. “Everything all right over here?” I asked. “Yeah,” the person said as he got up, swishing his tail as he did, “tried to beat my buddy here in a race after hearing about humans' high stamina. I lost by a large margin while he carried his fluffy ass on his back. The man said as he pointed to the Human and the Zeyzell. The Zeyzell just laughed while still clinging to the human's back. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you!” The Zeyzell said as the three laughed. “All right, you three, stay safe. Bye now.” The group of three said their goodbyes, and I looked at the human. He just seemed so happy. It was such a pure and authentic expression that it warmed my hearts. “It’s so nice that we met the humans; everyone just seems happier.” Rohan nodded. “Yeah, it’s like the mood has shifted, from the low to the high, it's nice. With the war, the terror that came after it, and the animals evolving and changing. Things were looking bleak. That’s not even mentioning all the giant refugees we've been getting, and well…him and them.” I looked at Rohan. “Who and what?” Rohan looked at me, confused. “You know? Viggo Scythelock?” I nodded. The mention of his name made me slightly mad. “Oh, him…you think they will catch the guy?” I asked. “Honestly, I hope so. He has caused so much pain to so many. The man is a psychopath, a monster. He used the war as an opportunity to harm so many.” Rohan looked down. “But honestly, it’s been over three years. I’m not sure if they will ever find him.” “Yeah…I hope they find him and take him out. Also, who are "Them" you are talking about?” Rohan looked at me, surprised. “You haven't heard?” he asked. He switched to helmet-to-helmet communications instead of talking out loud. This must be bad.” “I’m almost afraid to ask…but no, I have not heard about them,” I responded also with helmet-to-helmet communication. “Who are you talking about?” “The Cult of the Old God? You haven't heard what they have been up to?” “You mean them assassinating high-ranking individuals, stealing supplies, their entire operation multiplying tenfold ever since the alien's arrival?” I could tell he was surprised, and I could also understand that he was blinking and surprised underneath the helmet. That's how well we know each other. “How did you know?” “It's common knowledge, and the higher-ups sent this documentation earlier this morning. Did you not read it? They're very transparent, and you know that I don't get all your conspiracies at everything, which is a conspiracy.” “Oh, come on! The Aliens! Their rival was too perfect; just when we were getting worried that we were the only living creatures in the universe, pop! They show up. That can't be a coincidence!” I rolled my eyes underneath my helmet. “You need help.” “Not with my mental state, but definitely with my taxes.” I shake my head We continued on our way. When we crossed one of the streets and took a left toward one of the shopping districts, we saw two dudes sitting in the snow, huddled around something. We approached to make sure everything was alright. “Everything alright?” I asked. The guys looked up at me and made the shhh motion with their fingers. Then they parted their bodies a little, and I saw a female human sleeping between them. “We don’t want to wake her up,” the first said. I nodded my head and continued on. Both of us then turned a corner into a more populated part of the district. We saw a human and what looked like a construction worker chatting there. “Thank you so much for taking us in. I think I can speak for my entire species when I say you have made us so happy.” The construction worker raised an eyebrow and took another bite of the sandwich she was eating. “Anyone would’ve done it; it's just the right thing to do if they had a soul, at least.” The human started to laugh a bit, and then it quickly stopped as a human just shook her head. “Guess the federation has no soul then, huh?” The construction worker took another bite out of her sandwich. “Doesn’t sound like it.” The human leaned into the construction worker. “Eay, don’t worry. If those Federation things ever come here, they’ll get a big face full of Big Jim.” She then pulled out a massive [monkey wrench.] I smiled at that, knowing that so many were willing to protect the humans. I believe that made them feel more at home. We wandered past them on our patrol and continued deeper into the district. “Hey, you know what I’ve noticed?” Rohan said. “Hm?” I asked in return. “I haven’t seen all that many little humans, you know, their pups, kids, children, whatever they call them.” I was about to argue that I had seen quite a few children, but when I really thought about it. The only significant group of human children I had seen was when a bunch of them confronted me and painted the four-leaf clover and star onto my chest plate. Other than that, I’ve only seen a few. “Now that you mention it, you’re right. I’ve hardly seen any. Why do you think that is?” Rohan thought for a minute. Then, he snapped his secondary jaw in realization or remembered something. “I remember a bit of talk about a lot of young ones being on a second ARK ship. I don’t know much about it. All I know is that most of their young population, as in newborns to tweens, was supposedly on an ARK ship called ARK Twelve. Other than that, I don’t know much.” “Where did you hear that from?” I asked. “One of my buddies works in intelligence gathering. We like humans, but the intelligence bureau doesn’t fully trust them like Lord Lieutenant Commander Canilia Feral doesn't. I can’t blame them. Again, Humans are still a big unknown, even though they are one of the cutest things I have ever seen.” “Agreed.” “He was pretty drunk when I asked him, but it was his reaction when he said out loud that really disturbed me. Normally he’s a pretty big drinker because you see some bad shit in intelligence gathering. I mean, there are some terrible people out there. But the second he mentioned ARK twelve, he got really really sad. And he didn’t even finish his drink, which was a first. He mumbled something about going home to spend time with the human he was taking care of. I don’t know what it was about the response, but I got a sense of pure dread from it.” I nodded my head, and we continued. I felt like asking the next human I saw about ARK twelve, but I sensed it would be a bad idea. We saw a commotion in front of what looked like a jewelry store. Wandering over, there was a female tiwond Who seemed distressed. As we approached, she continuously asked strangers if they had seen someone. A lot of other people are starting to be concerned, too, for some reason. We approach to attempt to calm the situation. “Enforcers, what’s going on here?” Rohan asked. The woman turned around rather quickly. She was short and had that typical camo pattern fur that the people of the woodland area have, so she was most likely not a local. Then again, you can never be too confident in the city. “I lost them! I can't find them! I don’t know where they are!” She almost yelled in what looked like fear and worry. “Whoa, calm down, ma’am. What’s the problem?” I gently told her to try to get him to calm down. “Take four large breaths and clear all four of your lungs. Trust me, it helps.” She took some deep breaths, seemingly calmed down just a little, and then spoke again. “I am in charge of two humans under my care for the exchange program. I had brought her and her kid here to the shopping district to see if they wanted anything before moving back to the Woodland cities. However, they vanished. I don’t know where they went. I am terrified of all the unknowns around here that might hurt them.” “Thank you. Do you know where you last saw them?” I asked. I made a hand motion to Rohan to signal in an incident report and some backup. Rohan stepped away from the conversation and radioed a command using his helmet. “This is Rohan. I'm reporting a case of a missing person. Yeah, two humans went missing. I’m currently with Brolien, and we’re patrolling the shopping district… Green Wyvern. Can you send a few more patrols down here to help? We can’t have two aliens going missing in the city. That's bad, AR. Also, and yes, I want to see them safe. I am not an AR asshole.” "This is HQ, sending down an additional squad. Keep us updated." "Yes sir." Rhoan responded “Do you know which store you were in when you saw them last?” I asked. “The jewelry store, the one just over there. About [10 minutes] ago. Their names are Jasper and Melinda.” She pointed to one of the higher-end jewelry stores, and I motioned to Rohan to follow me. I noticed a few Street cops coming over to see what the situation was about. “What’s going on here?” one of the cops asked. I recognize this one, a retired Detective, I think. “Missing persons, two humans last seen over there. We’re going to investigate now,” I quickly informed him. “Keep an eye on her, will you?” He nodded and walked over to the lady, with two others in tow. Rohan and I walked over to the building to inspect the area around it. “If a human is missing here… I’m worried about who might’ve taken them. I know it’s pretty rare for kidnappings, but still.” Rohan said as he opened a dumpster and took a peek inside. “I mean, the humans are so frail. A good-sized hail storm will kill them.” Rohan said. “Yeah, apparently it can. I’ve heard rumors that back on their home planet, it’s possible to die from things like that.” I responded. “Unbelievable,” Rohan replied in disbelief, shaking his head. We started to search the area, calling out their names. We wandered past an ally—“Oh, protector, what is this?” I looked over to see Rohan had stepped in Something. I walked over and looked at it. “Is that blood?” I asked him. “No way too light to be blood. Look at how red it is. It’s not even a black color like ours. I bet you another copper wire melted. I can tell by the scent.” he replied as he shook the stuff off his boot. I took a closer look, put my hand in it, and brought it up to my face. It looked like blood. It flowed like blood. I used the scanning equipment in my helmet and… …Oh shit. “Rohan, this is human blood,” I said. I got up and turned the safety off my gun. Rohan follows suit, and we both enter the alleyway, guns drawn. There was a little more blood on the walls and a bit on the ground. “This is enforcer Rohan calling enforcer HQ, and we have possible contact with an unknown that has seemingly taken two humans, one child, and one mother. Send backup, sending location.” Rohan called in as we quietly walked along the side of the alleyway. We are doing our best to make no noise. I’m so happy that we are wearing the newer power armor. They are so silent. “Roger that Rohan, this is enforcer HQ. Reinforcements are inbound in two minutes.” The coms operator said [Chanting] “Do you hear that? Sounds like chanting?” Rohan whispered. I strained my ears to listen and turned up the sensitivity on my power armor audio receptors. Chanting, I wonder… “Do you think it could be…?” I trailed off, and he immediately knew what I was talking about. “Cult of the old God? This far north? Hm… shoot to kill.” Rohan sternly replied. “This is Enforcer Rohan, possible contact with the Cult of the old god. I am requesting time for the arrival of reinforcements.” “Reinforcements inbound in one minute.” We both quickened the pace and turned the corner-“FUCK!” I yelled out loud. There were Six cultists in total. Two cultus whipped around to face me. One drew a pistol, and another a plasma pistol. “CONTACT CONTACT! LIGHT THEM UP!” Rohan yelled, and we both started blasting into them. We popped bullet bullets into each of their heads and two hearts, taking them down instantly. “Cultus! Here! This far north! What the fuck?!” Rohan yelled. The three others drew their guns and aimed and opened fire at us as we took cover behind some old barrels. We were bullet and plasma-proof in our power armor, but I would rather not risk it. Rohan tossed a flash bang, and It blew up a second later. I heard screams a second later, and we got up and opened fire, our visors blocking out the flash. We both nailed the same bastard as his buddies dove behind cover. They would fire at us every few seconds, keeping our heads down. I looked at Rohan and made the hand single to get the shield. He reached behind himself and took out the heavy-duty shield. I had the battering ram, so I was not that useful. He got up first as I threw another flash, confusing and disorienting the cultists as it went off. We both advanced as Rohan swapped out his heavy rifle for an SMG; I took out the full-auto shotgun as we got closer. Rohan shield-bashed the first one and then blasted him with the SMG. I took out the second one with my shotgun. A bullet deflected off of the shield, and a small spread of bullets that Rohan could deflect with his shield came at us. Then they stopped, and we rushed to cover, Rohan still holding the shield. I peeked out from behind the cover. “Were did..” I started when I heard a yell from behind us. Whipping around, the cultist had appeared and was now wrestling with me for my shotgun. In a split second, I shoved the shotgun into him as he pulled, disorienting him and knocking the wind out of him. I then grabbed the battering ram, which had already been turned on and was at full power, and bashed it into his chest. He immediately exploded from the pressure, and I was coated in his blood. Looking around, all the cultists were down just as reinforcements flooded the area. Looking at the cultus robes, I noticed the same color of blood on them that I had looked at earlier. “Shit, I think these guys got the humans!” I told Rohan. The human female was lying on what looked like a makeshift altar made of scrap metal, an old luxurious chair, and wood. Her entire chest and lower body had been torn open. Most of her major organs were removed, and her heart was speared with multiple little needles and placed on top of the altar. “This is bad. This is bad. If there is this far north, they have gotten bold.” Rohan spoke as he walked over to the human female and inspected her. “She died only a minute ago. It looks like she was in pain the entire time, too. Damn. FUCKING FANTIC SHITS!” “Radio this in,” I ordered Rohan, and he immediately did that. I walked over to the human adult female's corpse and looked at it as a medic was handling her. Why didn’t she scream? Oh, that’s why. They sewed her mouth shut. Damn. I look at the cultists again and look at their golden medallions decorated with a skull. “Wait, Rohan. Weren’t there two?” We looked at each other and immediately split up in different directions to find the kid. It didn't take long for me to see him. “Aw…kid.” I gently bent down to inspect the little body. His lower jaw was gone entirely. His left arm seems to have been sawed off and taken. His eyes were closed, and he wasn’t moving. I looked up and noticed footprints taking off into the distance. A seventh cultist, it looks like we missed one. I cradled his head in my hand and took a pulse. Nothing… “Shit.” “Oh, void.” ‘Oh, my young one…I am sorry.” the other enforcers said as we gathered around the child's corpse. One of the enforcers punched a wall out of anger as another just sat on an old couch, shaking her head. “Looks like there was a seventh we missed. If I get my hands on that-.” Another one started. *GACK!* “OH SHIT! ROHAN HE'S STILL ALIVE!” I screamed. Rohan immediately ran over and looked. As did the medic. “By the protector he is!” The medic yelled as she began to administer human-friendly meds. “There is an ambulance outside. MOVE!” She yelled. I picked up the kid and held him in my arms, carrying him as the medic did her work. “You’ll be OK, you’ll be OK,” I told him to comfort him, although I felt it was more for my own sake. “JASPER!” I looked behind me to see the female running to me and followed beside me. "MISS IS MUST INSIST YOU MOVE-" The medic begins to yell. "I'M HIS CARE TAKER!" she yelled back. "Shhhh, I’m here now.” Jasper reached up with a blood-soaked hand and began to grab at her fur like he was trying to hold onto life. She held him to her and then took something out of her bag. “I can use this to get the blood out of his lungs!” “Do it!” the medic told her. She stuck the tube into the kid's chest, and blood came out, and he immediately began to breathe easier. He then latched himself to her chest and passed out. “Don’t worry. I promised your mom I would take care of you if anything happened to her. I will take care of you.” She quietly told the sleeping child as she rocked back and forth, crying, holding the child as the ambulance came around the corner with more enforcers. They loaded both of them into the ambulance and took them away. I walked out and sat down on a bench in front of the alleyway. I just needed time to think. I sat there as the world around me continued. Just lost in thought. What if we got there sooner..? I was broken out of the trance by Rohan. “You alright?” I looked down. “No, we were supposed to protect them…” “Yeah,” Rohan said. We just sat there. It was helping a little to have my buddy there. But…still A human was…dead. “And yet…we saved a human child.” He told me. I nodded, looking up at the Alien space station that was now in orbit around our planet. “Yeah…we did.” We remained silent before he put an arm around me and hugged me. "I hope he survives." "Me too, me too." First/Previous/Next |
2024.06.09 15:31 methygray 2yr old has favoured dad for a year, I can’t even put him to bed and it’s breaking me
2024.06.09 15:22 No_Funny3533 Scam Artist mingmei1344 (Yomi) and her accounts at: Aiu_Agency, asiahug.com, datesteady.com, cudate.com, Jpndate.com, sayhiup.com, Rose, Miyuki Miyamoto, SW Entertainment and more
My name is Mark Faraday. I was just looking for love back around January 20th, 2024 but I don’t want to see anyone else get scammed. I had a human profile picture when I was using these website, and was honest. I ran into a whole lying network run by a Woman, her friends, and a man. I will update this story if I have more to say in the future. Her nickname is Yomi, she told me her name was Miyuki Miyamoto and she was from Japan. Her real name is Jeong Nahyeon and she is from South Korea. She also has fake Chinese accounts like: submitted by No_Funny3533 to Romance_Scamer [link] [comments] Mingmei1344: https://www.instagram.com/mingmei1344/ Mingmeichan: https://www.instagram.com/mingmeichan/ mingmei1344 Mingmei Liu My Story is long but it is worth reading. From January to June as the writing of this post. I labeled each part so it easy to jump around to the parts you want to read.
Account 1: (Kawaii, Silly girl fake account) https://www.instagram.com/yuyu_only5/ yuyu_only5 Account 2: https://www.instagram.com/_yuyu_only5?utm_source=ig_web_button_share_sheet&igsh=ZDNlZDc0MzIxNw== _yuyu_only5 Yomi Newest Account: Chloee_asuna https://www.instagram.com/chloeee_asuna/p/C7kNkmzSIEi/?img_index=1 chloeee_asuna Jeong Nahyeon Lover or Friend 🙁(Scam Artist Man) 🙁 https://www.instagram.com/_xijii_/ _xijii_ Jpndate.com the site where I met Yomi (Jeong Nahyeon) original, closed on May 1st 2024. Never came back as the writing of this post. However, their sister site DateSteady.com is still very active. https://www.datesteady.com/ datesteady.com Another Scam website they own: https://www.asiahug.com/ asiahug.com
There is this dangerous woman who I am mad in love with (same person) running many fake Chinese/Japanese/Korean Romance scam websites, fake Instagram pages, tik tok, We chats, and many Chinese porn sites. It is the same person, she uses her looks with pictures and videos to steal money from men. She has many names she goes by, probably even more than I found. She also uses bots to get fake likes and weird Anime filters to try to look like an idol. She has scam artist female friends also I found. She the leader. I know a lot of scammers steal from other people's identities but that is not the case here. This is the same person as the scammer. My story will explain it. As well as this person has pictures of the same person you can’t find anywhere else on the Internet. Even if you do a Reverse Face image search. They said information that match to an unbelievable level. The person who Scammed me: Has Many names (Such As) And a talent for speaking many languages
yomi__na
la.nnnn930
hanhanhuwe
gracegracemei Email: [miyukilovee@outlook.com](mailto:miyukilovee@outlook.com) (Something about BlessCeline Lovee) Skype ID: live:.cid.737fb9ac2ad5655c
(Make Sense) u/mingmei1344 https://www.instagram.com/mingmei1344/ https://www.facebook.com/liuliu.meimingmei (Owner of aiu_agency since 2015) u/aiu_agency https://www.instagram.com/aiu_agency/
Google Drive (AI_U Agency) Hotel Connected: SHILLA STAY Gwanghwamun Her Scam Artist friends who work for both Ai_U Agency and JPNDATE CUDATE (That I found) (Some of these might also be her, not sure) Vynnie_nat : https://www.instagram.com/vynnie_nat/# (I think this Yomi friend and the next 2 images may also be that person 1 of 3)vynnie_natjiejierui_ngc: https://www.instagram.com/jiejierui_ngc/ (2 of 3)jiejierui_ngcVeravera_zhangg: https://www.instagram.com/veravera_zhangg/ (3 of 3)veravera_zhanggElle_owo_elle : https://www.instagram.com/elle_owo_elle/ (50% this also Yomi otherwise it Yomi friend)elle_owo_elleQiqi_shenglim : https://www.instagram.com/qiqi_shenglim/ (50% this also Yomi otherwise it Yomi friend)qiqi_shenglimMyemye_owo_ : https://www.instagram.com/myemye_owo_/ (50% this also Yomi otherwise it Yomi friend)myemye_owo_Her Friends are connected somehow but not sure how yet. They appear everywhere with the fake accounts or it just her also. Riyandiwilliam : https://www.instagram.com/riyandiwilliam/ (Either her lover, friend, or work with her) 🙁Summary: January to March 2024Jpndate.com / Datesteady.com / Cudate.com / Sayhiup.com are dangerous Romance scams. All the women are paid actors for the website from Korea/China. They will try to get into a relationship with you very fast, don’t fall for it. They are milking you for money like if you're a cow. They will threaten to kill you or your family if you call out their scam. They might also say they will sue you. If you stop paying them, they will text you very little. They will never video call you face-to-face. Jpndate.com has a sister scam website from the same people called sayhiup.com. When you buy something on Jpndate the payment goes to Cudate Limited, so that site must be part of the scam also.There also Datesteady with the same layout. There is a company in China doing all type of illegal and immoral practices. Their name is Zhengzhou Zhongzhiqi Technology Co., Ltd. / 郑州市中之祺科技有限公司 . They have their main technology business but they also run a list of many scam websites stealing money from American men, Asian, and European men. Such as Cudate, JPNDate, DateSteady.com, SayhiUp. These are romance scam sites where all the women work for the company. If you make a female account it will pend forever. Only men get approved. They claimed before to be an American-owned company then I exposed them now they claim to be Dutch. Their servers are all in China. They never filed paperwork with any foreign country. They are none of these the Chinese pretending to run many dating sites when in fact it’s all fake. They claim to be in nations their not. They have fake terms of service. I used PayPal before I didn't know it was a scam. I paid in dollars, but they refused to refund me till I told PayPal. PayPal made them pay me back. Then they refused to pay me the total amount they wanted to pay me on yuan when I paid dollars. I reported them to FTC. They also try to hack my laptop for me telling the government the truth about them. They probably get funds from the Communist Party government or SW Entertainment in South Korea. They are very very bad people. Please look into it or forward this message somewhere where it can be looked into. Pretends to be a legit dating site but feels more like a pay-to-use website for fake love. All women here are paid actors for the site. The same few women have multiple profiles pretending to be different people. The funny part is anytime you call out JPNDate bs they change their terms of service. Screenshot everything people. They have a fake page saying they're trying to stop scammers, it all bs they are the scammers. Host of JPNDate Servers: As the writing of this post: IP: 47.242.112.134 - Server: nginx IPv4 GeoIP: HK - AS45102 (ALIBABA-CN-NET Alibaba US Technology Co., Ltd., CN) Host of DateSteady Servers: As the writing of this post: IP: 47.242.47.54 - Server: nginx IPv4 GeoIP: HK - AS45102 (ALIBABA-CN-NET Alibaba US Technology Co., Ltd., CN) Host of Cudate Servers: As the writing of this post: IP: 47.52.110.73 - Server: nginx IPv4 GeoIP: HK - AS45102 (ALIBABA-CN-NET Alibaba US Technology Co., Ltd., CN) Host of AsiaHug Servers: IP: 47.242.112.134 - Server: nginx IPv4 GeoIP: HK - AS45102 (ALIBABA-CN-NET Alibaba US Technology Co., Ltd., CN) My Story: January to March 2024 My Story: January to March 2024 (Update): I know it is the same person, They told me in a text message by accident. They also replied with different accounts knowing info about me I only told the other account. Do you like Asian women? Real Asian women? These ones are real! I know who they are. Hi! This is Mark Faraday talking to you. This is my story of how a website named JPNDate Dancing Idol scammed me out of 4080 American dollars. From the time period of January to March 2024. First, I was on Japan Cupid, a dating site. On Japan Cupid, no one can chat unless one of you has a membership. I bought a 1-week membership. Within 5 minutes to 10 minutes, a woman nicknamed Yomi from Japan messaged me; this should have been a red flag for me. We talked for a while. She said she was interested in me. She asked me if I could move over to the dating site JPNDate because she paid for membership there and not Japan Cupid. She also promised to delete her account on Japan Cupid after we changed sites. She does delete her account off Japan Cupid. Japan Cupid is sus also. I don’t think it is the same company but it is still very sus. However, these women used that site to find men like me. That is a story for a different day. Unlike a normal scam artist, who may only have 1 or 2 photos, she has several photos on her profile. My trust in her grows a bit seeing that. She then privately messaged me several more photos of her. She asked me for some photos, which I sent. She then sends back happy and heartfelt emojis. She told me she doesn’t date Asian men anymore because they were violent to her in the past and her last boyfriend cheated on her. She talked about how she didn’t want to fight with me. She also said we could talk about any topic. She would compliment me often, as I did for her. Of course, on my profile page, I try to post my best pictures. Throughout my life, I have had many different hairstyles. She even mentioned this and got very happy and asked if I was a hairstylist. The spam of talking on JPNDate.com between us was from January 20th, 2024, to March 24th, 2024. On JPNDate, there is an upgrade system. You need Blue Diamond to chat with others. Crown to send videos. Blue Diamond is 20 dollars per month, and Crown is 80 dollars per month. I got the Blue Diamond membership at first. It showed her with it too. After a day or two, she asked me to upgrade like she did to the Crown membership so she could send me a video. I upgraded it, and she did actually send me a video. All pictures and the video match the same person and the same face. Some pictures were in different locations, and some were like three different pictures in the same place. We then later buy a 6-month Crown membership for each other because it is cheaper than 1 month at a time. I bought it for her, and she bought it for me. At this point, I start to believe. This person was giving me all their time. They reply very often, and their texting time was the same as Japan timezones every single day. They spoke not only English but also Japanese almost fluently. However, they did let me know that they're still learning English and sometimes use a translator. She let me know that this website has something called a mall. This should have been red flag number 2. You pay 1 American dollar for each gold point. Paypal is the only thing that works. When we started dating, she said it was normal for couples in Japan to send each other gifts. It was a symbol of forever love in Japan, she claimed. As an American, I didn’t know if this was true. I googled it and couldn’t get a clear answer. She said whatever I bought her, she would buy me as well. She asked if I liked necklaces or charms. I said anything was fine. She wanted me to pick up a necklace. At first, she picked up a $1,000 necklace from the site mall and asked me. I said no; that's way too much money for that. She said how about a 300-dollar Jade Romance charm. She told me to get her white one; she would get me the green one. I questioned if she was legit. She started crying. She somehow convinced me at the time that she was legit again. I did buy it. A few weeks later, I did receive the overpriced Green Jade Romance love charm to my address from her. I never told her which day exactly my tracking information said it would come to my house, but I asked her, and her tracking date was the same week as mine. By the way something almost the same as this necklace is 12 dollars on Amazon. It also broke when I got it in the mail. Probably cost them 2 cent to make. For the next few days, we had a wonderful, happy conversation. It is late January, and I know Valentine's Day is coming. I offered to get her flowers. I got her flowers and chocolate at a very high price of multiple hundred dollars. She then gets so happy. She told me many times how she wanted to go to America and find me. We talked about many topics for several more days. She told me she worked in an office in Tokyo. Yomi told me her real name was Miyuki Miyamoto. Which is very funny because I told her before I was a Nintendo fan, and this is the same last name as Mario and Zelda Creator. She also said she had her apartment to herself, which is true; she does own an apartment. She talked about how life is stressful right now in Japan. She claimed to have grown up in the Japanese town of Nagano, Japan. She also said she had gone to a university in Tokyo with a major in computer science. She wanted to visit America in July for 15 days when she had her time off. July is a normal time for people to get off in Japan for vacation, so I thought nothing of it. I told her that I was from a smaller town in California, but I lived not far from San Francisco. I told her how my town is quiet and how I could see mountains outside my house. She said she wanted a peaceful life and that life in Tokyo is too fast. And she always had great things to say about every picture I sent. We also talk about going on dates. I asked most of the questions, but she did ask me questions as well. I started to ask her a lot of questions about Japan. Like if she visited Himeji Castle, she said no. However, she did say yes to visiting Mount Fuji. I should have asked for a photo of this, but I didn’t. She was very happy; she told me very many topics about Japan. We even briefly talked about anime. She told me she liked Digimon, Dragon Ball Z, One Piece, and Detective Conan. This information is important later. We also talked about how both of us were big Disney fans growing up. She told me she wanted to go to Disney Land when she came to California to visit me. One day she told me, how work was busy today. I told her it was okay and we didn’t need to talk today. She did, however, still text me a little bit that day. This was the only day during our whole time talking when she was super busy. There is nothing wrong with this; all humans get busy. I decided to spend my evening drawing a picture of me and Yomi on a date to surprise her. When I sent it to her, she did not react. This was a red flag for me. I tried to convince myself that she just didn’t like drawings that much. I know I sound really dumb right here, but whoever I was talking to is very smart and knows a lot of things. I was in deep love. We started talking a few days later about the idea of meeting and going on dates together. I know that the yen is weak against the American dollar right now. I told them I would pay for anything they wanted when they were in America because I was in love. This was a big, big, big mistake. They then asked if I could give them 1500 dollars to buy a plane ticket. Never give money to people you never meet in real life, folks. Don’t be dumb like me. Turns out the ticket was actually 2100, so they asked for another 500 dollars the next day, claiming their friend let them borrow the money, and they paid the difference. They did show me a picture of a plane ticket. With the name Yomi and the correct airports in Tokyo and San Francisco. This gave me more trust in them; I got a lot of photos, videos, and even a picture of a plane ticket. At some point, I talked to them about social media. They claim to only have Skype and Line. I found it very hard to believe a woman in her 20s wasn’t on Instagram or Tik Tok. I went on Instagram and typed Yomi, and I found a Yomi who looked just like her. This made me think: why did she lie? What confused me is that all the pictures on her Instagram were different from the ones she sent me, other than one image that was the same. Meaning that the images were not clearly stolen from there. I looked up JPNDate online; there isn’t much info on this website (Right Now), other than one reddit forum from 1 year ago. Someone said something about being scammed by an IDOL on this site. They also said the website wasn’t in Japan but in China. I was wondering why I never saw new females joining the website; it was the same 23 pages worth of them. I wanted to test the website to see if it was legit. I made another account, a fake male account with AI artwork. It was approved in one second. I then made a fake female account; it said pending approval. It has now been 2 weeks since I made that account, and it still says pending approval. This means all the women on this website have to be fake actors. There is also a setting on JPNDate to see who has been online last or which accounts are the oldest. When I asked weeks before, Yomi claimed she had been on this website only for a short time. Her oldest picture was dated October 20, 2023. Yet she has the sixth-oldest account on JPNDate, according to the website. The Reddit forum I talked about before was over a year old. When I was on this website for a month, at least 10 other women tried to text me. There was this one profile of a woman from Taiwan, age 20. She texted me three times in one month. When I joined, her age was listed as 20, and at some point, she changed her age to 25 on her profile. I ignored all these women. This proves again that all these women are fake. I do know these are women based on how they type, but they are not truthful like they act like they are. As I write this, I just realized this is Yomi's friend or sister; it matches the other Yomi account's sister tag. They are part of the same dance agency Aiu_Agency on Instagram from SW Entertainment in South Korea. I knew this website wasn’t telling the truth. I found the JPNDate IP address and tracked it to a server in Hong Kong, China, hosted by Alibaba cloud servers. Reddit was right; the website is Chinese. However, Yomi is Korean which I learned later. I took pictures of the website code just in case. I asked Yomi if she knew Alibaba. Then she asked if I’m going to China—a very strange follow-up question. At this point, I was confused. Who is Yomi? I couldn’t find anything about Miyuki Miyamoto, only Yomi. On Yomi’s Instagram, she speaks Korean, not Japanese. I started to think there are no Japanese women on this website like they claim to be. She does speak Japanese, though. I started using more than 10 different software programs to track who Yomi was since she kept asking me for money. I found like 1000 pictures of an idol, WeChat model, singer, dancer, person on endless Chinese dating sites, and a valiant professional gamer part of the AI’U agency for over 8 years. I found two other Instagram accounts with Yomi's face. Another account in Chinese with an idol name other than Yomi also had a Facebook page. The Chinese account has a post about her going to Australia in early 2024, where she is typing in English words. It was a fake trip. I also found an account where she speaks only Korean on Instagram. I also found a tik-tok where someone dances and looks 100% the same as Yomi, to whom I’m talking. The part that is crazy is that none of the images are 100% the same, but the person is the same in all of them. This shocked me; I follow all the accounts. I saw the stories daily to see who this person was. Her Yomi account is just her normal pictures and atm company or something. Her Korean account is about traveling to Singapore, Spain, and South Korea. She also posts a lot about Disney toys here. When I talked to the scammer about Disney, I had no idea about this. At this point, I knew that many men had been scammed out of money for fake love, not just me. These women are real women. However, there are actors pretending to be in love. They will crush your heart and call you names after a few weeks if you don’t buy their stuff. It has to be from JPNdate Mall only, nowhere else. JPNdate Mall prices are crazy high. I am not sure if the point of the website is just for money or if it is actually for women to study English or what. Chinese women, pretending to be Japanese (most of them), that have connections to Korean music, dancing, and gaming on professional teams. Man, what a hell of a story this is. This sounds like a Hollywood movie, but it's real, or at least partly. At this point, everything I say seems to be true based on what I know. They are connected deeply with SW Entertainment. Yomi told me early on that she had one older sister and one younger brother. It seems like she is actually a twin, and she is the younger sister. Or it’s her friend she calls a sister from the dance Aiu Agency. Yomi claims to be 25, but I think she is closer to 27 or 28 based on finding a listing of her work in 2015 at Twitch Gaming. You have to be 18 or older to work at Twitch gaming, unless your parents sign things. Unless this job is fake, I don’t know. When I showed the pictures I found to Yomi on JPNdate, she played the victim card on me. Saying she thinks I’m a liar and she wants to break up. Then she gave me her Skype account to try to prove it was legit, and all the other images and accounts were stolen and fake. Her Skype name is Rose, with a One Piece picture. She sent me many voice clips, crying, trying to convince me that she was real. I put them in software, and the voice was 30% human, 70% AI. Clearly, a woman is changing her Chinese or Korean voice to sound Japanese. A PC gamer would know how to do this; they do it all the time to troll. Yomi told me she didn’t play video games anymore, but I found a picture that wasn’t that old of a woman who looked the same as her; she had a Nintendo Switch with a white OLED in it. Btw it’s a known fact that Yomi uses software to cheat in the Pc FPS games. We talk for a few more weeks on Skype. I can’t let Yomi, her sister, whoever the man is (I think her lover), and her idol dance friends scam men for their time and money. Yomi Chiense's name is Vera Yuanxin (维拉). Her twin sister goes by veravera_zhangg. Yomi “deleted her profile” when I exposed her. But One Yomi is still there with no pictures. Two they clearly have other accounts with people who look like she just changed hairstyle, talking and trying to scam other men. Remember when I said the anime part was important? On Yomi's Korean account, she has a friend with whom she talks about Digimon. She gave him a Disney toy. She told me she wanted to cosplay a fox; his profile is a fox. There is just so much proof that these are the same people. Later someone hit me up on Reddit from the Phillippines and told me how the same person Yomi scammed them. How for months Yomi promise them so many things. Then when they said it came to going on the plane to visit him they said they were sick or dying or something. Yomi also made a fake Instagram pretending to be Joe Biden and sent me a friend invite. I messaged and it was so funny how bad it was on their part. I said “Yomi are you trolling me?” then they deleted their account. This was on April 6th, 2024. Yomi tries so hard but use a lot of cheap things that are clearly fake like ai artwork, bots for like at ai_u agency, and fake profiles where she comments herself and attacks anyone who calls her out fairly. After exposing Jpndate they Ip ban my address lol. Then on social media joke about attacking me. If you call out their BS they threaten your family and yourself. Just stay away from all these sites if you're going to date online use well-known legit sites. I contacted Paypal and me and JPNDate.com had many emails back and forth. They pretended to do an investigation on Yomi real identity and said she was really Miyuki Miyamoto. It was so bullshit. I told them I would sue them if they were lying, The site no longer exists. The scam does, however. What happened After JPNDATE? April-June 2024 In April many fake Instagram accounts started following me each day. They are romance scams I never got them like this before. I didn’t fall for any of them. All or most were likely Yomi and her friends. Paypal did get me 4000 of 4080 dollars back but it took 6 weeks and multiple emails. JPNDate tells me they will be closing soon after PayPal went after them hard. Like I said I just wanted to find love. I made some stupid decisions along the way. However, I want to find out the truth and make sure other men don’t get scammed by them. I keep messaging Yomi's skype during this period, they never block me. They unfriended me but I could still send messages I wasn’t blocked. They even responded 2 times out of the 50 times I did this in the multiple-week span. I contacted the Aiu_Agency on Instagram (It is the same people as JPNDate) they pretended to be different people. I told them about Jpndate. They called me a hero, they said they loved me, and they thanked me for sending them all the pictures that Yomi sent me on Jpndate and Skype. They follow me on Instagram for 2 days. Then they unfollowed me randomly for no reason. They said their agency would do a police report and kill the scammer. I knew this was so bullshit. I told them how the scammers were making new profiles of them on Japan Cupid. Which is true. The leader Mingmei1344 (Which is Yomi Chinese account) claimed I was the scammer setting them up. She plays the victim card on me. I showed her all the messages and how I got the pictures, I didn’t steal anything. She told me her and her friends are okay if I hacked them, because I’m from the CIA. I am not from the CIA. It was a joke I made a few days before when she pretended to be a mob boss in Korea. I told her I am not a hacker. Right after that she and her friends all ban me other then Mingmei1344 account. Mingmei1344 Message me 1 more day, then block me. However, Mingmei1344 and the Aiu_Agency keep posting things on topics I told them days or weeks before. I checked their old post they never talked about any of this before that. I told these to Yomi on JPNDate and skype not Mingmei1344 again proving it is the same person. They look the same as well. Like the blue feather concept in love mythology, Gundams, Nintendo, Persona, and many many other topics. Yomi claimed to not know anything about videogames before I talked about it with her. I think this is partly a lie. This confuses me so I make fake Instagram accounts to message Mingmei1344 and Aiu_agency. She replies to my messages and Mingmei1344 even does a ask me a question thing on Instagram and replies to all of them. She clearly knows these accounts are from me Mark however she replies anyway. The replies were nice and positive things. Then later she bans them all again. Often Aiu-Agency Women (Yomi and her friends, Mostly Yomi) pretend to go to countries they are not actually in the picture, it’s all greenscreen effects. They also use Ai for Music covers Artwork. For music covers they pretend to sell millions of copies of but there is nowhere to buy such a music cover CD they claim to sell. Their music covers are claimed to be from popular songs kpop songs. I looked, at least not right now such CDs aren’t real. Of course, the songs are real but not their covers. Yomi is most of the women in the pictures but not all. They will post Ai cover artwork, multiple pictures of them using the greenscreen effect, then put a high-quality image of a famous Korean male singer. They never took these pictures of these Korean male singers. They download them and edit them. They pretend to perform with them but it is all fake. Mingmei1344 started always putting her with all the famous Mark’s in Korea. Only her not her staff with Mark’s. I think it’s a reference to me. She didn’t do this before meeting me I looked at her old post. Again Mingmei1344 is Yomi who is Jeong Nahyeon, who pretends to be Miyuki Miyamoto. She still references me sometimes in other ways and I send them messages to see what will happen next. One time I wrote about loving her to see what she would say. I do love Yomi, however I don’t want anyone to get scammed. I told her we could travel across the world together. She wrote in her next post on Aiu_agency on Instagram she liked this future with her future husband. It was a direct reply to what I asked the day before. I joined DateSteady after being contacted by a woman on Japan cupid. She is very interested in me and Yomi so I tell her everything. |
2024.06.09 15:22 Delivery-Plus What’s the difference between a fortnight, and Fortnite?
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2024.06.09 15:21 Delivery-Plus What’s the difference between a fortnight, and Fortnite?
2024.06.09 15:20 Live-Needleworker-60 The Deer and the Dragon by Piper CJ rant review
2024.06.09 15:13 Doll_girl516 Why is the new raspberry tea disgusting! I miss the old one
2024.06.09 15:12 Yurii_S_Kh The Untold Story of the Head of St. John the Baptist
https://preview.redd.it/ug8cv1d5pj5d1.png?width=327&format=png&auto=webp&s=d7474c5779c4af5eb89bcb0a56d892d7aee93367 submitted by Yurii_S_Kh to SophiaWisdomOfGod [link] [comments] Holy Scripture tells us that after St. John the Baptist was beheaded, the impious Herodias forbade the prophet’s head to be buried together with his body. Instead, she desecrated the honorable head and buried it near her palace. The saint’s disciples had secretly taken their teacher’s body and buried it. The wife of King Herod’s steward knew where Herodias had buried St. John’s head, and she decided to rebury it on the Mount of Olives, on one of Herod’s estates.[1] When word reached the royal palace about Jesus’ preaching and miracles, Herod went with his wife Herodias to see if John the Baptist’s head was still in the place they had left it. When they did not find it there, they began to think that Jesus Christ was John the Baptist resurrected. The Gospels witness to this error of theirs (cf. Mt. 14:2). Jerusalem. The First Uncovering of the Head of St. John the Baptist. May years later, during the reign of Equal-to-the-Apostles Emperor Constantine, his mother, St. Helen, began restoring the holy places of Jerusalem. Many pilgrims streamed into Jerusalem, amongst whom where two monks from the East, wishing to venerate the Lord’s Honorable Cross and Holy Sepulcher. St. John the Baptist entrusted these two pilgrims to discover his head. We only know that he appeared to them in a dream; and that after finding the head in the place he showed them, they decided to return to their native city. However, God’s will determined otherwise. Along the road, they met a poor potter from the Syrian town of Emesa (modern-day Homs), whose poverty had forced him to seek work in a neighboring country. Having found a co-traveler, the monks either out of laziness or carelessness entrusted him with carrying the sack containing the relic. As he was carrying it, St. John the Baptist appeared to him and told him to forget the careless monks and run away from them, taking the sack they had given him. For the sake of the precious head of St. John the Baptist, the Lord blessed the potter’s house with an abundance of goods. The potter lived his whole life remembering his Benefactor, giving alms generously. Not long before his death he gave the precious head to his sister, commanding her to pass it on to other God-fearing, virtuous Christians. The saint’s head was passed along from one person to the next, and came into the hands of one Hieromonk Eustacius, who sided with the Arian heresy. Sick people who came to him received healing, not knowing that it was due not to Eustacius’s false piety, but to the grace coming from the hidden head. Soon Eustacius’s ruse was exposed, and he was banished from Emesa. A monastery grew around the cave where the hieromonk had lived and in which the head of St. John the Baptist was buried. Emesa and Constantinople. The Second and Third Finding of the Precious Head. After many years, the head of St. John the Baptist was uncovered a second time. We know about this from a description by Archimandrite Marcellus of the monastery in Emesa, as well as from the life of St. Matrona (†492, commemorated November 9/22), written by St. Simeon Metraphrastes. According to the first description, the head was discovered on February 18, 452. A week later, Bishop Uranius of Emesa established its veneration, and on February 26 of the same year, it was translated to the newly-built church dedicated to St. John. These events are celebrated on February 24/March 8, along with the commemoration of the First Finding of the Precious Head. After some time, the head of St. John the Forerunner was translated to Constantinople, where it was located up to the time of the iconoclasts. Pious Christians who left Constantinople secretly took the head of St. John the Baptist with them, and then hid it in Comana (near Sukhumi, Abkhazia), the city where St. John Chrysostom died in exile (407). After the Seventh Ecumenical Council (787), which reestablished the veneration of icons, the head of St. John the Baptist was returned to the Byzantine capital in around the year 850. The Church commemorates this event on May 25/June 7 as the Third Finding of the Precious Head of St. John the Baptist. The Fourth Crusade and travel to the West. Ordinarily, the Orthodox history of the finding of the head of St. John the Baptist ends with the Third Finding. This is due to the fact that its later history is bound up with the Catholic West. If we look at the Lives of the Saints written in the Menaon of St. Dimitry of Rostov, we find a citation in small print, often overlooked by readers, at the end of story of the Finding of the Forerunner’s Head. However, after unexpectedly discovering the head of St. John the Baptist in France and then returning home to Russia, this citation became a real revelation for us. It is this next “finding” of the head of St. John the Baptist that we would like to write about below. Thus, we read in this citation that after 850, part of the head of St. John the Baptist came to be located in the Podromos Monastery in Petra, and the other part in the Forerunner Monastery of the Studion. The upper part of the head was seen there by the pilgrim Antony in 1200. Nevertheless, in 1204 it was taken by crusaders to Amiens in northern France. Besides that, the citation shows three other locations of pieces of the head: the Athonite monastery Dionysiou, the Ugro-Wallachian monastery of Kalua, and the Church of Pope Sylvester in Rome, where a piece was taken from Amiens. The face of St. John the Baptist, in the Cathedral of Our Lady in Amiens. The history of the Baptist’s head’s appearance in France differs little from the history of many other great Christian relics. On April 13, 1204, during the Fourth Crusade, an army of knights from Western Europe seized the capital of the Roman Empire—Constantinople. The city was looted and decimated. As Western tradition has it, Canon Wallon de Sarton from Picquigny found a case in one of the ruined palaces that contained a silver plate. On it, under a glass covering, were the hidden remains of a human face, missing only the lower jaw. Over the left brow could be seen a small perforation, most likely made by a knife strike. On the plate the canon discovered an inscription in Greek confirming that it contained the relics of St. John the Forerunner. Furthermore, the perforation over the brow corresponded with the event recorded by St. Jerome. According to his testimony, Heriodias in a fit of rage struck a blow with a knife to the saint’s severed head. The Cathedral of Our Lady in Amiens (Notre Dame d’Amiens). Wallon de Sarton decided to take the head of the Holy Forerunner to Picardy, in northern France. On December 17, 1206, on the third Sunday of the Nativity fast, the Catholic bishop of the town of Amiens, Richard de Gerberoy, solemnly met the relics of St. John the Baptist at the town gates. Probably the bishop was sure of the relic’s authenticity—something easier to ascertain in those days, as they say, “by fresh tracks”. The veneration of the head of St. John the Baptist in Amiens and all of Picardy begins from that time. In 1220, the bishop of Amiens placed the cornerstone in the foundation of a new cathedral, which after many reconstructions would later become the most magnificent Gothic edifice in Europe. The facial section of the head of the St. John the Baptist, the city’s major holy shrine, was transferred to this new cathedral. Eventually, Amiens became a place of pilgrimage not only for simple Christians, but also for French kings, princes and princesses. The first King to come and venerate the head in 1264 was Louis IX, called “the Holy”. After him came his son, Phillip III the Brave, then Charles VI, and Charles VII, who donated large sums for the relic’s adornment. The Church of the Forerunner in Rome (Basilica di San Giovanni in Laterano). In 1604, Pope Clement VIII of Rome, wishing to enrich the Church of the Forerunner in Rome (Basilica di San Giovanni in Laterano), requested a piece of St. John’s relics from the canon of Amiens. Saving of the head from the outrages of the French revolution. After the revolution in 1789, inventory was made of all Church property and relics were confiscated. The reliquary containing the head of the Holy Forerunner remained in the cathedral until November, 1793, when it was demanded by representatives of the Convention. They stripped from it everything of material value, and ordered that the relics be taken to the cemetery. However, the revolutionary command was not fulfilled. After they left the city, the city’s mayor, Louis-Alexandre Lescouve, secretly and under fear of death returned to the reliquary and took the relics to his own home. Thus was the sacred shrine preserved. Several years later, the former mayor gave the relic to Abbot Lejeune. Once the revolutionary persecutions had ended, the head of St. John the Baptist was returned to the cathedral in Amiens in 1816, where it remains to this day. At the end of the nineteenth century, historical science, not without the participation of ecclesiastical figures, determined that there had been many instances of false relics during the Middle Ages. In an atmosphere of general mistrust, veneration of the Amiens shrine eventually began to wane. The head of St. John the Baptist today. In the mid-twentieth century, specifically in 1958, there was a spark of renewed interest in the relics of St. John the Baptist. The rector of the Amiens cathedral reported to the ecclesiastical authorities that in eastern France, in Verdun, was what was presumed to be the lower jaw of St. John the Baptist. He wanted to rejoin the two parts. With the blessing of the bishop of Amiens, a commission of qualified medical experts was formed. The relics were investigated for several months, in two stages—the first in Amiens, the second in Paris. After the work was completed, the commission’s findings were gathered into a document, signed by the members. In the first chapter of the document, which covers the research performed in Amiens, the following conclusions were made:
Joyfully, during recent years more and more Orthodox pilgrims are travelling to Amiens. Now, with the help of the Pilgrimage Center of the diocese of Korsun (of the Moscow Patriarchate, based in Paris) Orthodox molebens and even Divine Liturgies are now being served before the head of St. John the Baptist. Priest Maxim Massalitin [1] The Ascension Convent (Russian Orthodox Church Abroad) is now located on this site, and a church dedicated to the Forerunner stands over it. --Ed. [2] St. John the Baptist is called “the first among martyrs in grace” in the final prayer of the canon of supplication to him. |
2024.06.09 15:10 John_Swift1 How I passed my SHRM-CP (without the Learning System)
2024.06.09 15:03 just_Dao_it Is Taoism Pantheistic?
“Suddenly Master Lai grew ill. Gasping and wheezing, he lay at the point of death. His wife and children gathered round in a circle and began to cry. “Master Li, who had come to ask how he was, said, ‘Shoo! Get back! Don't disturb the process of change!’ “Then he leaned against the doorway and talked to Master Lai. ‘How marvelous the Creator is! What is he going to make of you next? Where is he going to send you? Will he make you into a rat's liver? Will he make you into a bug's arm?’ “Master Lai said, ‘A child, obeying his father and mother, goes wherever he is told, east or west, south or north. And the yin and yang—how much more are they to a man than father or mother! Now that they have brought me to the verge of death, if I should refuse to obey them, how perverse I would be! What fault is it of theirs? “‘The Great Clod burdens me with form, labors me with life, eases me in old age, and rests me in death. So if I think well of my life, for the same reason I must think well of my death. “‘When a skilled smith is casting metal, if the metal should leap up and say, “I insist upon being made into a Mo-yeh!” he would surely regard it as very inauspicious metal indeed. Now, having had the audacity to take on human form once, if I should say, “I don't want to be anything but a man! Nothing but a man!”, the Creator would surely regard me as a most inauspicious sort of person. “‘So now I think of heaven and earth as a great furnace, and the Creator as a skilled smith. Where could he send me that would not be all right? I will go off to sleep peacefully, and then with a start I will wake up.’"—presumably, he will wake up as something other than a man.
“In panentheism, the universal spirit is present everywhere, which at the same time ‘transcends’ all things created. While pantheism asserts that ‘all is God’, panentheism claims that God is greater than the universe.”I think Taoism is thus a form of pantheism. All is Tao. The ten thousand things are specific, transitory manifestations of Tao.
2024.06.09 15:02 tofusenpai01 The current state of the Islamic word
2024.06.09 15:02 SharkEva Am I the asshole for feeling like my eldest daughter should be treated the same as my "real" children?
2024.06.09 15:02 SharkEva AITA for Telling My Sister's Fiancé About Her "Loyalty Test"?
2024.06.09 15:01 ibid-11962 Worldbuilding and Touring [Post Murtagh Christopher Paolini Q&A Wrap Up #10]
Did you have a research process when you were writing the Inheritance Cycle? I put a fair bit of thought into the story itself of the Inheritance Cycle, and then some general stuff as to the society and just kind of where things were in the world before writing it. I put a medium amount of thought into the magic system before I started writing, and then as I wrote the implications of it became much more apparent to me, and I really sort of dove deep into it. In retrospect, were I to create a fantasy world from scratch now, I would really put a lot of attention into that magic system and the society beforehand, just to have a good feel for that before I even start chapter one. I would put more restrictions on the magic too. I think the more restrictions, the more interesting, even the more realistic in some ways. [3]Creating Religions
If I were designing a magic system from scratch nowadays I would put way more restrictions on it because I find that the limitations are useful, I don't want the characters getting overpowered, but also just from a storytelling standpoint, incantations, rituals, spells, prayers, potions, all of those mechanical things are just kind of interesting and of course they give lots of opportunities for things to go wrong if you don't follow the correct steps. So I think if I were designing magic from scratch right now I'd put a lot of restrictions and rituals associated with it. So costs, more costs. [25]
What kind of hacks do you have to developing a magic system? Once I have a general idea of the setting, whether science fiction or fantasy, the first question I ask myself is how does it diverge from physics as we know it? Because that is a fundamental question that's going to determine what is possible in this world. It might determine what's possible with warfare, with politics, with industry, manufacturing, travel times, it could affect everything depending on what type of divergence you have. In the World of Eragon, the divergence is that living creatures have the ability to directly manipulate energy using their minds. The reason for that is kind of handwavy, although I have an explanation for it, but that is the divergence and then I tried to be as consistent and physically possible with it at every step of the way past that. When people play games you always get people who are looking how to exploit it. "What's the most I can get out of this game? What's the most I can do?" That's basic human nature. Science is a speedrunning nature I think. So the same sort of thing. You assume that if magic existed there's going to be someone sitting in their basement who's absolutely obsessive about it and is going to figure out every single advantage that that divergence gives them. And you have to be realistic and work that into your world and say "Well people aren't stupid. They are going to figure this out and use it in this way, and what are the implications, socially, physically, and everything else?" Once I have that then you can think about society and culture and everything else, but that basic physical difference from our reality is just to me fundamentally important to understand before I even begin to write. [25]
With standalones you're not dealing with continuity or what rule did you break or things like that. That's interesting, because I would say that writing a sequel for me is faster than writing a standalone. At least for me, the more I know the characters and the world, the faster, like I don't have to do the groundwork of creating a magic system, creating a society, creating the gods and the history. All that's done for me, so I can just slip into it like slipping on an old glove. [33]
A socio-political religion in your world helps drive characters or stories or die-hard fanatic characters forward. How do you go about developing those? Have the courage to let your characters actually believe the things that they are supposed to believe. If you look back historically people really did truly believe these different religions and different systems. Too often I think with modern stories we have people only giving lip service to the supposed belief and instead having very modern attitudes toward it which perhaps doesn't always work. That's understandable if you want a character to be relatable to a modern reader, but there are so many examples of interesting belief systems throughout the world. To me that's something fascinating to write about. But the main thing is just accept that when people truly believe something they're genuine about it and then you can follow that from a logical and storytelling standpoint. What I'd also say is, if you're writing about something that is very different from your own belief system, assuming it's not like completely evil, to try to approach it with a sense of charity. With the understanding that everyone is searching for meaning and understanding. I've always had a soft spot for the old television show Babylon 5, because although I don't believe that the creator J. Michael Straczynski is religious, he writes all of his characters with great sympathy and understanding, he's never cynical about it, and he's not putting up straw man arguments or criticizing any of the characters. He's like "They're searching for meaning. They're struggling with the great questions as we all do, and each one is trying to solve those questions in their own way." And I always really appreciated that he wasn't being cynical about it or really shallow. [25]Creating Languages
Did you think of the ancient language, not just as a mechanic, but also as a parable of our own language? I was thinking about how language itself feels like magic to me. You can write a story, you can convey information. Language in many ways is our greatest tool and makes us human along with, I would argue, our hands, our ability to manipulate objects and use actual tools. But one without the other wouldn't really work and wouldn't allow us to be a technological species. We could have language with no ability to handle tools, and then we wouldn't be what we are now. But I find language fascinating and I find the function of language incredibly interesting. And there is this idea in the real world going back to the beginning of time, that to name something is to understand it, and gives you a certain amount of power over it, whether that's a person or a physical object. And the ancient language is just taking that idea seriously. And I'm not the first author or tradition to do that, but is it a parallel? Is it a metaphor? I don't know if I'd go that far, but it definitely ties into the use of language and my ideas about it. What's crazy to me is there is a theoretical arrangement of words right now that would give us a massive breakthrough in science and physics. There's a theoretical arrangement of words that were I to write it or anyone else would influence how people think about the next presidential election to such a degree that it might actually changed the election. These are all theoretically possible and you can think of many many other things that you could do with language. We just lack the knowledge of what those arrangement of words are, and so we're constantly clawing our way toward new knowledge and new uses of language. [19]Creating Maps
The languages that you were playing around with in The Inheritance cycle, they were Germanic, Anglo Saxon based? The ancient language, the magical language, is based very strongly on Old Norse, which of course is Germanic or related to Old High German. The Dwarven language was invented pretty much from scratch although it is an agglutinative language like German is. And then the other languages have not appeared very much in the series. They're just little scraps here and there. To be clear, I am not a linguist, and I have not devoted the time and energy to developing these in a formal or rigorous way, the way that Tolkien did. Tolken was a linguist and that was his forte. I got far enough down that path while working on the Inheritance Cycle that I really began to appreciate how every word has a history and that history is inexorably tied to the history of the land. It's often said that Tolkien created Middle-earth just to explain his languages, as a setting for the languages. Which isn't entirely true, but there is truth to that. That's what I was encountering and I was realizing that I could spend 20 years, 10 years, just working on the languages and building this out. It might have been a worthwhile venture, but the tradeoff would have been no more books published during that time. I want to tell a story. [28]
What I would do these days, or what I did with other languages, is come up with a couple of words that sort of had a general feel that I liked and then extrapolating from those invented words, figuring out what consonants and vowels and clusters thereof that I wanted. Come up with some more sample words based off that and then start working out some grammar. Grammar is probably my weakest spot since at the time I wasn't really aware of non-English grammar systems and I've put some more attention in that since then. [34]
The language and culture that you describe in the books seem very real. How do you start inventing a language? You shamelessly steal from Germanic mythology and Scandinavian mythology, just like Tolkien did. But I'm no linguist, I did my best, I have a copy of the Nibelungen up on my shelf along with the Eddas, and I based one of my languages on Old Norse, which gave it a nice sound and feel. So the main thing is picking things that make sense for your world and then trying to be internally consistent. [2]
At what point in your writing process do you start creating the map? I've created the maps at different times in different books. At first I thought I didn't need a map because I thought that a good book should be perfectly understandable without a map. You shouldn't need to rely on anything outside of the text in order to enjoy it. And I still think that's generally true, but a map can add a lot. So for Eragon, I did it partway through the book. If I were to do a stand-alone fantasy novel, I would definitely want to work out the maps and stuff before writing it. [12]Creating Dragons
The map for Eragon, the original black and white map, I did about halfway or a third of the way into Eragon. My idea was, and I still kind of believe this, that a well-written book shouldn't need a map in order to understand the story. You should be able to keep your bearings just based off the text. What I ran into though was that I was getting lost in the world myself with the amount of places and things after a certain point. And so I drew a map. [34]
For me I think if you're creating something in the real world obviously that gives you certain constraints and certain advantages but if you're starting with something from scratch, I find creating a map right up front is really helpful because your story is not going to visit every square inch on your map so by filling in those other details on the map you're going to get more story ideas and also ideas for potential conflicts, travel distances. It all feeds into the realism of the story as well as potentially future stories. It's fun stuff. The downside is you could spend your whole life worldbuilding. There's a there's a book from World War Two called Islandia, and the guy just spent his whole life creating this island and its culture to the point of working out the actual layers of geography of stone in the island. I've never actually read the book, I don't know if it's any good, but I know it was fairly popular when it came out. [25]
What hacks do you have for for creating geography and points of interest within your world? When I was creating the map for Alagaësia I actually used a old National Geographic Atlas and traced over various coastlines and then distorted them and pasted on top of each other in order to get sort of a natural feeling coastline. Please don't compare the island of Vroengard to the outline of Greece. Please don't do that. And then you have Robin Hobb who just turned Alaska upside down for her map which I always love because I've lived in Alaska twice. I think she told me that she never actually expected the book to get published, but then she got stuck with that because everything was tied to the geography that she started with. [25]
I think that a good map ought to have lots of points of interest, and the tricky bit is, without getting so detailed that it becomes cluttered. You see that sometimes with real world maps, like atlases and stuff, where there's a ton of place names, city names, river names, road names. All of which are useful and necessary, but it can actually visually get in the way of the art, perhaps the artistic effect that you would want a fantasy map to have in a book or a movie or even a game. [12]
There are world generators that you can just click through. It's really easy nowadays with technology to build worlds just by snapping your fingers. Even with those tools, if you have the time and inclination, I think there is some benefit to redrawing or painting the maps in your own style. I don't know about you, I love seeing when the maps are from the author themselves. I remember Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn by Tad Williams. Tad did all the maps himself, and I love that. Even if it's imperfect or a little amateurish it just gives it a really nice feel. I love Tolkien's original art for the same reason. [25]
You are the creator of your own world. Do you feel that you have follow certain canons of fantasy worlds, for example, dragons have four legs and wyverns have two? Or do you feel that you can practically do whatever you want because it's fantasy and you create everything? Yes and no. No because I have already established rules and traditions and precedence in The World of Eragon, so I have to be consistent with that. But if I were writing a new fantasy, I would not feel beholden to any tradition. If I wanted to write a world where the dragons have three legs or feathers or something like that then I would feel free to do that. That's the great thing about speculative fiction is it gives you the freedom to write and create whatever you want to. The thing is when you have a genre where anything is possible it actually reveals the limitations of your imagination. And there are very few authors, myself included, who really make full use of that. But at the same time, limitations can make your fiction more interesting. I think it's important to pick some limitations and that will help actually improve the quality of your work. [7]
Why did you decide to have your dragons have a saddle? I was around horses growing up. And the thought of actually physically being on a creature with very hard scales was rather terrifying if thought about in a practical sense. And so it just seemed to me that there had to be some protection. [33]
When you're writing fantasy and you include dragons, especially a dragon rider fantasy, depending on how many there are there, it's actually quite a difficult thing to not solve all your problems with dragons. I think the solution to that is you focus on the problems that dragons present, which balances out the advantages. And of course people are smart, whether we're talking about humans or elves or dwarves or any other invented species. If dragons were real, you'd come up with counters to them, whether it's a bunch of giant ballistae on your walls, or building domed fortresses, or building underground. You would come up with solutions and it would negate those advantages. And that's always my issue with writing fiction with dragons in the real world. If it's a slightly more modern, then you have to ask, well, why isn't everything different in history? Like if dragons were a constant part of our world, architecture would be different, warfare would be different, politics would be different. Well, no, politics would be the same. What am I saying? [30]
I'm sure all of us have seen the fantasy paintings of like a knight in armor with a lance on a horse facing off against a dragon. Now, to be fair, a lance moving at a decent speed at a horse galloping will have enough kinetic energy behind it to punch through just about anything. It could do a lot of damage. But any decent sized dragon would move so fast and be so strong, you wouldn't have a chance with a lance. You'd need a giant crossbow. That'd be your only choice. The size of a dragon, intelligence of a dragon. Until you get to projectile weapons, you have no chance. [30]
We all know what any creature gets when they bond with a dragon. They get a dragon. But why would a dragon create that bond? Why would they do it? Is it the bond, is it their nature? I think for me, having other species bond with the dragons was essentially a way to keep the dragons from getting wiped out. Because dragons are such a huge threat. If you imagine in the real world, we don't suffer giant predators to be constantly predating and disrupting our world. We remove that threat. Especially if there's magic involved, the ability to remove that threat gets even bigger. So in a way I viewed the bond between rider and dragon as essentially self preservation for the dragons, if not the other species as well. Without some sort of symbiotic relationship, coexistence becomes very, very difficult. That, or the dragons have to be smart enough to just essentially remove themselves from the world and live off in the far off places. But that gets really difficult when you start considering how much they need to eat. I remember reading the Live Ship Trader series and I remember the end of that spoiler alert where it's become clear that true dragons have returned now. And it really was kind of an oh crap moment because you start thinking about what that actually means for there to be dragons in the world again. It's kind of like Reign of Fire. [30]
How did you do on your book tour? It was a lot. It was a lot. I did 50 days of touring last year between Fractal Noise and Murtagh. Obviously the majority of that was for Murtagh. And of course I had a couple other trips in there as well. I went to New York Comic Con. I had one or two personal trips. So there was a lot of travel last year. My goal is to not have as much travel this year. In general, the book tours were awesome, great crowds for the Fractalverse, enormous crowds for World of Eragon/Murtagh. I don't normally talk about this stuff, but since we're past it, it doesn't matter. I started touring for Murtagh November 6th and then got home for good on December 16th. But there's always a risk of getting sick while you're traveling. And I did pretty well in the US leg of things. And then over in Europe between the jet lag and not sleeping- I had a really amazing dinner, one of my publishers took me out to a three star Michelin restaurant. The problem was the dinner started at 8pm and didn't finish till midnight. And there were two or three desserts, and the last dessert was full of coffee, and I didn't realize it. Absolutely full of coffee. And I did not get to sleep until like four in the morning. And I only had three hours of sleep that night. So I think I got sick the day after as a result. I got so sick on the European tour that at one of my stops I had to call paramedics to my hotel room at 2 a.m. because I couldn't breathe. Ended up with bronchitis for the first time in my life. But I'll have you know, I did every event. I didn't miss a single event. I managed to do all my presentations and made it through in one piece. I've never, never backed down from doing an event, even while bleeding. Can you tell us a little bit about the time that you were bleeding in an event? Well, I was in Europe. I was touring for Inheritance, I'd already toured North America, and then I started in Europe, went to UK, and then I went to Australia and New Zealand. But first country was Germany, and I think I did Munich and Cologne, and then I ended in Berlin. And in Berlin, they had me in this wonderful theater that's like over 100 years old, which is very rare in the city, considering all the bombing during the war. And I'm backstage, which meant down in the basement of this theater. And there's like 500 people out waiting for me to make an appearance and there's someone introducing me and they say my name and everyone starts clapping. And of course you want to get on stage before the applause dies down. And the way you got onto stage in this theater was through a set of stairs. And it really wasn't even steps. It was almost like a ladder and it was wood. And the steps were so old that they were basically hollowed out from all the people that have gone up and down it over the years. So I'm scrambling up this and about halfway up, my right foot slipped off the edge of one of the steps because it was hollowed out and full speed, full strength, full weight, I slammed my shin into the edge of one of the steps, stumbled forward two more steps and did it a second time. But momentum, adrenaline, I keep going, I get up on stage, I waved to everyone. And fortunately for me, because I was speaking to a foreign audience, they had me sitting at a table with a translator and a presenter. So I got to sit down and the table kind of hit everything from view. And I start the presentation, start the event. And after about, I don't know, five minutes, I'm thinking to myself, okay, I've banged my shin before. We've all banged our shins before, but this really bleepin' hurt. So I looked under the table and the whole front of my jean leg on my shin is soaked with blood. There is blood dripping onto the floor and my sock is soaked with blood. So I poked my translator, the presenter next to me that I was doing a couple of events with, and I said, "Hey, look at this". And he glances under and his face just goes white. And I'm colorblind and I saw his face go white. And he said, "Do we need to call an ambulance?" And I'm like, "No, no, we're going to do this." So I did an hour-long presentation. And then I got up and managed to quickly limp over to a signing table. And no one really noticed that I wasn't feeling so hot. And I got behind the signing table, and I signed books for 400 or 500 people. And the funny thing is, I was traveling with this foreign rights agent publicist for Random House named Jocelyn, who was just an absolute beast of a woman. I love her to death. You have to understand, she did a European book tour with me while eight months pregnant. The woman was and is just very impressive. But she grew up on a farm. German family in the US, grew up on a farm. So I showed her my leg when I was sitting down to sign and she just looked at me and she said, "You need to go to the hospital?" I said, "Nope". She said, "I knew you were country. Good man." Slapped me on the back. So I finished signing and then I went back to the hotel and I had to get into a tub of water to soak my jeans off because the blood had dried and glued them to my shin. And the problem was I had a dent all the way down to the bone. And I really should have gone to a hospital because, sorry for the gory details, but what happens is when you get a dent like that, you lose the fat under the skin between the skin and the bone and it doesn't come back unless you get an injection to help it puff out and heal. And I didn't do that because I was on tour, there was no time. So the next day I had to fly to pretty sure it was Barcelona for the St. George Book Festival, which is a walking festival. So you have to walk from bookstore to bookstore in the city and do signings. But that was a bit rough. That actually took over a year to heal properly. I still have that dent. Stuff happens. I've heard some crazy stories with other authors. I'd rather it's my blood, not the fan's blood. [32]Touring Difficulties
We've got blood and sweat, any tears from tour? On occasion. The biggest one is just being away from home. And if anything is a bit off for whatever reason, you can't just pop home and hold someone or do this or do that. It's just difficult to be that far away from home for so long. [32]Meeting Fans around the World
If you're not familiar with book tours, the way it often works is that you fly to a city, you get to your hotel room, you have a little bit of time to freshen up, maybe get some food and then you go to the bookstore and you do your event. And it has to be after people get off from work, so it tends to be a later evening event. If you have a large number of people show up, that means that that time spent talking and signing pushes fairly late in the evening. You go back, you get dinner, and if you're a semi-introvert like so many authors tend to be, you need some time to decompress, which means you probably stay up a little too late reading or writing. And then in the morning, you got to go get another airplane flight and go to the new city. All of which is fine, but going to the airport, doing those flights, with the time it takes to go through an airport these days, it means that the schedule has very little time in it. When I toured for Fractal Noise, the publisher one of the days had me fly from Tampa to Portland and I still had to do an event that day. Which I agreed to. It was my own fault because they had everything on the East Coast and I said, "Well, what about the West Coast? You know, I have readers on the West Coast. They need to get a chance to get a signed book." It was my own fault. But that can get rough when you're doing it for weeks on end at a certain point. You just can't recover. A day off? What's that? But it's a good problem to have. That people want to see you and want to read your books. It's an awesome career to have. [1]
I'm also a big fan of coffee naps. So I will drink a cup of coffee, usually my second cup of coffee, and then I'll go take a nap, and I will nap for about 30 minutes, because after 30 minutes the coffee wakes me up. And I find that 15 to 30 minutes is the perfect length of a nap for me, and if I go past that, I need to sleep for about three hours, because otherwise I get into the middle of a REM cycle, and if I wake up in the middle of a REM cycle, I'm just like groggy and drugged, and I feel worse than if I hadn't napped at all. And then of course, if you're on book tour, the way I have been for a while, you gain the ability to just close your eyes at any point and take a 10 minute nap 15 minute nap anywhere, and it at least helps you stay upright. [19]
You just got back from the U.S. leg of your book tour — who’s making up the crowd? The readership is broad and probably older than it was back in the day. There are still a lot of 8-year-olds, but now there are grandparents, too. I’ve even met some kids who’ve been named after the characters, which is pretty amazing. Because people have been reading the series for so long, I tend to get a mix of incredibly detailed, hyper-focused, deep-dive questions about some of the lore, but also some more general ones about Eragon’s name. [16]Appearance
I'm sure you hear personal stories all the time especially at your readings and your your appearances. It must be lovely, and I guess overwhelming to connect with your fans. That's a good way of putting it: lovely and overwhelming. Everyone has their own personal history with these books. I have people showing up who named their children after the characters, or who've gotten tattoos. Oh my goodness, what's the one you get? Multiple Saphiras, Aryas, Rorans, a couple of Eragons. As a writer, you want people to read your stories, enjoy them, be affected by them. If they're affected so strongly they name their children after your characters, you feel pretty good about it. [28]
Are your European fans different from your American fans? I actually haven't met any children here who are named after characters from my books. That seems to be an American phenomenon. The language barrier sometimes makes it a little more difficult to talk to European fans. But the love for Eragon is just as strong in Europe as it is in the US. This is not your first time on tour in Europe. Is there something you're missing here? I actually noticed that hotels in Europe usually don't have ironing boards or irons. This is standard equipment in America. [24]
My great-grandmother was from Sicily and then my grandfather was from Bologna. I just found out recently that my grandfather as a child was tutored by Fellini's wife. [7]
My grandfather was the stereotype of an elderly Italian gentleman. He had a mustache, he cooked spaghetti and he made the most amazing red sauce for the spaghetti. He used too much profanity. He was quite the character. [35]
Amsterdam is a beautiful city, but if I had grown up here I would probably still have written fantasy, but it would probably have influenced the type of fantasy I write. [23]
I was just in Stockholm on book tour for my latest book. And I've sold a really large number of books, proportionally in Sweden, and I'd never been there before. And I was kind of curious what their thoughts and feelings were on it, given the fact that I have shamelessly pillaged, Anglo-Saxon Scandinavian mythology for my own work. And they said native Swedish authors don't write using their own mythology, they go into the more literary veins and they import and translate other authors who are writing about Scandinavian mythology and they enjoy it immensely, but it doesn't seem to be a homegrown thing for them, which is rather odd, I think. [30]
Old Norse is not so far from German, do you speak a little bit of German? I understand a fair bit. When I've done presentations in Germany, I've had children ask me questions in German, and I can sometimes understand the entire question without translation, but I only speak a few words. [Host 2]: Let's try it. Can you ask the next question in German? Of course. Oh dear. [speaking quickly] Herr Paolini, wie viel von ihrer Vision für die ganze Serie hat sich mit der Zeit verändert? Hat es sich überhaupt verändert? Denn wenn man sich die frühen Werke anguckt, erkennt man, dass sehr viele Sachen aus den frühen Werken in den späteren wieder auftauchen. So dass es eigentlich unmöglich sein kann, dass sie das nicht von Anfang an komplett geplant haben? Translation please. That was not fair. But funny. Yeah, I was just asking, when you started writing the book, and it became not just one book, it became a whole world, it became a series, and I don't want to spoil anything, but if you read the first books and you read the later books, stuff comes up again, and it seems like you actually knew where it was going when you started writing, which is again insane because you were 15. Is that something you just got lucky, or did you really plan for a whole series when you started writing the first one? I planned because I tried writing some stories before Eragon, and I never got past the first five or ten pages because I didn't have a story. I would only have an inciting incident, like a young man finds a dragon egg in the forest. Well, fun, awesome, but that's not a story. So Eragon and the series as it was, was a writing exercise for myself to see if I could outline, plot, and then write at least the first book of a series. So yes, if you read the first book, Eragon, there's actually a scene, a dream sequence in the first book. And it is the very last scene of the last book. And I did that specifically so that I could point to it and say to my readers, "See, I knew what I was doing." But of course, it isn't the last book now. [2]
Before he finished signing them all he asked if I read Fractal Noise, I said yes. He then asked how I liked it. I said I liked To Sleep far more. And to be fair I did. But I could've been a little more less brunt about it. All in all I'm sorry Paolini. I hope you see this. Dude -- No need to apologize! I was the one who put you on the spot. I was just curious about Fractal Noise as it's pretty different from what I normally write. That said, I'm a big boy, and it doesn't bother me in the slightest if someone prefers one book over another. [R]
Have you been on TikTok? How do you find it? I have an account that my assistants post content on for me because I don't have the time and I don't want it on my phone, but it has been a really useful way to connect with readers, and I had a lot of people who came up during my book tour end of last year, who said that they found out about the events I was doing from the posts on TikTok. [33]
Outside of the tour, did you do anything to personally celebrate the release of Murtagh? No. Not to sound blase, but this isn't my first book I've released. Going on the tour is the celebration. Getting to meet the fans. It's an enormous expenditure of energy, time, effort, and it's very joyous and touching and meaningful for me. And I think for a lot of the readers. So that's the celebration. My team and I, we all kind of take a moment to pat ourselves on the back every time a book comes out and then it's back to the grind a bit. Also, I got to celebrate my 40th birthday while on book tour, and I got to celebrate it with my editor, my publicist, my former publicist who's been with me since the beginning. So that was really nice. [32]
Being an author is like the best kind of semi-celebrity, because nine times out of ten, no one knows who you are, you can live a nice quiet life, and then you get to go out and meet people who like your work. And that's a real treat. I grew the beard partly to keep people from recognizing me. But then I've had it for so long that it doesn't work anymore. And I got tired of shaving. But the problem is the beard takes so much time and effort to take care of it, it doesn't save me any time. [1]Signing Books
Did your hat end up getting fixed post-tour? Yup. Fixed it myself with a rivet. [T]
Any advice on how to wear a pirate's hat without it being weird? It's very simple. There's one ingredient. You wear it with confidence. That's all. [36]
People people don't maybe don't realize what an endurance race it is, especially when when books are this big and successful. Like the amount. I once did 9,280 books in an afternoon and a half at a warehouse. I had nine people helping. I stood. I find that if I stand, I don't use my wrist. I can isolate the arm. And I just had someone shove it under me, someone pull it out for me, and everyone else was boxing, unboxing and flapping. But it hurt. It really hurt. I dropped my first name this past year. For the first time in a 20 year career, I finally dropped my first name. Did you feel defeated? Yes. But I have kids now and I just could not afford the time and the strain on my body. I actually got two typewriters. I got really bad inflammation in my right thumb from all the signing and I find that typewriters alleviated that. Also heavier like mechanical keyboards seem to help. So I know like Robin Hobb has suffered some severe problems with her hands with the amount of typing she's done over the years. So yeah, it is an occupational hazard. [33]
I have to say, signing 30,000 sheets is SIGNIFICANTLY harder than mining or placing 30k blocks in #Minecraft. Lol. [T]
Do you have a PO Box or something? I’d pay shipping both ways to have you sign my books. P.O. box is listed on paolini.net. Just include return shipping, please. :D Alternatively, you can arrange signed copies through Conley's Books & Music in Livingston, MT. [R]
If I send a book to a P.O. Box and pay for shipping there and back, would you sign it? Yup. Address is on paolini.net [T]
2024.06.09 15:01 survivaltothrival Healing Schizophrenia - Success Story!
2024.06.09 14:55 throwaway4fem A simp to Ashley and her family [Chapter 4]
2024.06.09 14:52 Kaboio Edward Elric vs Leo Valdez (Full Metal Alchemist vs Heroes of Olympus) Connections Revamp + MEGAPOST
Core Theme: submitted by Kaboio to DeathBattleMatchups [link] [comments] Sarcastic and intelligent teenagers proficient in a mystical science with an immortal, absentee dad and a dead mother that face off against a parental godly being and their children. Connections: -Witty and sarcastic teenagers who are very proficient with a mystical and inventive science which they can use in battle or in creation, repairs, or research (Alchemy and Magical Tinkering). They also picked up this talent at an incredibly young age. -Among their peers who practice the same mystical science as them, they have a rare and unique ability (Ed can use Alchemy without a transmutation circle unlike other Alchemists, and Leo can control fire unlike other children of Hephaestus). -They are exceptionally intelligent, and usually rely more on strategy and tactics to win fights than brute force alone. Additional personality similarities include impulsiveness, having a comedic “ego”, struggling to stay still/in one place and do nothing, and of course are selfless and very caring to those close to them. -They are also notably short amongst their peers, a trait which they’re often teased for and are sensitive about. -Both save their best buddies from dying by giving them a new body, then eventually return them to their original bodies (Ed saves Alphonse by putting his soul in armor then returns him to his human body in the end, and Leo saves Festus by using his consciousness and parts of his body to build the Argo II, then returns him to his bronze dragon body in the end). -Both of their fathers are immortal beings who abandoned them for most of their youth (Von Hohenheim and Hephaestus). However, they would eventually reconnect, learning that their fathers always cared about them and were proud of them despite having to be away, and they would fight alongside them in their respective wars. -Both of their beloved mothers die while they’re young, and both characters suffer trauma and a guilt complex from not being able to save their mother with their powers (Ed fails to bring back his mother with Alchemy, resulting in his brother losing his body, him losing an arm and leg, and making him believe he caused his mother to suffer more; Leo couldn’t reach his trapped mother, and accidentally burned down the building she was trapped in, making him believe he killed her). -Their love interest (Winry and Calypso) is a kind hearted, caring, down to earth, and feisty, and is often teasing and squabbling with them. Both of them specifically make promises to these love interests before leaving them to finish their mission to take down the big bad, and they would eventually return to them only after taking down said big bad. -The big bad they both face is a parental, godlike being (Father and Gaea, Mother Earth), who is the parent of the immortal, major antagonists they face across the story (the Homunculuses and the Giants). Both characters also deal the final blow to these big bads. Fight Potential: There’s quite a bit to work with and go over here. For one thing, both have decent sized kits you can work with for plenty of action. You can get some hand to hand/close quarters combat, primarily with Ed’s sword arm/spear against Leo’s hammer and wrench. And you can get some great clashes of Ed’s alchemy molding the earth against Leo’s flames. This would be a great opportunity to show Ed’s superiority up close and Leo’s ranged advantage. On top of that, Ed’s alchemy is also obviously rather versatile to allow him plenty of different options in combat (including barriers, giant hands, pillars, etc.), and Leo’s tool-belt would allow him to pull out his various supplies as well (it’s like a bag of holding that let’s you pull what you’re thinking of or stuff you’ve stored with some limitations) and you could likely give him some of his gadgets. Plus they can both potentially utilize their environment, with Ed’s alchemy manipulating his surroundings often and Leo being able to control machines. Suffice to say, I think there’s plenty to work with combat wise and their kits bounce off each other pretty well. The potential banter between these two is also amazing in my opinion. They could easily be quipping, teasing, and gloating throughout the fight in some very witty dialogue. You could also tap into their more serious sides, primarily having them strategize to get the upper hand on each other, and thinking through the situation. There’s also a few ways you could set up the fight, primarily through misunderstanding. You could have Ed falsely believe Leo’s fire is flame alchemy at first, but upon realizing Leo uses no components, assume he’s using a philosophers stone, or potentially even be a homunculus. And since Ed’s alchemy primarily uses the ground and stone, Leo could falsely assume Ed is a minion of Gaea. And Leo taking a jab at Edward’s height would also be in character, which could cause a scuffle where the misunderstandings occur. So I think there’s enough potential reasons for them to get into a fight. All in all, I think there is plenty to work with here for a great fight. Debate Potential: Despite each of them holding a number of advantages, Leo should win relatively easily. That’s not to say Ed doesn’t have some major advantages though. He’s more well versed and capable in combat, alchemy is generally more versatile than Leo’s kit, and he’s physically tougher than Leo (debatably, since I believe Leo’s flames should scale to the higher stuff but not his body). Meaning if he can get in close, Ed has the advantage and should be strong enough to hurt Leo. However, Leo’s flames scale way higher than Ed’s physical strength/durability (his fire scales to the continental feats from Khione’s), and scaling to Jason/Percy means he should be lightning timing speed wise. So realistically, Leo should just blitz one shot with his fire. There are some arguments for higher speed Ed, potentially getting him to Lightning speed as well, but I’ve yet to see the calcs and sources other than the electricity from Alchemy, which seems to be a debatable source. So all together, it could be closer depending on speed scaling, but Leo’s flames one tapping Ed remain a major advantage that should net him a win. Credit to u/Classic_Breath_4381 for the Track Art! |
2024.06.09 14:51 ThomasE900 Why Is My Model Rendering Twice?
void vk::Vulkan_CommandBuffers::recordVoxelCommandBuffer(PhysicalDevice& physicalDevice, VkCommandBuffer& commandBuffer, loadObject& objectToLoad, uint32_t imageIndex) { VkCommandBufferBeginInfo beginRecordInfo{}; beginRecordInfo.sType = VK_STRUCTURE_TYPE_COMMAND_BUFFER_BEGIN_INFO; beginRecordInfo.flags = 0; beginRecordInfo.pInheritanceInfo = nullptr; if (vkBeginCommandBuffer(commandBuffer, &beginRecordInfo) != VK_SUCCESS) { PRINTERROR("COMMAND BUFFER FAILED TO BEGIN RECORD"); } VkRenderPassBeginInfo renderPassInfo{}; renderPassInfo.sType = VK_STRUCTURE_TYPE_RENDER_PASS_BEGIN_INFO; renderPassInfo.renderPass = physicalDevice.logicalDevice.baseRenderPass; renderPassInfo.framebuffer = physicalDevice.logicalDevice.swapchain.baseframebuffers[imageIndex]; renderPassInfo.renderArea.offset = { 0, 0 }; renderPassInfo.renderArea.extent = physicalDevice.logicalDevice.swapchain.extentSetting; //clear the screen std::vectorVertex Shader:clearColors; clearColors.resize(2); clearColors[0].color = { 0.0f, 0.0f, 1.0f, 1.0f }; clearColors[1].depthStencil = { 1.0f,0 }; renderPassInfo.clearValueCount = clearColors.size(); renderPassInfo.pClearValues = clearColors.data(); //bind renderpass and graphics pipeline vkCmdBeginRenderPass(commandBuffer, &renderPassInfo, VK_SUBPASS_CONTENTS_INLINE); vkCmdBindPipeline(commandBuffer, VK_PIPELINE_BIND_POINT_GRAPHICS, physicalDevice.logicalDevice.voxelGraphicsPipeline); VkViewport viewport{}; viewport.x = 0.0f; viewport.y = 0.0f; viewport.width = static_cast (physicalDevice.logicalDevice.swapchain.extentSetting.width); viewport.height = static_cast (physicalDevice.logicalDevice.swapchain.extentSetting.height); viewport.minDepth = 0.0f; viewport.maxDepth = 1.0f; vkCmdSetViewport(commandBuffer, 0, 1, &viewport); VkRect2D scissor{}; scissor.offset.x = 0; scissor.offset.y = 0; scissor.extent = physicalDevice.logicalDevice.swapchain.extentSetting; vkCmdSetScissor(commandBuffer, 0, 1, &scissor); std::vector descriptorSets = { physicalDevice.logicalDevice.dataDescriptorSet,physicalDevice.logicalDevice.voxelsDescriptorSet,physicalDevice.logicalDevice.imagesDescriptorSet }; vkCmdBindDescriptorSets(commandBuffer, VK_PIPELINE_BIND_POINT_GRAPHICS, physicalDevice.logicalDevice.voxelPipelineLayout, 0, 3, descriptorSets.data(), 0, nullptr); for (unsigned int m = 0; m < objectToLoad.pworld->getModels().size(); m++) { vkCmdBindIndexBuffer(commandBuffer, physicalDevice.logicalDevice.modelIndexBuffers[m], 0, VK_INDEX_TYPE_UINT16); std::vector pushConstantData = { m }; vkCmdPushConstants(commandBuffer, physicalDevice.logicalDevice.voxelPipelineLayout, VK_SHADER_STAGE_VERTEX_BIT, 0, objectToLoad.sizeOfVoxelPushConstant, pushConstantData.data()); uint32_t instanceCount = 1; vkCmdDrawIndexed(commandBuffer, static_cast (objectToLoad.pworld->getModels()[m].getIndices().size()), instanceCount, 0, 0, 0); } vkCmdEndRenderPass(commandBuffer); if (vkEndCommandBuffer(commandBuffer) != VK_SUCCESS) { PRINTERROR("COMMAND BUFFER FAILED TO END"); } }
#version 450 layout(location = 0) out vec4 fragColor; layout(location = 1) out vec2 fragTexCoord; layout(location = 2) out float fragTextureIndex; layout(push_constant) uniform constants { uint modelIndex; } pushPosition; layout(set = 0, binding = 0) uniform UBO { vec2 windowDimentions; } data; layout(set = 0, binding = 1) uniform cameraUBO { vec3 pos; vec2 depthBounds; mat4 rotation; mat4 perspective; mat4 view; } camera; layout(set = 1, binding = 0) buffer modelSBO { vec3 pos; mat4 model; float numOfVertices; float skyboxFlag; float textureIndex; vec3 vertices[1000]; vec2 texCoords[1000]; } models[100]; //===FUNCTIONS=== vec3 convertFromCartisianToNormalisedCoords() { vec3 cartCoords; //how much a certisian coord is in normalised coords cartCoords.x = (2.0 / camera.depthBounds.y); cartCoords.y = (2.0 / camera.depthBounds.y); cartCoords.z = (2.0 / camera.depthBounds.y); return cartCoords; } void main() { vec3 pos = models[pushPosition.modelIndex].vertices[gl_VertexIndex].xyz + models[pushPosition.modelIndex].pos; vec3 cartCoords = convertFromCartisianToNormalisedCoords(); vec3 normalisedPos; //coordinates + where the vertex is on the square normalisedPos.x = (cartCoords.x * (pos.x)); normalisedPos.y = (cartCoords.y * (pos.y)); normalisedPos.z = (cartCoords.z * (pos.z)); //send data to fragment shader if (models[pushPosition.modelIndex].skyboxFlag == 1.0) { gl_Position = vec4(normalisedPos,1) * camera.rotation * camera.perspective; }else{ gl_Position = vec4(normalisedPos,1) * models[pushPosition.modelIndex].model * camera.view * camera.perspective; } fragTexCoord = models[pushPosition.modelIndex].texCoords[gl_VertexIndex]; fragTextureIndex = models[pushPosition.modelIndex].textureIndex; }Fragment Shader:
#version 450 layout(location = 0) in vec4 fragColor; layout(location = 1) in vec2 fragTexCoord; layout(location = 2) in float fragTextureIndex; layout(location = 0) out vec4 outColor; layout(set = 2, binding = 0) uniform sampler texSampler; layout(set = 2, binding = 1) uniform texture2D textures[100]; vec4 convertColor(vec4 color) { //convert color from 255 to between 1.0 vec4 convertedColor; convertedColor.x = (color.x/255); convertedColor.y = (color.y/255); convertedColor.z = (color.z/255); convertedColor.a = (color.a/255); return convertedColor; } void main() { vec4 textureImage = texture(sampler2D(textures[uint(fragTextureIndex)], texSampler), fragTexCoord); if (textureImage.a > 0) { outColor = textureImage; }else{ discard; } }
2024.06.09 14:47 lolfreng Genital herpes or razor burn
2024.06.09 14:46 No_Marzipan_1230 Industrial Mage: Modernizing a Magical World Chapter 11 – A New Skill, Jack’s Request, A Strange Visitor
2024.06.09 14:41 No_Marzipan_1230 Industrial Mage: Modernizing a Magical World Chapter 10 – Holden Affairs & Numbers Going Up!